Or just human? We all imagine terrible things. It’s a way of preparing ourselves, or a way of protecting ourselves: if I imagine it, it surely won’t happen.
But that’s the thing about life: both your wildest dreams and your worst nightmares can come true.
Chapter 112
She is Lila and Harvey’s cousin. Her name is Faith. She designs computer games for a living and looks after people’s pets when they go away. The pets stay in their backyards and Faith visits and feeds them, plays with them or takes them for walks. She took care of a snake last week. One of her computer games just won a major award so she might be able to cut back on the pet business soon, although she enjoys it. She is the sister of the cousin with whom Ethan shared the plate of mini vol-au-vents at Harvey’s funeral, and she wasn’t there because she was overseas at the time and her flight got delayed.
She is funny and interesting. She makes Ethan feel funny and interesting.
They talk about Harvey a lot. Raise a glass to him. Over and over.
When Faith goes to the bar for their third round of drinks, Lila leans forward. “I don’t know if I should tell you this, but Harvey was going to introduce you to Faith at his thirtieth,” she says. “He’d been going on about it for years. He reckoned you two would be a perfect match.”
“He never mentioned her.” Ethan glances back over his shoulder.
“He said he wasn’t going to say a word because that would put you off. He was so excited, said he was a shoo-in for best man.”
“Well,” said Ethan. This is moving fast. “I mean—”
“Oh, sure, sure, let’s see how it goes. Maybe ask her out on a date before we send out the wedding invites.”
“And, um, Lila, doesn’t she live in Tasmania?”
Lila lowers her voice and mutters in a fast, low voice, “Thinkingofmovinghereinthenewyear,” just as Faith arrives back with their drinks.
“Do you think that’s Harvey checking in on us?” Faith nods at the scowling seagull on the railing.
“I think I saw him earlier,” says Ethan.
He is thinking about the day he had his cards read, and Luca was supposedly channeling Harvey and he said Harvey was telling him to have faith. Didn’t he use the word “faith” multiple times?
Another coincidence? How many coincidences before you start to wonder? Or is the whole paranormal industry based entirely on coincidence? He thinks of that long-ago statistics class, when two girls seated together were amazed to find they shared a birthday, and even after the lecturer explained the math of it, they thought it must mean something and became best friends. Maybe they’re still best friends.
“Oh, gosh.” Lila studies the seagull. “That is such a Harvey expression.”
It looks for a moment like she can’t get her breath and Ethan wonders if she is about to cry, but then he realizes she is laughing. She has her brother’s identical silent wheezy laugh. It strikes him as somehow beautiful that Harvey’s wonderful weird laugh is still here in the world. It hasn’t vanished after all, and it might live on for generations in Lila’s children.
Ethan catches Faith’s eye as she watches her cousin fondly.
“Lila, Harvey, and Uncle Tom all laugh the same way, and when the three of them laugh together, it’s wild,” she says. “I mean it was wild.” Her voice cracks and Ethan feels his sinuses block.
“Um, can’t you see your friend is choking? Right in front of you?” A woman walking by in towering stilettos, dressed up in formal wear, perhaps for a black-tie wedding at the Opera House, stops to bang her palm against Lila’s back.
The seagull jumps about excitedly.
“No, no, it’s okay, she’s just choking,” says Ethan, meaning to say, she’s just laughing, and then he can’t get the correct word out. “No! I mean, I meant, I mean—”
“Well, I know she’s choking!” says the woman.
Now Lila, Faith, and Ethan are all laugh-sobbing, their faces crumple-wrinkled like old peaches as they rock with laughter and grief. They’re a hot mess.
“They’re drunk.” The woman’s friend drags her away.
“Ah, Ethan,” says Faith as they are finally regaining their composure. She is looking over her shoulder. “Do you know that guy? Because he looks kind of…mad with you.”
Chapter 113
Well. It has been difficult.
I thought I had experienced enough loss in my life to have developed some kind of skill or expertise in coping with it, but it seems I have not. Not at all. I have found it impossible over these last months to get a grip on my grief. It’s big, slippery, and mean, not beautiful and profound. I do not look wistfully at sunsets. No. I often break things. I swear. I’m brittle and vicious at times. You should have heard me on the phone to that travel insurance company.
We had Ned’s funeral in Sydney.
“I guess it’s more convenient, he’s already here,” I said to Hazel, and then I laughed, and couldn’t stop laughing, and poor sweet Hazel didn’t know if she should call a doctor.
Nobody expected it. He was so fit and healthy, to pass away of a heart attack while he napped just did not seem like something Ned would do.
Do you know what I did the day Ned died? I called my ex-husband, David. Isn’t that peculiar? I don’t know exactly what I wanted from him, but I seemed to need to tell him all about Ned, as if, because heart attacks were David’s field of expertise, he could offer a solution; he would find a way to give Ned a different ending. He seemed to understand. He told me half of all cardiac deaths occur in people with no history or symptoms. He said the cardiologist might have saved Ned, but not necessarily. Ned’s EKG might have been normal and he might have told him to book in for a stress test and angiogram after his holiday, or, yes, he might have told Ned not to get on that plane. He said he didn’t think an Apple Watch would have saved his life. He said, “I’m so very sorry, Cherry.”
The morning of the funeral I looked at our river cruise itinerary. That day we had a choice of two full-day excursions: Salzburg or Český Krumlov, a medieval town with Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque architecture. I think we would have chosen the latter as we had already been to Salzburg. It’s funny how the mind works, how I kept thinking about which excursion we would have chosen, as if it mattered.
It was a big funeral. Many of Ned’s former students attended, including people in their fifties who Ned had taught more than thirty years ago. One man, who’d been in one of Ned’s classes when we lived in the UK, flew all the way to Australia for the funeral. I said, “Oh, goodness, that wasn’t necessary.” Rude of me. He said, so sincerely, “It was necessary because Mr. Lockwood changed my life.” And then, well, I felt so proud of Ned, I couldn’t stop crying. It was very embarrassing.
I kept looking about for Jill and Bert, and then remembering. I thought I could get through this if I had them by my side, and then I thought I could get through their loss if Ned and I were grieving them together.
But I could not get through all their losses on my own.
I thought: What did I do to deserve these tragedies? This is too much. This is grossly unfair.
