Cherry reflects on how her mother Mae became convinced she had foreseen her husband Arthur's death. On the day Arthur and Mae argued about life insurance, Arthur had jokingly said "if I'm struck by lightning," and Mae claimed she felt his death in her chest at that exact moment. Mae believed that if Arthur had listened to her warnings—if he had refused to deal with the insurance salesman (referred to as Jiminy Cricket)—the death would never have happened. Mae repeated "I knew it" with conviction, despite her sister Pat's skepticism.

Cherry notes the logical flaw in her mother's belief: Arthur had also said "if I'm hit by a bus," yet he was not hit by a bus. These were simply common expressions for unlikely events, not prophecies. Despite this, Mae clung to her conviction that she had foreseen Arthur's death.

As a teenager, Cherry angrily confronted her mother, shouting that the supposed premonition meant nothing. Mae responded by banging her chest and insisting she knew what she had felt. By that point, Mae had reinvented herself as "Madame Mae," and the story of foreseeing Arthur's death had become her origin story as a psychic or fortune-teller. Cherry, sixteen at the time, dismissed her mother as foolish.