Chapter One
I like bagels
Today was just like any other day, until a mouse asked me for a bagel.
The furry creature stared at me with big brown eyes and wiggled its nose. I blinked multiple times to make sure I wasn’t imagining the rodent resting next to my tea mug on the wooden table.
Thankfully, it vanished.
“What was in that bedtime tea last night?” I closed my eyes and rubbed my temples.
I woke up at two in the morning with a killer headache and a queasy stomach, and I still hadn’t recovered. Everything felt off… like I’d been on a rocky boat for hours.
“Was that a yes for picking up bagels at the store?” a tiny voice asked, and my eyelids shot open.
The mouse stood at the edge of the table on his little pink feet and head tilted.
“Uh, sure?” I could freak out. Iwantedto freak out. But I’d wake up my daughter if I panicked.
Besides, it was just my imagination.
I was still dreaming or there was something severely wrong with those tea leaves.
“Thanks for not screaming. The neighbors downstairs are screamers.” The mouse wiggled its ears as if it could still hear them, then scampered off the table.
My lips turned down as I examined the wood surface.Was I going crazy?Sure, hours at the bank have been long lately, but I’ve worked more before. It had to be the tea.
Piper walked into the kitchen wearing her pajamas with little bookworms on them, which brought a smile to my lips despite my momentary inner crazy. She’d always had that effect on me.
“Mom, have you seen my blue top? The one with the—” Her words cut off abruptly. “What’s wrong with your face?”
I dragged my attention from her cute pajamas to meet her gaze. My daughter’s head was tilted, and her eyebrows were pinched together, concern etched in her features. She looked so much like her father, especially when serious, though his was never out of concern for me. But the black hair, thicker eyebrows, bow lips, and bluntness were all him.
How she could be so beautiful yet an exact replica of him was a mystery from the universe I’d never understand.
Those vibrant green eyes currently searching my soul, though, were the same as mine. She shifted her hips to the side while crossing her arms.Poor girl got those sturdy hips from me too.
“Mom, seriously, what’s up? You look like you’re gonna puke or something. Your face is paler than normal.”
“Your face is paler than normal,” I parroted for no reason, voice sounding far off to my own ears. “A mouse just asked me to pick up bagels when I go to the store.”
Her face softened. “I like bagels.”
Piper no doubt thought I’d finally lost my mind, and she was being gentle about it. There was a reason I loved her to the moon and back.
“Yeah…” I said with a ragged sigh, “but a mouse sat by my teaand talked.” My hands tingled with a strong urge to scrub my cup because,ew, a mouse.
“Did it ask for a cookie too?” She sat in the seat beside me and waited, a small, playful grin began to tug at her lips. “Wait… Are you high?”
“No.” At least I didn’t think so. “Maybe it was that tea I had before bed. You know, from the package your father got me for Mother’s Day.” I mean, I wouldn’t have put it past him to gift me expired tea. It was the only logical reason for my sudden hallucinations.
The gift basket was full of teas, and grape scented bubble bath. I hated grapes. I swear he did it to annoy me, or he didn’t actually know me at all despite interacting monthly since we had Piper in high school. Knowing him, he got it from a garage sale or flea market. It was likely I’d been drinking tea unearthed from someone’s dead grandma’s cabinet from 1982.
My stomach roiled at that thought.
“Maybe,” Piper said gently, “but I had a bag the other day, and I didn’t imagine talking mice.”
She touched my hand and the tingling intensified. My head throbbed, and my mouth watered. Maybe it wasn’t my ex inadvertently poisoning me. Maybe it was something else.
