“By the way…?” Holly prompted Daphne, looking concerned.

“I was just about to ask if the empty role had been filled when I saw someone I don’t know walking behind Trevor,” Daphne replied pursing her lips. “So I guess that answers that question.”

Trevor rapped his hand on the doorframe, and the talking of the room died down. “It’s been so long since we’ve been together, it’s almost like we’re not a team anymore,” Trevor said with a impish grin as he and Landon came into the room.

Daphne’s heart skipped a beat and she felt as though she was floating out of her body a bit. She swallowed hard, trying to get her mind to focus on the situation.

This has happened before, she thought. Trevor said that line in the past, word for word. Is this proof that I’ve truly come back to the past? How can I disprove that this is hell?

Daphne’s fist clenched under the conference table. Pay attention, she chastised herself.

She started looking at the individual faces at the conference table. The vast majority of her co-workers were the same people she had been working with in December.

One face, however, stood out to her in particular. The man’s name was Asher Hawthorne. He had left about a month before Christmas, and Daphne remembered that Trevor had made a big fuss when he left, saying that Asher was going to work for one of the company’s competitors. Vaguely, Daphne recalled Trevor shouting at someone else, thankfully not her on that particular day, that Asher “hadn’t even had the dignity to put in his two weeks’ notice.”

Why would anyone want to with a boss like Trevor? She wondered, looking back at the shy Landon and the smug look on Trevor’s face.

“Everyone, please welcome Landon Stevens to the team,” Trevor said, stepping further into the room so that everyone could see Landon.

Thank God I held my tongue to Holly, Daphne thought. She would look at me differently if I had known Landon’s name before anyone else did. I’ll have to be careful.

Daphne looked around the conference room table again, as everyone started clapping to welcome Landon, and Asher’s brown eyes caught her own.

Her heart jumped in her chest, and she felt a fluttering in her stomach as she quickly looked away from Asher. She bit her lip and watched her hands clapping. Her face warmed a little.

I can’t believe he just caught me looking at him, she thought. How embarrassing.

The clapping quickly died down, and Landon smiled timidly. “Thank you for letting me join the team,” he said in his baritone voice. “I’m excited to get to know and work with you all.” He smiled wider, showing his front teeth.

“Does anyone feel like taking Landon under their wing and training him?” Trevor asked. “He only recently became a project manager, so he’s relatively new to all of this.”

Shit, Daphne thought, thinking back to the past. If I remember correctly, I was the one who got assigned to train him…and I was behind for weeks because of it.

She took a quick glance around the room. Just like in the past, no one seemed to be volunteering. She glanced over at Landon and he looked a mixture of nervous and disappointed.

It’s not even his fault no one is volunteering, Daphne thought. It’s because whoever trains is subject to Trevor’s whims.

Finally, Asher gingerly raised his hand, and Daphne noticed that he was looking at Trevor directly in the eyes. No wonder Trevor thought Asher was insolent, she thought.

“I’ll train him,” Asher said. Daphne knew she hadn’t really paid attention to Asher in the past, but his voice surprised her at that moment. It sounded warm, even though most people at work knew that it wasn’t worth buttering Trevor up. Then, there was the fact that he volunteered in the first place, something Daphne knew for sure he hadn’t done in the past.

Trevor pursed his lips, looking annoyed. “I appreciate your willingness to volunteer and help, Mr. Hawthorne, but I think it would be best for someone with more experience to train our new recruit.”

Why is he volunteering this time around? Daphne wondered. I guess it just means that maybe this is an alternative universe after all.

Trevor’s eyes settled on Daphne, and she quickly looked away from his face. “Ms. Woods,” he said. “you’re one of the longest term members of our team. How come you’re not volunteering?”

It was another slight change. Daphne felt fairly confident that Trevor had just assigned her to train Landon after no one had responded. Is this because Asher volunteered? She couldn’t help but wonder. Or is this because this Trevor is different from the one I knew?

“Ah,” she answered, feeling her face redden as everyone’s eyes found their way to her face. She glanced over at Asher, who was not looking at her, and she noticed that his jaw looked as though it was clenching. “Apologies, sir,” she replied, looking back over at Trevor. “I’ve just been so busy that I figured you would want someone with a bit more time to train him.”

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They were definitely words she’d never said before. She had never even tried to defend herself at work before. Her heart was thundering in her chest, and she was staring at Trevor’s shoes on the carpet of the conference room.

I shouldn’t have said that, she thought. He’s gotta be pissed. I just have so much on my plate to be training someone on top of everything else that is going on.

“That’s a fair point,” Trevor agreed.

Daphne’s stomach twisted inside of her. I think that’s probably the first time that man has ever agreed with me, she thought.

“However,” Trevor continued, “You’re also one of the most capable people on our team. I really think you would be the best at showing Landon the ropes.”

Daphne felt her eyes widen at Trevor’s words. She didn’t know that he had ever complimented her before. A light lit in her chest, and went dark as soon as she looked at Trevor’s face. He wasn’t just angry. His face was nearly purple it was so red, and she could tell that he had his jaw locked so that he didn’t scream at her in front of the whole team and the new staff member.

