Chapter ten

Alice let herself into the apartment and threw her overnight bag down on the side. She called out for her mom but when no one answered she realised she was alone and sank into the sofa. It seemed so strange to be here all alone. If anything it just reminded her of all that she had lost. She pulled her knees up under her chin and wrapped her arms around them as the apartment started to feel so much bigger and lonelier.

It was dark outside and so she figured that she'd start her mission to save Hatter tomorrow. She was starting to wonder where her mother was. It wasn't like her to stay out late and Alice wondered if she should have called to tell her she was coming; of course then she'd have to tell her that she was alone and she just couldn't face up to that yet.

She didn't know when she had fallen asleep but when the front door to the apartment clicked open she shot up awake scaring both her mother and her mother's guest. He was a tall man of around the same age as her mother. He had brown hair that was slightly greying around his sideburns and was cut short and stood up straight. His blue eyes crinkled beneath many laughter lines that seemed to be laughing at some kind of shared joke between Carol and him.

"Alice?" Carol asked, her eyes wide with shock, "What are you doing here? I thought you and David were staying until the weekend."

Alice looked up at her mother with pain-filled eyes, "He's gone, mom. David's gone."

"Oh, honey." Carol looked at her daughter sympathetically and rushed to her side to wrap her arms around her. Alice sank into her shoulder and couldn't stop the flood of tears from escaping. "He wasn't worth your time anyway. Don't waste tears on jerks like him."

Alice looked up at her mother, "No, it isn't like that. He didn't just leave me. He's gone, you don't understand. I have to find him." Her speech was getting faster as the thoughts went round and round inside of her head.

"Oh, Alice."

"No, mom. Don't 'Oh, Alice' me. I'm going to find him. You'll see." She pushed away from her mother who only just seemed to notice that her guest was still standing in the doorway. Alice looked from him to her dressed-up mother and connected the dots, "Were you on a date?" she asked incredulously.

"Yes. Alice, this is Robert, Rob, this is my daughter, Alice."

"Nice to meet you." Robert smiled politely but Alice ignored him,

"Can I talk to you in the kitchen for a moment please, Rob." Carol stood up and led him into the next room.

"I'm sorry." Carol said in a hushed tone, although Alice could still hear her perfectly well, "You're going to have to go. I don't know what it is with that girl but heartache seems to follow her around. First her father disappeared one day, she devoted every day trying to find him, then Jack, this lovely, sweet man that she was dating, just up and disappeared out of nowhere, and now David, the ex construction worker that I was telling you about. I don't think I can watch her go through it all again, she had this same, mad idea that she could find her father, but she never could. I need to be with her, I'm sorry." Carol explained, touching his arm gently,

"Don't worry about it. But if you need my help with anything, just give me a call, okay?" he kissed her goodbye on the cheek.

"Thank you." Carol stood and watched him leave before looking back at Alice with a forced smile, "Everything's going to be alright, honey."

"It is, because I'm going to find him mom. I know you don't believe that I will, but I do. First thing in the morning I'm going to get a few things then I'm going back."

"Back? Back where? You can't seriously be thinking about living in that house all alone?"

"It's our house mom, and when I find him we're going to live in it together, and then we're going to get married." Alice turned away from her mother with the last part of her sentence,

"What?"

"Get married. He proposed to me, the day before he disappeared." Alice smiled to herself at the memory of the two of them in the tree house.

"Do you think that's why he ran away?" Carol asked sympathetically,

"No." Alice said a little more forceful than she had intended, "He didn't run away. I was standing right outside the shop. Someone took him."

"I don't understand." Carol's face screwed up with confusion, "What do you mean, someone took him? He was kidnapped? Have you called the police?"

"No, mom. I know what I'm doing. I'm going to find him."

"Honey, I can't help but feel a sense of déjà vu here, we went through all of this with your dad, remember? Haven't you learnt anything from that?"

"It's different. I know where he is. I just can't get to him, not yet anyway."

Carol looked more confused than ever and more and a little bit concerned for her daughter,

"Look, I'll explain it all to you another time, but right now, I'm going to bed, night mom." She kissed her bewildered mother on the forehead and disappeared into her old bedroom.

Hatter's clothes were still hung up in the closest, Alice half smiled and half cried at the ugly brown shirt he used to always wear. It still smelt like him. A picture of the two of them at an amusement park was sticking out of the frame of her mirror. Hatter's face always made her smile in that picture, he looked so much like a child with various foods all in his hands and a giant stuffed animal under his arm. He looked so happy, just being there with Alice. She wished that she could go back to that moment and freeze it, hold onto it forever.

She knew that it wasn't like Hatter was dead, it was worse than that. She knew he was alive; he was just in a place that Alice couldn't get to. What if she never saw him again? Or worse, what if something had happened to him once he'd gone through the Looking Glass and someone had hurt him, even killed him. What if she wasted another ten years looking for him without any luck? What if the Looking Glass never opened again? Or what if it opened when she was an old lady, wasted away and empty inside and he stepped through young and fresh as if no time at all had passed? Time went differently in Wonderland; nothing was ever as it seems there. But in a way she envied that Hatter had gotten to see it again whilst she was stuck in the real world. It was so devoid of magic and wonder that it was barely manageable. The only thing that had made it manageable before was Hatter. She had to find him, she just had to.