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.

She introduced me to her granddaughter, Bridie, who was sitting on the couch engrossed in her phone. In spite of my agitation, I managed to ask Bridie if she was pleased to be moving to Tasmania and she took a moment to think, and said, “Maybe.” She seemed like a serious little girl and I liked her. Her mother and brother were out visiting a local soccer club.

Mira went to the kitchen to make us some tea. She said her son was in the garden.

I walked out onto her deck. A middle-aged man was walking around Mira’s backyard in an anxious, perturbed kind of way. I understood, as I was also a little anxious about Mira’s backyard. I believed she’d been scammed. She’d paid upfront and this man had done nothing but left a very old, dilapidated-looking excavator parked on the edge of a half-finished, pointless-seeming deep trench.

Mira’s son did not see me at first, but as I watched, I recognized him. His curly hair is so distinctive! It was the man who had sat across the aisle from me on the flight, the one with the same impatient-tapping fancy shoes as Ned.

At first I thought, Oh, isn’t that interesting, what a coincidence, Mira’s son, who she talks about so often, the one who works too hard like his father, was on the same flight to Sydney.

The sun was out, but there had been relentless rain the last few days, and Mira’s backyard had turned to mud. I watched as he stopped to look down, probably concerned about the state of his shoes. (Like mother, like son.)

He scratched his jaw.

On the same flight.

That’s when it hit me. If he was sitting across the aisle from me, then could I have given him one of those “predictions” Thor had just told me about?

If so, what in heaven’s name had I said to him? To my delightful new friend’s son? Color flooded my face. I was mortified, horrified. I wanted the ground to swallow me up. It was like coming face-to-face with another resident in the stairwell of the Perth apartment block, and thinking, Oh my goodness, I hope I didn’t kiss you last night.

He looked up and saw me standing on his mother’s back deck.

His mouth dropped. He clearly recognized me too. He looked like he’d seen a ghost. We stared at each other for an endless second and then I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye.

At first I thought I was imagining what I was seeing: the excavator falling sideways in slow motion, like a toppling tree, like me on the couch at Hazel’s place, toward Mira’s son, who was still staring up at me, transfixed, apparently frozen on the spot.

It was going to hit him.

I’m so glad I remembered that his name was Leo and I wasn’t too shy to use it.

I shouted, “LEO, WATCH OUT!” and pointed.

He turned his head. He swore.

He jumped nimbly to the other side of the muddy trench just in the nick of time.