Instead of passing the home down to them, their uncle insisted on selling it to them. Fair enough, Adelie had supposed, since he had given them a decent deal on it. The sisters had thought they could swing a mortgage payment if they both did it together, but Adelie being unemployed, getting laid off from her position as a sales associate at Serendipity downtown, had lasted longer than she’d expected. She’d been job hunting, and prospects weren’t looking good.
“What do we do?” Suzie said.
“We’ve got to make up the payments,” Adelie said.
Suzie harrumphed and folded her arms. “How are we supposed to do that?”
They were surviving on fumes as it was. They’d already sold more of their grandparents’ antiques and family heirlooms than they’d ever wanted to, but no matter what they did, the bills kept coming.
Adulting really stunk sometimes.
Medical expenses didn’t help. Suzie had shoulder surgery over a year ago; it seemed like they’d be playing catch up for the rest of their lives.
Adelie peered around the beautiful, quaint kitchen, with its white cabinets and their smooth silver handles, at the buttercream wallpaper speckled with flowers, at the paneled window above the sink that unlatched in the center and opened without a screen, and at the exposed wood rafters in the ceiling above. Sure, it was cramped, but the house had too much charm to let it be foreclosed. Not to mention how this would ruin both of their credit. The idea sank into Adelie’s chest like a rock.
“This is one of those times I wish Grandpa was around to talk to,” Suzie said.
Same old Suzie. Always trying to help find solutions in any way she could. “Yeah, but he isn’t. We’ve got to figure this out.”
“We’ll find somewhere else to live,” Suzie said with a shrug.
The thought hurt. It was physically painful. “How could you say that so easily? You love this house as much as I do.”
Unease sweltered in her empty stomach. She stirred the hash brown and egg mixture in the skillet and, as it was brown and yellow—murky, just like she felt—she turned off the heat.
The TV behind them blared and a news broadcaster piped up in their worried silence.
“What is Wonderland without a white rabbit? Pierre has gotten loose, and it’s up to you to catch him. This is your chance to go down the rabbit hole and find the grand prize. Whoever follows the clues correctly and finds the white rabbit first gets a grand prize of fifty thousand dollars.”
Reaching to dish a heaping helping of food onto their plates, Adelie peered at the TV in the corner above their dishwasher. Cheers broke out in the newsroom on the screen. Daylight News anchors laughed and cheered, joking about this new opportunity.
The anchor in a fashionable suit, with her dark hair pulled back, faced the camera and continued. “Today, we have billionaire owner of Wonderland Theme Park, located in Westville, Vermont, Maddox Hatter, here to tell us more about it. So, Maddox, before we start, I have to know. Is your name a coincidence or a pseudonym you came up with when you started the theme park?”
Maddox crossed one leg to the opposite ankle and smiled. A heartbreaker kind of thing. Adelie bumped into the table and nearly dropped the plates in her hands. Attention equally plastered to the screen, Suzie apparently missed her sister’s faux pas.
“Look at that,” Suzie said. Adelie was curious about his reply, but with Suzie’s interruption, she missed it. “It’s a wonder she hasn’t fainted yet.”
Adelie sank onto the chair across from her sister. She couldn’t deny her temperature had gone up a few notches. “Are you saying you would?”
“If I were in the same room with him, and he smiled at me like that? I’d be crazy not to.”
“Crazy,” Adelie mused, nudging her eggs with a fork and squirting some ketchup over the top. “This whole thing is crazy. Who gives fifty thousand dollars to some random person just for finding a white rabbit?”
If she had that kind of money, she’d want to use it to help others. She thought of her cousin, Ella’s, fiancé. Hawk Danielson owned Ever After Sweet Shoppe, and this sounded like the kind of charitable thing he might do.
Suzie’s voice cracked with excitement. “Are you kidding? This is the chance of a lifetime. Even if we didn’t just get a visit from our friendly neighborhood police officer, we’d be mad not to jump at this.”
Adelie swallowed and stilled. Her sister couldn’t possibly be considering this. “Stop it right now. You don’t actually want to go and try.”
“Why not?”
Adelie pointed at the TV with her fork. “Do you know what kind of crowds are going to be there? He just broadcasted this on national TV. People are going to be traveling from far and wide for a chance at this.”
To their cozy Westville. As far as towns went, it didn’t get the massive traffic other big cities often did. It was a quaint little slice of heaven. They didn’t need Disneyland-level tourism here.
“You know, the one I feel sorry for is that rabbit,” said Adelie.
“Nah,” Suzie contradicted her. “I feel sorry for all those poor suckers who’ll be driving in from out of town. Because it’s going to be for nothing. I’m finding that rabbit, Adelie.”
“I don’t think it’s going to be that easy,” Adelie argued.
“See these hands?” Suzie flared them in her direction. “Rabbit catchers.”
Adelie laughed. “Good luck with that.” She took another bite of buttery, ketchup-slathered hash browns.
“You sound like you’re not coming.”
Adelie
