Page 6 of The Lost and Found Girl

CHRISTMAS PAGEANT

MARY—Lydia McKee

JOSEPH—Benjamin Smith

BABY JESUS—Hattie Mayfield

ANGEL OF THE LORD—Ruby McKee

THREE WISE MEN—Elizabeth Albright, Shannon Smith, Heath Mayfield

SHEPHERDS—Analise Johnson, Corbin Johnson, Aiden Mayfield

SHEEP—Jade Springer, Callie Springer, Sarah Marsh

OLD DONKEY—Dahlia McKee

DAHLIA

Ruby was home. Her mother had texted her a few minutes earlier, as if Dahlia had forgotten her younger sister would be here today. She shut her laptop off promptly at three, stretching at her small desk and looking around her office—which was essentially a closet.

She took the brass watering can off the windowsill and poured some water on her fiddle-leaf fig, which was beginning to look poorly, much to her chagrin.

It had been an office warming gift from her sister Marianne at Dahlia’s request. She’d thought that greenery might enliven the space more than a painting. Maybe she should have just gotten some abstract art for the wall. Something that she didn’t have to keep alive.

But the changes she’d made in the last five months—and the office itself—felt like an important step in her new, adult life, and she had thought that maybe a plant was a good way to commemorate that. Of course, she hadn’t anticipated failing at the plan, and she really hoped that it wasn’t a harbinger of doom for the rest of the endeavor.

She had been working at Spruce Coffee on Main Street for years while she wrote various pieces for websites and magazines. That was before she had gotten up the nerve to approach Dale Wainwright about being the first employee of thePear Blossom Gazettein more than a decade. The newspaper was coming up on its one hundredth year and Dahlia felt a keen connection to the publication. After all, when they had first discovered her sister Ruby on the bridge, reporters had become a constant in her life. And most specifically, reporters working at theGazette. Back then, the building had been filled with different staff. And that was before everything had moved on to the internet, damaging physical circulation, especially for a publication in a small town like this one. There had been an economic decline in the early 2000s, a dip in businesses on Main Street and in circulation of the newspaper.

But there was a change in town in the last ten years. Younger people had moved here looking for a simpler life, and more tourists chose to spend time in the small town, with businesses on Main Street finding their footing again now that local restaurants, banks and boutique stores were at the center of a revolution.

What Dahlia wanted to see was a return to print media as well. And to local news. News that really focused on the community.

She and Ruby had always been history nerds. They’d volunteered together at the historical society. Dahlia loved the mysteries of history. She loved old newspapers and piecing together information about the day through the lens of reporting and interviews. Ruby, though, seemed to like the quiet, bookish aspect of it. A much more fantasy-driven idea of what it meant to make that a career. Ruby had always imagined being impoverished—in a romanticized sense, naturally. And unemployable.

But that was the kind of thing they’d laughed about in their shared room as kids, while Ruby brooded about misters Darcy and Rochester.

I would love to be a poor, starving archivist warming myself by a pitiful fire surrounded by stacks of books.

Ruby, you missed lunch yesterday and almost chewed my arm off.

I mean it in the sense that I will have a small garret, my research and all the baguettes and cheese I want. A glamorous starvation.

So...not starvation.

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.