Page 144 of Here One Moment

She smelled of a beautiful fragrance. She said, “I know what this time is like.”

I did not know how badly I needed this.

She became my new friend.

Friends can save your life.

It was a few weeks before we realized how close we lived to each other, and of course we were amazed, although it was statistically likely seeing as we had met at a local aquatic center. I can see into her backyard from my house. She was the woman who waved at me from her back veranda the day of the flight. We can walk to each other’s homes.

Her husband had died two years before and she said she still felt angry at times about all the plans they had made that would never come to be.

We both agreed we were not “merry widows”—we would never be merry about the loss of our beautiful husbands—we were “angry widows,” and we joked about forming an Angry Widows Club. (I do not want to form a club of any sort.)

Mira said her husband had worked so hard, all his life, long hours in his own jewelry store, and she used to tell him he was a workaholic, and he would say he would rest when he retired.

She said her son was turning out to be just like his father, nothing but work work work, but her daughter-in-law, who she loved, although she wore the ugliest shoes you have ever seen, was trying to convince him to give up work for a year and move to Tasmania, and she thought he might have agreed, fingers crossed.

Chapter 118

One November morning, seven months after the flight, and about a week before the anniversary of Ned’s death, as well as the deaths of Jill and Bert, someone knocked on my door.

I considered not answering it because I was not doing well thatday.

You may know this and I’m sorry if you do, but there is a feeling you experience as the anniversary of the death of a loved one approaches. Your body seems to know it before you do. It is something to do, perhaps, with the weather, the flowers that bloom, a certain smell in the air, and you begin to feel a sense of anticipatory loss, almost fear, as if it’s going to happen again.

I opened the door and found myself face-to-face with a man’s torso.

I looked up. Farther up. He was a tall, muscled man with a gray buzz cut. The man who helped me with my bag on the plane. He resembled an older version of “Thor,” the fictional superhero portrayed by the astonishingly attractive Australian actor Chris Hemsworth.

His name was not Thor. He introduced himself as “Ben,” but I got the feeling it wasn’t his real name, so let’s call him Thor.

He gently told me what I’d done on the plane and seemed unsurprised when I said I had no memory of it. I pressed my hand to my mouth as he spoke. It was the same sick shame I used to feel when people told me about my drunken behavior at those rooftop parties. In spite of my shock, I never suspected Thor was lying. It all made sense. I remembered the expression on the beautiful flight attendant’s face when we landed, how she’d treated me as if I’d had some kind of medical episode. I remembered how the little boy had been staring back at me, and children rarely show an interest in me. Also, there was something so eerily familiar about what Thor described—not that I suddenly remembered my actions, but as if I could remember once dreaming them, and who else but me would talk of “cause of death” and “age of death”?

He seemed to already know everything about me: my career, the loss of Ned, even the loss of Jill and Bert. I believe he is a retired intelligence officer of some sort, although he is vague about the details.

He said he’d been following the story and was becoming increasingly concerned. He said I’d correctly predicted three deaths and now there had been a fourth.

I gasped when I heard my predictions had come true.

I remembered the young girl and the elderly couple from the airport. It was frightening and distressing to hear they were now dead and that people thought it proved I had supernatural abilities. I felt that dreadful sense of responsibility I’d experienced when I learned about the two people falling off the rooftop terrace.

Thor seemed angry about the fourth death. I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand any of it. He showed me the news articles appearing online. He said he believed my identity was about to be exposed, probably any day now, and that people were looking for me, and he didn’t want me to walk out my front door one morning to a crowd of journalists pushing microphones in my face. He said, if I liked, he could help me release a public statement explaining I was not a psychic. “Because you’re not, are you?” I said I was not, and that it seemed like I needed to release an apology. He said it was up to me how I worded it.

He also said he had a safe house where I could stay until the story blew over.

(Look. He didn’t really say “safe house.” He said “investment property.” It’s just that he really did have the rather exciting manner of someone working in international espionage.)

He said he would leave me to think about it for a few hours, but he’d be back. He suggested that I not answer my phone in the meantime. He said he needed to look into the fourth death.

I watched him go. His cape didn’t swirl, as he wasn’t wearing one, and he’s not really a superhero. He’s just one of those heroically helpful people. He certainly rescued me.

—

Well, my head spun after Thor left. I literally spun in circles for a while. I was distraught, confused, and incredibly embarrassed, and I very badly needed Ned, but of course if Ned had been there none of it would have happened.

Finally I thought, I will walk down to Mira’s place and tell her.

Mira answered the door incandescent with happiness. Her son and his family were in Tasmania, looking for rental homes in the area! Her son had resigned! His evil boss had gotten the shock of her life! I couldn’t get a word in, she was so excited.

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