Page 72

Leo learns about the next two deaths when he’s at work.

He has set up a Google alert for the words “psychic,” “plane,” and “death.”

The headline, from a Tasmanian newspaper, reads: “Plane Psychic Correctly Predicts Deaths of Married Doctors.”

The article is behind a paywall, but he doesn’t hesitate to sign up for a subscription, and as soon as the full article appears on his screen, he recognizes the elderly couple from the departure lounge in Hobart. He stood in line behind them while they ordered coffees and he noted their frailty, but also the Apple Watches on their wrists and the bright intelligence in their eyes. They were both warmly dressed and he’d thought about his grandmother and how badly she felt the cold.

The article says that the couple were both retired doctors who had run a joint medical practice in Hobart for sixty years and were well known in the local community, beloved by their patients. Dr. Bailey and Dr. Bailey had one daughter, three grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren.

Their daughter is interviewed. She says her parents flew from Hobart to Sydney to attend their youngest great-grandchild’s christening, and while on that flight, a lady informed them they would die at the ages of one hundred and one hundred and one respectively, which is exactly what happened.

“They were scientific people, being doctors, so they didn’t take it seriously, they found it entertaining,” she said, “and they were very philosophical about death. They got a kick out of hearing their cause of death would be ‘old age,’ just like Queen Elizabeth. They were proud royalists.”

Leo feels emotional as he looks at the photos chosen to sum up the couple’s lives: young and beautiful on their wedding day; as new parents holding a saucer-eyed baby daughter; standing back to back in white coats outside their brand-new medical practice, arms folded and professional, stethoscopes around their necks; as middle-aged parents of the bride at their daughter’s wedding; as retired travelers holding up wineglasses to the camera, probably on one of those European river cruises; as the elderly patriarch and matriarch at their great-grandchild’s christening, surrounded by family, the saucer-eyed baby now a grandmother herself.

He feels envy on behalf of his own parents, who should have gotten a long happy shared life together like this. Instead his mother will have to spend her last years alone. Their retirement plans never came to be. The other day she told Leo she is sick of people assuming she is over her grief by now. There was real fury in her voice, which surprised Leo, because maybe he assumed that too. He misses his dad, all the time, but he feels like he has passed through the really intense, dreadful period of mourning—he no longer cries in the car, for example—and he kind of assumed his mother had too. He sees now that was foolish. She lost her lifelong partner whereas Leo’s immediate family structure remains intact. His mother is particularly incensed by the phrase “merry widow,” although as far as Leo knows, nobody has actually used that phrase, or told her she should be one, she is just incensed by its existence. She recently made a new friend at aqua aerobics, also a widow. They are starting a club called The Angry Widows.

He hasn’t told his mother or his sisters anything about the psychic. He doesn’t want to upset his mother or give his sisters a reason to make fun of him when he doesn’t end up dying.

“Tomorrow’s site walk has been rescheduled until Thursday.”

“Hmmm, what?” Leo looks up vaguely to see his office manager poking her head around his office door.

“Tomorrow’s site—”

The words infiltrate. “Oh, yep, fine, good, thanks.” He raises his hand in acknowledgment and looks back at his computer. This is rare for him. He works at work. This is not billable time.

The elderly couple’s daughter is quoted: “Mum died peacefully in the hospital after a brief illness and my father didn’t make it one night without her. He died in his sleep the very next night.”

Up until their deaths, her parents had still lived in the house they’d moved into after their marriage. Their joint funeral, which is expected to be standing room only considering their positions in the local community, will be held in the same church where they’d married.

The woman said her parents had been blessed with long happy lives but she was still “devastated” to lose them. “It’s never long enough, is it?” she said. “You’d still do anything for one more day, one more chat, one more phone call.”

The article finishes with a reference to growing interest in the “so-called plane psychic” after a young Tasmanian girl’s tragic death in a car accident was livestreamed on social media. The young girl was “allegedly” told by the psychic she would die in a car accident when she was nineteen.

Leo’s phone rings.

It says: Sue O’Sullivan (Hobart flight) .

“How are you, Leo, can you talk?” She launches straight in, as if they are old friends, not strangers who met once on a plane, and Leo feels the strangest longing for her and Max to actually be his old friends. He’s messed up badly on the issue of friends. He’s left “friends” to Neve, in the same way Neve has left “tax” and “lightbulbs” to him.

“I can talk,” says Leo. “I’m just reading about the Baileys. The doctors in Hobart.”

“Me too,” says Sue. “What a great innings! Sad, but not a tragedy, not like the poor beautiful young girl in the car accident, which I assume you saw. I talked to her at the airport, she was so sweet. It was terrible to see…to see that.”

