Life gets complicated starting about here. As nice as it is to think that Hatter and Alice could go right to having a relationship comprised entirely of rainbows and butterflies after what they went through together, I'm not sure they could. They both have their fair shares of hangups and that makes things difficult. But that's life, eh? It's difficult. This chapter might also make some of you really hate Carol. I apologize in advance!

o…o

With her best friend back in her life, and a boyfriend she actually trusted, Alice thought that maybe she was due for a little happiness and stability and normalcy for a while. But if there was one thing Alice knew for damn certain about her life, it was that it was hardly ever easy and far from normal.

It'd been a while now since she'd thought of her father; before her trip through the Looking Glass, she obsessively searched for him and was always watching, looking, thinking. She tried to spot him in crowds, looked for any trace of him whenever she was elsewhere, scoured the internet for any sign of him, and he was always, always on her mind. Everything she did revolved around finding him.

Not anymore.

There was no need.

She filled that gaping hole in her life and keep busy, but she didn't even know how to be normal so she found herself at a loss. Almost all of the friends she'd had had long since left, just like the trail of ex-boyfriends behind her, because they didn't understand her compulsive desire to find her father and her zealousness scared them off.

All roads led her back to the same problem: what the hell was she supposed to do with her life now? She felt like she'd lost her direction.

She had to let her father rest and she had to go on with her life.

There were other things on her mind, too. Having JD and Hatter with her should have been a good thing, but it wasn't. It all came down to a very, very old problem: her boyfriend was suspicious of her male best friend. She hated it when that happened—she hated it when the guys in high school made a big deal out of it, and she hated it when the adult boyfriends in her life couldn't handle it, and she hated it when Jack was suspicious, and she hated it now when Hatter was suspicious.

There was only so many times she could explain that no, she was not in love with JD and she never had been, but no matter how often she explained it, people were always inclined to believe that there had to be some kind of romantic tension in their friendship simply because their genitals didn't match.

And what was worse—not only did Hatter clearly have a problem with it but he was being stubborn and didn't want to talk to her. He was just sulking and being morose and bristling whenever he heard JD's name.

While yes, she had been spending a lot of time with JD, it was purely innocent. He was her best friend and two years ago he ran off to California in pursuit of a girl and she hadn't heard much from him since; she was just glad he was back.

Maybe she just needed to pin Hatter down and make him talk about it.

Crossing the road deep in thought, she almost didn't notice the truck until it honked at her and she leaped to the safety of the pavement. She went around to the back lobby of the apartment building and unlocked the mailbox before going up to go home. She idly flipped through the mail as she climbed the stairs, looking for the college information she'd sent away for two weeks ago. She figured that school was a good place to start if she wanted to figure out what to do with her life.

She got to the door and then stopped dead in her tracks.

What was that?

She was sitting at the table, looking accusatory and knowing it, when her mother came home, humming mindlessly to herself.

"Hi, Alice. No David today? I thought you were attached at the hip."

"He's having a bitchfit about JD, I'm letting him cool himself off."

"Oh, not this again," she sighed heavily. "Is that what you want to talk about?"

"No, it's not."

"Then is there a reason you're sitting there looking at me like I've committed some kind of crime?"

She didn't say anything and instead fixed her mother with what she hoped was a withering scowl.

"I've been home for a minute and a half, what the hell did I do?" Her mother asked.

But Alice wasn't in the mood for jokes.

"All right, what is it?" The woman asked, dropping her coat and purse and pulling up a chair.

Alice pushed a thick envelope over the table. "What's this, Mom?"

Carol cast a halfhearted glance. "Looks like mail. Is that all we got?"

"I'm being serious. Mom, this is official stuff. From the census board. And it's addressed to miss Carol Hamilton. Now, unless I got hit harder than I thought when I had that confrontation with Jack, I'm 'miss' Hamilton. You're married."

"You know, the CIA should fire all of its interrogators and just hire you."

"Mom!"

Carol sighed and rubbed the spot between her eyes, frustrated. "This conversation had to happen eventually, I guess. Would you like some hot chocolate? I have a feeling we're going to be talking for a while."

"No. I want answers."

"Okay."

"Well?"

"You haven't asked me any questions yet."

"What the hell is this all about, Mom? I want you to start at the beginning."

o…o

Alice's life was unnecessarily and frustratingly complicated. There were days when she just wished she could pop up somewhere else as a completely different person. And today was one of those days.

JD was up to his eyeballs unpacking all of the personal belongings he mailed to himself when he left California—which was to say everything he couldn't cram into his one suitcase, which was most of his belongings. He'd left in an awful hurry and didn't have time to sort everything out properly; everything arrived at the same time and now he was sorting through all of it.

But she'd talked to him anyway because she had to talk to someone, and it only made her mood worse when she found out that he already knew about it. Why was she always the last person in the universe to find out about important things like this? Especially when they were important things that pertained to her.

Hatter wasn't being any help, either, because he was still having a fit because of JD, and it was just one more thing to bother her.

Just one more load of shit piled on her.

She felt her nerves slowly starting to frazzle and fray and she was becoming a wreck very quickly. She wasn't talking to her mother. She couldn't. She was too angry.

