Part One
Sara had let her guard slip. She had been thinking about home. She’d lived here since she was a teenager and hadn’t grown accustomed to celebrating Halloween in this heat. A Halloween without crows or bonfires in late spring heat.
She was prepping the colcannon and the steaks. She remembered when curly kale couldn’t be found in LA for love nor money. She’d had to make do with spinach.
Their neighbours at home had grown so much of the rubbery green vegetable, it was almost a weed. She thought of their bleating sheep, devouring the verdant fields. Lamb was scarce in this land of chickens, turkeys, beef, and avocados. She craned out the window and could just about make out the cliffs down to the ocean, after which their home on Pacific Heights was named. The sea was different. It didn’t match her eyes like the gunmetal grey-blue of her bucolic childhood Atlantic.
The barmbrack, an Irish hybrid between a bread and a cake, an Irish solution to use up the last of the rotting fruit, was in the oven at Jack’s insistence. It wasn’t as if either of them liked it that much.
Jack was a stickler. Things went his way, or not at all. He was a traditionalist. It was easier to go along than to go against.
She wondered how the meeting had gone. Had they liked the script? Were they going to option it? She avoided asking. He’d let her know when he was ready. She recoiled when she heard the door slam.
‘Useless Bimbo!’ Jack roared.
She froze. ‘Excuse me?’ she said after a recovery beat.
‘You heard you incompetent twat.’
Not again, she thought. An involuntary giggle preceded her flinch of terror. She swallowed it. The crash she heard was too close.
Sara turned and watched white porcelain shards flying past her. Her eyes were transfixed on a snail trail of coleslaw slinking its way down the wall in front of her.
‘You useless hag. Mom showed you how to make it last Christmas. She sent you the recipe. You still can’t get it right. I want the coleslaw like she makes not this poor mouth crap. You can’t get a thing right, you lazy cow.’
‘Who cares about coleslaw anyway?’
Oh no did she say that out loud?
Before her brain told her to run, she was slammed against the wall. His arms were around her neck. She gasped, clawed her hands through the crook, the V space in his arms, to create room to breathe. Is coleslaw to be the sword I fall on, she thought, as a freeze response engulfed her.
What are you doing? Sara shook herself out of her apathy. You’ve trained for this moment. Get on with it.
She sprang into action.
She drove her knee into his groin. She grabbed the frying pan from the stove. It was sizzling with heat. She clocked him hard across the temple. She had learned from the last time that there wouldn’t be a second chance to defend herself.
She watched him slump to the floor. The steaks toppled after him. Was the blood trickling and seeping down the side of Jack’s head from her blow or from the steaks?
The whiff of burning hair and spilled grease roused her from her numb trance. The scenario had been inevitable. Lessons were learned from the other times. She was forearmed. She hoped she had prepped enough.
Her mood turned to seething icy rage. She removed the brack from the oven and tipped it over his head. She smushed the errant crumbs and dried fruit with her heel into Jack’s spotless travertine floor. She hated its coldness. It was a nightmare to clean and hurt her back with its hardness.
She heard him mumbling. She caught ‘kill’ and ‘this’.
‘Enough!’ Sara screamed.
She stumbled towards the kitchen island. Sara lifted off the pumpkin he’d forced her to hand-carve. She squished it into his mumbling gob. His eyes closed. The muttering ceased.
‘Oh no, I’ve killed him!’ she cried.
She lifted a spoon from the table and held it to his mouth. It misted. Phew, still breathing.
She shuffled out to the laundry room. She rooted through the laundry basket and drew out the roll of cash she’d hidden underneath her mankiest period knickers. She put it in her pocket.
She riffled through Jack’s pockets. When she found his phone, she held it up to his face. It worked.
There it was under Ben Olly Anderson; the code to his banking App. When she got in, she transferred all his money to her secret account, as well as the money in their joint account. Sara took it as her due. It was less than half the equity in their home. She deleted the app and the contact in the phone with the disguised login code.
Sara nabbed the keys from his pockets. Stomping up the stairs, she grabbed every guilt gift and his two briefcases from the safe. She’d examine them on the way to LAX.
