Tabby chuckled. “I’ve got dishes to clean. I’d like to get home before ten anyway.”
“Ooh la la,” Alice winked and sat back, “another hot date with Mr. H.P.D.?”
Tabitha bit her bottom lip, a shy look in her eyes. “I don’t know, maybe.”
Alice giggled and rubbed the back of her neck. “Then I suggest you get those dishes done.” She winked.
Tabby ran back, a spryness to her steps Alice couldn’t hope to match. She was exhausted.
Not, “I was out working in the garden exhausted” either. More like, “I’ve run ten miles, hiked Mount Kilimanjaro, all while lifting twenty pound dumbbells” tired. She rubbed her nose, feeling the beginnings of a headache spreading behind her eyes and shooting down the back of her neck. She winced.
Too many long nights, too much stress of opening day, too much. She needed a break already. Tired as she was though, it was a good tired. She brushed some crumbs off the table, filled with a sense of accomplishment.
Alice sighed; content to stay put a moment longer. Tabby teased her about her lack of a love life, and even though she played along, the truth was Alice was beyond sick of being alone. She wasn’t that crazy. Really.
Her bedroom might be decorated a bit like an enchanted garden, full of potted plants and candles and gauzy silky drapings. And so maybe there were the wall clocks, faces painted to appear like the Cheshire cat, the Queen, and of course... handsome Mad Hatter, Johnny Depp. But that wasn’t that weird, right? She had a thing. Didn’t everyone?
Alice shook her head, slipped her shoes back on and with a heave, was headed toward the register when the front door jingled. She smacked her forehead. In her laziness, she’d forgotten to lock the door.
“Sorry, we’re closed.” She turned, spying an older woman-- maybe in her late fifties-- wearing a sad look.
“Oh my. I smelled something so heavenly and knew I must, must get a taste of whatever special surprises were in here.” She threaded her fingers together. “Truly, could you not find it in your heart to allow a tired old woman, frail too I might add...”
Alice couldn’t stop the smile. The woman had balls. She kind of liked her.
“Oh come on, Auntie,” the local island patois slipped from her tongue as she jerked her hand. “But lock that door behind you. I don’t have much left.”
Blue eyes, still as sharp and bright as they must have been in her youth, lit up. She rubbed her hands in anticipation. “I’ve heard so much about you, Alice Hu.”
Alice frowned. How did the woman know her name? Paper maybe? Had she given her full name? She rubbed her forehead.
The woman’s face went soft, eyes deep in contemplation. “Extraordinary likeness,” she spoke quietly and reached out a hand to frame Alice’s jaw. “Oh, Alice. I’ve found you.”
Alice’s heart clenched, she wanted to jerk out of the woman’s grasp, but something made her pause as an answering awareness fluttered desperate wings in her chest. Then the lady gave a tiny shake of the head and laughed, as if suddenly recalling where she was. She dropped her hand and took a step back.
Alice released a breath, suddenly confused by what’d just passed between them.
The woman flashed straight teeth at her. “Wild, reckless child you were. Head in the clouds, nose in the book. Hatter in the heart.” There was a lyrical, chiming quality to her laugh that made Alice think of bells. “But now you are a woman grown and my, what a woman you are. You look so much like her.”
This was all too weird. “I’m... I’m sorry,” her brows dipped, “do I know you?”
The old woman was now at the counter. Her clothes were stylish, fashionable even. But the fabric was unlike any Alice had ever seen. As if someone had gathered the finest spider silk, still sparkling with morning dew, and woven a pale white top from it. She wasn’t a large woman, but her personality swept in like a tidal wave, filling the room with its bubbling presence and making her seem much larger than she was.
“Oh, dear me, no.” She laughed, her blondish-gray curls bobbed attractively around her pixie face. “How could you? Why this is the first time we’ve ever met.”
Ookay. The woman was clearly one bat short in her belfry. “Right, well... let’s see,” Alice turned to the display case, trying to hurry things up, “seems all we’ve got left are the Red Queen’s Revenge.”
“Oh,” the woman shook her head, “that old hag? Surely you could have come up with something better. Off with your head.”
Had she not made that same joke to Tabby a few minutes ago? A shiver of strange zipped down Alice’s spine.
“What’s in it?”
“Umm.” It took a second for her to gather her wits. This woman was seriously weirding her out. Memo to her, check the web for any reports on missing mental patients. “Uhh, it’s red velvet. Frosting is Italian butter cream with flecks of pink peppercorn.”