Page 35 of The Escape Plan

“Right. You mentioned the other night that your family’s been here for generations.”

“Yup,” she says, then pauses. Frowns. “Well, specifically my dad’s family. The Roberts family.”

I glance at her hands, which still have chipped black polish and that silver Claddagh ring. “Does that mean your grandpa grew up here? Is he your dad’s dad?”

“Yes. Gramps was the mayor’s son, and then was also the mayor himself for a time. The Roberts side of the family are part of the furniture in this town.” Her smile falters a little. “I just visited him yesterday morning, at his retirement residence. He has dementia now, so he needs full-time care.”

“I’m so sorry,” I tell her sincerely. While I haven’t personally encountered dementia with any of my relatives—Gran was thankfully completely lucid until she passed—I’ve heard it’s an extremely tough condition on both the person afflicted and their loved ones.

A part of me had hoped to ask Keeley if her grandpa could have crossed paths with my gran. It was a stretch, sure—Serendipity Springs is a town of about a hundred thousand people. But the fact that Keeley has that ring from her grandpa seems like an odd coincidence.

Coincidences certainly seem to be a thing around here, though, and this seems hardly the time to dig around for such information. So I let the thought go for now.

“Were you close?” I ask her.

“Yeah. We were pretty close—stillarepretty close.” She frowns. “But things are different now.”

“I get it.” My hand involuntarily goes to the ring around my neck. “I was close with my grandmother. She passed away last year.”

I’m not sure why I’m volunteering this information—it’s not something I talk about easily, especially not with people I’ve recently met. But something about Keeley, about her sharing with me, makes me want to open up, too.

“I’m sorry,” Keeley says quietly. She lifts a hand, and I get the sense she wants to place it on mine as a gesture of comfort, but she seems to change her mind and run it through her ponytail instead.

I look over at her and give her a half-smile. “Guess we’re a sorry pair.”

“A sorry pair of Spring Chickens, you mean.”

“I beg your finest pardon?”

Keeley laughs, and the sound echoes happily around the cab of the truck as she digs a key ring out of her shorts pocket. A little white tab on it proclaims: “I’m a Spring Chicken!”

“This explains nothing,” I tell her mock-solemnly.

“Springs Foods loyalty card, baby. Stick with me, and I can get you all the best shopping deals in town.”

It’s my turn to laugh. “How lucky I am to have taken up residence next to you.”

“Unfathomably lucky,” she declares.

We share a smile, and suddenly, my jokey words feel very true. I’m grateful that Keeley Roberts has become a part of my time here in Serendipity Springs.

Chapter Twelve

Keeley

“Okay,if we’re doing this, we’re doing it right,” I tell Beckett as I hand him a wire grocery basket and take one for myself.

“Lead the way, captain,” he affirms as we walk into Spring Foods together, two people on a mission.

Somehow, my morning has transformed from “go for a run to get my head on straight after being kept awake again last night by Andrew and Lisa’s footsteps” to “accompany my new friend Becks to the grocery store to help him stock up onAmerican delicacies”—his words, not mine. Apparently, while he’s here, he wants to try all the delightfully processed foods our great nation has to offer.

Lucky for him, he has a connoisseur assisting him today.

And lucky for me, he pulled up in his truck at exactly the right moment, because I think my head might’ve exploded before making it home.

I hate running at the best of times. And I must’ve gone temporarily insane this morning—it’s the only explanation for why I was suddenly convinced a run in one-thousand-degree heat would inspire me to work on my article this afternoon.

Although, of course Beckett would see me in yet another state of total disarray.

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