Chapter One
Beckett
“Did you 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 seen Supersize 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.”
“Don’t mention it,” I say dryly. “And on that note, I have my bags now, so I should probably get going.”
“Text the family group chat when you get there,” Aoife instructs.
“Aye, and take photos of some trucks for me,” Callan adds.
“Will do,” I say. Easier than reminding Callan that he’s twenty-three years old and perfectly capable of googling pictures of whatever specific truck it is that he wants to see.
After about seventeen rounds of goodbyes and a parting piece of advice from Aoife to “see if I can find myself a local Dallas Cowboys cheerleader to date,” I hang up feeling equal parts despair for my siblings’ appalling geography knowledge, excitement for my adventure ahead, and homesickness for my family.
Or, more accurately, guilt about being here.
Ireland suddenly feels very far away.
I’ve never left them before. Not like this.
But they’re all grown up now and busy with their own lives—Aoife’s married with a baby on the way, Callan’s finished his apprenticeship and is working as an electrician, Eoin’s happy as can be working at a local animal rescue, and Niamh’s in college training to be a midwife.
Everyone is fine.
Nobody needs me in any kind of urgent way.
And as Mam told me a few weeks ago before she set off on her honeymoon in Greece with her new husband Paul, it was about time I stopped looking after everyone else and started worrying about myself.
She told me I should take a holiday, go see the world. Do something I wanted for a change.
To which I replied that I was absolutely fine, thank you very much. Of course, this opened the entire McCarthy family floodgates of opinions .
So. Many. Opinions.
Since Gran died and my long-term girlfriend Roisin left me, I’d been feeling a bit aimless. Like I was living a kind of Groundhog Day of work, eat, sleep, repeat, with no real end in sight. No real purpose.
I didn’t think it was a huge problem, to be honest. But between my siblings, Mam, Paul (who gets a family opinion now that their nuptials are complete), and Eoin’s one-eyed dog, Enya (who Eoin firmly considers a voting member of the McCarthy clan), a consensus from my family soon formed: they just want to see me happy.
And currently, I’m apparently not happy enough for their liking.
So, here I am. Off on an apparent pursuit of happiness—AKA, on holiday in America for the rest of the summer.
Because I didn’t have the heart to tell them that a change in my location would do nothing to change the way I feel. Or didn’t feel, more like.
I step outside the airport and am greeted with the type of glorious, blazing sunshine that is about a once-a-year occurrence back home.
Standing still, I close my eyes and tilt my head upwards, letting the early morning rays dance over my skin, warming it.
I’m snapped out of my celestial-adjacent moment all too soon, though, as a man dressed in a suit and carrying a briefcase barrels into the back of me, almost knocking us both over.
“Move it, moron!” he yells in a nasally voice, his thick Boston accent making him sound extra angry.
Which makes me smile.
“Top of the morning to you, too,” I respond brightly. We don’t actually say this to each other back home but I felt like leaning into a stereotype for this rude man’s benefit.
However, the man simply rolls his eyes at me before hurrying on his way, and I chuckle to myself over my first real encounter with a member of the American population.
Mr. Bernard Prenchenko, who I am house sitting for this summer, warned me that Bostonians can err on the side of rude. But once I hit the road and drive the one-and-a-half hours west to his apartment in Serendipity Springs, he says I will be likely to find nothing but hospitality, kindness, and a warm welcome from the locals.
I pick up my guitar case in one hand and my suitcase in the other and head towards short-term parking, where Mr. Prenchenko has parked his vehicle in area 4C and left the keys sitting in the left front wheel well, trusting fella that he seems to be.
When I find the correct number plate, I have to laugh as I discover that Prenchenko drives a Ford F150 truck.
I take a picture and send it to Callan, who responds in seconds with one word: “Lethal.”
Which, in Ireland, is common slang for great! 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 was Gran .
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.
I really need to sleep.
“You talking to yourself, or to me?” a man grumbles from behind me, and I turn to see a bearded guy giving me a funny look. He’s wearing dirty jeans and is holding a toolbox in one hand. He also has a phone pressed to his ear, but he’s definitely addressing me, not whoever might be on the other end of the line.
“Uh, myself, I guess,” I admit with a wry smile.
The guy raises a dark brow, then takes a step away from me. Which is totally understandable. Although not quite in the vein of the small-town friendliness Mr. Prenchenko promised me.
I glance at the magpie one more time, then watch as another one comes to perch on the railing nearby.
Two for joy.
That’ll do nicely. Two magpies together definitely bode for a good start at my new residence. So much so that I grin… and then promptly rearrange my face to neutral as the handyman gives me another wary look.
Before he can try to have me committed or something, I grab my guitar case, suitcase, and backpack and make a beeline for the stairs, checking the instructions on my phone again.
Mr. Prenchenko’s email says he left two keys in his mailbox for me: one for the front door of his apartment, and one for the front door of the building.
And said mailbox is… inside the building. In the lobby. Of course.
Kind of an important detail to overlook there, Prenchenko.
I sigh as I read the instructions again and see that a building manager, Steve, is mentioned. Maybe I can knock on the front door and hope this Steve guy will let me in.
I’m about to do just that, but I give the door a little push first—just in case.
To my surprise, it opens.
I walk right in.
The heavy door shuts behind me with an unceremonious bang, and I take a moment to assess my surroundings.
This place is… insane . In a good way. The lobby is large, with an old-fashioned wooden front desk that sits unoccupied and shiny hardwood floors. To the right, there’s a sweeping grand staircase.
Not quite what I was expecting—for some reason, I imagined more the tall and modern apartment building from Friends . But this place has a super cool vintage-y vibe so far. Or, as Callan would say, lethal.
I quickly locate the wall of mailboxes by the staircase and scan them until I find one labeled “Prenchenko.” It’s got a combination lock, and I enter the code he wrote out for me in his email. Pull the knob.
Nothing.
I enter the code again.
Still nothing.
I rattle the little knob, but the box stays firmly shut.
Maybe I’ll need to summon Steve the building manager after all. I scan Prenchenko’s email once more, but there’s no mention of where Steve’s office is, nor a number for him.
Details are apparently not Prenchenko’s forte.
The email does, however, mention that the owner of the building lives on the fourth floor. Hopefully they can help me?
Not like I have another choice, so I guess I’ll go find out.
With a shrug, I head for the elevator.