Mara fixed watches in a little shop that smelled of brass and old oil. On Wednesday she buried her brother Tomas, who had stepped under a delivery truck on Tuesday. That night she sat alone and wound the dead clock he'd left her. The mainspring caught hard, like it snagged on something. Then every hand in the shop began spinning backward.

Mara held the clock tight and the spinning got faster. The shop windows went dark, then bright, then dark again. She squeezed her eyes shut. When she opened them, sun was pouring in. The wall calendar read Tuesday. Tomas was alive somewhere out there, and she had until the truck to find him.

Mara grabbed her keys and ran. Tomas always got coffee at the corner shop on Tuesday mornings. If she could reach him before noon, she could warn him about the truck. She sprinted down the street, lungs burning, praying she wasn't too late.

Mara found Tomas at the coffee shop, alive and grinning. "You look like you've seen a ghost," he said. She grabbed his arm and begged him to stay off Main Street today. He laughed, but the fear in her face made him stop laughing fast.

Tomas listened, finally, and stayed inside with Mara. They watched out the window at noon. The delivery truck rolled past, slow and harmless. The corner where he should have died stayed empty. Mara hugged her brother so hard he gasped. She had done it. Tuesday let him go.