Part Two
She grabbed her keys, her bag, and her coat. She went next door. Orla was Irish. They had taken to each other immediately when they recognised their shared connection. She waited until a little group of trolls and a solitary zombie had left before buzzing. Orla opened the door.
‘Trick or treat, ’ sang Orla. ‘Oh my God, Sara, your poor neck. What happened to your eye? We have enough evidence now, we need to call the cops.’
‘I’m doing it this time, Orla. I need that case. Please don’t call them until after I get away. You might need to call an ambulance as well. He’s alive but a bit incapacitated at the moment.’
‘Ok. Whatever you want. Just text me when it’s all systems go. Can I bring you to the airport?’
‘No, it’s okay. I’ll get a cab or an Uber or something.’
‘You take care and mind yourself, or you’ll have me to answer to you hear? Wait, before you go, take this.’
Orla opened a drawer in the credenza and pulled out a green silk scarf. It brought out the golden highlights in Sara’s hair. The silk didn’t irritate her neck too much.
‘I will, and thanks for everything. I’ll see you back home in the Summer, please God.’
Sara threw her arms around Orla’s shoulders.
‘You’re a life-saver.’
She left. She passed by a Dracula, two Harrys, an Elsa, a zombie, and a Hermione as she made her way to the main drag. She was about to open her Uber App when she spied a sexy nurse and a stripper witch falling out of a cab. She ran over and climbed in.
‘LAX, please.’
She pulled a hand mirror out of her bag and watched her home shrink on the street behind her.
Part Three
She planned this after the last time. She had woken up gasping, a pillow over her head. He told her he’d kill her for real if she ever told anyone. She believed him.
The honeymoon period lasted a month or two. He treated her like fragile crystal. It was a shaky détente. She might not make it out alive again.
She excused it. But a time comes when a grown man can’t blame childhood for being an asshole. If you have mental health problems, get help. Stop blame-shifting onto the person who’s in your corner.
Sara’s life meant more to her now than his. He could shove himself under Lough Currane if he started with that crap again.
She remembered that day at work.
‘What’s up Sara? You’re preoccupied. You’re not as switched on as usual. Did you get the accounts for Luisa Mendez sorted?’
‘Oh yeah those. They’re all done and should be in your shared documents to sign off. I’m working on the Brands’ account now.’
‘But you did that yesterday. You saved them a fortune in write-offs. We signed off on it together before you went home,’ said Grace. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Just some personal stuff. Jack is a bit stressed over some last-minute edits the studio sent over. He’s been a grumpy ass to be honest.’
‘Hey Sara, don’t forget it’s me you’re talking to. You never talk about your personal issues. Loyal to a fault, you are. That’s what I like about you. He must have been more than a grumpy ass for you to say a thing. Grade one asshole more like.’
‘Yeah, that one,’ Sara shrugged.
‘I don’t want to go into it. I went looking for my passport and my licence this morning. They’re gone, along with a couple of bank cards. I was going to get on a flight and never come back. I told him. He took them and hid them. He copped on to himself. He apologised; said he’d get help, so I’m going to let it go.’
‘Girl, you know that’s not good. Have you got running away money? My momma told me every woman should have some.’
‘In my account, yeah.’
‘Check it now.’
She opened the app on her phone and found that it had all been transferred to their joint account the night before.
‘That’s not good.’
‘I’ll tell you what I’m gonna do, Sara. You’re gonna open a separate account at my bank when you find your licence, and I’m gonna physically hand you the payslip for your bonuses instead of sending them to you. Then you’re gonna report that licence stolen and get you another one. We’re going to build that running away fund back up. Then you’re gonna pack an emergency bag, and come and stay with me until you get back on your feet.’
She had moved in with Grace.
He was pitifully sorry. He told her he loved her. She still loved him. He gave her back her money, her passport and her licence, along with a pair of beautiful platinum and diamond earrings.
She didn’t report it. She said nothing about the account. She stashed incremental emergency supplies of cash in the laundry basket. The basket was never empty of dirty clothes when Jack was home.
His good behaviour lasted for a week. He hit her again. He said he’d kill her and that nosy piece of shit if she left him again. She promised she wouldn’t to make it stop, and it worked.
