The Repeat Year Read Online Free PDF

of the worn paisley pillows onto her lap. It was soothing to hold.
    The wedding had happened. The whole year had already happened—all 365 days of it. Olive knew it; perhaps someone else knew it. Just because Phil and Kerrigan and her mom didn’t remember didn’t mean that she was the only one. She studied the other party guests to see if she could detect a difference in their behavior, an awareness, a kind of recognition of the absurdity of their position. Mrs. Pinto seemed to be a little off, clutching her beer bottle in both hands and surveying the room hurriedly with her small, black eyes, but Olive suspected she was just drunk. There had to be someone else. She couldn’t be the only one.
    She shifted in her seat and touched the edge of a folded newspaper her mom must have wedged between the couch cushions. It was often her way of quickly tidying up. Olive opened up the newspaper and began skimming through the headlines.
Dane County snowmobile trails to close. Injured bald eagle on the mend at wildlife center. UW marching band ready for Pasadena.
Nothing caught her eye, but she didn’t know what she was looking for. Was she looking for an article to reassure her that others were aware of this strange loop in time, or was she looking for something to irrevocably convince her of this awful fact? The date on the newspaper was December 31, 2010. Her mom wouldn’t have let something a year old stay under the couch cushion if that were the case. But it wasn’t. There was no refuting the facts now. Olive bowed her head.
    Her cell phone suddenly vibrated against her leg, and she wiggled it out of her pocket. It was a text message from Phil. How are you feeling? Call if you need anything. I’m helping my mom take down her Xmas lights today. Love you.
    She stared at the message until the letters looked like hieroglyphic groupings of pixels. How was one supposed to respond to a loving, concerned message from an ex-boyfriend who didn’t remember he was an ex-boyfriend? Was there some kind of etiquette to follow? She finally settled on a reply: No need to worry about me. I’m at my mom’s. She pressed the send button and slumped even further into the couch.
    Someone sat down next to her. “Hungover?” a female voice asked with a low laugh. Her aunt, Laurel.
    “Tired,” Olive corrected. She pocketed her phone and sat up straighter. She could see Sherry Witan on the other side of her aunt, still pretending to be captivated by the coffee table book, but Olive had a feeling she was eavesdropping on their conversation.
    “I missed you guys at Christmas,” Laurel said. “I’m really sorry I couldn’t be there.” She was a flight attendant for Frontier and was often scheduled to work both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
    “We missed you, too,” Olive said.
    “I heard Harry joined in the festivities.” Laurel leaned in conspiratorially.
    “He did.”
    Her dad, a car salesman, had never been quite impressive enough for Laurel, who had remained vigilantly single her whole life, and dated pilots and doctors and actors—or at least men who claimed to be pilots and doctors and actors—that she met on her flights to Kansas City and Cleveland and Indianapolis. Laurel found Harry’s job as a professor at the University of Wisconsin much more glamorous. Wrongfully so, since he taught medieval studies, perhaps the dorkiest of all departments. She claimed a scholar was just the thing for her brainy older sister, who had been the acquisitions director at the Richmond branch of the Madison Public Library for the past nineteen years.
    “Aren’t you warming up to him yet?” Laurel asked. “I know it’s hard for you and your brother to see your mom with anyone other than your dad, but you’ve got to get used to it sooner or later. For Kathy’s sake.”
    Olive disliked when people talked down to her like that, as though she and Christopher were a pair of school-age brats reluctant to gain a new stepfather. However, she had