Here One Moment

Ned Lockwood, a divorced high school math teacher, studied math at university with Cherry. He called her “Kronecker delta girl” because she once handed him a pen absent-mindedly during a lecture on the topic (424). Cherry recalls how Ned was so high-energy he couldn’t even sit through a movie, but Cherry loved him and they married. He gave her a brooch inscribed with the Kronecker delta symbol on their first wedding anniversary.

Sue’s illness was just a virus. She and Max take up salsa dancing because Max believes he’d regret never having done it if he lost Sue. She considers how lucky she is and decides to “cherish each moment she’s allocated until there are no more” (433).

Cherry remembers her happy marriage to Ned. They frequently traveled to exotic places, including the mountain and castle that Mae saw in Cherry’s future. They lived in various places and, after Ned retired, moved to Hobart, where they made friends with a marvelous couple named Jill and Bert. Cherry was more content than she had ever been, although she had a disturbing vision similar to the one she had about Jack. When Ned, Jill, and Bert went on a picnic that Cherry couldn’t attend, Cherry pictured them all dying in a car accident. Fortunately, the vision didn’t come true.

Ethan is meeting Harvey’s sister, Lila, for a drink in Sydney. As a seagull eyes Ethan’s French fries, Ethan muses that his crush on Jasmine is fading in her absence. Lila brings with her a cousin, with whom Ethan instantly falls in love. He hears Harvey saying, “This one, mate. Not the other one” (441).

Cherry recalls how she and Ned prepared for a European river cruise for her 70th birthday. The day before, Ned had left a cardiologist appointment without seeing the doctor, who had been running very late. He fell asleep on the flight from Hobart to Sydney and never woke up. On the same day, their friends Jill and Bert were in a fatal car accident.

Lila and Harvey’s cousin is named Faith. Lila tells Ethan that Harvey was planning to introduce her to him on his 30th birthday. Faith is thinking of moving from Tasmania to Sydney.

Faith wonders if the seagull checking out Ethan’s fries is Harvey, looking in on them. Ethan recalls the psychic, Luca, saying Harvey wanted him to “have faith.” Suddenly Carter spots Ethan.

Cherry recalls how Ned’s funeral was in Sydney. Cherry has been hopelessly overcome with grief ever since. She discusses the “just-world fallacy,” the erroneous belief that the world is fair. The belief makes the world more predictable when in fact, random bad things can and do happen.

Several months after the funeral, Cherry flew back to Sydney with Ned’s ashes to scatter them at a scenic overlook. She hadn’t eaten or had anything to drink for hours.

Paula has taken to writing “Timmy will not drown” 1,000 times a day (455). She has dinner with a friend, Stephanie, who turns out to be Bert and Jill’s daughter.

Cherry realizes that she suffered from delirium on the flight as a result of dehydration. She may also have had a psychotic break caused by grief. After the flight where she made her predictions, she stayed with her in-laws, Hazel and Tony, for a week.

Carter is drunk and quickly becomes enraged with Ethan, who senses the imminent fight that is meant to end his life. The seagull flies into Carter’s face, distracting him as Ethan, Lila, and Faith make their escape.

Cherry has no idea that the passengers on the flight are now leading “lives clouded and complicated” by her predictions (464). She takes up aqua aerobics and makes friends with a widow named Mira. She is the person Cherry accidentally waved to on the day of the flight and turns out to be Leo’s mother.

A man from the flight knocks on Cherry’s door about seven months after the flight. He is the man from the plane with the gray buzz cut. Never learning his name—he seems to be a retired intelligence officer—Cherry calls him Thor. He tells her what she did on the flight and explains there have been four deaths as predicted since then. Thor says he believes Cherry’s identity is about to be exposed and offers to help her release a public statement explaining that she is not a psychic.

Cherry tells Mira about Thor’s visit. She is thrilled because Leo and his family are in Tasmania, looking for rental homes. Cherry meets and recognizes Leo just as an excavating machine left behind by a landscaper begins to topple toward him. Cherry shouts for Leo to look out and saves his life.

Cherry explains that the falling excavator wasn’t technically a workplace accident.

The fourth death never actually took place. The young influencer wasn’t even on the flight. The faked death takes attention away from Cherry and leads people to wonder if the plane incident itself was fraudulent.

A week after Cherry releases her statement, Stephanie brings Paula to meet her. Cherry apologizes and says she has no ability to see the future.

Cherry tells her that Timmy should continue taking swim lessons. Paula sees a photo of Ned, who reminds her of her old therapist, Dr. Donnelly. She decides to enter therapy again and to get a part-time legal job.

Cherry reflects that people who had understood what an actuary does sometimes asked her to predict their death. She would automatically analyze their data and come up with a cause and age of death, which she didn’t share. She wonders if what she did on the flight was a “strange version” of this odd exercise.

For example, she remembers that Leo held a magazine about construction, Ethan’s arm was in a cast, and Kayla was clumsy, leading to predictions about a workplace accident, death by assault, and a fatal car accident. Other passengers reminded her of people who died, and she assigned those deaths to them. She may also have temporarily believed she was her mother, repeating Mae’s words, “Fate won’t be fought” (479). In any event, she was very conscious of death as she boarded the plane and thought of the fact that everyone on it would one day die.

Eve is greatly relieved by Cherry’s public apology. She realizes that she and Dom can solve their money problems by moving in with Dom’s father. She thinks, “Live your life, Eve. Live it hard” (482).

Cherry reflects that you can’t choose your future, and nobody can predict it with 100% accuracy: “It’s all just math” (484). She expresses her relief at watching her predictions begin to fail. Several of her “victims” have thanked her for alerting her to illnesses or causing them to get smoke alarms.

Allegra is 29, pain-free, still with Jonny, and training to be a pilot. She realizes it is her brother, not herself, who is depressed, and decides to bring it up with him.

Cherry decides she must fill her life with new people. She reconnects with her childhood friend Ivy, has regular coffees with Mira, and helps Leo’s daughter Bridie with math. Looking through Ned’s notebooks for ideas on how to help Bridie, she finds he has jotted down one good thing each day and that often the good thing is Cherry. She recalls discussing mathematical Platonism with Ned: the belief that mathematical truths have always existed, meaning that “reality must extend beyond the physical world” (492). She wonders if her love of math and her mother’s love of spirituality could both be ways to access “another reality,” and if they were both stumbling toward “God or enlightenment” or if that was just another way of saying “we didn’t know” (492).

Cherry continues to read the notebooks and thinks about how people don’t understand how time works. She can trick herself into being back with Ned. Meanwhile, she is happily tutoring Bridie and feeding her Monte Carlo biscuits. Cherry realizes that Bridie is the little girl her mother foresaw whose name begins with B.

The Epilogue shows Timmy Binici preparing to swim in his first Olympics at age 17. He tells an announcer that his childhood swim lessons, the result of a fortune teller’s prediction, saved his life at the age of seven when he nearly drowned. The announcer thanks the fortune teller, and Cherry says “You’re welcome” as she cheers Timmy’s gold medal.

The book’s last page is a quote from psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. Ross, renowned for identifying the five stages of grief, said that only when we understand that our time on Earth is limited can we “begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it were the only one we had” (497).

Even Cherry, so grief-stricken over Ned’s death, finds fulfillment in tutoring Bridie.