Page 30 of What If It's You?

We kept picking our way through the streets between Porter and Magoun squares, past a string of stately Victorians and blocky triple-deckers, the sun casting shivering silhouettes of the autumn leaves clinging stubbornly to the old-growth trees dotting the sidewalk. I took a bite of my pastry, eyes hooking on the intricate gingerbread woodwork on the house we were passing. It had been toolong since we’d done this, played hooky. I wondered if there was really a destination at all, or if Ollie was just trying to distract me. Which frankly didn’t make the gesture any less thoughtful. The state I’d been in when I walked in the door was…probably a little unnerving for him.

Finally, Ollie stopped at a street corner and pointed to the base of an empty shopfront, its windows butcher-papered, a faded pet shop sign clinging above the chainlocked door.

“You wanted to show me…an empty store?”

“Lookdown,Lo.”

I did, and then I saw it, a small window cut into the weatherworn stonework just to the right of the entrance. I moved closer, squatting near the two-foot-wide gap in what I’d assumed was the building’s foundation, a slightly filmy piece of fiberglass paneling offering a glimpse inside.

“Whatisthis?” I blinked at the scene in miniature unfolding behind the hazy opening.

“I think it’s the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles.”

“You’re totally right,” I murmured, scanning the wavery gilt mirrors in forced perspective at the left, the brilliant parquet flooring lining the enclosure, the series of tiny, glittering chandeliers suspended from who knows where. A miniature statue, vaguely Greco-Roman, was tucked into a little clamshell recess, and what looked like gold foil had been worked into impossibly intricate moldings and frames, carving out the geometry of ceilings and walls. In the center of the scene was a single tiny figure in a Marie Antoinette dress and powdered wig. But it was…

“A mouse? It’s not…alive, is it? Or, you know…like poisoned?” It looked so real, its shiny eyes staring straight ahead, its miniature mouse hands folded over the front panel of its voluminous satin skirt.

“Don’t worry, no mice were harmed in the making of this diorama,” Ollie assured me. “Apparently it’s a mix of faux fur and felted wool, which like…I love imagining what inspired the artistto think ‘But what if I made a to-scale, perfectly realistic mouse?’ ” He jerked his head to the side. “Come on, I hear the ones around the side are even cooler.”

We made our way around the building, stooping to marvel at the tiny Tower of London cell, complete with arched arrow-slit windows and a pacing Thomas More in threadbare sixteenth-century garb; the miniature sun-bleached desertscape of Petra, a family of Hawaiian-shirted mice snapping photos at the base of the intricately carved structures in the cliffs; and, whimsically, a rolling green hillside with a round door in the center, propped open to reveal a tiny mouse-hobbit in sturdy traveling garb and a hooded cloak, dwarfed by Ratdalf the wizard, his pointed hat grazing the ceiling of the homey interior.

“How did you hear about these?” I said, bending closer to peer at the minuscule glittering ring on the rough wooden mantel of the hobbit living room.

“Jason’s girlfriend heard about them from some of her art school friends.” Ollie flashed an amused grimace. Jason’s predilection for dating way younger than he should had become an inside joke. “From what I’ve been able to find out online, no one knows who made them. Presumably someone with access to the store.”

“And a metric fuckton of time on their hands.” I shook my head slowly, half baffled and half in awe of whatever impulse had led to…this. “Cool or creepy?” It was…not even a game, really, just a shorthand Ollie and I used. So many of the people we met through the music and arts scenes he—and by extension I—ran in had hobbies that could easily go either way.

“Definitely cool. Is that even a question?”

“But like…think about the kind of person who would go to all this trouble. Sewing a tiny eighteenth-century dress, sculpting a tiny piece of bread and then painting realistic mold on it. That’sweird,right?”

“It could be good weird.”

“What if it’s all just a cover to lure out whoever lives in theapartment next door? Like, they create this entire whimsical hobby but it’s really just a front for straight-up stalking?” I waggled my eyebrows exaggeratedly.

“That’s dark, Lo.” Ollie’s brow furrowed with feigned concern. “But…I still say cool. Like…elaborate, yes. Borderline obsessive. But you’d have a hell of a how-we-met story to tell your grandkids.”

“It’s called a meet-cute. And forget how obviously meet-creepy that is, I love that you assume thisworksas a courtship ploy.” I bent closer, not wanting the moment to end. “Oh, what if they come alive at night? Like that kid’s book with the magic dollhouse that shows what happened. The doll…deaths?” I bit my lip, searching for the memory.

“The Dollhouse Murders,holy shit!” Ollie’s eyes went huge. “That book messed meup. Lily had a dollhouse in the corner of our room that I would watch for like…hours before I’d finally pass out.”

“Maybe these mice actually contain the souls of murder victims and they’re doomed to act out their own tragic demises until someone solves the case and puts them to rest,” I said, tapping at the fogged fiberglass, staring intently at the mouse figurine inside as though it might suddenly come to life and prove me right.

“Maybe that’s your brilliant literary debut. Sounds like a million-copies-sold premise to me.” Ollie slid his arm around my waist as I stood, pulling me against him and kissing me lightly on the temple.

Shame flooded me—for years now I’d talked about how someday I’d leave the corporate grind and become a novelist, the dream job that I’d find a way to turn into a reality…eventually. But really…why bother to pretend anymore? Even in a world where I had the time and space to write, didn’t have the pressure of work and bills and all thewhat ifsthat hand-to-mouth life came with looming over me, I hadn’t come up with anything brilliant. Or really anything at all.

Why hadn’t I been able to come up with anything? Everything was set up for me to succeed there…

I sniffed away Ollie’s idea, willing the toxic thoughts to follow.

“So I writeThe Dollhouse Murders 2: Mouse Murder? Might come off as a little derivative.”

“You’ll find a way to make it different, I have faith.” Ollie threw me a quick grin, then pulled out his phone, crouching to snap a photo of the hobbit diorama. “Shit, is it really ten?”

“Why, do you have somewhere to be?” I smirked. Ollie never taught lessons before noon, his ability to sleep in was almost teenaged. And to be fair, most of his students were…well,students,so he stacked lessons into the after-school hours, scheduling the handful of self-improving adults in the hour or two before.

“Is that so impossible to believe?”

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