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Then she’d been up again at three for the five o’clock flight into Medford, which had set her back on the ground around the time she’d taken off. Which had made her feel gritty and exhausted and wholly uncertain of the time. She’d passed through so many time zones nothing felt real.
She waved the driver off and took the first step forward. She paused at the entry to the bridge. She looked back over her shoulder at the bright sunshine around her and then took a step forward into the darkness. Light came up through the cracks between the wood on the ground and the walls. At the center of the bridge, there were two windows with no glass that looked out over the river below. It was by those windows that she’d been found.
She walked briskly through the bridge and then stopped. In spite of herself. She often walked on this bridge and never felt a thing. She rarely felt inclined to ponder the night that she was found. If she got ridiculous about that too often, then she would never get anything done. After all, she had to cross this bridge to get home.
But she was moving back to town, not just returning for a visit, and it felt right to mark the occasion with a stop at the place of her salvation. She paused for a moment, right at the spot between the two openings that looked out on the water.
She had been placed just there. Down on the ground. Wrapped in a blanket, but still so desperately tiny and alone.
She had always thought about the moment when her sisters had picked her up and brought her back to their parents. It was the moment that came before that she had a hard time with. The one where someone—it had to have been her birth mother—had set her down there, leaving her to fate. To die if she died, or live if she was found. And thankfully she’d been found, but there had been no way for the person who had set her there to know that would happen.
It had gotten below freezing that night.
If Marianne, Lydia and Dahlia hadn’t come walking through from the Christmas play rehearsal, then...
She didn’t cry. But a strange sort of hollowness spread out in her chest.
But she ignored it and decided to press on toward home. She walked through the darkness of the bridge, watching as the light, the exit, loomed larger.
And once she was outside, she could breathe. Because it didn’t matter what had happened there. What mattered was every step she had taken thereafter. What mattered was this road back home.
She walked up the gravel-covered road, kicking rocks out of her way as she went. It was delightfully cold, the crisp morning a reminder of exactly why she loved Pear Blossom. It was completely silent out here except for the odd braying of a donkey and chirping birds. She looked down at the view below, at the way the mist hung over the pear trees in the orchard. The way it created a ring around the mountain, the proud peak standing out above it. A blanket of green and gold, rimmed with misty rose.
She breathed in deep and kept on walking, relishing the silence, relishing the sense of home.
She had spent the last four years studying history. Mostly abroad. She had engaged in every exchange program she could, because what was the point of studying history if you limited yourself to a country that was as young as the United States and to a coast as new as the West Coast.
She could remember the awe that she’d experienced walking on streets that were more than just a couple of hundred years old. The immense breadth of time that she had felt. And she had... Well, she had hoped that she would find answers somewhere. Because she had always believed that the answers to what ails you in the present could be found somewhere in the past.
And she’d explored the past. Thoroughly. Many different facets of it. And along the way, she’d done a bit of exploring of herself.
After all, that was half the reason she’d left. To try and figure out who she was outside of this place where everyone knew her, and her story.
Though, when she got close to people, it didn’t take long for them to discover her story. It was, after all, in the news.
Of course, she always found it interesting who discovered it on their own. Because that was revealing.
Who googled their friends.
Ruby obviously googled her friends, but that was because of her own background and experience. If those same friends had an equally salacious background, then it was forgivable. But if they were boring, then she found it deeply suspicious that they engaged in such activities.
She came over a slight rise in the road and before her was the McKee family farm. It had been in the McKee family for generations. And Ruby felt a profound sense of connection to it. It might not be her legacy by blood, but that had never mattered to the McKees, and it didn’t matter to her either. This town was part of who she was.
And maybe that was why no matter how she had searched elsewhere, she was drawn back here.
Dana Groves, her old mentor, had called her six months ago to tell her an archivist position was being created in the historical society with some newly allocated funds, and had offered the job to Ruby.
Ruby loved Pear Blossom, but she’d also felt like it was really important for her to go out in the world and see what else existed.
It waseasyfor her to be in Pear Blossom. People here loved her.
It had been a fascinating experience to go to a place where that wasn’t automatically the case. Of course, she hadn’t stayed in one place very long. After going to the University of Washington, she had gotten involved in different study abroad programs, and she had moved between them as often as she could. Studying in Italy, France, Spain, coming to the States briefly for her graduation ceremony in May, and then going back overseas to spend a few months in England, finishing up some elective study programs.
But then, she’d found that instructive too. Being in a constant state of meeting new people. And for a while, the sheer differentness of it all had fed her in a way that had quieted that restlessness. She had been learning. Learning and experiencing and...
Well, part of her had wondered if her first job needed to be away from home. To continue her education.
But then six months ago her sister’s husband had died.
