Page 75 of Not You Again
Shireen sharply exhaled. “I see your point. Okay, we’llkeep checking the storefronts here. See if anyone else is missing or has seen anything.”
“Thank you,” Carly said. “I know you probably don’t want to spend the first day back looking for Adam, but when you went missing, that’s pretty much all we did.”
“I believe it,” Shireen said. “Don’t worry, we’ll find him.”
Carly held on to that sentiment as she drove to Bill and Sheila’s house. Maybe, by some loop miracle, Adam would be waiting for her there. Perhaps, unlike Shireen’s disappearance, Adam was simply misplaced.
When Carly knocked on the door, though, and Bill and Sheila answered with kind smiles, she understood that she’d be breaking the news to them. They sat in front of the fireplace in the living room and Carly tried to stick to the facts, just as Adam would want.
“Adam didn’t show up with the reset this morning.” Her heart clenched with each word. “Shireen came back, though. And she and Dean are searching through town to see if anyone has seen Adam, or if others are missing.”
Sheila’s hands instantly went to her mouth, and Bill’s face fell. “Shireen is back,” he said. “So Adam will be back, too.”
“Of course he will,” Sheila said. She grasped onto Bill’s hand for support. Carly had grown so used to having Adam by her side that she flexed her fingers for him, then hugged herself as she remembered he wasn’t there.
“Shireen was gone for two loops, so we can assume Adam will be back after two as well,” Carly offered. “But I wanted you both to know what’s happening. I’m going to keep searching until he’s back.”
“We are, too.” Bill stood from the love seat and extended a hand to Sheila, pulling her up. “We can go to the funeral home and search the tree house. We’ll look for any clues we can find.”
“Great,” Carly said, and felt some weight lift off her shoulders. When Shireen had gone missing, Adam wanted to keep the search more contained. But maybe with extra help, he’d return faster than two loops. “How about we meet in town around sundown? Maybe I can convince Mayor Franco to hold another town hall.”
“Telling the whole town? Oh, God, that’s so serious.” Sheila wiped her nose with a tissue; her eyes were red rimmed and she seemed to be holding back her grief.
“I know, it’s a lot.” Carly leaned forward. “But if we want to find Adam, I don’t think it hurts to have everyone looking for clues.”
“Absolutely, yes, okay, we’ll meet you in town at sunset.” Sheila seemed to straighten at the words, a soldier giving herself an order.
And Carly knew she had to break the other news to them. “Just so you know, Shireen and Dean will probably be there, too. I hope that’s okay.”
“Oh, honey, you know, we didn’t tell Adam this, but we said our piece to them early on. We made sure they were okay.” Bill’s tone was even and measured, like he was just commenting on the weather.
Which made Carly certain that she hadn’t heard correctly. “Made suretheywere okay?”
“We’ve known them since they were kids,” Sheila clarified. “Our families spent holidays together. It’s not so easy to just never speak to someone again.”
“But they broke Adam’s heart.” Carly’s brows furrowed in confusion. She waited for Bill and Sheila to say something, anything, to make her feel better about the fact that Adam’s parents had checked in with his ex-wife and ex-best friend and kept those things from him. But they didn’t. And while she knew Adam wouldn’t want her to say anything, she couldn’thelp but stand up for him. “With all due respect, I heard you tell Adam that he doesn’t open up, but there seems to be a lot of secrets in this house. Seems unfair to expect him to share his feelings when you can’t share yours.”
Carly didn’t want a big confrontation—that wasn’t her goal—she’d spoken on Adam’s behalf and defended him, but she didn’t want to waste time arguing. Not when she could be doing something to bring him back. Without looking at Bill and Sheila, she stood up and made her way to the door. She was vaguely aware of their murmurs and footsteps but chose to move forward. As she reached for the door handle, though, Bill stopped her.
“I think you’re right,” he said. “I mean, Iknowyou’re right. It’s just hard to change.”
“It is hard to change,” Carly said, thinking of how long it had taken her to change. But meeting Adam had opened her up to sharing her story about Bruce. So she knew that change was possible. She hadn’t understood that Adam had shifted part of who she was but now she realized he definitely had. “But I hope you try, for Adam’s sake.”
As Carly walked out the door and headed for the car, she understood that she’d just meddled in Adam’s business. But Adam wasn’t there to stand up for himself, and even if he was, Carly wasn’t sure he’d speak up on his own behalf. She’d have to tell all of this to Adam when he returned, and she hoped he’d be understanding.
She turned the car on, took a deep breath and decided to go find Dr. Song and Rick. They were the people Adam had asked for help with Shireen’s disappearance, so maybe they could focus on bringing Adam back instead.
By the time Carly found the Caltech van outside Rick’s airstream, and told Rick and Heather all the details about Adam’s vanishing, they were minutes away from the eclipse.
“No change in the time,” Heather told Carly when the eclipse ended. “So it’s stayed stagnant since Shireen went missing. The only changes being Shireen and Adam’s presence here. Stands to reason that as they vanish, the eclipse remains stable.”
“Well, the eclipse staying the same is a good thing, maybe?” Carly squinted against the light coming through the trees. “Maybe it’s just this thing where one of us vanishes and then pops back up a few days later. That’s not so bad, right?”
“Newton’s third law,” Dr. Song said, almost under her breath. She scratched her head and almost pretended that she didn’t say it.
Carly was afraid, but said, “I can tell I’m not going to like this.”
“For every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction.” Heather kicked a pink flamingo, and it fell with a whomp onto a pile of dry leaves.