She went for a walk in the park in hopes of clearing her head, but it didn't help. Her thoughts kept going in a hundred directions at once and her emotions were a jumbled mess and she was so distracted she collided with a bare tree and ended up in a compromising and moderately sexual position with the trunk.

"You shouldn't do that," she heard someone say. "People will think you've got a tree fetish."

"Hatter?"

He leaned around a fat ancient oak, which was blocking the rest of him from view. He was sitting near the pond, tossing bits of bread to a little group of ducks looking for handouts.

She should've been glad to see him but she just felt like it was one more thing to deal with right now.

"Thought you'd be out with JD on a day like this," he sad casually, but the bitterness in his voice was apparent.

"You're not gonna drop that, are you?" She grumbled. "Ever."

He turned back around so he was hidden from view again; she followed him.

"Real mature, Hatter."

He ignored her.

She sighed heavily and jabbed her boot into one of the knobbly roots sticking up from the ground.

"I'm really not in the mood for this right now," she said flatly. "If you don't wanna talk I'm just gonna go."

"Suit yourself," he said with a shrug. "It's not like we planned to meet here."

She turned to go but immediately turned back around and stood over him, her arms crossed and her eyebrows knit, furious.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" She demanded. "I'm not a mind-reader. I can't tell what's going on in your head. If something's up you've gotta tell me."

Grunt.

She kicked the root again. "Whatever—I'll just go on my way. This is so stupid, Hatter. I really, really don't need this crap right now. I've got other things to worry about." With that she turned to leave.

He fiddled with his hat.

"Look, there's a lot of crap in my life right now, okay?" Her voice was starting to crack and rise. "I don't need you having a little girly bitchfit just because my best friend has a penis."

"You think that's it, huh?"

"I dunno what to think. It's not like you tell me." She didn't feel like dealing with this right now. There was too much going on in her head to argue effectively with Hatter and whenever she started losing an argument with anyone she usually just hit them.

"Geez, what's gotten into you lately?"

She didn't respond.

"Well?"

She shook her head like a wet dog and clutched her coat tighter around herself. "Look, this isn't the time or place."

"Uh-huh."

He stepped from side to side in front of her, blocking her escape and frustrating her further.

"D'you wanna talk or what?" She spat, thumping him soundly on the chest.

"Seriously, what's wrong?"

There was a long, long, uncomfortable silence. She felt her temper boiling steadily under her skin.

Too much crap.

Too much to deal with.

She wanted to punch Hatter in the stomach and run.

"My mom divorced my dad and she never told me!"

It just exploded out of her and hung in the air between them.

"What?"

"My mom… she divorced my dad."

Pause.

"What's a divorce?"

Hatter's comparative unfamiliarity with much of her world never usually bothered her like this, but she forced herself to calm down, take a deep breath.

"Un-married. Divorce is when a marriage ends."

"Oh."

Another pause.

"So… she un-married him? Alice, he's been gone a long time, even you're moving on—"

"She did it five years ago and she never told me about it!"

She buried her face in her hands and cried. Just cried and shrieked and shook and drooled all over herself and didn't care.

"If one spouse goes missing, the state can legally dissolve the marriage if the one left wants to, even though there's one of them missing."

She snuffled messily.

"And now she's gotten started on the paperwork to have him declared dead. The state can do that, too, if no evidence of a missing person turns up in seven years."

She expected him to point out that her father was dead, expected him to say that it had been more than ten years in 'Oyster time' and that maybe it was time that her mother did give him up for dead.

But he didn't.

Instead he just stepped closer and gingerly put his arms around her; when she didn't shove him away, he hugged her a little tighter. She wrapped her arms around him and held onto him like they were on a speeding flamingo, then cried hard into his shirt.

"She didn't tell me!" She sobbed.

He stroked her back and pressed his lips against her hair.

"I know he's dead and I know he's gone and I know he wasn't even my dad for most of the time he was away, but… I dunno. It just seems so final. I can't believe she kept something like that a secret from me for so long."

She sobbed a little harder into his chest and growled angrily, frustratedly.

"Why did she keep it from me? God-fucking-dammit, that's something I oughtta know!"

"I'm sure there was a reason for it—" Hatter began.

"JD knew," she said softly. "JD, and his three sisters and his brother. And their dad, Ray. For all I know the fucking paperboy knew about it. But not me. He's my dad and she never even fucking told me! Nobody told me! Nobody thought this was something I should fucking know!"

Then she stopped blubbering and ranting and just cried and cried, and Hatter held her and stroked her hair and they both ignored the stares from the people walking around them.

"I'm so sorry, Alice," he whispered.

"Me, too." She stood back a little and wiped her eyes with her sleeve. "I got your shirt all wet and drooly."

"S'okay."

"Snot, too."

Strangely, he didn't care too much.

o…o

So… yeah. Some of you are going to hate me (and Carol) for this, but it'll become clear later on. And you're probably not too fond of Hatter, either, for the fit he's having over this JD character. Well, he's suspicious. Is there anything to his suspicion? We shall see…