Shit, Daphne thought. I’m going to eat my words later.

“Understood, sir,” she replied. “I’ll do my best to show him how we work and train him well.” She swallowed hard at what she knew was yet to come.

Even if I did come back to the past, if I can’t change anything, I’m still going to end up dead before Christmas, she thought. She bit her lip. At least Landon was a very hard worker. I’m sure it won’t be too difficult…Hopefully.

“Excellent,” Trevor replied. He knocked his knuckles on the doorframe again. “Then meeting adjourned. Let’s all get back to work.” Trevor left, and all of Daphne’s co-workers started getting up to leave the conference room.

Daphne felt Holly’s elbow gently collide with her hips. Holly had leaned close to her, and as Daphne turned, she heard Holly say, “What a prick. Asher would have been plenty competent enough to train Landon. Asher has been working here longer than I have.” Holly pulled away, and Daphne saw her roll her eyes. “If you need any help, feel free to let me know,” she said with a small smile. “Happy to take on anything little if I can.”

Daphne smiled back at Holly, her heart warmed, and thinking aback to how Holly had offered to help her in, what was now considered the future. “Thank you,” she replied, warmly. “I’ll take you up on that offer if I need to.”

Holly’s grin widened, and she stood up. “Good luck,” she told Daphne.

“Thanks,” Daphne replied, standing up and facing Landon. She smiled at him, attempting to keep her smile warm in hopes of calming his nerves.

“I’ll be in your care,” Landon said to her shyly.

Those are the same words he said in the past, Daphne thought. I suppose I’ll have to try to figure out what is going on while taking care of him.

“I’ll do my best,” she replied, as Landon smiled a little back at her.

~

Daphne had Landon shadow her in all of her meetings. Even though the project manager teams were required to be in office, most of Daphne’s meetings were still over video call.

Daphne asked Landon to take notes for her on all of the calls, and after debriefing for two of the meetings, she remembered why she had forgotten that she had trained him. He was incredibly competent and a hard worker, meaning she was only really training him on how her team and the organization did things.

It probably didn’t take all that long to train him in the past either, Daphne thought.

After lunch, Daphne and Landon joined another virtual meeting. Daphne was smiling at the people on the screen. Though in their view, it probably had only been a short while since they had last seen each other, Daphne hadn’t seen this particular team’s smiling faces for some time. They were one of the teams she had enjoyed working with the most.

Daphne had been struggling to focus all day, but she struggled even more after lunch. She was normally as sharp as a tack, but her mind kept drifting to the situation she was in.

The feeling of déjà vu is not going away, she thought, while trying to focus on the team was saying. In fact, I think it has only continued to get worse. She swallowed hard.

“So, if we tackle the implementation in a more agile way than through the waterfall method, I think the change management is going to be a little easier to come up with, and easier for the teams to digest,” one of the team members was saying.

There have been some minor adjustments to how I remember things going, Daphne continued in her mind. But for the most part, everything is happening as I remember it going. Is that enough for me to really accept that I really have returned to the past? She wondered. But if I’m in the past…how? Why?

She had been avoiding thinking about the car accident all day, even though the memories were still fresh in her mind. It hadn’t even been a full…perceptual…twenty-four hours since it had all gone down. But now, she actively called forth the memories.

Was there anything unusual about the accident? She asked herself. She replayed the memory of it in her mind, trying to keep her face impassive so that it still looked like she was listening to what was being said in the meeting.

She remembered noticing that cars were getting stuck in the snow. She reheard the sound of the truck’s engine roaring. The sound of her skull cracking into the cement played in her mind. What happened after that? She asked.

She remembered losing the sensation in her legs and her lower torso. The metallic taste of blood in her mouth as she’d coughed it up, and feeling like she was choking through the blood came to mind.

I figured the driver would call a paramedic…she thought, squinting a little. Though even if I had gotten help, I probably still would have died on that curb.

She swallowed hard, feeling a lump in her throat. There was something odd that I saw there though, she thought. She bit her lip and then remembered.

The flowers, she thought. The chrysanthemums that were growing up out of the ground. What were those doing there? Why were those blooming two days before Christmas? Shouldn’t they have been dormant at that point?

She tried to think back to if she had seen the mums as she had been walking to the park, before all of the snow had fallen on top of them.

I wasn’t paying attention to the foliage at all that night, she thought. Only the snow and the lack of it, right before Christmas.

She thought back to earlier that morning, trying to remember if she had seen any flowers there when she’d driven by on her way to work. They would be blooming right now, she thought. But still, she could not remember if they had been there when she drove by or not.

I’ll just check when I get home today, she thought. Though I suppose if this is truly a parallel universe, they probably won’t be there at all.

“Daphne?” one of the people on the meeting called her name. She was quickly brought out of her thoughts and assessed the expressions on all of their faces. They looked as though they were waiting for her to answer a question.