LARK #2
I can hear the music swell, the whoosh of web-slinging, the soft thud of a landing he’s watched a hundred times but still reacts to like it’s brand new.
He’ll come out later, eyes wide, and tell me some small, irrelevant plot detail like it’s breaking news.
I’ll act surprised. Like I haven’t heard it sixteen times before.
That’s the job.
And honestly? I love the hell out of it.
By 7:30, the diner is mayhem with a rhythm. Plates clatter, elbows fly, the coffee pot makes that dying-walrus sound again. I move through it on instinct—refilling mugs, dodging bacon grease, stepping over the old ranch dog that somehow keeps sneaking in like he owns stock in the place.
The regulars are already parked in their usual spots, treating it like a bingo hall no one ever wins and no one ever leaves. Somebody’s arguing over cattle feed. Someone else is pretending not to listen while absolutely listening.
Delores Nash is at her usual post at the counter. Bedazzled jean jacket du jour, notebook labeled TOWN BUSINESS in thick black Sharpie. Delores believes in three things: Jesus, decaf after noon, and knowing your secrets before you do.
In the corner booth, we’ve got Shirley and Harold Fitzpatrick—sixty-two years of marriage and sixty-one years of mutual loathing.
They’re locked in mortal combat over a crossword puzzle, as per usual.
Shirley won’t wear her damn glasses. Harold won’t let her guess if she can’t see the clues.
They once had a screaming match over a Jeopardy!
rerun so intense their daughter had to come drag them out before Mabel threw them both in the alley like old produce.
At the front table, Buck and Jed Wheeler, twin brothers in their late seventies, are engaged in a silent war of stubbornness.
Jed ordered apple pie for breakfast just to spite Buck, who has been insisting that “pie before noon is the devil’s work” for as long as anyone can remember.
Neither of them speaks about the ongoing battle, but every morning, Jed eats his pie extra slow and makes sure Buck sees every bite.
They come in, order the same thing they always do, and talk—about whose cow got into whose yard, whether the preacher’s wife really got Botox, and why the mayor still refuses to fix that pothole on the south road that’s been eating truck tires since the Clinton administration.
Most of Summit Springs revolves around ranching in one way or another.
Cattle, quarter horses, sheep—livestock auctions that bring in buyers from all over the state.
If you’re not running a ranch, you’re working on one, and if you’re not working on one, you probably sell something to the people who do.
Which means the Bluebell is more than just a diner.
It’s a second home to a whole lot of men who wake up before the sun, spend the early morning working in dust and sweat, and come in looking for black coffee and a plate big enough to make up for skipping dinner the night before.
Most mornings, the place is full of them—ranch hands, foremen, guys who pull up in trucks still coated in dirt from the day before.
Their boots are heavy against the floorboards, and their hats are tipped low like they’re trying to recover from the early hours.
They take their coffee strong and their eggs runny.
They talk in short sentences, in nods and grunts, in language that doesn’t require much beyond an eyebrow raise and a shake of the head.
Right now, there’s a pack of them lined up at the counter—mud-streaked jeans, sunburned necks, ball caps pulled low. They’re flipping through the classifieds like they’re gonna find something in there they haven’t seen a hundred times before.
The Bluebell gets the ranchers early. Before the sun’s even fully up. Their trucks idle out front, trailers still hitched, dust still fresh on the tires. They come in quiet, shoulders heavy with the kind of work most people don’t understand unless they’ve lived it.
The hands roll in later—mid-morning, after they’ve already put in six hours and a busted fence.
They’re louder, younger, smell more like sweat and ambition than coffee and age.
They pile into booths or line the counter, wolfing down food like it’s fuel—which it is—and then they’re gone, like they were never here in the first place.
By noon, it’s a mix.
Cattle haulers passing through. Retired ranchers still pretending they’ve got a herd to check on. Men who never really clock out, just come in long enough to shovel food in and trade opinions before heading back out into the heat.
There’s a rhythm to it.
Who comes in. When they leave. Like the Bluebell is synced up to the heartbeat of the land itself. The younger guys don’t linger. They order fast, eat faster, and leave with their hats already in hand.
The older ones? They stretch their coffee refills into an art form.
They talk in theories and weather patterns, in vague metaphors and unspoken truths.
