Page 130 of The Lost and Found Girl

It was hideously embarrassing to realize how much of her Save Lydia Mission was about her own feelings, and even worse to realize... That realizing it didn’t change the way she felt.

Now she was finally back at the cottage with the newspapers Dahlia had promised.

And she was... Ugh.

She was trepidatious. And she was never that. It irritated her.

Ruby settled back into the cottage and stacked the newspapers beside her bed by the window, shivering slightly as she looked out into the darkness.Hecould be out there and she wouldn’t know it.

“Good lord,” she muttered, getting up and drawing the curtains.

She’d lived in cities full of strangers where there was almost certainly a criminal somewhere on the same street. A predator of some sort. And yet there was something intimate about knowing who the person was. About knowing what he might’ve done. About being here and feeling in danger. In this place that had always been a haven for her. For her specifically. Because hadn’t Sentinel Bridge shielded her? And hadn’t the people here taken her in and loved her?

Or maybe she just had an overactive imagination, and she was applying all sorts of special meaning to the situation that simply didn’t exist.

She pulled out the newspaper article that had appeared the day after she’d been found.

Baby Found on Sentinel Bridge

A newborn baby girl was found on Sentinel Bridge on the evening of December 23. Marianne, Lydia and Dahlia McKee were walking home from choir practice when they happened upon the bundle...

It was an article that Ruby had read before. One that her mother had cut out and tucked away in her baby book. Her blanket from that day and the necklace that had been placed with her were wrapped up in the same keepsake box.

She looked at the rest of the paper. There were ads for various sales. A story about puppies for Christmas and a bit of national news.

But it was the other story that occupied the front page of thePear Blossom Gazettethat stopped her cold.

Brewer’s Trial Postponed

The trial of Nathan Brewer has been postponed indefinitely. The defense is challenging the charges on the basis that there is not enough evidence, and that Brewer has been held unlawfully. The defense posits that because no body has been found, nor any evidence suggesting violence occurred, Brewer cannot be implicated in the disappearance or possible death of Caitlin Groves.

This is a devastating blow to a community in mourning. It has been more than a year since our town’s greatest tragedy, and we are no closer to justice, or answers. This event has left a deep and lasting scar. If we cannot now trust our own neighbors, as we always have, throughout the history of our town, what will we become? If we cannot root out the bad apples among us with veracity, if we can have no recourse or justice, what will this community become?

It was the strangest thing, to see this story right next to her own.

Hadn’t Dana just made the link between herself and Caitlin yesterday?

The town acted like her appearance canceled out the loss of Caitlin.

She grabbed another newspaper at random, one from the middle of January.

There was nothing about her, or Nathan. There was a piece about smudge pots and their history. But when she grabbed the paper for the week of January 20, there was mention of Nathan again.

Charges Dropped, Brewer to be Released.

She skimmed the article, her eyes landing on the final few paragraphs.

Dana Groves is distraught, her eyes hollow. The single mother has no one else to help to shoulder this burden. She is a woman alone. A wayward teen daughter, who spent nights out with a boyfriend, likely engaging in risky behaviors, likely already causing undue stress, the loss of that child has broken her.

Perhaps it is only residents of this town who can truly grasp the gravity of the situation. Certainly not officials sitting in their ivory towers in Salem. They are unaffected by the tragedy of one teenage girl, potentially murdered by one of the people she trusted the most. For now, for Dana, for the community of Pear Blossom, it feels as if Caitlin has been taken all over again.

“He knows something,” Groves’ mother asserted. “He was the last person to see her. And he’s the only one who knows what happened to her. I just want the truth.”

But the truth is proving to be elusive, subject to the whims of a justice system that is more concerned with keeping the letter of the law than seeing actual justice done. The state of Oregon may forget, the nation most certainly will. But the

town of Pear Blossom will not.

Well, they hadn’t. Ruby knew that for sure. Because there were no villains hated half so much in the town as the Brewer family. And Nathan Brewer was here. Why?