CHAPTER 3

Alice let out a little sob that was half a laugh.

The wardrobe looked the same as she remembered. Or almost the same, anyway. There were cushions piled up in the little space. A nook with little shelves held books. Nancy Drew. C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books. Lois Lowry’s Number the Stars.

Her mom, running a bookstore and raising a kid, had found a creative way to keep Alice busy the many hours she spent at Blithedale Books.

“This is your magical hideaway,” her mom had told her. “Your Wonderland. No one else gets to come in, unless you invite them. Only people you love—and who love you.”

“Then you can come in, Mommy,” Alice had said.

Her mom laughed and touched Alice’s face. “I will, Sweet-pea. If I can fit.”

Now her mom’s comment made sense as Alice wedged herself through the narrow opening. She eased herself down onto the cushions, and only got halfway before the awkwardness of the dress overturned her and she dumped down on her butt.

She let out an “Oomph!”

But at least she was sitting down.

Cobwebs tangled in her hair and she brushed them away.

The space was much smaller than it had once been—or rather she was bigger. The giant dress didn’t help. Her legs extended beyond the door, and it would be difficult to close it.

But dammit, she’d come all this way and she wasn’t about to give up.

She raised one leg, twisting it, so she could shove it into the wardrobe, knee up against one wall. One of the bookshelves dug into her back. The other leg came next. She tried to retract it. But she wasn’t a turtle. Instead, she had to bend it and grab it with both hands and yank it toward her butt. Gently, she closed the door, until she heard the beloved snick of the latch closing.

Her legs ached. The edge of the shelf behind her stabbed her back. Something under the cushion—something hard—poked at her thigh. But at least she was inside.

She let out a long sigh. She’d found her hideaway again, the last place she’d truly felt like she knew herself. After her mom’s diagnosis, it was as if the world cracked, and nothing quite looked right again. With every move across the country, more cracks showed in the glass, and Alice receded deeper and deeper into herself and her books.

She breathed in—and coughed. It was dusty in the hideaway. And cobwebs filled the corners. But as she closed her eyes, she imagined what it had felt like to sit in this place and know that her mom was behind the counter, selling books. For a moment, she felt it. She could taste the chocolate chip cookies her mom brought her, the cold milk, the sound of the cash register ring-dinging as her mom made another sale. The chatter of happy customers.

“My love for you will live on forever,” she heard her mom say. “You’ll find it where and when you need it the most.”

Alice wiped a hand across her face. It was wet with tears.

She shifted her position.

Ouch.

There really wasn’t much room in this wardrobe. And this hard thing under the cushion wasn’t making things better.

She shoved a hand underneath and found the object and pulled it out.

It was a book.

She gasped. It wasn’t just any book. It was the one she’d been looking for.

Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Could it really be the case that this book, which she’d hid twenty years ago under a cushion, had been left undisturbed all these years for her to find again? What were the chances?

She opened to page 1 and read the first line:

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, “and what is the use of a book,” thought Alice “without pictures or conversations?”

And as she read the familiar lines, she could almost hear her mom reading them to her at night as a small child. Snuggled close to Mommy. Her soft, warm body against her. Still so alive with love.

Something hot rose in her throat, choking her. Then a sob broke through. Then another. The tears trickled down, and there was nothing she could do—or wanted to do—to stop them.

She gripped the book, pressing it to her chest, and wept, and wept, and wept.