The noise was sudden and loud, a metallic thud, followed by the screech of breaks and a second dull thump, then silence followed by shouts and excited cries. I jumped up from the meeting table and ran outside the door of our office, which exited onto the junction just below the Catholic church in Castlebar. While I sprinted down Tucker St to my jeep, my brain was inexplicably sending me images of my father and sister standing shocked in the road. I came to a small car, with the driver sobbing in gasps, wedged sideways in the street. She had failed to yield to the right-of-way at the junction and was struck by an oncoming vehicle which sent her own car, pummelling down the narrow street, miraculously missing all the parked cars, except mine and which my girlfriend was sitting in. Once checking everyone was ok, I then turned to look up to the other car and recognised it immediately as my father’s. Both he and my sister, who he had been taking to the hospital for a check-up, were shaken but okay. Later, the attending Garda (police officer) made several attempts to understand how the vehicles owned by me and my father were the only ones damaged by the errant car — especially as neither of us knew the other was in Castlebar that day. ‘It’s too much of a coincidence’ he repeated ‘what are the chances, hah?’, perhaps thinking some sort of elaborate insurance fraud on our part. But it wasn’t. Coincidences do happen even, even as our brains ascribe meaning to otherwise random events, which seem to be unavoidably connected.