I let my eyes drift closed.
The problems will still be there when I wake up.
They can wait.
**********
The office at the Bluebell is too damn small. It always has been. I’ve tried rearranging the furniture a dozen different ways, but no matter how I shift the desk, the filing cabinets, the ancient printer that only works when it feels like it, it still feels like I’m working out of a closet.
The walls are lined with shelves crammed full of binders, invoices, and receipts that date back to Alice’s time. I should get rid of most of them, but throwing away anything with her handwriting on it feels wrong. The overhead light flickers, buzzing just loud enough to remind me it needs replacing, but it’s been on my to-do list for weeks, and I still haven’t gotten around to it.
I stretch my neck, rolling my shoulders as I glance down at the financials. They’re good. Better than good. It took me years to get to this point, butthe Bluebell is finally where it needs to be.
When I first took over, it was a mess. Not because Alice hadn’t run it well—she had. She’d kept this place going on sheer willpower, on loyalty from customers who would have crawled through fire to get a plate of her pancakes. But she didn’t believe in raising prices, even when she should have. She paid the staff out of her own pocket more times than I could count. And she never updated anything unless it was falling apart at the seams.
So when I got here, I had to clean up the books, replace half the equipment, and get the suppliers to stop charging us like we were some rundown roadside joint instead of one of the busiest spots in town. I added dinner service, brought in a new coffee supplier, started hosting community events that packed the place every weekend. I made this diner mine.
And now, it’s thriving.
I flip the last page of the report just as Hudson lets out a dramatic groan from the corner of the office.
“I’m dying,” he announces, slumping in his chair like his bones have turned to liquid.
“You’re not dying,” I say without looking up.
“I wouldn’t be this bored if I had a phone.”
I sigh, rubbing my temple. This again.
Hudson’s been campaigning for a phone for the last year, and he’s relentless. Every kid in his class has one, apparently. It’s cruel and unusual punishment that he doesn’t. I’m ruining his social life. He’s basically living in the Stone Age.
And I get it, I do. But the thought of handing him a direct line to the internet, to group chats, to kids being kids in the way that makes my stomach twist—I can’t do it. Not yet.
Hudson has a good childhood. A real one. He still reads actual books, still spends his free time at the baseball field, still talks to his friends in person instead of through a screen. I want to keep it that way for as long as I can.
He lets his head fall back against the chair. “Can we at least talk about it?”
“Wearetalking about it,” I point out.
He groans again, flipping through his Shohei Ohtani magazine with the enthusiasm of a prisoner counting the days on a cell wall.
I sigh again, setting my paperwork down. “Hudson—”
“I already know what you’re gonna say,” he mutters.
I raise an eyebrow. “Then why are we still having this conversation?”
Hudson rolls his eyes. “I’m not a baby anymore, you know.”
I press my lips together and take a deep breath. “I never said you were.”
“YouthinkI am,” he says, still flipping through his magazine, but I can see the tension in his shoulders. “You just want me to stay little forever.”
There it is. The gut punch.
I turn in my chair to face him fully. “Hudson, that’s not fair.”
“It’s true,” he says, voice rising just a little. “I’m the only kid who has to borrow his coach’s phone to text his mom after practice. Do you know how embarrassing that is?”
