Page 25 of Against the Current

It wasn’t that Jackie was fully relying on whatever her mother decided to leave for her when she passed. With her entire heart and soul, Jackie hoped her mother would live another thirty years! All the way to one hundred! But then again, the promise of that money added a level of comfort and ease to Jackie and Josh’s current life. It helped her sleep at night.

Money was a terrible thing. It did heinous things to people. It turned them into monsters.

Jackie touched her mother’s shoulder. “We’ve had a horrible week, Mom. One of the worst. Why don’t we ask everyone to leave? We can have some tea and maybe watch a film?”

But Dana looked resolute. She looked as though she never needed sleep again. As though vitriol and vitriol alone would keep her alive and rested.

“He needs to want more for his life than that,” Dana said between her teeth. “Mark my words. He’ll regret it.”

The following week, Jackie got a call from Josh. She was up on a stepladder, cleaning the hard-to-reach windows over the front door of the house she was meant to sell, but she’d tucked her cell phone in her back jeans pocket and answered from up there, teetering slightly as she said, “Hey, stranger!” She hadn’t seen Josh since she’d left the house that morning and felt an ache to see him again. Ever since her father’s death, she’d needed Josh more than ever.

“Hey, honey.” Josh’s voice sounded strained. “Have you heard from Ryan lately?”

Immediately, Jackie’s heart slammed to a stop. In her mind, she counted back the days since she’d last heard from Ryan and realized she hadn’t talked to him since the wake. How was that possible? She’d been so distracted.

“I guess not,” she said, coming down the ladder slowly. She was shaking, and the ladder rattled beneath her.

“I was driving by his place and called him,” Josh explained. “When he didn’t answer, I knocked on the door. Nobody was home. Then I swung by the restaurant where Trisha works, and they told me Trisha quit.”

Jackie’s mouth went dry. “Oh no. Oh no.”

“You’re at the house in Siasconset?”

“Yes.”

“I’m on my way.”

Later, Josh found Jackie on the dock, wrapped in a ball, watching the water, and calling Ryan over and over again. His phone rang exactly four times before going to voicemail. Heavy with devastation, she’d decided to expect the worst. They’d obviously run off. They’d had enough.

Could she blame them?

Josh sat down beside her and wrapped his arms around her.

“I don’t know why he would leave without telling us,” Jackie warbled. “Is this really Ryan we’re talking about? Ryan would never do that!”

Josh didn’t say it, but Jackie could read his mind.His life is different. He’s a married man. Things have changed.

Jackie wanted to scream.

But then, she thought of something. “We have to talk to the Reeds.”

Josh’s eyes widened.

“What? You don’t think I’m capable?”

“It’s not that,” Josh said. “It’s just, I never thought I’d hear you say that.”

Jackie snapped to her feet and pounded down the dock. Josh was hot on her heels, calling out, “Let me drive, at least!”

Jackie let him. Josh drove slower than she would have, winding through backroads until they came upon the little crooked shacks located at the edge of a sprawling forest. There was a sense of foreboding over here, as though the shadows ran longer than they did elsewhere on the island, and all the toys and equipment strewn across the property looked rusty and haunted. A man Jackie knew was Trisha’s grandfather sat in a rocking chair and smoked an old-fashioned pipe, glaring at them as they approached. The rocking chair squeaked horribly.

Jackie and Josh had never come out here. The one time they’d met Rhonda and Tommy before the wedding, they’d met at a restaurant downtown, and Josh and Jackie had paid for everything. But everyone in Nantucket knew where the Reeds lived. Everyone knew not to go too far down that particular road.

Was Ryan living out here now? Had he decided to abandon the Suttons and become a full Reed? Jackie shuddered.

As Jackie and Josh approached, one of Trisha’s older brothers came out the side door and put his hands on his hips. He wore dirty jeans and no shirt and looked muscular and mean from his days of working odd physical jobs. Jackie remembered Trisha saying that one of her brothers (of which there were four) worked at the Nantucket Airport, rolling big trailers of luggage around. Was it this one? Another had worked as a gravedigger for a while. Abstractly, Jackie wondered who had dug her father’s grave. Was it one of the Reeds?

“Hi.” Jackie tried out her voice. “Um. We’re…”

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