Salem had her meeting with Travis and the department heads. When she had wrapped up the meeting with her own department, she retreated to her office. Everything felt redundant. Every word, every step, everything she witnessed felt like it had all happened before. Hecate must be right.


    “Of course, I am,” Olympia announced standing by Salem’s office door, closing it for privacy.


    “Any clues about why we’re in the past yet?”


    “Not yet. But go on about your day. I’ll be around,” Olympia said before disappearing from sight again.


    Salem’s day proceeded. She was finishing her work when David bounded into her office with Travis and baby Michael.  The men went through a speech about meeting Molly for dinner. Salem already knew they’d say at The Laurence before they’d even said it.


    David left with Michael to pick up Aunt Molly, while Salem wrapped up her work before driving with Travis to the restaurant. It was at the restaurant, before David arrived, when suddenly Salem observed everything around her freeze completely still. The waiter walking past stopped in mid-step—his leg suspended in air as if just about to complete his next step. Travis’s hand was as if a piece of stone gripping his cocktail to his lips, mid sip. Salem herself had the power to stop time in motion, but she hadn’t done this. Only Olympia also possessed that power. Salem turned to glance around her, trying to spot her grandmother.


    “I’m here, my dear,” Olympia said over the still quiet as she glided around the figures stopped from their motion around the room. “This is it, Salem. This is the precise moment when you go back to the beginning of the day. Obviously, you are not trying to change something, but to avoid it.”


    “I don’t understand Hecate.”


    “Neither do I, Baby,” the old woman said clasping her granddaughter’s hand. “But this time you are going to face it. Remember, even though you won’t see me when I unfreeze everyone, I’ll still be here watching. You’ll be alright. Hecate is here. I will not leave you.”


    “I’m afraid Hecate,” Salem admitted. Even saying the words felt like an admittance of weakness to someone as strong as her grandmother.


    “I know, Baby. Fear is normal, do not run from it. Stay and face it. You are a Blanchard. There is nothing a Blanchard cannot survive.” Olympia faded like a mist into the air as the hustle and bustle of The Laurence resumed.Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.


    Travis sipped his drink and pulled out his phone. “They should be here by now. I’ll call Molly and see what’s the holdup.” He phoned his wife as Salem sat and listened to his end of the conversation.


    “Are you guys almost here yet?


    What?


    He hasn’t?


    But he left an hour ago.


    Yeah, traffic is rough, but he still should have been there.


    We only live a few miles from the office.


    Yeah, wait there and we’ll come home.”


    “David hasn’t shown up yet,”  Travis told Salem as he hung up the phone. “Molly has been waiting this whole time.”


    What could have happened?  Salem’s mind immediately rushed to the worst of possibilities, but she quickly dismissed those.  That would never happen.  David’s a great driver.  He just stopped off for gas or ran into an old friend somewhere and got distracted talking.  But Salem knew deep down this was it.  This was the reason she’d hurled herself backward in time, and it had nothing to do with her husband running into an old friend.  Whatever happened was exactly why she was stuck in the past.


    Travis broke every traffic law on his way to his house, but they never made it there. The flashing blue and red lights on the side of the road, along with the dozens of cars stopped in place between the lights and Travis’ car, told Salem all she needed to know. David had been in a crash.


    “Salem wait!” Travis shouted as his niece bolted from his car and began darting around stopped vehicles in the chaotic maze of the traffic jam.


    She ran as fast as she could towards the flashing lights. Five cars away. Four cars away. Three. Two. Then she saw the pileup. Two sedans and one transfer truck lay mangled across all four lanes of traffic. There was also a fourth car. David’s car.


    She knew the moment she approached that her husband was dead. She could see his body being loaded onto a stretcher by two medics. His face was covered in blood and unrecognizable. One of his arms was missing but she recognized his suit. The suit was all that was recognizable about him.


    “Ma’am, get back,” a policeman told her, pushing her backward away from the scene.


    “That’s my husband!” she screamed. “Leave me alone!”


    “Ma’am, you have to step back. You cannot go up there.”


    “Where’s my baby?! That’s my husband! Get away from me!!!”


    Salem waved her arm across the officer’s head.  Suddenly the officer, as well as the two others now running forward to block her way, were sent hurdling backwards over the hood of the closest vehicle involved in the wreckage.  Her path was cleared as she sprinted forward toward her husband.  David was dead.  Undeniably dead.  She stood staring at the carnage which had once been the man she loved.  Somewhere beneath the torn flesh and bloodied face was her husband.  The missing arm, his left arm, was where he wore their wedding ring.  Salem suddenly found herself wondering where the arm—where the ring—could be.  But another thought flashed into her mind making the visage of David’s decimated body fade away.  Where is my baby?


    “Out of the way!” shouted another medical professional rushing forward with a gurney. Strapped to it was the tiny form of baby Michael. “We’re losing the baby!”


    Salem stood stunned, almost out of body as she witnessed her infant child being rushed towards the back of the ambulance. Instinctively she shoved her hand forward into his direction and froze the scene.  Everything stopped.