In hindsight, it probably smelled like burnt rubber early on. We were jet-lagged, though, and wet from splashing in the Irish Atlantic, so our senses were dulled. I leaned my head against the cool window of the van, focusing my eyes in and out on the water droplets that clung to its surface. The sky was, like usual, cloudy, and the air was chilled with the misty remnants of that afternoon’s rain shower. In the blur behind the window droplets, kelly green painted every grassy space from sidewalk cracks to the pastoral hills beyond.