She applied for a passport in her Irish name Sorcha Nic Giolla Padraig. The new passport was stashed in her runaway bag. She left it next door with Orla ar eagla na heagla (for fear of fear).
She researched. She was ready. Sara was not going to be a cautionary statistic, murdered within days of the taste of freedom.
Orla was sharp as a paper cut, She recognised there was something up. She could hear it through the open windows, or when she was out in her backyard. She trusted Sara could take care of herself and told her so.
‘Me and Aoife. We’re here whenever you need. No judgement.’ Orla told Sara.
‘Make sure you come to us if you need help. We have to be careful. Aoife’s naturalization papers haven’t come through. She was living with her ex when she applied. We want to stay off the radar until they arrive. Besides, we don’t want Jack to cut you off. We’re going to be civil to his face.
‘But Sara, I’m judging the heck out of that langer.’
Part Four
At Grace’s, Sara had gotten back in touch with her estranged family. Jack was at the centre of the falling out.
They were visiting for the Easter holidays. She reached over for a second helping of roast potatoes. Jack squeezed her arm a smidgeon too tightly.
‘You asked me to stop you and remind you about your diet, remember?’
Jack lied. She had asked no such thing. He had left a mark. It took weeks for the bruises to fade.
‘Let me eat what I bloody want!’ Sara barked at him, coinciding with one of those conversational dinner-table lulls. It hit the audience like a thunderclap. Everyone caught it.
‘Sara,’ her mother hissed. ‘Jack’s only looking out for you and doing what you asked. Give him a break. We don’t want sniping at the dinner table.’
Sara second-guessed her plan. She had intended to get her mother alone over the holidays to voice her concerns. Jack could do no wrong in Mam’s eyes. Mam would have ripped Dad a new one if he had ever commented on her diet or weight at a family dinner. Sara couldn’t tell Mam anything.
‘I can’t believe you didn’t back me up, Mam. I know where your loyalties lie.’
Dad had intervened.
‘We will get on at this table. This is a celebration. If you can’t put differences aside or talk to your mother civilly for the length of a meal, you can leave.’
Sara’s stomach dropped. She was trapped. She swallowed her distress for her nieces. Their eyes were as big as glass-bottoms; their faces as red as Bart Simpson’s T-shirt.
The next day, Sara and Jack booked an Airbnb in Galway. She found a moment with her mother at the airport, when Jack was getting a cup of coffee.
‘You should have my back, mother!’ Sara spat. She unleashed a tirade about her upbringing and her mother’s interference. It had enough elements of truth in it to be hurtful and unretractable.
Sara understood her double standard. How could she forgive Jack, but not them? Hours of deliberation, sweaty, tangled, sleepless nights, had brought her to a reluctant decision to reach out. That one small admonishment from Mam was enough to quash her plan. If they didn’t support her right to stand up for herself in front of everyone, would they also minimise and excuse his coercive control?
Sara knew how her Mam and her family worked. If she wanted to sort it, she had to apologise. Mam never caved first. She wasn’t sorry. For shouting, yes, but not for the things she had said. Sara was in a cold war.
Jack supported the estrangement. He detailed the ways her parents had undermined her.
‘I’m sorry, Sara. I shouldn’t have squeezed you so hard. You know I prefer it when you don’t have those extra pounds on you. I don’t like the way your mother spoke to you or how she nags at you. Nobody talks to my partner like that. It’ll take a lot for me to forgive her. I won’t allow someone in your life to treat you that way!’
With the distance of an ocean between them, the rift didn’t heal naturally as it would have if she lived back in Ireland. The fault lines cracked. They fractured further when she heard through Luke that they had upped sticks and returned to Kerry, without so much as a change of address text. She had tried to call her father when she learned about the move.
‘I love you, Sara more than you realise. You’ll know what I mean when you have children. You’re no longer a child. You’re an adult. You need to apologise. You’re my child. She’s my wife. I can’t talk to you behind her back. She’s my life now. Please, I’m begging you, as I’m begging your Mam, fix this.’
They hadn’t. They sent unopened and unread occasion cards over and back. They didn’t Facetime or WhatsApp one another. Jack was in his element. He was a smug, spoiled cat who had chased off attention-sucking rivals.
