“Hi, sweetie. How do you feel?” I asked while turning off the oven. “Want a cookie?”
She stumbled past me, heading for the coffee pot. “I feel a little better.” She grabbed the pot and filled it with water. Geez, I hadn’t meant to drink it all.
Pointing to the pot under the stream of water, I said, “Before you get too far into making a whole pot, I was wondering if you felt like helping me get all these cookies over to the bake sale.”
She frowned and glanced at the sheets of cooling yumminess. “For the school? Why do you still help with that? You don’t even have kids that go there.” She then waggled her brows at me and added, “Unless there is something you need to tell me?”
A laugh burst from my lips as I rolled my eyes. Then, I couldn’t help myself, I moved closer to her and wrapped both arms around her. “Nope. You are my one and only.”
She hugged me back and laid her head on my shoulder. “I don’t know. Having a little one around could be fun.”
“Bite your tongue, Missy.” I poked her in the side, making her jump and giggle. Then I felt her forehead. “Your fever went away. How did you sleep?”
“Okay. I had a few majorly strange dreams, but okay.”
Good, at least she’d slept better than I had.
“What were your dreams about?”
Releasing her, I moved back to the baking sheet and transferred the cookies to a cooling rack while waiting for her answer. The longer I’d had to process the early morning events, the more I thought my brain might have been atadover-imaginative.
The bunny and the bite were real. I was sure of that because the bite still stung a little. As for the furry audience in my backyard, I wasn’t sure if that had been real or not.
As for my daughter not being in her bed, Tilly could have gone to the bathroom or sleepwalked. The latter was something she hadn’t done since she was a child. But that didn’t mean she hadn’t started again.
Tilly didn’t quite meet my gaze. “I don’t really remember, just that they were weird.” Huh. That was an odd reaction to my question. Was she nervous?
After pouring the water into the coffee maker’s reservoir and placing the pot on the burner, Tilly flipped the brew button and turned to face me. “And to answer your other question about going with you to the school, I think I’ll stick around the house today. I’m not feeling much like peopling right now.” She rubbed her hands up and down her arms, visible goosebumps erupting. Something was nagging at her.
I wasn’t a big fan of people myself. Ever. But I’d promised I’d bake Mama’s town-famous oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. I couldn’t back out now. And it didn’t go unnoticed that she seemed to be lying to me about remembering her dreams. “I hear ya,” I said while keeping a close eye on her. “But everyone loves Nana’s cookies and since she up and moved to Florida, I’m the only one who makes them like she does. Soon, I’ll teach you the secret recipe.”
Tilly grinned. “Nana already did.”
“Of course, she did,” I teased as I took the now-empty baking sheet to the sink and rinsed it off before putting it in the dishwasher. “Outside of the weird dreams, did you sleep well? Was your room, uh, comfortable?” I asked her, trying to find out more about the bunny and her disappearance, without actually mentioning the two crazy things.
She shrugged. “I slept better than I have in months. The dorm can get noisy, especially on the weekends. I think the extra sleep helped me feel better.”
Okay, I’d have to be more direct. “Tell me this. Did you see a bunny in your room last night?”
She stilled and frowned but didn’t quite meet my stare. “A bunny? What? No. I don’t even remember rolling over.”
Huh. I couldn’t tell if she was lying or not, which is something I was usually good at. But why would she lie to me? It was a stray rabbit. Not a reason to deceive me. “Well, there was a rabbit in the house last night, and it bit me.” I held up my hand to show her, then realizing it was still wrapped, I took off the bandage.
She leaned in to look. “Wow, that’s a mean little bite.”
Her features morphed into what I recognized as her guilt-face. Why would she feel sorry about the bite? It wasn’t like she’d changed into a bunny and bit me. Nowthatwould have been something that would have pushed me over the edge and made me seriously consider checking myself into the nut house.
People couldn’t shift into animals. How ludicrous.
I wiped my hands on the kitchen towel. “I’m going to jump in the shower, then package everything up for the bake sale. If you need me to pick you up something from the store on my way back, just let me know.” I said, studying her for a few more seconds before she waved me off.
“Go. I’ll be fine.”
I gave Tilly a quick kiss on the cheek and headed to the shower. When I was clean, dressed, hair semi-styled, and light makeup on, I entered the kitchen to pack up the cookies only to find that Tilly had done it for me. My sweet baby girl. Although she was all grown up. If a college student could be considered grown, mine was as adult as they came at her age.
All the cookies were in the pretty boxes I’d purchased for them. She’d made a half-dozen boxes and even individually wrapped cookies as well.
After bagging up the boxes, I went to the living room, where I found Tilly curled up under a blanket on the sofa watching TV. “Thanks for packing them all up for me.”
