Page 32 of The Escape Plan

Even if I have no foggy idea who John McCandless is.

“What happened to who?” I ask her as I move my phone to my other hand and push open the front door of The Serendipity. It’s sunny again today, and I slip on my sunglasses before I head down the steps, taking them two at a time.

I’m headed out this morning to do a food shop.

Or, as they say here,get groceries.

I’ve been in Serendipity Springs for a few days now, and so far, I’ve been living off the supply of basics Mr. Prenchenko kindly left in his fridge for me. But at this point, I’m out of bread, milk, and eggs—and I’m kind of missing having green things in my diet.

Not to mention I’m hoping that the supermarket will have some decent tea.

“Aye, you know John. Tall fella from Clogher, used to hurl with your uncle Packie back in the day.”

“Still don’t know him, Mam.”

“Wise up, Becks. You do know him, surely. Big John McCandless. He came to Conan Fogarty’s first communion?”

I pinch the bridge of my nose. “No, Mam. I have never met, nor heard of, this John McCandless you speak of.”

“Lawds a mercy.” She clicks her tongue—a habit my brother Callan inherited from her—and then launches into a long, secondhand-account story about a man I have only just learned existed and how he won some money last night betting on horses.

Real fascinating stuff.

Nonetheless, I listen patiently, the pitch of Mam’s voice soothingly familiar as I head towards the parkade. As I go, I greet a couple of fellow Serendipity residents with a nod—that sweet elderly couple who are always strolling around the building, and a young woman with dark brown hair who gives me a look of intrigue as she nods back, then whispers something to the guy clad in medical scrubs whose hand she’s holding.

Mam’s just getting to what I believe is the crux of the story—the moment John risked all his winnings on lucky number thirteen, Paddy’s Wagon—when the line beeps. She stops mid-sentence. “Ah look, Aoife’s on the line. Lovely, I’ll add her to this call.”

She presses a button, and Aoife’s pale, freckled face fills half the screen. I get the feeling that I never will find out if John McCandless’s gamble on Paddy’s Wagon paid off or not, as my sister starts rapid-firing questions without waiting for an answer. “How’s Crete, Mam? Did you hear about that robbery in Sligo last night? Dreadful, just dreadful. Oh, and I bumped into Roisin last night at the hairdresser’s, and it turns out she’s seeing Frank Doherty now. Remember Frank? Skinny fella. Had a bit of a lazy eye back in the day before he got those corrective glasses?”

“Nice lad, Frank,” Mam says, beaming. “Good for Roisin.”

Then, they both stare at me. I realize they’re waiting for my reaction.

“Yeah, good for her,” I say, and I mean it. I don’t think of Roisin much anymore, and I truly wish her well when I do.

I hope Keeley will feel the same in regards to Andrew someday, too. Seeing her face go pale when he came into the laundry room yesterday really irked me, especially when he acted like she was doing something wrong for simply talking to another man.

I know guys like that. Guys who play women for their own gain, who use women to make them feel bigger and better about themselves. And though I don’t know her well yet, I already want so much bigger and better for Keeley than that rat of a guy.

I’m judging him without knowing him, and I’m sure my Gran would have a saying about not doing such a thing. But then again, I don’t think she would have liked Andrew, either.

And on the subject of Gran, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about seeing her name on the laundry room wall yesterday. I don't think Noeleen is a super common name here in America and it seems too convenient. On top of every other convenient coincidence I’ve encountered lately.

“Mam, are you sure you don’t have any more info on Gran’s time here?” I ask when there’s a brief lull in the Frank Doherty conversation. “Like, she never mentioned where she might have lived or anything?”

“Becks, love, I’ve told you everything I know.” Mam lifts a shoulder. “She went to college there, came home, met your Grandpa, and they got married and had me a few years later. She never, ever spoke about her time there. In fact, I forgot all about it until you found that old student ID of hers.”

Ah, yes, that student ID card shocked us all. I came across it in a basket of Gran’s things when I was helping Mam clear out her bedroom. I’d had no idea that she’d ever even been abroad, never mind that she’d gone to school in America.

The twenty-year old Gran in the picture looked happy. Truly happy and glowing through the grainy black-and-white exposure.

I wondered why she never told me about going to America. Surely, out of the millions of stories she’d told us over the years, it would have come up.

My gran was a natural storyteller, through and through. What could have happened here to make her never speak of it?

“But Becks, don’t you be fretting about Gran, you hear me? Just take it easy over there, enjoy your holiday.” Mam’s beady eyes suddenly spark with interest. “Speaking of, have you met anyone nice yet? Made any friends?”

The question is reminiscent of the ones she asked me after my first day of “big school” oh-so-many years ago, and it makes me smile. “Yeah, I did.”

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