Page 11 of Against the Current

“Daddy?” Jackie said. “What does it feel like?”

Jeremy’s eyes were cloudy and distant. He struggled to shift his gaze from Dana to Jackie, and when he did, Jackie wasn’t entirely sure he knew who she was.

“My mother is here,” Jeremy breathed.

This struck Jackie as terribly alarming. But it wasn’t till later that she realized why he’d said it. Jackie and his mother, Felicity, looked similar. Had they not been born fifty years apart, they might have looked like sisters.

The EMTs rushed through the wedding reception crowd and checked Jeremy’s vitals, then put him on the stretcher.Everything happened very quickly after that. Jackie felt more sober than she ever had in her life, but Josh demanded that he drive her and her mother to the hospital because he’d “only had half a beer.” Jackie didn’t have time to think. Suddenly, she was in the back seat of Josh’s truck, holding her mother’s hand as they raced after the ambulance.

“He’s going to be okay, Mom,” she told Dana over and over again. “You’ve taken such good care of him over the years.”

Dana kept her eyes on the rolling landscape out the window. It was still one of the more remarkably beautiful days Jackie had ever seen. But her father’s incident—a heart attack? A stroke? —made the colors look like a Technicolor nightmare. It should be raining. It should be hailing. It should match the mood of the day.

“I took care of him,” Dana muttered, tugging at the fabric of her dress. “His mother never thought I could. But I could. I always did. I still will.”

“You still will,” Jackie affirmed. “And he takes care of you, too.”

It was important to Jackie to maintain the present tense.

But thirty minutes after Jeremy Sutton was taken to the hospital, he was pronounced dead. Cause of death was a heart attack.

The moment the doctor announced what had happened, Jackie crumpled into Josh’s arms. But Dana remained upright and regal, looking at the doctor in a way that reminded Jackie of a big hunting bird, like an eagle. Dana looked at the doctor as though she planned to attack and eat him. She looked at him as though she didn’t believe him at all.

Chapter Five

January 2025 - Chicago, Illinois

Here on the nearly empty tenth floor of a building in downtown Chicago—just off The Loop—Ryan Lewis sat at his desk and tapped his pencil on a blank notepad and remembered his first day of work at the advertising agency. That had been fourteen years ago. He’d been twenty-seven years old and green and eager, with a pregnant and optimistic wife at home. The third idea he’d pitched had been made into a commercial, and the creative energy that came with that “yes” had taken him far. It had been a lucrative time—a time of business lunches and travel budgets. At the time, he’d assumed that lush life would go on forever. He’d assumed that the company’s dime would stretch and stretch.

Now, his boss, Mike, appeared in the doorway and tugged on his tie. His face was gray with worry. “You ready for this?”

What could Ryan say? No. Please. Anything but this. But Ryan didn’t have that kind of leeway. The bank hadn’t agreed to a loan. He’d written half a business plan for his own company,but with advertisement budgets so low across all websites and publications, he didn’t have a lot of faith in the industry. Clients had abandoned the advertising agency left and right.

Now, it was up to Ryan and Mike to fire another twelve employees. The phrase “eat or be eaten” had come to Ryan’s mind. He hated himself for that.

If only my mother could see me now.

The staff was well aware of the continued cutbacks. In their cubicles, they sat like panicked children, waiting to be reprimanded. Ryan called his least favorite remaining employee first, a guy named Travis who’d once insulted a client over a steak dinner. Why Travis had kept his job after that was beyond Ryan’s pay grade to understand. Mike had said something about the client “respecting Travis’s harshness.” That had reminded Ryan of his grandmother, too. She’d demanded respect, all right.

Now, Travis sat opposite Ryan’s desk, looking smaller than Ryan remembered. Ryan suddenly couldn’t remember the dynamic of Travis’s home life. Did he have children? He wore no ring. A few seconds later, Evie from HR entered, her badge swinging from her neck. Evie entering a room like that never meant anything good for anyone.

Of course, Ryan knew that Evie’s job was ending at the end of today, too. He wondered if Mike had told Evie that already. Was he really going to force Evie to help him fire everyone all day and then kill off her job as well?

Now, Travis spread his hands out in front of him. “I know what this is about, Ryan.” He flashed a strange smile, adding, “You want to bring me up into the big leagues. Right?”

Ryan wasn’t sure if this was some kind of ill-formed joke. Maybe Travis was just trying to make this more difficult on Ryan. Perhaps he resented that Ryan was his boss rather than the other way around.

Ryan and Travis had started around the same time. But Ryan had risen in the ranks, while Travis had gotten murky raises here and there.

Ryan sighed and explained what he knew: they were doing another round of cutbacks, and unfortunately, Travis was being let go. “We’ve appreciated you every step of the way,” Ryan said. “We hate to see you go. But I think you’ll find that the severance package is…”

But suddenly, Travis was on his feet and storming out. Evie hurried after him, clutching her clipboard. “I’ll give him his exit folder,” she said. “I’ll have him out in ten.”

The next three hours went about the same as Travis’s firing, save for one exception.

Ryan was forced to fire Scott—a friend and, incidentally, the father of another ten-year-old girl with autism. They’d bonded over this over what felt like fifty-plus beers, plunging into the depths of their souls to say things they couldn’t to their wives. They told each other what they’d wanted for their daughters. They’d told each other how difficult it was to fathom their daughters’ futures. They told each other how much they’d wanted to walk their daughters down their wedding aisles and dance with them after that. “I couldn’t wait to hate her boyfriends!” Scott had confessed. “I couldn’t wait to give her life advice! I couldn’t wait to move her into her first apartment! And now? Now, it’s like her life has been stolen away from her. All these experiences have been ripped away.”

When Ryan told Scott he was being let go, Ryan felt as though he was punching himself in the face. He couldn’t look at his friend at all.

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