They argue about sick calves like the fate of the world depends on it.
They’ve got two speeds: dead serious or full of shit. Sometimes both in the same sentence.
By the time dinner rolls around, it’s families and teenagers and couples sharing milkshakes like we’re in a rom-com. But mornings? Mornings belong to the ranchers. The ones who carry Summit Springs on their backs. Who work quiet and steady and don’t ask for much .
Across the room, Shirley sighs dramatically, lowering her crossword puzzle. “Harold, help me out here—what’s a four-letter word for ‘useless’?”
Harold doesn’t even glance up. “H-A-N-K.”
“I swear to God, Harold, if you bring up my brother one more time—”
“You asked me!”
Lenny, a local rancher who’s still hidden behind his paper, grumbles. “You two argue like it’s an Olympic sport.”
Shirley sniffs. “Well, if it was, I’d be bringing home the gold.”
I shake my head. “Do I need to separate you two?”
Harold waves me off. “Nope. She likes the fightin’. It keeps her sharp.”
He’s not entirely wrong.
“You better pray I go first, Harold. I mean it. Because the second you’re gone, I’m telling everyone you were a terrible lover.”
Harold just keeps eating his toast. “Joke’s on you, Shirl. They already know.”
“Jesus,” I mutter, refilling her coffee mug before she can weaponize it.
These people. This town.
They wear me out.
And yet…I wouldn’t trade a single one of them. Not even Tina, who just tried to pinch my cheek like I’m five and she gave birth to me. I keep weaving through the tables, refilling coffee cups, dodging elbows, offering tired smiles. It’s muscle memory at this point.
Someone once told me your twenties are for figuring out who you are, and your thirties are for living it.
I don’t know who came up with that, but I’m calling bullshit.
Because I’m thirty, and if anything, I feel like I’m standing in the middle of a life I built out of necessity and wondering if I ever stopped long enough to decide if it’s what I actually wanted. Like I missed some turning point while I was busy making coffee and fixing leaky faucets.
I don’t feel “settled.”
I feel…tired. And grateful. And unsure. All at once.
For the past twelve years, I’ve lived as two different people.
There’s Lark Westwood—the version of me this town sees.
The one who owns the Bluebell, opens up before the sun even stretches, keeps the lights on, the stove hot, and the orders moving.
The one who holds everything together with burnt fingertips and duct tape and a smile that’s easier to wear than the truth of how I actually feel some days.
I do it because I don’t know how not to. Because no one else will. Because it’s easier to stay busy than to admit I’m still figuring it out.
And then there’s the other version. The one who belongs to Hudson.
The one who wakes up early to pack lunches and checks his backpack three times to make sure he didn’t forget his science folder again.
The one who listens to hours of baseball talk like it’s gospel and pretends not to notice when his voice cracks mid-sentence.
The one who worries about how much screen time is too much and whether or not frozen waffles count as dinner when we’re both too tired to try.
I love him in ways that feel too big for my chest.
In quiet, constant ways.
In I-love-you-every-single-day-even-when-you-pretend-you-don’t-hear-it kind of ways.
And still, some nights I lie awake and wonder if it’s enough. If I’m enough. That’s the thing no one tells you about parenting—how much it exposes the parts of yourself you still haven’t healed. How much you end up raising yourself right alongside your kid.
I want him to feel seen. To feel loved. To never feel like he was a mistake. I want to be everything for him, to try to fill every gap, every empty space.
I was eighteen when I found out I was pregnant.
Eighteen. I hadn’t even finished my senior year of high school yet.
I was still trying to figure out how to live in a world that felt too big and too small at the same time, in that vast space between childhood and adulthood.
I was still uncertain about everything—still deciding whether to stay in Summit Springs or run far away to somewhere else, still figuring out how to boil water and make macaroni and cheese without ruining it completely.
I didn’t know how to live on my own, let alone be a mother.
And then, in one moment, that all changed. I had to grow up. I had to become someone else, someone who could be enough for him. I wasn’t ready, but I had to be.
I became the girl who woke up early and stayed up through the night with a colicky baby. Who figured out how to stretch twenty bucks into groceries and gas. Who taught herself to parent without a blueprint, without a back-up, without a single soft place to land.