Page 20 of Bluebell Tides

On her laptop, she’d pulled up the article that Ruth had written about the Bluebell Cove Eco-Lodge, which Lily now skimmed, nodding along.

“It’s a perfectly normal article,” Lily said. She sounded disappointed.

“Look at her website,” Sophie said.

Lily clicked through to Ruth’s writing website, through which you could find links to some of her more prominent articles. There was also a description of her that read: Ruth Landers is a multi-award-winning writer and journalist. For more than a decade, she previously worked in New York City publishing. She has a degree in literature and creative writing from Yale and grew up in Virginia.

“It’s so vague,” Lily muttered. “Where’s the specificity? Isn’t she supposed to be a writer?”

“I know what you mean. It’s like there’s a smokescreen,” Sophie said.

“A mystery!” Lily laughed again. This was all playful for her.

But Sophie was reminded of her time in Bluebell a few summers back, when she’d operated as a feisty journalist, digging through semi-secret files to get to the root of the city’s environmental problems. One thing about that era that stood out to her was that throwing herself into another story let her forget her own. It had brought her mother and Sophie back together again. It had healed so much.

Maybe, in digging deeper into Ruth Landers, Sophie could forget the fire. Maybe she could forget about Ethan, if only for a while.

“When you google her, does anything else come up?” she asked Lily.

Lily searched for Ruth Landers, her fingers flying over the keys. The first twenty posts were articles Ruth had written over the years. All the images were of Ruth in recent years, accepting journalism awards or speaking at publishing functions. It seemed, from here on Sophie’s bed in her mother and Landon’s house, that Ruth was exactly who she said she was. Sophie’s heart dropped.

“Boring.” Lily offered a funny smile. “Maybe that’s all she is? A boring, quiet recluse.”

But then, Sophie spotted the birth announcement. Tucked away at the bottom of the page of links, it read: SLOANE LANDERS, September 22, 2003. Curious, she pointed at the site and told Lily, “Click on that, will you?”

Lily did. It took them to a birth announcement website, which listed Ruth Landers as the nineteen-year-old mother of baby Sloane.

“She has a daughter,” Lily breathed, her lips parting with surprise. “And her daughter can’t be much older than we are.”

“And Ruth was younger than us at the time she was born. Nineteen. Wow.” Sophie crossed her arms. She was pretty sure her mother had said that Ruth had no children, that she was alone in the world and therefore “someone to watch out for, someone to protect.”

“No father listed here,” Lily said, her breath skipping.

“She must not have wanted him to know about the baby,” Sophie said.

“That, or he didn’t want anyone to know who he was,” Lily said.

Lily and Sophie sat with this new information, realizing that Ruth was even more complicated than they’d initially thought.

“Did she still graduate on time?” Sophie asked, imagining how difficult it must have been to raise a baby during Ruth’s tenure at Yale.

Lily discovered a Yale University website listing the graduation dates of its former students. According to the site, Ruth Landers had graduated in four and a half years, which suggested she’d had to take a semester off to care for her baby.

“Still, I can’t believe she was able to do it alone,” Sophie said.

“Maybe she wasn’t alone,” Lily suggested. “If she went to Yale, it means she came from money, right? Or had really good connections?”

“I don’t know. Does she strike you as a wealthy woman?” Sophie asked.

“Yes,” Lily said, laughing. “She lives in New York City. She worked in publishing. She’s a travel journalist. I think she does all right for herself.”

“Yeah. I guess you’re right.” But something about it gave Sophie pause. “What did she do after she graduated?”

It was nearly one thirty in the morning, but Sophie found that her enthusiasm for discovering Ruth’s past woke her up more and more with each passing second. More than that, she didn’t want to go to bed yet. She didn’t want Lily to leave her with her anxious thoughts. It had been so difficult to sleep lately.

Eventually, Lily discovered a website listing many of Ruth’s occupations over the years. It was sort of like LinkedIn, but only for writers and journalists. From the site, it was clear that Ruth had been hired by one of the most prestigious publishing houses in New York City immediately after graduating from Yale.

“She didn’t let her baby get in the way of her career,” Sophie breathed, impressed.