Page 51 of The Escape Plan

Her eyes widen even further. “Well, I never!” she breathes, pressing one wrinkled hand to her heart. “Of course, you are. I see it now—you look so much like her.”

Exactly what I thought when I saw Noeleen’s picture.

“I believe you two were friends?” Becks asks.

Sissy claps her hands, bangles jangling on her wrists. “Friends? Please, we weresoul sisters, your grandmother and me. Born worlds apart but cut from the exact same cloth.”

My heart starts to thump excitedly. Beckett smiles wide but his eyes are soft as they focus on Sissy, clearly hanging onto her every word.

“How is she?” Sissy goes on. “I always wondered what became of her. Haven’t heard from her for, gosh, sixty-odd years now.”

Beckett’s smile falters. “Um, she died. Last year.”

Sissy looks stricken as she reaches for Beckett’s hand. “I’m sorry to hear that, honey. Your grandmother was one of the good ones.”

“She was my favorite person,” Becks says, and Sissy smiles sadly.

“Mine too, at one point.” She winks. “Don’t tell my husband that, though.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Beckett promises solemnly.

“We were thick as thieves, lived in the same dorm during college. We did everything together.”

“Did Noeleen know my Gramps, too?” I pipe up, unable to keep my question quiet any longer.

Sissy nods. “She did.”

Becks touches the ring on his neck, and I can tell the motion is totally reflexive, unconscious. “Were they… together?”

I lean forward eagerly.

Sissy pauses, her shrewd eyes noting Becks’s gesture. “They were, for a short time. In our last year of college.” Her eyes get a little misty, like she’s plucking memories from deep inside her mind. “Wow, it’s been a long, long while since I’ve thought about that. Noeleen was so in love with Douglas, and he was head-over-heels for her. In fact…”

She frowns at us both, then nods at my right hand. “They got each other matching rings back then from an Irish guy in Boston who owned a jewelers’ store there. If I’m not mistaken, the very same rings you’re both wearing today.”

I twirl Gramps’s ring around my finger, processing all of this information.

I figured Douglas and Noeleen were once an item ever since we found out yesterday that the inscriptions on our rings match. But hearing Sissy confirm it as fact—alongside the fact they were very much in love, and the matching rings were, indeed, theirs during their relationship—makes my head spin. “Whoa.”

“Ah, the double dates we had! She and Douglas, me and Roger. We were the talk of the town back then. Noeleen was so magnetic, drawing people in without even trying.”

Sounds just like her grandson.I shoot a surreptitious look at Beckett.

“I was so upset when she went back to Ireland,” Sissy continues. “I missed her every day for a long time. We wrote for a few years—last I heard from her was a good few years after she left. She’d married and just had a baby. Bridget, I think her name was.”

“My mam,” Beckett says with a smile.

Sissy looks at Becks fondly. “I was happy Noeleen had finally found love in her life again and had started a family. But we eventually lost touch. It was harder to stay in contact back then, as you can imagine. Snail mail was our main form of communication.”

Becks shoves his hands in his pockets, looking genuinely sorry. “Do you know why she left Serendipity Springs?”

Sissy shoots a little look in my direction, then looks back at Beckett. Shifts on her chair. “She had a life back in Ireland…”

She hesitates, looks like she wants to say more but is debating what to say.

“And?” I ask, unable to help myself.

“Well, right before graduation, she and Douglas broke up, right out of the blue.” Sissy frowns. “It was totally unexpected—the two seemed so happy together. To this day, I’m not sure why they broke up, exactly. She never told me.”

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