And anyway, I wouldn’t stay poor if a duke found me.
Dukes are not likely to find starving archivists in Pear Blossom.
Then I’ll have to go somewhere else.
And now she was back.
Dahlia stood up, put her laptop in her leather bag and walked to the door of the office, flicking the lights off and shutting the door behind her. Dale hadn’t even come in today. He was pretty solidly half work-at-home and half at the office. But he maintained that as a man well over the age of retirement, that was fair. Dahlia didn’t mind having the place to herself, but she went to the office every day, even if she didn’t have to.
Much like her preference for newsprint over websites, she liked being in the office. It made her feel more like she was living her dream.
Sitting in the shed on her computer made her feel like a blogger. She wanted to feel like a journalist. It was what she’d gone to school for, after all.
She walked down the narrow hall, lined with awards spanning the years that proclaimed theGazettea town favorite—it was the only paper in town—and photos of the town’s most notable events.
Right at the very end of the hall was a grainy, black-and-white newsprint shot of a baby.
Ruby.
It always made Dahlia pause. It was impossible for her to not get completely lost in her memories, and with them a profound sense of sadness, which no one seemed to share but her.
Someone had abandoned Ruby.
Left her on a bridge to die.
And Dahlia had always felt that no one wanted to dig too deeply into that.
All Dahlia ever wanted to do was dig.
She sighed and turned away from the picture, then walked out the front door, jamming her key in the lock and turning it till it clicked.
She stepped away from the door and ran almost smack into Ruby. “Dee!”
“Rubes?” She shook her head and stared, her sister’s presence completely out of context.
Ruby laughed and jingled along with it. Dahlia always made it a game to try and quickly identify which piece of Ruby’s jewelry was making her sound like a human wind chime, because there was always something. Earrings today.
“Or her doppelgänger,” Ruby said cheerfully. “I could have a doppelgänger, you know. Or a twin. Maybe only one of us was abandoned.”
Dahlia rolled her eyes. “We’ve been through this. You don’t have half an amulet.”
“Iwasfound with a necklace.”
“Not one with a missing half.”
Ruby pretended to look crestfallen. “Right. Well. In that case, I guess that rules out a twin. Inthisdimension.”
“You better hope there’s no interdimensional twin. Because that would be an evil one.”
“How do you know I’m not the evil twin?”
Dahlia laughed and pulled her sister in for a hug. “You are most definitely an evil twin, Rubes.”
“Can I see the office?”
“I just locked up,” Dahlia said.
“Please?” She treated her to a wide smile.