The courage that came from inside me was new, and probably the reason I reached for whatever was attached to the eyes, rather than beating tracks and calling animal control as a normal person would. There was no reason for me to try to grab it, but yet I did.
As soon as my hand got close, the damned thing bit me. I jerked back, said a swear word I wasn’t very proud of—it was relative to the barnyard and something that would make my mother reach for the soap even now if she’d heard me say it—then squealed, another fine moment in a life full of them.
It leaped out. A rabbit! It was a frikkin’ Bugs frikkin’ Bunny! The jumped-up rat lurched and jerked out of my way, then ran like hell out the door and down the hall.
I gave chase, because what else could I do? There was a rabid bunny in my house, and itbitme. I was going to have to get a rabies shot now. Maybe even tetanus.
Well, one thing was sure. I wasn’t going to let it hang around. Not that I had a great plan for rabbit stew; I just wanted it out of my house. I ran to the front door, barely beating it to the front of the house, and yanked the door open. To my shock, it headed straight for me, then past and outside. As if it knew I was standing there holding the door open just for the rodent. Was a rabbit a rodent? Eh, whatever.
I watched it leave, then slammed the door shut behind it just in case it decided to shoot back inside. “Okay, there was a bunny in my house. A bunny. Not a wolf. Not a bear. It was just a weird, angry, possibly rabid bunny. You’re okay. Everything is okay.” I took a deep calming breath—therapy had done wonders on my psyche—and leaned against the door. I glanced down at the bite on my finger. Savage little beast. My blood was bright red against my hand, but that was nothing to worry about right now, not when my daughter was still missing. If the rabbit was rabid, well, that was another matter. For now, I had to find Tilly.
She hadn’t been rolled under her bed. Nor at the foot of her bed. Since the dust by her window hadn’t been disturbed, the most logical explanation is that she got up and left, going past me.
Where was my phone? I had to try to call Tilly. I needed to make sure she was okay, to ask if she had any idea how a bunny got into her bedroom. Instead of freaking out, I reminded myself she was an adult and likely perfectly fine right now, even if next time I’d remind her to wake me up. Anything rather than just disappearing, leaving me to worry and get bunny-bit.
As the blood rolled down my finger, I sighed. But first I was going to have to care for the bite and make sure it didn’t get infected. The multitasker that I was, I grabbed my cell from the coffee table and made my way to the bathroom while dialing Tilly’s number.
Once inside the bathroom, I put the phone on speaker while cleaning the wound. Dread and fear soured my stomach as the call to Tilly went to voicemail.
I switched over to the app to find her phone. I didn’t usually use this option. It was a bit invasive, even for me. But this was a time that these types of apps were made for. I hit the button to locate her phone, and a few seconds later, followed the sound of the chiming back to Tilly’s bedroom. Her phone was on the ground behind her bedside table.
Crap, crap. She never would’ve left her phone! Where the heck was my daughter?
CHAPTERTWO
After finding her phone, I returned to my first aid. By the time my finger was bandaged, and I returned to the living room, I was starting to feel a little off. Not exactly sick, justoff. It wasn’t just that my body was sore from my difficult night. I felt a little…light-headed. There was no way I was already getting Tilly’s cold, so that left only the bite and that darn bunny.
Great, this was the last thing I needed, to get rabies from a rabbit. How fast did animal-borne illnesses take to start showing symptoms? Oh, crap, should I have caught it? If it had rabies, I’d need to turn it over to, er, someone. I had no idea who I was supposed to notify. Maybe the health department.
“It’s not rabies, you drama queen.” I smirked at myself in the mirror hung in the corner of my living room. It was significantly more likely that whatever cold Tilly had brought homewasalready affecting me. Or it was a different cold or flu bug.
Oh goodness, I hoped the hell not. I was on a vacation from work. Well, sort of. My last temp assignment had ended the day before, and I’d decided to take a week to relax before hunting for more work.
Being sick was not my idea of relaxing. What was more, when I got sick, I just hid in a pile of blankets in my bed with the TV on and a mountain of tissues around me. I could not do that if Tilly was home and also sick.
“So, what now?”
I did that a lot: talked to myself out loud. Even before Tilly had left for college it’d been a bit of a habit of mine that she loved to tease me about.
“There’s no chance I can go back to sleep, so…coffee.”
Pivoting towards the kitchen I made my favorite drink. The dark heavenly brew had to be my first step, or I’d never think clearly enough to make the right choices.
I was up, so there was no use in going back to sleep. Besides, I had to make cookies for the local elementary school’s bake sale sometime today. The whole town was involved, and I’d signed up for the easiest thing on the list. Cookies were a cinch.
Now I needed to find out where Tilly had gone. Her absence grated at me. The mess in her room could perhaps have been attributed to her trying to catch that dang bunny. That made sense, at least. She wasn’t off somewhere, injured. There was an explanation.
Maybe she’d thought leaving a note on my forehead was rude, even if I would’ve preferred it to the panic I’d felt when I hadn’t found her in her room. Chances were, she’d left a note somewhere, and the kitchen was a smart place to start.
Even though at nineteen she was technically an adult, she wouldn’t just leave without at least leaving a note. She was a good kid.
But when I got to the kitchen, there was no note to be found. Back when Tilly was a teen and I would temp, sometimes pulling weird hours, and she’d usually leave a message on the counter over the junk drawer.
Moving to the spot on the counter, I touched it and felt a strange bitter-sweet twist in my chest. Even though being a single mom to a girl hadn’t been easy, there was so much I missed about those days. The way she’d smiled at me like I was her whole world. The way she’d curled up on the couch with me to watch a movie, or given me advice like I was the kid, and she was the parent. She’d just always been an old soul.
Other moms had always told me how they wouldn’t allow their children to dye their hair, or create art, things which people sometimes found controversial, but none of that had bothered me. Every time she’d change her clothes and go for a new look. Every time she’d follow tattoo artists on social media and try to recreate their images with pens on her own body. It all felt like that was just who Tilly was, and I could accept her for who she was, or risk alienating her.
So, I’d accepted her for who she was. A creative, old-soul, who was often more responsible than me. There were many times I’d doubted myself, but I’d never, not once, doubted her. I always knew she’d make the right decisions.