Her brother Luke had left a door ajar. The contact was infrequent. He urged her to talk to their mother every time they spoke. She begged him to stop. He wouldn’t. She didn’t tell him that Jack would go ape if she did. She missed Luke’s wife, Ciara, and her two headstrong nieces, Annie and Ruthie, who tumbled in and out of their sporadic video calls.
Luke had moved back to Ireland shortly after their parents. He and Ciara were settled in Dublin. He was still working for the same multinational, at their European base. The girls were losing some of the LA twang in favour of a DART blas; an accent named after the train system that ran through Dublin’s more affluent coastal suburbs.
At Grace’s, she contacted her parents through emails and messages, telling them she and Jack were having issues. She would contact them when she was ready. The typing dots stayed on her screen for about five minutes before disappearing, before her unanswered message was acknowledged with a heart.
Two days later, she received a text from her parents:
Come home.
The following day, she returned home to a contrite Jack. Once they had decided to work on salvaging the relationship, she stopped texting to hold the ship steady.
Part Five
The driver was mercifully quiet. One of those scented cards, and a huge set of rosary beads hung from the mirror. Sara opened the window to disperse the overpowering aroma of lemongrass. She shut it immediately. There was no stench like this back home. Slurry and silage were in the ha’penny place compared with the sniff of eau de skunk.
Sara took out her burner and downloaded her banking app. In the back seat, she routed multiple transfers to her Irish accounts. She put on the guilt jewels. She didn’t want awkward questions at security.
Using Jack’s keys, she opened the briefcases. One was full of dollar bills. The other had three USB sticks, a leather notebook, a printed script, and two watches. Where had he gotten those from?
She had supported his screenwriting career. There must be thousands in there. How had Jack earned this much cash and enough for a Rolex and an Omega? Could she smuggle this much through security?
Oh well, I’m a white woman in her mid-thirties heading to Ireland, she thought. I haven’t been stopped before. If it gets seized, I’m no worse off than I was. She put the USBs in her bag for later.
She tried to book a direct flight to Ireland. Damned midterm. The nearest she could get was first-class to Cardiff. That would do. It looked like she could afford it. Yes, she booked a connection from Cardiff to Dublin.
The driver pulled up at LAX. Sara was due to leave in two hours.
She pulled her case, one briefcase perched on top and held by the handle, the other in her hand. She went to print off her boarding pass before heading for the bathroom.
In the cubicle, she shoved the cash and watches into her shoes and clothes. She pocketed the three USB keys and packed the two briefcases. Creating a bomb alert by abandoning them in the airport was the last thing she needed. She made her way to the first-class check-in desk.
‘Good evening, Ma’am. Thank you for flying with Virgin today. Will you be travelling on?’
‘Yes, I’m flying on to Dublin’
‘ Do you want us to check you in from here? It means you can go through emigration in LA instead of in Cardiff.’
‘Yes, please.’
A steward took her bags and led her to the VIP area. She ordered a drink and breathed. Laptop, on, Sara plugged in the first USB. It was unencrypted. It looked like ideas for a movie script.
The second and third were encrypted. She pulled out his notebook. The stupid eejit had written in his codes and passwords. One heading was Cayman, and the other was Lutz.
Sara found the Cayman file on the second stick. Lutz must be on the third. As suspected, it was a bank account. What she saw shook her more than the assault.
20 million dollars amassed over ten years! How had he managed that? What was she going to do about it?
Sara transferred everything to her account. Let him suffer like she had. She’d look at the other one later.
Taking the SIM out of her phone, Sara dropped it and the two memory sticks into her half-empty coffee cup, tossing them in a nearby bin. She threw some serviettes and some unattended food left on a table after them. She put the last stick in her pocket and waited for the flight announcement.
She checked her burner phone.
21:20 Orla: He survived. I can hear him cursing in the backyard. No sign of police or an ambulance.
22:00 Orla: He’s taken the car and left.
22:10 Sara: At the airport. Can you book an Amtrak and a Greyhound trip in my name somewhere far away? I’ll put a grand in your account when I get to Ireland.
22:12 Orla: I’ll give the tickets to someone who wants to travel.
