Page 116 of Here One Moment

I don’t want to feed your fish, Jasmine. I don’t like fish.

He texts back, Sure, no problem. Have fun!

Her text appears: Thanks! PS: Flying commercial. OMG, I know it’s better for the environment but SO much waiting!

Is she for real? She must surely know he’s never flown anything but commercial. He can’t even answer that text.

Harvey chortles: So, you’re stuck feeding the fish heiress’s fish while she’s in Paris. This is really working out well for you, mate.

There is a pounding on the door.

Someone’s fist. He knows whose fist even before he hears Carter’s voice: “Jasmine! It’s me!”

He must have gotten someone to buzz him in downstairs, or someone held the door for him. It’s not like he’s an unfamiliar face around the place.

“I just want to talk!”

Ethan feels a surge of fury. It’s Carter’s fault Ethan now has the responsibility for these expensive fish.

“Jasmine!” Carter shouts, and bangs his fist over and over like he’s trying to knock the door down. Does he truly believe this is an effective way to win back a woman’s heart? It’s bloody terrifying. “You owe me this!”

Should he call the police?

Ethan puts in his AirPods, turns up his music loud enough to give him permanent hearing damage, and waits for the snooty neighbor in the opposite apartment to do it first.

Chapter 95

You know what?

The fourth death really gets my goat, as Auntie Pat liked to say.

That’s when everyone lost their damned minds. That’s when articles about me began appearing in “respectable” publications.

That’s when people began hunting me down. As if I were prey, as if I were a criminal, as if I were hiding, which I assure you I was not.

Chapter 96

Paula plays with her children on the living-room floor like a regular loving engaged mother. Dinner is in the slow cooker, the washing machine whirs in an industrious duet with the dishwasher. These are the precious moments that make up a life! All her thoughts are acceptable and pleasant. All her actions are normal and nonrepetitive. She is not obsessing. She is living in the present and she is not thinking about the fourth death, not at all.

“What a dee-yight-ful cup of tea.” Willow doesn’t sit, she crouches down on her haunches and purses her lips as she sips from a tiny plastic teacup: a regency matriarch in pigtails.

“Do you need more sugar, madam?” Paula’s role in these games is often unclear. Sometimes she is a fellow guest but often she’s the maid. She needs to be ready to pivot.

“Oh, yes, please, madam.” Willow holds out her cup.

Timmy commando-crawls beside them, grunting with effort like a wounded soldier. He is much more graceful in the water than on land, but he’s missing today’s lesson because he has a head cold. Paula can see snail trails of snot on the carpet. He climbs into her lap, pulls himself up by her shirt, and flattens his snotty nose in her eye.

“Thanks, Timmy.” She wipes her face.

“Mim, Mim, Mim!” Timmy babbles.

Swim. She is pretty sure he’s saying “swim.” She has not translated for Matt.

“No swimming lessons today,” says Paula.

This is proof that Timmy’s multiple secret swimming lessons donot fall under the definition of a compulsion. She does not need Dr. Donnelly. She knows what he’d say: Life is unpredictable. Timmy might drown. Timmy might not drown. You are not your thoughts. Bad things can happen. Blah blah blah. She knocks her knuckle against her front teeth.

His cold is not that bad. Just a sniffly nose. She could bundle both kids into the car right now and still make it. It might even make him feel better.

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