Lately, the park’s appeal had all but vanished. The numbers weren’t coming. In fact, with the cost of operating rides, maintenance, electricity, and staff, profits were drifting into the fiction category right along with the book it was based on.
Duncan’s expression shifted from skeptical to apologetic. “Forget I said it. I just wanted to make sure this rabbit thing wasn’t some ploy to get her back.”
Maddox rammed away his uneasiness. Though his relationship with Ruby had ended badly, he did still hope to find someone to share his life with. But she would need to be someone he could trust, and Maddox wasn’t sure someone like that existed.
He shook his head. “This is my livelihood. My mom’s idea. I have to do this for her. I need investors.”
“Whatever you say,” Duncan said as a short, youthful associate with black hair and freckles made her way down the aisle toward them. “I’m going to go see if they have any turtles. There’s a mock turtle in the book. Why not set one of those loose?”
“It’s supposed to be a challenge,” Maddox said with a laugh.
Duncan whirled to walk backward as he spoke. “Right. A challenge. Because everyone loves those.”
“When I’m offering a cash prize big enough to feed a family for a year, they do,” Maddox said as Duncan turned his back to him and strolled toward the display of saddles.
“Can I help you?” the cute associate interrupted. She wore an Arbor Ranch nametag on her plaid blue shirt, and cowgirl boots climbed up the ends of her jeans.
Maddox rubbed the back of his neck. Maybe he was crazy to do this.
He could tell the associate no thanks. He could leave the furry cottontails behind and find where Duncan had strolled off to. Or he could step out of the box and take a chance.
He’d always preferred that option.
“Yeah,” he said. “I need a white rabbit.”
This is going to work, he told himself as the associate assisted him with the rabbit. Whether the park was set in Vermont or not, he’d issue his challenge everywhere he could. Bring in new customers. He’d get Wonderland back on its feet.
All he needed was the right girl.
CHAPTER TWO
Adelie stared at the gigantic F-word on the top of the letter that’d just been hand-delivered by a balding sheriff.
Foreclosure.
Her mind spun, her thoughts turning to mush.
“This can’t be happening,” she said, closing her front door.
“Who was that?” Suzie asked, trotting over in her bunny slippers, with a steaming mug in one hand. Adelie couldn’t form the words. Instead, she passed the notice to her sister.
Suzie’s blonde hair was piled in messy perfection on top of her head. Her eyes skimmed the contents while a little line appeared between her brows. “How can this be? I thought we were caught up.”
“We were.” Adelie huffed and followed Suzie past the floral couches and into their farmhouse kitchen. The smell of sizzling hash browns and eggs filled the small room. They’d eaten hash browns and eggs for days. Thanks to their chickens that roamed the yard willy nilly, it was a cheap meal. “Until I lost my job. I’ve been so stressed trying to find work, but I thought you said you were going to take care of our mortgage payments until I found something.”
“Right…” Suzie shifted, shuffling to place her mug on the kitchen’s tiled counter. “About that.”
Adelie blinked. “You haven’t been paying the mortgage?”
Her sister was silly and spacey, that was true, but Adelie never thought Suzie would neglect something as important as this.
“I forgot I had to,” Suzie said in a pleading tone. “All my money has been going toward school.”
Adelie sank onto a chair at the kitchen table that had belonged to their grandparents. When Grandma and Grandpa Carroll both died—Grandma shortly passing after Grandpa had—Uncle Harper wanted to sell their house and get as much profit from it as he could. The girls hadn’t wanted to sell it to anyone else. Having been raised by their Carroll grandparents, the two girls had grown up in this house. To think about selling the Sears-kit home with its back-in-time charm to anyone else had been unthinkable.
Instead of passing the home down to them, their uncle insisted on selling it to them. Fair enough, Adelie had supposed, since he had given them a decent deal on it. The sisters had thought they could swing a mortgage payment if they both did it together, but Adelie being unemployed, getting laid off from her position as a sales associate at Serendipity downtown, had lasted longer than she’d expected. She’d been job hunting, and prospects weren’t looking good.
“What do we do?” Suzie said.
“We’ve got to make up the payments,” Adelie said.
Suzie harrumphed and folded her arms. “How are we supposed to do that?”
They were surviving on fumes as it was. They’d already sold more of their grandparents’ antiques and family heirlooms than they’d ever wanted to, but no matter what they did, the bills kept coming.
Adulting really stunk sometimes.
Medical expenses didn’t help. Suzie had shoulder surgery over a year ago; it seemed like they’d be playing catch up for the rest of their lives.
Adelie peered around the beautiful, quaint kitchen, with its white cabinets and their smooth silver handles, at the buttercream wallpaper speckled with flowers, at the paneled window above the sink that unlatched in the center and opened without a screen, and at the exposed wood rafters in the ceiling above. Sure, it was cramped, but the house had too much charm to let it be foreclosed. Not to mention how this would ruin both of their credit. The idea sank into Adelie’s chest like a rock.
“This is one of those times I wish Grandpa was around to talk to,” Suzie said.
Same old Suzie. Always trying to help find solutions in any way she could. “Yeah, but he isn’t. We’ve got to figure this out.”
“We’ll find somewhere else to live,” Suzie said with a shrug.
The thought hurt. It was physically painful. “How could you say that so easily? You love this house as much as I do.”
Unease sweltered in her empty stomach. She stirred the hash brown and egg mixture in the skillet and, as it was brown and yellow—murky, just like she felt—she turned off the heat.
The TV behind them blared and a news broadcaster piped up in their worried silence.
“What is Wonderland without a white rabbit? Pierre has gotten loose, and it’s up to you to catch him. This is your chance to go down the rabbit hole and find the grand prize. Whoever follows the clues correctly and finds the white rabbit first gets a grand prize of fifty thousand dollars.”
Reaching to dish a heaping helping of food onto their plates, Adelie peered at the TV in the corner above their dishwasher. Cheers broke out in the newsroom on the screen. Daylight News anchors laughed and cheered, joking about this new opportunity.
The anchor in a fashionable suit, with her dark hair pulled back, faced the camera and continued. “Today, we have billionaire owner of Wonderland Theme Park, located in Westville, Vermont, Maddox Hatter, here to tell us more about it. So, Maddox, before we start, I have to know. Is your name a coincidence or a pseudonym you came up with when you started the theme park?”