Chapter 3
Carly
Carly shivered as a blast of intense air-conditioning came through the vent above her head. Goose bumps trailed her arms and
she rubbed her hands up and down her skin to warm herself. “Hey, Dad,” she said and fell back into the seat with a thud.
By her count, this was the two hundred thirty-eighth time she’d attended her dad’s funeral. Not in a metaphorical, dream,
or fantastical sense—in a very real, butt-in-a-hard-white-chair-facing-her-father’s-coffin kind of way. Being stuck in a time
loop had not been on her bingo card, and if she’d known such a thing was even possible, she’d have opted for a more comfortable
bra.
But as it stood, Carly couldn’t change anything about how she started the loop. It was always 10 a.m. on April twenty-third.
Her dad was permanently in the casket. She was forever in a black dress with combat boots, a box of tissues in her lap and
her hair parted in the middle.
Even after 238 times, seeing her dad here was never easy. A constant reminder that she’d never be able to take back the last thing she’d said to him. Just the memory of those words made her shoulders hunch.
In order to avoid becoming a human snowman of negativity, she found the best approach was to avoid thinking about her problems
altogether.
Carly approached the closed casket and drummed her bitten fingernails across its sleek top. “Morning,” she said. “Want to
hear a story?”
Carly understood her father was dead, but she still spoke to him. If for no other reason than to try to be a good daughter.
Something she hadn’t been able to do when he was alive.
“I met this guy.” She leaned an elbow on the lid and crossed one combat boot over the other. “Early thirties, like me. He’d
driven to Julian on a whim and got stuck in the loop. He was apparently about to graduate from med school. Anyways, I helped
him open a bottle of wine. He couldn’t find a corkscrew, and I remembered that elbow trick you taught me.”
She waited for an acknowledgment of her good deed, but of course none came. So she pursed her lips and patted herself on the
back. Carly had accepted that this loop was her life—maybe it was even karmic retribution for being a terrible daughter. So
as a way to repent, she’d decided to do one nice thing for someone else every time she looped. It helped pass the hours, and
doing something considerate distracted her, albeit momentarily, from the fact that she was undeniably the worst.
A nearby door banged open. “That’ll be the love birds,” she joked to her dad.
The other super-fun, not-at-all-alarming thing about the loop was that everyone in Julian was stuck—not just Carly.
Their days all restarted at 10 a.m. on April twenty-third, just as hers did.
And like Carly, they’d had to relive the same day over and over.
Adam and Shireen, however, hadn’t been coping well.
The slap of flip-flops down the hall made Carly turn just in time to spot the wife—or ex-wife—Shireen. Carly didn’t personally know Shireen, but she knew of her. In the sense that she’d overheard her conversations with Adam 238 times, and therefore understood the bulk of their relationship
history: met in high school, together soon after, both happy until Adam took over the family business and Shireen started
to feel neglected, Adam didn’t notice her new haircut, there were no more big or small romantic gestures, Shireen ran into
Adam’s best friend, Dean, during a particularly low point and next thing you know . . .
Carly usually waited for them to leave before making her own exit. Not only because the situation was awkward—funeral and
breakup colliding—but because Adam was . . . how to say this politely . . .
Ah, yes, a vindictive prick.
It wasn’t that Carly thought Adam should necessarily take Shireen back, but she’d watched him go from heartbroken to heart
of stone in a matter of loops. Maybe she’d been right in telling him to leave her alone the day of her dad’s first funeral
because, as it turned out, Adam wasn’t a particularly nice guy. While his ex had tried to find some kind of reconciliation—first
with their marriage, and then a possible friendship—Adam shut her down repeatedly. And 238 times later, he still didn’t seem
to have shifted whatsoever on his point of view that Shireen was someone he couldn’t so much as exchange a pleasantry with.
Not to mention the handful of opportunities where Carly had seen him in the loop, the man either ignored her or went out of his way to pretend she wasn’t there.
It was as if the polite, water bottle pushing guy she’d initially met had been replaced with a grumpy one.
He never gave a friendly smile or waved hello. He just acted like she didn’t exist.
So she very much understood why Shireen might be unhappy in their marriage. Carly would be, too, if she were married to Adam
Rhodes, Director of Rhodes Funeral Home and purveyor of effortless frowns.
