RUBY
Courtesy of her jet lag, Ruby was up and ready to investigate the cottage by six o’clock the next morning. But she had to wait until she was reasonably sure that Dahlia was up.
She peered out the window and looked across the field, and it didn’t seem like her sister’s car was parked in front of the little cottage. Dahlia had always been an early riser.
The keys were hung up on the peg by the door, and she put on a pair of hunter green rubber boots beneath her dress, ready to cross the great, murky fields that stood between her and the dwelling.
She slipped a long woolen cardigan on over the dress and wrapped it tightly around her body as she walked out of the house and down the front steps, across the driveway to the first, weed-filled field that stood between her and the dwelling. The sky was washed in pink, the edges of the clouds rimmed with bright gold from the rising sun. The trees, which were beginning to turn on autumn’s red tide, looked like they were on fire now, as the morning took hold of the scenery with not a blooming gentleness, but a gong, declaring sunlight over the sleeping world, demanding wakefulness.
She picked through the weeds, grimacing as the taller shoots went up beneath her dress and scraped the sides of her thighs. The air was sharp, and if she took it in too deep, it sliced at her throat. And all the same, she found it deeply comforting to be here on a morning like this. A morning that reminded her of walking to school as a child.
A morning that reminded her of home.
Of seasons past and all things familiar. Of those foundational years that had built her into who she was. And it made the back of her neck as prickly as her eyes, that thought.
The field gave way to a forest, and the cottage was settled beneath the trees there. It was like walking back into the night. The sun couldn’t penetrate the immensity of the pines. The soft, rich soil was carpeted with moss and ferns.
At the back, her father had added an A-frame. There were windows all over, and she noticed that a velvet green moss had grown thick on the roof, just as it had everywhere else around. She stuck the key into the door and turned the lock, making her way inside.
It was desperately cute and quaint, and she had always loved it, from the moment her father fixed it up, and was entranced by the idea of staying in it. And with Dahlia, just like when they were kids. And they’d stayed up late talking about their desperate romantic fantasies and their plans for the future.
Dahlia wanted to write articles. For all her sister sometimes seemed stoic and hard to reach when they talked, when she wrote she poured her soul out. When they were kids, Dahlia had written breathless romances—in the vein of Jane Austen, of course, but always with a suggestive scene of the hero and heroine disappearing behind closed doors.
Ruby had loved them.
Ruby had loved that time in their lives. The idea of living in it again made her feel... Just so very good.
There was a little bookshelf in the entry, built-in, stacked with Dahlia’s books, and Ruby had a feeling there was going to be a tussle over shelf space. That was predominantly what she had shipped back to the States, in a flat rate box, because it was cheaper than paying the exorbitant airline fees for anything that heavy.
And Ruby was nothing if not a book pack rat.
There were two very small bedrooms, and one had the door firmly shut, the other opened. Ruby pushed the door open. The room was sparse and clearly not Dahlia’s. There was a small twin bed pressed against a wall of windows that backed the woods.
Not just the woods.
The Brewer orchard.
She stood there at the window and stared out for a long time. There was something... Unsettling about the orchard. About the Brewers themselves.
They were placed firmly on Pear Blossom’s list of pariahs.
Her mother had cautioned them to stay away from the property, though when no other incidences occurred, Ruby had always found it a little bit sad. But Nathan Brewer’s parents had been ostracized along with him.
She didn’t remember his mother at all. She’d died when Ruby was maybe four or five. But while Nathan had left, his father had stayed, regardless of the fact that people in town have their opinions. He still went out drinking at the bar; he still had his stalwart friends, as far as Ruby knew.
But that was how Pear Blossom was. When an opinion was set, it was set.
Nathan Brewer had been tried and found guilty of murder by the citizens, and that was all that mattered. Whether or not a court could convict him was irrelevant.
She turned away from the window. She didn’t need to be thinking about murder while contemplating moving into her new room. Much less in the context of the orchard that was just on the other side of where she would rest her head at night.
Of course, the orchard had been searched. When Caitlin Groves had gone missing, search and rescue had brought dogs out, and members of the community had formed a line, both on foot and on horseback, and combed the whole property and the surrounding woods.
At least, that was what her father had said when he had relayed the story years later. It was impossible to live in town and not know about it, even though it had happened before she was born. Because posters of Caitlin remained up in town. Pear Blossom’s only missing person’s case.
For a moment, a strange sensation settled over Ruby’s skin. A missing person. She could be a missing person, really. Kidnapped, taken away from her mother. Brought out to Pear Blossom, left on Sentinel Bridge. Maybe she was on a poster somewhere. How would she ever know?
It was unlikely, but that was one of her more simplistic fantasies. Of course, it led to the possibility that she was a kidnapped princess. Not that she really believed that, but in her opinion, it would have been a failure of imagination to never entertain the more fantastical options.