Page 15 of Lost Then Found
I pull a few bills from my wallet and toss them on the counter.
Wyatt nods, like that makes sense even if he doesn’t fully get it. “Whatever it is, hope it works out for you.”
“Yeah. Me too.” I clap his shoulder on the way out. “How’re things with you?”
He snorts. “Cows still need feeding. That about sums it up.”
I crack a half-smile. “They always do.”
We shake hands again, and I step outside, cold air biting at my jaw as I head for Lucille.
She’s my old ’‘79 Chevy K10—beat to hell but still kicking. Paint’s faded to a dull navy, more primer than color, rust creeping up around the wheel wells. Front bumper’s got a dent from a fence post that sure as hell wasn’t there the day before I hit it. I got her when I was sixteen—hand-me-down from my dad after she sat in the barn for a decade, collecting dust.
First time I fired her up, Kenny Rogers came crackling through the speakers.
You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille.
The name stuck.
Lucy’s been with me through everything. Sneaking out after curfew. Sunrise hay hauls. Beer-soaked midnight drives with me behind the wheel, Ridge riding shotgun, and Lark tucked in the middle seat, her bare feet on the dash.
I climb in and slam the door. She rattles hard, like she’s holding it together out of pure spite.
I pull onto Main and roll the window down, let the cold hit my face. Sharpand clean. The kind of cold that wakes you up whether you want it to or not.
Town looks the same. And somehow, not at all.
Summit Springs doesn’t change quick. It holds onto things—old barns with sagging roofs, feed stores with hand-painted signs that’ve been touched up a hundred times but never replaced. Dusty trucks. Men who still spit their tobacco into Coke bottles and call it a good day’s work.
The grain elevator’s still standing out on the edge of town, same one we used to climb just to prove we weren’t scared. We were. But we did it anyway.
Outside McKee’s Hardware, there’s a rodeo poster flapping against a telephone pole—sun-faded and peeling at the corners. Promising a jackpot big enough to make any broke cowboy feel lucky for five minutes.
I pass the Sinclair station. Old man Jorgensen still runs it. He once let me and Ridge buy beer at seventeen—told us we could have it if we helped him unload a shipment of oil drums. Thought we were pulling one over on him. Took us too long to realize he was just getting free labor.
And Rosie’s Café? Still got the same three specials written in dry-erase marker that don’t erase all the way anymore.
I slow down when I hit the feed store. Memory hits before I see it—Lark standing there, trying to talk me into buying her a baby duck. Swore up and down Alice wouldn’t care.
She very much cared. But we brought it home anyway.
Then there’s the rodeo grounds.
Bleachers look smaller now. Dirt’s still packed tight from years of hooves tearing it up. We all put in time here. Earned our bruises.
I rode broncs for a stretch—back when I thought I couldn’t be broken. Eight seconds of pure adrenaline. Muscle and instinct. You hold on while the horse does everything it can to throw you into next week. You move with it, not against it, and pray you make it to the fence before you get your ass stomped into the ground.
Ridge was the bull rider. Took after Dad that way. He was climbing on bulls before he had a license, coming home bleeding and taped up, facesplit open from a horn—grinning like it was nothing.
Wren was the natural. Born with the kind of quiet patience that animals trust. She could get a skittish colt to take a saddle just by being there. Never rushed it. Never forced it. Just…understood them.
Sage was wild like Ridge. Always chasing after us boys, trying to prove she could keep up. Usually did. Even if it cost her a broken wrist or a busted lip.
And Lark—she ran barrels like the damn thing was personal. Lean, fast, hair flying behind her, legs tight against the saddle. Eyes locked. Determined. Like she had something to outrun.
We spent whole summers here. Warm beer behind the chutes. Hooking up in the dark. Talking big about getting out. About the lives we were gonna have once the world got bigger than this place.
Summit Springs has a way of holding on to you. It clings to your boots, settles in your lungs. It remembers who you were, even when you’re trying to forget. It’s full of ghosts—of the people who never left, and the ones who did but still haunt the place anyway. The ones who swore they’d outrun it, only to find themselves right back where they started.
