To her credit, Ariana pretended the crusty, dried up baked ziti was delicious, and politely admired the apartment while they ate. Emma raised her eyebrows at him and he shrugged. The girl had clearly been raised with all the social graces and could keep her countenance in even the strangest circumstances. He longed to grill her about why she was coming from fifty years ahead of her own time but held it in, wanting to be in control of the situation. And what a situation. He was almost grateful Dahlia was only caught shoplifting. It seemed far less serious than running away. He choked back a laugh, thinking that Ariana was only a few short miles from her home, but so very far away.
As soon as she primly placed her napkin alongside her plate, he handed her the letter. Her eyes widened.
“What’s this?”
“Just read it,” he said.
She unfolded the creased, crackly paper and squinted down at it. The ink had faded over time, but he’d read it so many times he had it memorized and recited it in his mind as she read it.
Dex, I pray you find this and that it’s not too late. Ariana’s gone missing. We’re not sure if she used the portal or some spell. She found that horrible book and has been secretly studying it for years. I don’t know if she’ll turn up in your time but please, please keep an eye out for her. I can’t stand the thought that everything’s going to come true. Keep her safe and make her come home.
He could tell when Ariana pulled the letter closer to her face that she’d come to the part that was smudged, probably from Tilly’s tears falling on the page as she wrote.
“H-how did you get this?” she asked in a tiny voice. “How does Mum know I’m gone?”
“I guess your little spell to only be gone a few minutes didn’t work this time,” he said. When he noticed her hands shaking, he dialed back his smugness. “I found that in my office behind a file cabinet a year ago. Or rather, the cleaning crew did, wedged into the baseboards. Thankfully they aren’t an overly curious lot or it might have raised some questions I’d have no good answers for.”
“A year ago?” she shook her head as if trying to make everything fit.
“We’re two hundred years from when you belong,” Emma said, pouring more water into Ariana’s glass. “We might have found it ten years ago or never found it at all. We’ve been carrying around this worry all this time, waiting to see if you turned up. Thankfully you did before—”
A door slammed, cutting off Emma’s tirade. Dahlia stormed through the kitchen. “Do you mean to starve me?” she whined, then stopped dead at the sight of Ariana in her fine gown. She blinked and the pout slid off her face, replaced with a huge grin. “Tilly?”
Ariana gaped and slapped her hand on the table, causing the glasses to rattle. “She knows my mother as well?”
“This is Dahlia,” Dexter sighed. “Dahlia, meet my second cousin Ariana. And she only knows about your mother from old photographs.”
“But she knows about her?”
Dahlia yanked back a chair and sat down, leaning eagerly toward Ariana. “You’re her daughter, then? How’d you get here? I thought the portal was sealed up for good?”
Ariana’s face turned ashen, then slowly purpled to the point he feared she might faint from holding her breath. She finally let it out in a gust and ground out through clenched teeth, “She knows about the portal?” She rounded on Dahlia. “How old are you?”
“Fourteen,” she said. She got a dangerously saucy look on her face. “But I’ve known since Dex and my mum got together when I was eleven.”
Ariana’s eyes filled with tears. “It must be very nice to have parents who don’t lie to you.”
“It doesn’t hurt to be a massive snoop, either,” Dahlia said. “But maybe my parents are just sloppier.”
“Enough, Dahlia. Don’t stoke the fire,” Emma said, placing her hand on her daughter’s wrist.
Dexter could see a flash of pain in Ariana’s eyes at the motherly gesture. So the wretch missed her mum, did she? He wondered how long she’d been away from her proper time before turning up with them.
“Dahlia, fix yourself a plate to take back to your room and leave us to our conversation. There’ll be time enough for visiting tomorrow.” He glanced at his watch. How had it become so late? He hadn’t been able to give Emma her anniversary present, his dinner had been ruined, Dahlia seemed to be on the road to reform school, and now he had a runaway from the past to deal with.
Dahlia looked like she might fight to stay and listen, but then the two girls exchanged a look and Ariana yawned showily. She slapped her hand over her mouth and said primly, “Oh goodness, I beg your pardon. I’m just so tired.”
“She can bunk in with me,” Dahlia offered sweetly.
“But the letter,” Dexter argued.
Curiosity warred with wanting to get out of a lecture as Ariana looked from the crumbling note to them and back again. “I’m not going back tonight,” she said finally. “You said I could have a proper visit. And like Emma said, I’m safe now.” Her lips twisted into a pucker and she rolled her eyes. “Not that I wasn’t anyway.”
He didn’t like that the girls seemed to be silently conspiring against the adults and opened his mouth to assert that he was in charge when Emma squeezed his shoulder.
“What year did you say you came from, Ariana?” she asked, but looked at him with serious fear in her eyes.
“1889,” she said,
