Page 1 of The Escape Plan

Prologue

Beckett

You knowhow some people feel like a specific thing? Like, how a loved one feels like home, a romantic interest feels like falling, or a friend feels like laughter?

Well, to me, my grandmother always felt like magic.

Growing up, she told my siblings and me countless stories about Irish folklore. She taught us to salute lone magpies to avoid sadness and to never disrupt faerie trees for fear of bringing bad luck.

She also loved stories about love itself. She often told one about a boy she’d once loved but ended up losing because the fates determined different paths for them both.

To this day, I’m still not sure how much of what she told us was true, but I do know that when Gran was around, nothing was ever dull or boring. She weaved a golden thread through our childhood, and many of my memories center around that specific feeling of magic she brought to the smallest of everyday situations.

A lack of ingredients in the fridge to make dinner turned into barefoot dance parties in the kitchen as Gran made pancakes shaped like stars and crescent moons.

My inability to concentrate in school, humming tunes to myself in the back of the classroom—and, as a result, being berated by my teacher for being “thick” and “an eejit”—led to the appearance of my first guitar in my bedroom, as if by magic.

It was an ancient, battered instrument, and I cherished it becausefinally, I’d found something I was good at.

I knew Gran was behind the gift, but when I asked her about it, she smiled, tapped her nose, and said, “What’s for you won’t pass you, Beckett. So if music’s what’s for you, make sure you hold on to it. Never give up on it.”

Like any good Irishwoman worth her salt, she had many sayings, but “What’s for you won’t pass you” was Gran’s favorite. She loved the idea that we don’t get to control our own fates, that life has its own funny way of working things out. That if something is meant to be, it will be.

And that’s how we lived, with her at the helm of our family ship. Chalking our circumstances up to fate and waiting for fortune to hopefully favor us. Times were often tough in our home, but when the going got really tough, Gran’s magic was always enough to make me believe in something better.

Believe that there was always a little magic to be had, if you just looked in the right places.

Last year, when Gran passed away peacefully in her sleep, her loss hit me hard.

And for a long while, it felt like the magic died with her…

Until I found myself in Serendipity Springs.

Chapter One

Beckett

“Didyou get one of those wee square hamburger thingies yet, Becks?” asks Eoin from the phone screen in front of me. He pokes his glasses farther up his nose and leans forward curiously.

“Don’t be an eejit, Eoin,” Callan says as he gives him an elbow to the ribs. “Haven’t you seenSupersize Me? There’s nothing ‘wee’ about any of the food in America. Everything is massive there. Even the cars. Speaking of, have you seen many pickup trucks yet, Beckett?”

“I’m still inside the airport,” I say, a little tired, already feeling the pinch of jet lag. “So no, I haven’t spotted any trucks yet.”

“Crying shame, that.” Callan clicks his tongue.

“What about the Statue of Liberty? Have you seen that, Beckett?” Aoife asks.

“Like I just mentioned, I’m still inside the airport. In Boston. And as the Statue of Liberty happens to be in New York?—”

“What about Oprah?” Niamh interrupts me, clapping her hands so all her bracelets jangle. “Do you think you’ll get to see her? Do you think she’d write me an autograph?”

“Well, America’s a big country, and I imagine she lives in Los Angeles, which is at the other end. So I’d say the probability of me running into her is pretty slim.”

“Aw, come on Becks,” Niamh says with a pout. “I think getting me an autograph is the least you could do, considering you’re off gallivanting in America all summer, leaving us behind in rainy Ireland."

My sigh in response is good-natured. I love my siblings to death, but most conversations with them feel like running a marathon. And with the added novelty of them all being crowded around Callan’s phone on FaceTime from roughly three thousand miles away, this particular conversation feels like running in circles more than most. “Tell you what, Niamh. If Oprah Winfrey happens to pay a visit to the small central Massachusetts town of Serendipity Springs in the next few weeks, I’ll do my best to get you an autograph, okay?”

“Brilliant.” Niamh smiles. “Cheers, Beckett.”

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