Page 1 of Against the Current

Chapter One

June 2010 - Nantucket Island

Jackie Sutton was the first to admit she was something of a sap. Overemotional. Prone to outbursts of love. Always the first brought to tears of joy. All that was true. But why, then, today—the day of her only son’s wedding—did she feel nothing but guilt, denial, and fear?

Jackie sat in her childhood bedroom. Now that she was forty-eight years old, it was thirty years after she’d left the Sutton Estate, married her husband, Josh, and struck out on her own. Thirty years since she’d gone to sleep in this bedroom! It was often hard to believe. But her mother and father had kept little odds and ends in this room that had once been her everything—on the wall hung a photograph of herself with her high school best friends, on the opposite wall hung her high school diploma, and along the dresser sat a number of stuffed animals she’d once doted on. Remarkably, the room still smelled the same as it always had. Jackie guessed that was because her mother still used the same candles and fabric softener. Perhaps, to hermother, it hadn’t been so long since Jackie left the nest. Now that Jackie had raised two children of her own—Ryan and Robin—she understood that sensation all too well. Where had the time gone?

There was a knock on the door. Jackie would have known that knock anywhere.

“Hi, Mom.” She tried to fix her face with a smile. “Come in.”

Dana Sutton entered the bedroom. Already dressed in a smart light pink suit and a pair of short heels, Dana looked remarkable and far younger than her sixty-nine years. Jackie said a small prayer of thanks for Dana’s genes and raised her chin to look her mother in the eye. A small jolt of electricity went through her. It was hard not to remember that Dana had once burst through that very door to tell Jackie to get ready for school.

Dana’s tone was strained. “You look nice.”

“You look gorgeous, Mom.” Jackie got off the bed and swept the wrinkles from the lap of her forest-green gown.

Dana stepped deeper into the room and closed the door. Jackie’s heart dropped into her stomach. Dana put her fingertips together. Something was wrong.

“What’s going on?” Jackie asked, terrified to let the silence go on for too long. “Is it the caterers? Did they show up?”

“Everything is all well and good and moving along on time.” Dana sounded like a bored secretary. “But that isn’t why I wanted to talk to you.”

Jackie couldn’t breathe. When her mother became formidable like this, all Jackie knew was to hold on tight.

“I just don’t know why you’re letting this happen,” Dana said.

Jackie collapsed on the mattress; it bounced beneath her and raised her toes from the floorboards over and over again. Why couldn’t her mother read the room?

But then Jackie realized she was wrong about that.

Mom could read the room better than most. She didn’t care how I felt. She needed to have her opinion known.

Her opinion was the only one that ever mattered.

“Haven’t we been through this?” Jackie whispered into her hands.

Dana sniffed and checked the watch on her wrist, one that hung on a slender golden band. “We have four hours to get out of this. After that, we have to get the lawyers involved. I don’t want that any more than you do.”

Jackie couldn’t look at her mother. After a long time, she finally asked, “Did you feel this way when I married Josh?”

“You know I didn’t. Josh was a worthy partner. Josh fit seamlessly into my vision for you.”

Jackie knew we all had visions of how our children’s lives would go. But being a good parent required letting go of those visions and letting your children make it up as they went along.

But what if they made mistakes? Shouldn’t we help them?

“Please, Jackie. Listen to reason,” Dana implored. “This is impractical.”

Jackie blinked rapidly and tried to imagine what her mother wanted from her right now. It seemed likely that her mother wanted Jackie to go downstairs, accost her son, Ryan, tell him not to marry his bride, and then what? Would Ryan ever forgive her? She didn’t think so.

Suddenly, Dana sat down beside Jackie. Jackie’s nostrils filled with the intensity of Dana’s floral perfume, a perfume she’d been wearing since Jackie was a girl. It brought back memories of when Jackie felt young enough to hug her mother whenever she wanted. But there’d been a distance between them ever since she was a teenager. A physical boundary. Perhaps it was because Dana didn’t feel it was appropriate to hug older children. Jackie didn’t know. (Jackie did, however, make it a point to hug Ryan and Robin whenever she wanted to.)

“Honey,” Dana said softly, folding her hands over her thighs. “As Suttons on Nantucket, we have a reputation to uphold.”

Jackie scoffed softly. She wanted to remind her mother of her older brother, Victor, and how he’d dragged the Sutton name “through the mud” when he left his wife, Esme, after their son passed away. He left her for his secretary, for crying out loud.

But she didn’t want to force her mother to remember such a poisonous time.

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