Page 3 of The Escape Plan

I take a picture and send it to Callan, who responds in seconds with one word: “Lethal.”

Which, in Ireland, is common slang forgreat!Or, as the Americans say,awesome!

I can only hope that my drive in the truck to Serendipity Springs complies with the slang meaning of the word rather than the literal outcome.

* * *

After an hour and a half spent sitting in the driver’s seat of a vehicle twice the size of what I’m used to, navigating six-lane highways filled with drivers as impatient and angry as Mr. Move-it-Moron at the airport (and on the wrong side of the road at that), I somewhat miraculously make it to Serendipity Springs in one piece.

Thankfully, the roads here aren’t quite as hectic as those in the greater Boston area. They’re actually a bit more reminiscent of the winding country roads you’d find back home in Ireland.

I steer the truck into a multi-story parking structure on a quaint, tree-lined street in a town that’s set to be my home for the rest of the summer and exit the behemoth vehicle on slightly shaky legs. Honestly, I feel more grateful to have my feet back on solid ground right now than I felt after eight hours on a transatlantic plane ride.

It takes me almost no time at all to collect my relatively small bags from the spacious truck bed, lock up the vehicle, and walk around to the front steps of The Serendipity apartment building. I drop my luggage on the sidewalk and dig around in my jacket pocket for my phone so I can pull up the instructions Prenchenko emailed me to access my new apartment.

Leaving truck keys with his truck at the airport was apparently acceptable, but leaving a house key with said truck keys was apparently not.

While I’m house sitting for him, Prenchenko is staying in my hometown of Castlebar in County Mayo, Ireland, teaching a Social Anthropology summer session at the fancy private school where I work during the school year.

I happened to mention to a colleague that I had a desire to go on a trip, and she told me about the soon-visiting lecturer from an American college who would have a vacant apartment Stateside while he was in Mayo and was looking for someone to watch it for him.

That’s another thing about the Irish—someone always has a friend of a friend of a friend to hook you up with anything you might want.

What I wanted was a temporary escape from my life. A holiday that would keep my family off my back.

This house sitting gig seemed, well, serendipitous.

And, when I found out what college said lecturer was visiting from, I almost fainted in shock: Spring Brook College, in Serendipity Springs, Massachusetts.

Where my beloved Gran attended school over half a century ago. Not that any of us knew this information until recently.

Serendipitous,indeed.

I’m hoping that not only will my time here be a getaway from my regular routine, but that it will also allow me to feel close to her. To learn something about her life back in her youth, before she wasGran.

I scan Mr. Prenchenko’s email, then glance up at the neat brick building in front of me, and my heart picks up the pace a little. “Home sweet home,” I mutter to myself.

The Serendipity is rather charming—four stories high with intricate stone detailing and old-fashioned wrought-iron balconies, all adorned with creeping vines of ivy. Nothing like the ugly blocks of flats we have on every street corner in Ireland. A few steps lead to the grand double front doors flanked by old-timey lights. And atop one of those lights sits a little magpie, its head tilted to one side as it… studies me.

Well, not studies me. Obviously.

It’s a bird.

A bird which is simply looking in my general direction.

I look around to see if I can spot a pair for the magpie. But when I realize that there’s only one in the vicinity, I swiftly lift my index and middle fingers to my forehead and give it a salute, just like my Gran taught me when I was knee-high to a grasshopper.

We Irish are a superstitious bunch, and if you’re brought up knowing anything at all, you’ll know to always salute a single magpie.

One for sorrow.

“Hello.” I give the magpie a nod for good measure, and then almost stumble backwards when I swear I see it wink.

My abject shock lasts for all of the millisecond it takes for my brain to catch up with my idiocy, and I remember that birds don’t wink, just as they don’t study people.

Must’ve been a trick of the afternoon sunlight.

That, and the jet lag.

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