Leo hears the horror of the video in her words.

“I did,” says Leo. “That video was awful. My daughter found it first.”

“Oh, no, and did Bridie understand the…implications?”

She remembers Bridie’s name. He pauses. He is so touched by that.

“Sorry—it is Bridie, isn’t it, I thought—?”

“Yes,” says Leo. “You have a great memory! Unfortunately Bridie does know—she overheard me talking to my wife about it and got very worked up for a while. We thought she’d gotten over it, but obviously that video of the poor young girl in the car accident was just…”

“Kids are resilient,” says Sue. “Try not to worry.” She sighs. “I don’t really know why I’m calling you, Leo, I guess I just wanted to talk to someone in the same situation. I’ve had all these tests and there is no indication that I’ve got any kind of cancer. I guess I just wondered, are you feeling—”

“Spooked?” says Leo. He looks at the framed photo he keeps on his desk of Neve and the children. It’s nowhere glamorous, just the three of them on the couch, Neve in the middle, a kid tucked under each arm. Oli and Bridie are so much bigger now.

“Yes,” says Sue. “I mean, it could all just be—”

“A terrible coincidence,” says Leo. He needs to stop finishing her sentences. People prefer to finish their own. He pulls the photo closer to him. He can’t die. He’s necessary. Neve leaves flammable items near the hotplates, she never closes cupboard doors, and she’s so happy when he comes home. Sometimes it gives him a kind of teenage boy’s feeling of surprise: Wow, this girl still really likes me!

“Do you really think it’s just a coincidence?” says Sue. She sounds younger on the phone than he remembers from the plane, less grandmotherly, more like someone the same age as him. He imagines inviting Sue and Max over for dinner. Ethan could come too! It’s healthy to have friends from different generations. They could be his friends. Would that be weird? Yes, it’s weird, what’s wrong with him?

“It has to be a coincidence,” says Leo. “But, yes, I’m feeling a little rattled. I shared a taxi with that injured guy and she predicted that he’ll die in a fight when he’s thirty, which is in October, and I’m meant to go in a workplace accident any time after my birthday in November. I feel like we might be next on the chopping block!” Is this dark humor appropriate?

“Well, hopefully you two will prove her wrong!” says Sue robustly.

“I did hear her tell that flight attendant she’d die of ‘self-harm’ when she was twenty-eight,” muses Leo. “But I think she was younger than that.”

“Oh, no, please tell me it wasn’t Allegra,” says Sue. “The beautiful one? It was her twenty-eighth birthday that very day!”

Leo’s phone beeps and he takes it away from his ear and sees Neve’s name. She rarely if ever calls when he’s at work. Has she seen the article? “Sorry, Sue, my wife is just calling—”

“You go, Leo,” says Sue immediately. “Keep in touch.”

Leo accepts Neve’s call. “Hi,” he says to her, and her words are a tumble of panic. The only time he can remember her ever sounding like this was in the final stages of labor with both babies, when both times she begged him to please make it stop, and he felt so terrible that he couldn’t.

“You need to resign, Leo. Type up your letter of resignation right now.”

“You’re not serious.”

“I am serious.”

He can’t believe it. Some kind of switch has been flicked. She’d been calm after they watched that terrible car accident video together.

“More people have died,” she says. “Just like she predicted.”

“I know, sweetheart, I just read the article myself, but they were an elderly couple, it wasn’t actually that hard a prediction to make. I can’t possibly give up work based on a random—”

“Why can’t you? Of course you can. It’s easy. Just stop working for a year.”

“I’m not going to die in a workplace accident, I promise you.”

“You can’t promise me that. There was a story about a multistory crane collapse on a site last week. A man in his forties died. It could have been you. It could easily have been you.”

“That was not one of our sites, and you know, Neve, you could be hit by a bus yourself.”

“Well, if a psychic told me I was going to be hit by a bus, I’d avoid catching the bus!”

“Not if catching the bus was the only way to pay the mortgage!”

They seem to be in the middle of an argument. He tries to keep any emotion out of his voice. “This is all so—”

“You know what?” Neve interrupts. “If working for that woman ends up killing you, I will kill that manipulative, micromanaging bitch myself.”

Leo reels. Manipulative, micromanaging bitch? What the hell? He thought Neve and Lilith liked each other. All that admiring of each other’s hair at the office Christmas parties. He actually assumed Neve, as a woman, found Lilith even more inspirational than he does.

“What are you talking about, Neve?”

“Leo? Am I interrupting?”

And there she is, standing right in front of him. Lilith in her cream pantsuit and pearl earrings, frowning at a message on her phone.

“Have you heard about this drainage issue?”

She smiles. There is a minuscule fleck of red lipstick on one of her incisors.