Page 140 of Here One Moment

“Wait, is that Ned?” she said, and she lost all color in her face. “You don’t mean Ned Lockwood died?”

“Yes!” I shouted. “That’s what I’ve been telling you people for weeks on end! He died! So he doesn’t need his goddamned gym membership anymore!”

Isn’t that dreadful? The swearing, I mean. My grandfather would be rolling in his grave.

She burst into tears. Then an overly muscled young man came over to see what was going on and when he found out about Ned, he cried! I thought, For goodness’ sake.

It turned out nearly everyone at the gym that day knew and loved Ned. He’d been helping the muscly guy with his math subjects for his university degree. The people I had been speaking to on the phone had all been at a central call center and had nothing to do with this local branch where Ned was a beloved member.

Anyhow, they canceled his membership, so at least I could check that off my list.

I stopped at the grocery store on the way home. I left the ashes on the passenger seat.

“You stay there,” I said.

I went into the grocery store and filled my basket, but then, when I was at the checkout, I realized I had bought pistachios. I do not like pistachios. I only ever bought them for Ned.

“Oh,” I said. “I don’t need those. Sorry.”

The young girl sighed and huffed and reversed the transaction, as if it were the biggest inconvenience of her short life to date. She tossed the pistachios into a basket at her feet in an unnecessarily aggressive manner.

The next item on the counter was Monte Carlo biscuits, and I thought of the day Bert bit through both layers and said, “I like to live dangerously, Cherry,” and I recalled that was the same day Jill and I tried to do the sit-to-stand longevity test.

“Guess we’re dying young,” said Jill.

“Too late for that,” said Bert, and Jill threw a cushion at him, which he caught one-handed.

“Forget it,” I said to the checkout girl.

She held up the biscuits. “You changed your mind on these too?”

“Just—forget it.”

I left the grocery store. I ate nothing that night and I think it’s possible I didn’t drink any water at all, except perhaps when I cleaned my teeth, which I definitely did. I continue to clean my teeth each time my world crashes to pieces.

The next day I took a taxi to the airport.

Chapter 114

“What is this?”

Paula doesn’t look away from the bathroom mirror. She is putting on mascara, which she hardly ever does anymore. Her former colleague, Stephanie, asked if they could get together for a drink. The last time they saw each other was at Stephanie’s parents’ funeral at St. David’s around this time last year. That devastating day when Paula feared she would burst into inappropriate sobs.

“Paula?”

This time the tone of Matt’s voice makes her look away from the mirror. He is holding a pile of loose paper, and she knows immediately what it is. She should have hidden it better. She’d just shoved each page in the bottom drawer of her desk, exhausted each night, glad it was done.

He brings it over to her and she sees her own handwriting, cramped but perfect, filling the paper.

Timmy will not drown.

Timmy will not drown.

Timmy will not drown.

Write it down a thousand times a day and he will not drown.

“It’s nothing,” she says. “It’s just, you know, something I do to calm myself down when I get too worked up about the prediction.”

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