Once they were both gone, Carly would leave, too. She was a guest in the funeral home, after all, and she figured it was best
to let them have their moment. It was also the only guaranteed way to avoid them.
“Shireen,” Adam called out. Carly couldn’t quite imagine the person who’d once pretended to inspect the leaves of a fiddleleaf
fig to avoid talking to her would ever want human connection. Either way, his plea caused the flip-flops to stop before they
made an exit.
Carly held her breath, like a kid overhearing a fight between their parents. She didn’t want to be caught, because she was
desperate to hear the details of something she just barely understood. This is what also made Carly a terrible human: her
love of gossip.
“Yes?” Shireen asked, maybe a tinge of hope lacing through her words.
Which is why Carly knew with unfortunate clarity that Adam would take the opportunity to knock her down.
“Say hi to Dean for me!” Adam said.
Carly could almost feel a fake smile plastered across his face.
To her delight, Shireen simply said, “Fuck off, Adam.”
“Yeah, good for you,” Carly said. Out loud. Whoops.
She held her breath. Maybe they didn’t hear?
There was a pause—too long of a pause—and then Shireen said, “I knew I liked that girl.”
Carly’s eyes went wide. Was she that girl? She slumped down into the plastic seat and wondered if she had the ability to melt into the floor. They were in
a time loop, after all; stranger things had happened.
There were footsteps, a door opening and closing and finally, the silence that told Carly she was alone. She let out a very
relieved breath. “See you tomorrow,” she told her dad.
As with every loop, leaving this room was Carly’s main goal. As long as she could spend the next thirteen hours and change
doing everything not to think of Bruce, she might be able to forget how she’d treated him at the end.
Carly came to the hallway, a nondescript, low-lit area straight from the pages of Anywhere Bland USA Magazine. As Carly headed
toward the exit, she paused. Was there an acorn painted on the wall? Had that always been there? She approached and, sure
enough, there it was. She traced the outline of the acorn with her finger. Who the hell would paint an optical illusion acorn onto a funeral home hallway?
“Can I help you?” a sharp voice asked.
Carly pulled her finger away, as if his words had burned her. Adam stood at the opposite end of the narrow hall, with his
fiery mop of hair and strong jawline. She’d often wondered if she could hang off the tops of those cheekbones and swing, as
if from a monkey bar. But judging by the daggers Adam shot from his dark brown eyes, this was neither the time nor the place
to get distracted by bone structure.
She swallowed. “No, sorry, I . . .” What had she been doing? “There are acorns in the walls.”
“Acorns in the walls?” He somehow made every word a question.
“On the walls, like painted on them? Haven’t you noticed?” She was suddenly very warm, an ant under a magnifying glass.
Adam’s eyes flicked to the wall, then back to her.
“Never mind.” She tugged on the hem of her dress. His eyes followed her hands, and then he cleared his throat. That pointed
sound almost seemed to ask what the hell she was still doing there. She should just go, really. So she turned toward the door
to do exactly that.
Only, much like the optical illusion acorns, there seemed to be something hiding in his hooded eyes. Carly had a lot of big feelings. She sort of gravitated toward them, actually. If she saw someone else crying,
she cried. If she heard laughter, she was more prone to it, too. She was a feelings sponge, and at that moment her pores were
soaking up some serious vibes that Adam was searching for a friend. Maybe Adam was so rude all the time because he needed
to talk. After all, he’d attempted kindness with her once before, so didn’t she owe him? Helping Adam could be her good deed
for the day! A way to make amends!
Without being able to stop herself, she turned back and locked eyes with him. She faltered only for a moment because, well,
staring at him was like looking at the sun—an otherworldly thing with that flaming red hair. But she managed to ask, “Are
you okay?”
Adam glared at her, as if she’d just suggested riding a bicycle over his pretty leather loafers. Maybe she should first apologize.
“Sorry that I chimed in earlier . . .” she started. “With Shireen.”
Adam crossed his arms and his lean biceps strained against the blazer. He didn’t say a fucking word, but he almost didn’t
have to. Carly intuited that he was pissed off from his tight posture and those pointy cheekbones threatening to cut her if
she took a step closer.
“Well, it’s sort of hard not to listen, you know?” She talked a lot when she was nervous, and in general. “And you were both in the hall. The walls aren’t exactly soundproof.”
“Just filled with acorns,” he said.
She couldn’t tell if he was joking, but then he clarified things.