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“Oh, all right, but there’s nothing much to see.”
“I still want to see.” Ruby cleared her throat and her gold earrings moved too, punctuating the sound with their own. “Why didn’t you tell me about the new job?”
There were too many answers to that question, and each one was complicated. Mostly, though, it came down to Dahlia’s nature, which was always in opposition to itself. If she failed, she didn’t want anyone to know—least of all Ruby, who never failed at anything. But she was also proud and had been desperate to tell Ruby.
“It was new,” she said, which was honest. “And I kind of bulldozed Dale into creating the position, so I guess I just kept being afraid I’d blow it and he’d fire me.”
“But he hasn’t,” Ruby pointed out.
Dahlia smiled. “No.”
Dahlia unlocked the door and pushed it open. Ruby floated in past her. Ruby always seemed to float.
“How was England?” Dahlia asked. She’d been once when she was in college, and she’d suddenly understood Ruby’s obsession with all things Austen and high tea related.
“Amazing.” She shifted and her blond hair slipped over her shoulder, catching the light. “Everything I could have ever hoped that it would be.”
“And you’re sure you want to trade in your fabulous life abroad for a life back here?”
“Yeah,” she said. “For now.”
They walked down the hall and Dahlia waited to see if Ruby would notice the picture of herself. She didn’t. It said a lot about how... Ubiquitous the Legend of Ruby was here. That a picture of herself on the wall as a baby was visual white noise.
“I haven’t been in here since I was a kid selling candy bars for school,” Ruby said. “It looks the same.”
Dahlia looked down at the orange carpet, and the fake wood paneled walls.
“Yeah,” Dahlia said, “except pretty much no one works here now.” She pushed her office door open again. “Here it is. It’s...tiny.”
“A potted plant. You’re such a hipster,” Ruby said.
“As if you’re not?”
“Absolutely not,” Ruby said, tugging at the ruffled collar of her dress.
“How long has it been since you’ve been in a secondhand store?”
Her sister looked around shiftily. “I am conscious of my environmental impact, Dee. And, broke.”
“Somehow,” Dahlia said, “I don’t think that was your primary motivation for going to this supposed thrift store.”
“You don’t know me.”
“But I do,” she said, feeling a small bubble of excitement in her chest. Ruby was going to lose her mind over this, and Dahlia had been dying to show her.
You could have told her before she came back...
She could have. She hadn’t.
She wasn’t floaty like Ruby. She didn’t light up the room or jingle when she moved. But she knew what sparked Ruby’s interest. And being able to channel Ruby’s brightness made her feel like some of it belonged to her too.
She and Ruby were different. Oil and water different. Night and day different. Optimist and realist-thank-you-very-much different. But they both loved this town, and they loved the history of it, and no matter what changed in their lives, whether they were close or distant, like shifting tides in the ocean, that truth remained.
“I know youwell,” Dahlia continued. “Come here, and I’ll show you something more interesting than my office.”
She walked Ruby the rest of the way past the hall, down the offices that no longer housed anyone, and Dale’s office, to a room at the very end of the hall.
“What is it?” Ruby asked.
