Page 44 of The Lost and Found Girl

“I’m playing along,” Ruby said. “I’m just deeply uncomfortable about the aspect that includes me.”

“What are you doing about Ruby?” Lydia asked.

“It’s a compendium of town history. I would be remiss to leave Ruby out of it.”

“Wow. First the nineties are retro, now Ruby is history. You’re not doing a lot for my self-esteem, Dahlia.”

“Well,” Dahlia said, “I think it’s interesting.”

“I think everything that can be said about Ruby and Caitlin has been said,” Marianne pointed out. “Didn’t theGazetterun exhaustive coverage of both things? They were the biggest stories Pear Blossom has ever had.”

“Well, yes,” Dahlia said. “I guess it’s just that... I don’t know. I’m curious about other angles or something. The full context of the history of the town. I’m trying to reinvigorate interest in the paper.”

“I hate to break it to you,” Marianne said. “But I think print circulation is on the downhill slide.”

“You used to love the school paper,” Dahlia said. “Used to want to write,” she pointed out.

“Yes,” Marianne answered. “But then I realized I was terrible at it. In any way. I like being around people too much.”

“Well, I don’t. I hate people,” Dahlia said, grinning. “So a life spent distancing them by filtering them through the lens of their stories, and sitting by myself writing, is perfect. Anyway. I want to include some stuff about the store.”

“Well, I like that,” Marianne said.

“Great.”

“Can’t you just write a story that says I’m miraculous?” Ruby asked.

“Sorry,” Dahlia said, grabbing a French fry and dipping it into Ruby’s ranch. “Nothing is that simple.”

Marianne looked over at Ava. Sadly. She had a feeling that Dahlia was right.

10

Ruby McKee is not perfect. She is annoying. I hate her I hate her I hate her.

DAHLIA MCKEE’S DIARY, AGE 15

DAHLIA

Dahlia was ready to pitch her idea to Dale. After talking to her sisters a few days earlier, things had just started to gel. She’d had to get everything compiled into a formal pitch, because he was nothing if not traditional in that sense, and then she officially emailed it to him, rather than walking into his office and just asking. He would also make her give him a verbal pitch. She knew that by now.

Unless of course he rejected the initial idea.

Then he would just send her an email, and they would pass in the hallway and never speak of it.

She was tapping away at her keyboard, sitting at her desk, when Dale called her on the intercom on her desk phone, which he insisted that she keep for just such an occasion.

“Can I see you in my office?”

“Sure thing,” she said, standing and brushing off her skirt. Then she walked down the hall and stood in front of his door for a moment before knocking. No points for seeming too eager.

“Come in. I want to hear your idea,” he said, as if he didn’t have the entirety of the idea sitting in front of him in text form.

“As you know,” Dahlia began, staring at a point on the back of the wall. It still made her nervous to do things like this, even though Dale had never seemed to mind that she wasn’t Ruby. That she didn’t have that kind of light ease about her. In fact, he had an intensity that often matched her own, and it seemed to be compatible.

“Ruby is back for good—she took a job at the historical society, which I used to be heavily involved with also. Through our discussions, I started thinking. Our community is filled with local history, the kind of thing that you can’t just gain from a Google search. And AP articles and stories that inform us of what’s going on in the broader world might be important, but Pear Blossom is our home. I want to run a series of articles about the history of the town. I want to start with the founding of Pear Blossom, then do a feature on the introduction of the pear industry and the railroad into the community, followed by the effects of the world wars on the community, and then a piece about Caitlin Groves and another about Ruby McKee. Interspersed between those will be some pieces that reflect an old-style journalism that used to happen at theGazette, including features on who’s out and about in town, and also a No Longer on the Map feature, where I talk about businesses that are no longer here, and the way that Main Street has changed over the past hundred and fifty years. It will be in honor of the 150th year of theGazette, and what I hope is that special features like this will increase interest in people subscribing to this newspaper, and not just Medford’s paper or the national news. Real, human-interest pieces about our town. Where we live.”

“It’s a good idea,” Dale said. “It’s a damn good idea, Dahlia. And you’re right. Exactly the kind of thing that will bring a point of interest and difference to the paper.”