Chapter 16 #2
Dodging the question, Amie asked, “You’re enjoying yourself, right?”
“In this conversation? I could go either way.”
“In life.”
David adjusted a domino that had gotten knocked out of line. “Sure. I feel like building these machines is worth my time because I enjoy it. So I suppose that means I’m happy with my life. But we’re not talking about me, are we?”
“I just think that if it works for you, then it can work for me.”
David whipped around so fast the movement sacrificed a row of dominos.
“Oh no,” he said, holding up a finger. “Do not try to make a role model out of me. I’m not perfect.”
“I didn’t say you were perfect,” Amie retorted. “You’re far from perfect.”
“Now hang on, ‘far’ is—”
“I’m just saying that we lead similar lives.” She held out her hands palms-up. “I get the same bagel from the café every time I go for breakfast. You go grocery shopping at the same time every week. We stick with what we know. And we’re happy!”
David ran a hand down his face, wincing. “Sure, but … I’ve lived a lot more life than you have, kid. I know what I like best because I’ve tried a lot of things. Can you say the same?”
Frowning, Amie stared at the flamingo. “I guess not,” she mumbled. “But, okay, that brings me back to my first question. How do you know when you’re happy enough? How do you know that you’re spending your time in the best way possible?”
The oven beeped, indicating that it was finished preheating. David returned to the kitchen, put the lasagna in the oven, and disappeared into his bedroom.
Amie pulled out her phone, then stuffed it away again without looking at the screen. She wasn’t sure what would make her feel worse: seeing a text from Ziya, or seeing that Ziya hadn’t texted.
“Here.” Her vision was overtaken by a short stack of papers being waved in front of her face. She took the papers as David retreated to his work table once more.
“What is it?” Amie placed the plastic flamingo on the couch next to her and flipped through the pages. They displayed rough sketches of what looked like people and animals, with words that were even more difficult to interpret.
“I started working on that children’s book,” David said, resurrecting the domino casualties from the Great Table Bump of Two Minutes Ago.
“You were right—even if Elle is too old for it now, it’s still something I want to do for her.
And she’ll still appreciate it, even if it’s ten years overdue.
I could agonize over what could’ve been if I hadn’t waited so long to do it, but … why spend the energy on that?”
“This is so sweet.” Amie held up a drawing of what looked like a lion/car hybrid playing volleyball. “But you’re going to get an artist for this, right?”
“Okay, fuck off.”
“No!” Amie laughed. “I’m sorry. These are really great.”
“Eh, you’re right.” David turned, crossing his arms. “I can’t draw to save my life. Clearly. I’ll stick with the writing. I think it’s a cute story, so …” He shrugged. “I don’t know, I need to work on it some more.”
He cleared his throat uncomfortably. “I never considered that it was something I could still do. But I did it because you gave me the push to try something different. So thanks for that.”
“This is amazing.” Amie flipped to another page as David abandoned the domino rescue effort to sit with her on the couch.
“Ziya …” Ow. “… gave me the push to try something different, too. And then I did it, and she was still unhappy. But I think that’s because I only push myself when someone else tells me it’s the right thing to do.
And she didn’t like that I couldn’t do that for myself. She wants ‘more’ for me.”
“Mm.” David laced his fingers together, resting his forearms on his thighs. “Do you think you could start doing that for yourself?”
“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 is you. ”
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.”