Page 3 of Against the Current

“She won’t,” Jackie assured him.

Dana coughed.

From downstairs came the voice of Jackie’s daughter, Robin. “Does anyone want lunch?”

Jackie practically raced downstairs to get away from her mother. Ryan and Dana were hot on her heels, ready to pounce on the sandwiches Robin had laid out on the dining room table. “I know I forgot to eat on my wedding day,” Robin said. “I didn’t want my little brother to do the same.”

“I don’t think I could ever forget to eat,” Ryan joked, grabbing a turkey on rye and giving his sister a side hug.

Dana’s cheek twitched as though she didn’t approve of the close contact or the joy emanating from Robin and Ryan. Jackie wanted to scream at her mother to loosen up.

But not long after that, it was off to the races. The wedding planner and her team of frantic and organized workers carrying clipboards and speaking into little microphones attached to their heads took over the Sutton Estate like an army of ants. Ryan’s groomsmen arrived, and more champagne was opened. Robin chased Ryan to remind him not to go “overboard” when it came to pre-wedding drinking. “Don’t make Trisha cry today!”

Ryan rolled his eyes as his groomsmen cried out, “Don’t make Trisha cry, Ryan! Come on!” They popped another bottle of champagne.

“I’ll switch to water, Rob,” Ryan said, disappearing upstairs with the guys.

Twice more that afternoon, Dana tried to accost Jackie and get her to do “what was right.” But Jackie told her to behave herself.

“We’re an hour away from I do,” Jackie hissed. “It’s too late, Mom. It’s Ryan and Trisha now. Get on board.”

Later, when Ryan walked his mother down the aisle, Jackie’s heart thundered with regret. All she’d done all day was stand up for her son and what he wanted. All she’d done was stand up for Trisha. But it was true what Dana said. Trisha’s family was nothing like the Sutton Family. There they sat up front on the bride’s side, some of them in jeans and T-shirts, some of them with greasy hair. One of them was even smoking a cigarette when she walked by! Jackie didn’t want to be too judgmental about the way people lived their lives; she didn’t want to belittle anyone’s quest on planet Earth. But for many years Trisha had been raised in a literal trailer park. Was that the kind of thingJackie could expect for Ryan and Trisha’s children? What if the bad luck that had befallen Trisha’s family followed the Suttons?

What if they lost everything?

What-ifs rang through Jackie’s head all through the ceremony.

But when Trisha and Ryan stood with their hands clasped and said their vows, there wasn’t a dry eye among the three hundred guests. Jackie’s heart swelled as she listened to her son tell this woman he would love and protect her all the days of his life. Once, she glanced at her mother in the row behind her, searching her face for some sign of how she really felt. But Dana was a brilliant actress.

Who knows?Jackie thought. Maybe everything would work out perfectly between Ryan and Trisha. Perhaps they would show the Sutton clan and the rest of Nantucket Island what their happiness was all about.

Maybe my mother was wrong.

Chapter Two

January 2025 - Chicago, Illinois

It was one of those miserable winter days that didn’t know whether to rain or snow. While waiting in the Jeep in the parking lot, Ryan toyed with the heating, blasting it until sweat beaded on the back of his neck, then turned it off until he froze. How long had he been here? Ten minutes? Twenty? He’d been able to duck out of the office early because there was nothing to do—reason number one he found himself here at the bank in the first place—but Trisha wasn’t here yet. Was she trying to make him crazy? Hadn’t they agreed to get here early to go over what they wanted to say?

Suddenly, Trisha’s secondhand Chevy appeared and parked in a space toward the back of the lot. Ryan muttered under his breath, “Why are you parking so far away from me?” But he steeled himself and pulled his scarf tight and got out, waving at her as she approached. Try as he might, he couldn't fix a smile on his face. But Trisha was good at that. Her smile was the color of summertime strawberries. She was slender and pretty andstill dressed very well although they didn’t have any money, not enough for new clothes and hardly anything for makeup. How did she manage? Had she saved things from when they’d had more? Or was she using money without telling him about it? Should he be checking receipts?

These weren’t questions Ryan wanted to busy either of them with right now.

These weren’t questions he’d ever envisioned asking his wife.

His heart broke over and over again.

“Hi,” Ryan said as though this were a typical day in the history of their marriage.

“Hey, stranger.” Trisha breezed past him. “Let’s get out of the rain. It’s hideous.”

Feeling like a fool, Ryan hurried behind his wife and into the bank. Once there, they waited in the foyer without speaking. They were forty-one and thirty-seven years old and on the brink of disaster. Ryan eyed the bank tellers, wondering which of them would meet with the married couple today. Which of them would deliver the good news they so needed? Ryan tried to project an aura of goodwill; he tried to look like a solid and happy and good-spirited family man. Wasn’t he all of those things? Or hadn’t he very recently been all of those things?

Money was slippery. Especially when it came to family life. Especially when it came to the failing economy and surprise diagnoses and feeling so very alone.

Sometimes he considered what his life might have been like if he hadn’t married Trisha and had children. Sometimes he pictured himself alone on a golden beach, sipping mai tais and working a job that he could have anywhere, a job of emails and video calls, a job he could do with his toes in the sand and the sun on his face.

It wasn’t that he didn’t love them. Trisha, Gavin, Willa, and Rudy were his world. He’d do anything for them.

---