Against the Current (The Sutton Book Club #6)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

June 2010 - Nantucket Island

J ackie 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 her mother, 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.

Jackie herself didn’t want to think of it. Her heart felt ripped in half whenever she said Joel’s name. Joel Sutton. She blinked back tears.

Jackie turned to look at Dana. From this close up, she could see the fine lines around her mother’s eyes, proof she wasn’t as young as she wanted the world to believe. Why was she so stuck in her ways?

“Mom, you know I’m not the biggest fan of Trisha either.”

Dana’s shoulders loosened.

“But Ryan loves her,” Jackie reminded her mother. “He’s loved her for years. There’s nothing we can do about that.”

She refused to do anything to make her son hate her. What if she pushed him away?

These were things she couldn’t say aloud to her mother.

Dana used a handkerchief to dot her hairline. It was clear Ryan’s approaching wedding was a jolt of anxiety Dana was unaccustomed to in her very easy and well-tended-to life. Being Suttons and living in the immaculate Sutton Estate, Jackie’s mother and father had several maids, a part-time chef, three gardeners and landscapers, and an interior designer who came over four times a year to instruct Dana on how to switch things up to keep with the times.

Jackie and Josh were well-off, but they worked hard for it—Jackie at Sutton Real Estate and Josh as a contractor. Jackie had founded Sutton Real Estate with the help of her parents’ money, which was never far from anyone’s mind. Jackie often wished to this day that she hadn’t been in a position to ask for the money. (She’d been young! Naive! So sure of herself and her position in the world!) Now, it felt like something they held over her, even without saying so.

Even now, that subject sat in the room with them. Force your son not to marry Trisha. We’ve done so much for you. Haven’t we? Don’t you owe it to us?

Of course they would never say it so bluntly.

Jackie had a hunch her father would never say something to that effect at all.

“What does Dad think?” Jackie asked.

Dana snorted. “Your father has his head in the clouds. You know that. He can’t think further than five days ahead.”

Jackie soured. She hated when her mother spoke ill of her father—that big-hearted and kind and generous man who’d taught Jackie to ride a bike and sat on the sidelines during her sporting events and given her secret cookies when Dana said no more.

But suddenly, there was another knock on the door. Jackie recognized the sound of this one, too. Before Dana could say another word, Jackie tore across the room to open it. She found her son—already in a pair of black trousers and a white undershirt—carrying three glasses of champagne. Ryan’s cheeks were red, and his eyes glinted with laughter.

“I heard a rumor that my favorite two ladies were in here!”

Jackie’s heart melted at the sight of her son. Trying to hide her disdain for her mother from Ryan, she cast Dana a look that meant Look at how happy he is .

“Ryan, you’re a darling!” Dana got up to take her flute of champagne.

“Isn’t he?” Jackie filled her lungs and raised her glass.

“I can hardly sit still,” Ryan confessed, pulling his fingers through his hair. “I’m so nervous! Three hundred guests? Did we really need to invite so many?”

Dana’s laughter sparkled. “It’s a big crowd, isn’t it?” She cast Jackie a look that Jackie read as we need to end this immediately before everyone arrives . Don’t embarrass us .

Jackie put her hand on Ryan’s shoulder and smiled. “Tell us. How do you feel?”

Ryan laughed again. He looked joyous and youthful. It was hard to believe he was twenty-five years old.

“I feel like this is the happiest day of my life?” Ryan said.

“Why the question mark?” Dana asked. She was digging for information she wouldn’t find.

“Well, it hasn’t happened yet,” Ryan said. “It’s all still happening. I want to soak up every minute. I don’t want to forget.”

Jackie smiled wider. Ryan had always been closer to her—sappier and bigger hearted. Maybe that was why he’d fallen for Trisha.

“I just keep thinking about everything that will happen later,” Ryan said. “You know, what does her dress look like? What will she say in her vows? What if she bails at the last minute?”

Dana and Jackie laughed nervously.

“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 thing Jackie 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.