Page 64 of Here One Moment

She sat up, and she never told him this and never will, but it terrified her. His face was illuminated only by the spooky green light from Riley’s phone charger. She couldn’t quite make out his features. His eyes were like black holes.

“I will kill you,” he said again, and she could hear pure fury and conviction in his voice, and she scrabbled back so that she was up against the caravan wall and held her pillow in front of her, like that was going to help.

“Dom,” she said. “Babe. Wake up. You’re asleep.”

He got really close to her face. She could smell his red-winey breath.

He said, “I have a very particular set of skills. I will look for you. I will find you, and I will kill you.”

At which point she’d laughed out loud with recognition and relief, because now she understood. They’d all been quoting lines from movies that night, and that one was Riley’s favorite: Liam Neeson’s famous phone conversation with the kidnappers in that old movie Taken.

“You haven’t got any skills, mate.” Riley spoke up from the bottom bunk. “And your Irish accent is shit.” He knew all about the sleepwalking and -talking, so he understood right away what was going on.

Dom dropped the accent and began muttering, “Let’s stop here and buy some water. Pull over here, babe, I need water, you thirsty, babe?”

Riley got up and gave Dom a bottle of water, which he drained in one long gulp, spilling some on himself, which obviously woke him up because he said, in his normal voice, “Sorry. Was I sleepwalking?”

They all laughed about it. It was funny. Just another crazy Dom sleepwalking story.

That was until the lady on the plane made her prediction, and then, on their honeymoon, Dom woke up in the night, remembered the incident in the caravan, started researching, and discovered something truly terrible: a phenomenon called “homicidal sleepwalking.”

“What if I do that to you?” he said, and he’d showed her all the news stories he’d found. A man who claimed he was dreaming about “aggressive ostriches” when he killed someone while asleep. A husband who killed his beloved wife and was now in jail with no memory of what he’d done. “I will miss her until the day I die,” he said, which was extremely tragic.

“You won’t kill me,” Eve had said. “Anyway, I don’t believe in psychics.”

“Forget the psychic. I just think we should be aware I might hurt you in my sleep.”

“You’ve never touched me when you’ve been sleepwalking,” Eve comforted him. It wasn’t technically true. Sometimes he’d kind of pushed her hand roughly away when she was trying to convince him to come back to bed, but she’d never once felt in danger.

Oh, gosh, it was all so silly!

He’s still Dom when he’s asleep.

Things that happen on the internet never happen in real life.

She picks up the framed wedding photo from their bedside table. She chose a “vintage-style” effect for this photo—it’s in moody black-and-white, with a yellowish tinge—and this, combined with the fact that she’s wearing a vintage dress, and Dom is wearing classic suspenders and a bow tie, makes it seem like their wedding took place decades ago.

Eve thinks about the first bride who wore her dress. Did she get post-wedding blues? Did she know that multiple affordable expenses add up to one big unaffordable total? Probably. Probably everyone knows that. This photo print cost forty-five dollars and the frame cost sixty dollars. She’s been throwing her money around like a Kardashian.

What’s that phrase people keep using? “Cost of living crisis.” She didn’t think it applied to them. She thought it applied to people with mortgages and school fees.

She remembers overhearing her mother talking to Dom’s dad at their engagement party. “They’re like babes in the wood, those two.”

“I know,” said Dom’s dad sadly. “They don’t know what they don’t know.”

Well, why didn’t they just tell them what they didn’t know?

“You’re so, so stupid,” she says out loud to her own smiling stupid face in the photo.

“Who’s stupid?” says Dom from the bedroom door.

She drops the photo. “What are you doing back so early?”

“Last two clients canceled.”

“You’re kidding me,” says Eve. “That is unbelievable, those people are so—”

“Oh, well, I got Thai for lunch.” Dom lifts up the plastic bag looped around his wrist. “But it’s maybe got a bit cold, because, I need to tell you, I had—”

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