Hallow Haven Cozy Mysteries Bundle Books 1-3 by Mara Webb (books to read fiction .txt) 📕

I had a place to relax and put my feet up, a way to keep up to date with all my soap operas and, if the bedroom was awful, a place to sleep. I smiled at the thought of collapsing onto the cushions and turned to look for the kitchen.

I stepped into a dining room first, each chair looked as if it had been made by a different person, nothing matched. There was a plastic chair as if from a children’s school, a red wooden chair with intricate spindles, a jet-black armchair that was barely able to tuck underneath the table, and about nine more chairs that were equally unique.

It was then that I first spotted it. I assumed I had seen something in the corner of my eye and my brain had tried to make sense of it, but my first thoughts were right. On the largest wall in the dining room was a painting of a sprawling tree, faces adorning the branches. I recognized two of the people depicted; one was Greta and the other was me.

5

I paused in the doorway. The faces were a mixture of printed photographs and small paintings, one was a pencil drawing, and another was carved into a small stone oval. My picture was a printout of a photo I had put out on social media about a month ago.

The photo I had taken was one of those with a whole story behind it. I had been home alone and had spent most of the day watching a TV show about choosing wedding dresses, I’d cried and eaten a whole box of expensive chocolates. In a weird, ‘it’s MY special day too’ moment, I had gotten off the sofa and put on a full face of makeup, curled my hair and tried to take pictures at attractive angles.

Obviously, most of the moments captured on film had my puffy, cried-all-day eyes on full display, but I’d managed to get one photo that I was proud of and put it online as my new profile picture. I had also planned to use it on a profile for a dating website, but I got too scared and didn’t do it in the end.

Staring at the picture of my own face hanging on the wall I felt a strange mix of, ‘yeah, I look great’ and ‘why is this here?’. This picture was new. I tried to think about when I had digitally signed all the papers for the café sale, or when all the payments had gone across. Maybe Effie had been checking out the person taking over their business, that was normal, right?

It’s the new thing that employers do, they score your social media presence for reasons not to hire you. You just have to assume that everything you say and do on the internet will come back to bite you in the butt if you aren’t careful. Still, it’s weird to stalk me and print off that picture.

I wanted to keep exploring the house. This was my place now and when I had more energy, I could take the weird picture wall of strangers down and put up a nice painting of some pebbles or something, you know, a more neutral image that wouldn’t give me chills while I was eating at the table.

I backed out into the corridor and entered the kitchen. Stepping onto the tiles I was reminded that I still had my shoes on. I slipped them off my feet and walked barefoot over to the refrigerator hoping that when Effie told me that she had stocked it, she had included something that I could just throw in a microwave.

It was a double door refrigerator, that was a good start. I pulled open the doors with both hands and leaned into the cool air. The smell of fresh food poured out and I closed my eyes to bask in it, before opening them again to see what was on the shelves. It was a lot of the usual suspects, cartons of milk, eggs, a draw filled with oranges and one shelf was covered in bottled water and nothing else.

There was a note stuck to one of the bottles that read, ‘take on walks!’, and I assumed this was Effie’s reminder to drink more now that I was in a hotter environment. I could have done with water on that weird post-storm hike, so I would make sure to tuck a bottle into my purse tomorrow. I saw a plastic container of ravioli and a tub of sauce and grabbed them both.

“That is probably a bad choice,” a voice spoke out. I dropped the pasta box but kept a tight grip of the sauce as I looked around. Was I about to use this four-cheese as a weapon? This was how I planned to defend myself? “It’s cooled down a little but come on. A hot pasta dish on a night like this? You really are new.”

“Where are you?” I shouted back, thrusting the pasta sauce forward and swinging it like a baseball bat. I spotted a woman leaning against the stove and I staggered backwards a few steps. She looked to be smaller than me, maybe this sauce would be enough to scare her off? Or at the very least I could prize the lid off and throw cheese at her, then she might be carried away by ants, right? Fear was taking my mind to strange places.

“I know there was a storm but come on! It’s not cool enough for Italian food,” she scoffed.

“It... it’s warm in Italy and they eat Italian food for every meal!” Good comeback. Why was I engaging in a conversation with someone that had broken into my house? I had received the keys less than an hour ago and already was dealing with a burglary.

“You’re an odd one, I like that. They’ll love you here,” she smiled. The longer I stared at her, the more familiar her face became. She had been messing