Here One Moment

Cherry compares her viral reputation as the “Death Lady” to her mother’s transformation into Madame Mae, the fortune teller. In Cherry’s opinion, her mother’s predictions are based on simple probability—for instance, her mother predicted the existence of a new baby for a mother with three recently married daughters. Madame Mae becomes very popular as a psychic. Cherry continues to look for logical explanations, although she admits that sometimes—as her mother always maintained—there are none.

Paula wonders if teaching Timmy to swim will change Cherry’s prediction. She decides to locate the Death Lady and find out.

Cherry’s grandmother’s last words were to say that she wasted her own life. Cherry reflects that one should choose all one’s words wisely because “[y]ou never know what your last words are going to be” (240).

Dom plans to handcuff himself to the headboard of the bed each night so he can’t harm Eve in his sleep. He has been sleepwalking a lot. Both have taken on extra work, and they can’t afford to repair the car. She decides to find the “Death Lady” and pay her to tell Dom that her prediction for Eve was wrong.

Waking up in the middle of the night, Ethan meets Jasmine in the kitchen, and they have tea and muffins. Carter catches them as he is showing Jasmine the video of Kayla and jealously asks if he is interrupting them.

Cherry says that the video of Kayla’s accident got over a million views on TikTok before it was taken down. She hopes people have forgotten about her but hints that she will become known as “the Death Lady.”

The second and third deaths occur in August, a month after Kayla’s accident. Cherry thinks of the roulette game in Monte Carlo and how people read meaning into what was just a series of random spins.

Leo learns about the next two deaths, which befall a married pair of elderly doctors. The article about them references the “plane psychic” who also predicted Kayla’s death. Sue O’Sullivan calls him to say she’s had all her medical tests and there is no sign of cancer. She is spooked, though. The call is interrupted by a frantic call from Neve, Leo’s wife. She has read about the elderly couple and wants Leo to resign from his job immediately.

Cherry has never had a nickname before, but “deathlady” has become a trending hashtag.

Ethan’s 30th birthday is 11 days away. He has made friends with Carter over sharing the video of the car accident. Carter tells him to “treat every day like a gift” because it might be Ethan’s last (260).

Cherry remembers how, while studying math and statistics in college, a man named Jack Murphy came to her house to install shelves for her mother. She knew immediately that he was special.

Allegra has seen the video and the story about the elderly doctors. She does not plan to self-harm and is in fact very happy dating Jonny Summers. She withholds a little of herself from him because of a previous bad breakup.

Jack made Cherry deliriously happy. He was very social and gave Cherry confidence, especially at events. She recalls watching children jumping into a blowhole, or natural water jet, with him and how, as a child, she witnessed a boy drowning in a blowhole.

Paula attends the funerals of the elderly doctors. Timmy is now in three different swimming schools, taking six lessons a week. The only time she doesn’t think about the prediction is when she is watching Timmy swim with confidence. Her sister wonders if Paula should talk to her old psychiatrist, Dr. Donnelly. Paula sees Eve.

Cherry remembers how Jack had to register for the draft when he turned 20. His number was 102. When the second-to-last number turned out to be 101 his mother was sure the next couldn’t be 102. Cherry, however, knew that each spin had the same probability, and indeed, the last number called was 102. As she said goodbye to him, she thought that she’d never see him again. He died in Vietnam a few weeks later, and his mother blamed Cherry.

Eve and Paula have both come to the doctors’ funerals in the hope of finding Cherry and getting a different prediction. They bond over their terrible flight experience. Paula thinks she knows Cherry from somewhere. They decide to join forces to track her down.

Cherry reflects that all the important women in her life lost men they loved. She quarreled with her friend Ivy, who felt she was grieving too long over Jack, but Ivy apologized a year later. Cherry thinks it’s “never too late for an apology” but then she admits that it is sometimes too late (289). She got her first job counting kangaroos for a National Parks and Wildlife Service project.

Leo leaves work early one day and thinks of how overpriced his house is and how he misses his hometown in Hobart. Neve presses him about leaving his job as his boss calls to remind him of something.

Neve asks what Leo would do if he knew he was really going to die at 43. Leo says he would resign to hang out with his immediate and extended family and move back to Tasmania. Neve says they can do all those things and urges Leo to call an old, as yet unnamed friend.

Through her job counting kangaroos, Cherry meets a woman named Suzanne. Cherry offers to read her palm, something she has never done, and realizes how much she has learned from her mother. As she tells Suzanne to leave her current situation, she recalls how her mother sent women with violent husbands to a women’s refuge.

Her boss at the kangaroo job, Baashir, invites her to a Swiss fondue party.

Sue’s 64th birthday finds her in perfect health. At the celebration, her kids show her a social media account Paula and Eve have set up. Cherry has correctly predicted a diagnosis: A young woman who was pregnant on the flight has breast cancer. The husband, who writes the post, is upset because his wife is refusing treatment, certain that she is going to die. Another woman has changed her life for the better because of her prediction. Sue muses that her boys “haven’t yet discovered the awful fragility of life” because they don’t yet know that “the possibility of death is always there” (313).