Page 29 of Against the Current

Jackie laughed. “It’s wet enough. It’s good for packing. Wait, let me get my gloves. I’ll help.”

Jackie sped back to her car, searched the back seat for her gloves, and returned to find her grandchildren hunkered down, preparing the base of a snowman. They still hadn’t asked who she was. Did they already know? Jackie didn’t want to frighten them. She glanced at the front door, where she saw flashing shadows and what looked to be Josh, pulling on his coat and talking exuberantly. Very soon after, Josh and a man Jackie recognized as forty-one-year-old Ryan appeared on the front porch. Jackie leaped into the air.

“What happened?” Josh cried as they approached.

“What?” Jackie couldn’t for the life of her understand what he meant.

Josh pointed at the car in the ditch. Jackie cackled and waved her hand. Embarrassment was the furthest thing from her mind now that she was piling snow upon a snowman’s lower body and listening to her grandchildren’s laughter.

“I made a bad turn.” Jackie shrugged. “That’s all.”

“She’s not bleeding!” Willa called.

“That’s a relief.” Ryan stopped a few feet away from the snowman-building site and looked at Jackie.

Ryan’s eyes were the same as they’d always been: curious, introspective, eager. The sight of them ripped Jackie back through time. It reminded her of being twentysomething again, guiding her toddler through a big and beautiful world.

Jackie tore through the snow to throw her arms around her son. Her heart pumped so loudly that the sound of it filled her ears. Tears froze on her cheeks. Ryan hugged her back with his head on her shoulder. They were wordless.

“Dad?” Rudy interrupted them.

Ryan and Jackie broke their hug and turned around to look at Ryan’s youngest.

“What is it, buddy?” Ryan asked.

“Is that Grandma?” Rudy asked.

Jackie, Ryan, and Josh laughed gently.

“Yes,” Ryan affirmed. “This is your grandmother. My mom.”

The word mom rang in the air like the most wonderful bell.

For a moment, Rudy, Willa, and Gavin assessed Jackie with fresh eyes. When they were satisfied, they returned their attention to their snowman, working seamlessly. Jackie noticed that when Willa grew nervous or anxious, her brothers had an easy way with her, guiding her back to the process at hand.

“I thought they needed me,” Jackie said of the snowman construction, “but I think they have it handled.”

“They have a system,” Ryan affirmed.

It was difficult for Jackie to imagine what winters were like in Chicago. But she guessed that being so close to Lake Michigan probably lent for wicked white winters and thick walls of snow.

A shiver went down Jackie’s spine. A part of her longed to remain in the dark white forever. Another part of her yearned for a mug of hot cocoa by the fire with her son.

She twisted to look up at him. “I’m sorry. We weren’t supposed to come till tomorrow.”

Ryan waved his hand. “Running into Dad put things in perspective.”

Meaning what?Jackie wondered. Meaning how much he missed us?

“It was a long trip,” Ryan affirmed, maybe because he didn’t know what else to say.

The kids finished the body of the snowman and put a tiny head on it. Jackie helped them fit the face with two spare buttons she kept in her coat pocket and a couple of sticks for a mouth and a nose. The expression was vaguely grim, but it was all they could manage with limited time. It was getting late. It was getting cold.

As they entered the Sutton Estate, the six of them stomped their boots of snow and took off all their layers, throwing them on a rack to dry, just as they always had when Jackie was a girl. Her heart was heavy with nostalgia.

“I’ll make cocoa,” she announced to her grandchildren, grateful to take care of them.

“Yes!” Rudy cried.

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