Page 68 of Here One Moment

Sue hears someone in the background say, “Excuse me, Dr. Bonetti?”

“Just one moment,” says Caterina, her voice muffled.

“Look. It’s silly. It’s probably fake.” Her voice is loud and clear again. “But do the tests, Sue, you should do the tests.”

Chapter 57

This is the thing with a heads-up.

The person has to believe. The person has to change their actions.

What if my mother had actually said, with certainty, You will get hit by lightning, Arthur.

Would he still have gone rock fishing?

He might have looked up at that cloud-heavy sky and said to his friends: Let’s call it a day.

Mum might have saved Dad the way Grandma saved her from the red-bellied black snake.

Dad might have lived until he was one hundred.

Chapter 58

Paula’s sister texts: Passing this on from that weirdo cousin, haven’t watched, something you talked about at wedding? Feel free to ignore! x

The only potentially “weirdo” cousin that Paula spoke to at Lisa’s wedding was her new brother-in-law’s cousin, the one who never made a significant life decision without checking in with her clairvoyant.

Paula feels a sense of foreboding. Should she ignore it? It will be something about psychic predictions and she doesn’t want to tumble back down that anxiety rabbit hole.

She’s just about over it, or she hopes she is.

Both Timmy and Willow wear their evil eye bracelets every day. Willow loves hers and holds out her wrist for people to admire it. Matt looked quizzical when he saw the bracelets but didn’t object. Perhaps he even likes them. It turns out he and his brother both wore them when they were kids.

Paula can now make the same boast as that swim instructor did about her granddaughter: Timmy swam before he walked. He’s still not shown any interest in walking, crawling suits him fine, but he can float, seemingly forever, and dog-paddle the width of the pool, grinning and gurgling.

The power of the lady’s prediction, or curse, is steadily fading, the way the pain of a hurtful remark becomes muted, although never forgotten, the more time passes. She no longer thinks about it every day. It’s all a little embarrassing.

The children are asleep.

Paula and Matt are watching a brooding Scandi series. It feels like they’ll never finish because each night they have to rewind it after one of them falls asleep and wakes to confusing plot developments the other one can’t satisfactorily explain.

Paula looks over at Matt stretched out on the opposite couch. Sure enough, he’s sound asleep, his forearm across his forehead, his chest rising and falling.

She pauses the show, presses the link on her phone.

It’s a video of the side profile of a very upright fair-haired young woman behind the wheel of a car. The person filming is next to her in the passenger seat. It seems to be a small car. There isn’t much space between them.

The person filming says, “Why are you driving so slowly today, Kayla?”

The girl doesn’t glance sideways. Her focus is all on the road ahead.

Her hair is in a sleek low ponytail with a ruler-straight center part. Her eyelashes are long and Bambi-fake, her skin young and dewy, and she grips the steering wheel so hard her knuckles are white.

“Because yesterday I turned nineteen,” she says without turning her head.

“And why does that mean you have to drive so slowly people keep honking their horns at us?”

“Nobody is honking at us,” says the driver.

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