“Probably not.” Amie straightened the papers in her lap. “I spent two years in a time loop and almost never pushed myself to do anything. I think that might have been why I was in there for so long. I thought I just needed to keep my head down, but I was probably supposed to actually try something different.”
David was quiet for a moment.
“I don’t … think it matters what you think you were supposed to do,” he finally said. “What matters is that you understand that you’re … important. You spend a hell of a lot of time doing things for and worrying about other people, kid, but you don’t treat yourself the same way. That’s why you just kept your head down in the time loop. You were the only one impacted by it, the only one who needed help, but you don’t consider yourself important enough to be worthy of your own help. Sometimes, Amie, the most important person you need to consider isyou.”
Amie pressed her lips together as her eyes started to prickle.
“I think,” David continued, “if you were in Ziya’s shoes, you’d want more for you, too.”
“Yeah,” Amie said softly. She passed David’s papers back to him before any tears could fall on them and make the drawings look even more strange than they already did.
“Lasagna time!” David sprang off the couch, taking his pages with him. “Come and get it.”
Amie wiped her eyes as she joined him in the kitchen. “The timer didn’t go off yet,” she pointed out.
“I know,” David said, donning oven mitts, “but the energy was getting a little too touchy-feely for me, so I thought it’d be best to nip that in the bud.”
He opened the oven door and removed the lasagna. Once it was set down safely on the stovetop, Amie gave him a hug.
“This was the bud I was trying to nip,” David grumbled, patting the top of Amie’s head with an oven mitt. “There, there.” He gave her a one-armed squeeze before extracting himself from the embrace. “Come on, grab a plate.”
Once she’d returned home for the night, Amie finally gave in and checked her phone. Her heart leapt into her throat when she saw the red notification bubble indicating an unplayed voicemail, until she remembered the spam call she’d ignored earlier that evening.
Poised to delete the message, Amie pressed play to listen:
“Hey, it’s Winston. From the flower counter. Sorry this took so long—my manager was out yesterday, and today we were flooded with this huge last-minute order for the fall festival … anyway, doesn’t matter.
“So, I think you said you wanted to know if a delivery would’ve been left at the door if no one was there to accept it. The answer I got was yes, it would’ve been. My manager showed me how to access the notes on an order. I know you were asking about Savannah Harlow’s delivery, so I checked the notes for that. The flowers were delivered at seven on Monday and left outside the address.”
Amie sat down at her kitchen table, turning up the volume on her phone. So the delivery person hadn’t seen Savannah return to the store that night. Not that Amie had been wishing Savannah’s wrath on an innocent delivery person, but she’d hoped there might be someone out there who could tell her if the bookstore owner had been upset about the change in delivery time. If so, it would have confirmed that someone had impersonated Savannah on the phone, changing the time to lure her back to the store to be murdered.
“I noticed something else,”Winston continued.“I thought the reason Savannah came in on Monday was because the system glitched and canceled her order. But after looking at her order notes, it looks like Savannah called in on Sunday herself to cancel it. Not sure why she took it out on me the next day. Guess she forgot.”
Amie stilled.
“That’s all I got. Have a good weekend. Bye.”
Chapter SeventeenFall
Day 6 A.L.
The new furniture arrangement worked. Amie slept well that night, despite the roller coaster of a day she’d had (or maybe because of it—by the time she got into bed, she could hardly keep her eyes open).
Sundays had always been her time to prepare, physically and emotionally, for the week ahead. Despite not having experienced a Sunday in quite some time, Amie easily fell into her pre-loop routine. She cleaned her apartment. Did the laundry. Stocked up on groceries. Finally replaced her failing pen and filled out her planner as best she could. (All she ended up writing was “Find new job,” “Look at schools,” and a bunch of doodles while she tried to come up with something else to jot down.)
Though it had been almost a week since the time loop, it felt odd dedicating a whole day to her future. But the feeling was comforting. And strangely exciting. Amie never thought she’d find doing laundry exciting. It was like the opposite of the Sunday scaries. Sunday … cheeries? No, never mind, it didn’t need a name.
As she went about her day, she found her thoughts repeatedly drawn to Winston’s message.
“But after looking at her order notes, it looks like Savannah called in on Sunday herself to cancel it.”
That had immediately felt off to Amie. Savannah always seemed to relish taking her anger and annoyance out on other people, but canceling the order only to yell at Winston about it the next day didn’t seem realistic. Nor did Savannah forgetting she’d canceled the order herself. Of all the people Amie had spoken to about the dead woman, no one had mentioned her struggling with her memory. Unless Amie, whohadbeen struggling with her memory, had forgotten about that. But this seemed unlikely as well.
Especially once her memory helpfully served her a piece of information that almost made her topple off the chair she’d been standing on to dust the top of her bookcase.
“We figured out some compromises. Coming home by seven was one of them; she used to stay at the store even later before we agreed on that. She’d also agreed to not work on Sundays, let go of a few part-time employees, and feature more bestsellers in the window.”
Amie remembered feeling surprised when Andrew told her this. Savannah never struck her as someone willing to compromise, but her widower had seemed confident that she had been sticking to her word. Would she have made a call canceling her flower order on the one day of the week she’d promised her husband she’d take off?