22:12 Sara: Thanks, you’re a star. Hugs.
It was ten thirty when the flight took off. She was safe. Sara was grateful she wouldn’t have to deal with elbows or leg-spreaders. She’d been through enough today.
Part 6
Stretching out in her Pullman seat, she ordered another glass of champagne, pulled on her eye mask and headphones, and pretended to sleep. She must have done more than pretend, because it was time to deplane into a throng of people wearing green rugby shirts, when she woke up.
So that explains all the empty flights to Dublin, she thought. There must be a rugby match on in Cardiff. All those empty seats were going to be filled with beer-sodden posh boys chanting Ireland’s Call at the top of their drunken lungs.
There was no hassle on the Dublin leg. One chancer on his way to a stag do across the aisle from her tilted into her space and attempted to chat. She blanked him and asked to be moved when it had no effect except galvanise him to move closer to her lap and breathe 40 percent proof into her face. She asked to be moved.
‘I’m only messing with you, sweetheart. Can you not take a joke?’
Two attendants exchanged a quiet word without her having to intervene. He slumped back in his seat, like a sullen adolescent in the principal’s office.
Her new seat was beside a white-haired woman with the softest skin and gentle blue-topaz eyes. She was filling out a Sudoku puzzle book.
‘Wait until he has daughters and then he’ll know what a gombeen he was,’ the woman muttered.
Sara burst out laughing.
“Hello, I’m Mary. I was over visiting my new grandchild. She’s a little dote. Oh, sorry, dear, let me know if you want a bit of space. I’m just so excited. She’s our first. Unfortunately, I couldn’t stay. I have to be back at work tomorrow.’
She showed Sara a picture of her granddaughter on her phone.
‘That’s unusual — having to go back on a Sunday. How come?’
“I’m with the Gardaí. No regular hours for me.”
Sara’s stomach roiled. She tried for nonchalance and hoped the woman wasn’t going through the VIP lounge with her.
‘Oh, good on you. I’d imagine that’s not an easy job to raise kids around.’
‘You’re right. I married late. My husband was on the force as well. It’s actually his daughter’s child. I never had any of my own. It’s a bit late now. I always tell people: freeze your eggs while you can. I’m lucky his children took to me, and that they understand the pressures of the job.’
‘Oh, I didn’t mean to stick my nose in. I just said what was in my head. I’m Sara, by the way.’
Of course, she hadn’t said, ‘shit’ which was what was really in her head. She babbled out any old garbage to mute her inner screams.
You’ve just stolen twenty million. You’re smuggling who knows how many thousands in your luggage and you’re sitting beside a fecking Garda, of all people.
They chatted amiably for the rest of the flight. Sara, intent on not letting a nefarious thing slip, retained nothing they shared. She should’ve taken her chances with drunk-lad.
They parted at the airport. Sara’s bags were brought to her and Mary went off to baggage claim.
Sara walked straight through the EU “Nothing to Declare” section. Nobody stopped her. She unclenched her gut.
The beauty of being with someone as self-absorbed as Jack was that he hadn’t asked too many questions about her background once the honeymoon period ended. He knew her middle name, but not that every Irish person had an Irish, as well as an English version of their name. In Ireland she could use either.
She didn’t know if Jack still had a current passport. He hadn’t travelled outside the U.S. since his army days, over a decade ago.
She walked out of the airport, pulled out the travel pass she’d kept from her last visit home, and dragged her case behind her, heading into town. On the way, she booked herself into the Westbury. Why not? She had Jack’s money.
She checked her burner phone.
Orla: He hasn’t come back to the house. No sign of police.
He didn’t know her parents had moved home, so hopefully he’d assume she’d gone to stay with them in New Jersey, or with Grace. She’d emailed Grace from Cardiff, telling her to either get out of the house or call the police if Jack turned up. Sara knew Grace would be fine. She’d pull a gun on Jack if he gave her any crap.
Would he think of Ireland immediately or had she a couple of days to breathe? She wouldn’t mind a breather to consider her options. She was grateful for the nap on the plane. She had a lot to do.
After check-in, a long, luxurious soak, and forty laps of the pool, Sara headed down Grafton Street, her old haunt.
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