Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
June 2010 - Nantucket Island
F rom where she stood in her childhood bedroom, Jackie had the sensation she could see and understand everything. Out the back window was the wide stretch of frothing blue water that made up the Nantucket Sound, the long glistening strand of the beach, the lawn where her children once played and screamed and made snow angels, and the back patio where she’d burned her shoulders tanning as a teenager. But through another window, the smaller one on the side, she could see more still. Her only son and his new wife were embracing and crying like the world was on the brink of collapse. To Jackie, the world had already ended. Her father was dead. What were they smiling about?
It was hard not to think of Trisha as the villain who had brought about the downfall of the Sutton Family—only four days after the wedding.
If only they hadn’t gotten married. If only Dad hadn’t been dressed in a suit and overexerting himself. If only he hadn’t drunk champagne.
Jackie was dressed in a simple black dress. It was brand new and stiff and a little too large, perhaps because she’d been on such a strict diet before the wedding and had promptly stopped eating after her father’s heart attack. There she stood, glaring down at her son, daring him to look up at her and see. But no. He was hugging and kissing Trisha again. They were talking about something with more enthusiasm than Jackie had ever seen. Didn’t Ryan remember that they’d just buried his grandfather?
Jackie hated how black her heart felt.
Suddenly, there was a knock on the door. “Honey? Are you in here?”
Josh poked his head inside and gave her a half smile that evoked his relief at having found her. “There you are. I wondered what happened.”
Jackie turned to block the small window. She didn’t want Josh to know she’d been spying on Ryan. “I just needed some space.”
Josh remained in the doorway, seeming uncertain if that meant he wasn’t wanted. But the look on his face melted Jackie’s heart just a tad. Josh noticed and stepped inside, closing the door behind him. He sat on the edge of her bed. “Come over here.”
Jackie joined him. Together, they lay on her childhood bed, listening to the murmur of hundreds down below. Everybody had a wonderful story to share about Jackie’s father. Jackie had had enough. She wanted to grieve in peace.
“Mom is loving this,” Jackie muttered.
“She’s grieving,” Josh reminded her. “Everybody does it in their own way.”
“She loves all the attention,” Jackie said darkly.
Josh wrapped his hand around the back of her head and kissed her cheek. Jackie knew she was being outrageous and acting like a child. But she didn’t know how to react to this properly. She could make sandwiches. She could take showers. She could get places on time (unlike Trisha). But she couldn’t feel positive about any of it.
“I think it’s helping your mother to have so many friends and family around,” Josh said quietly.
Jackie groaned. Why did he have to be so good-hearted all the time?
“I know you’re right.” Jackie propped her head up with her elbow and studied Josh’s features. His eyebrows were thicker and curlier than she remembered. She wondered when that had changed. How many hundreds of times a day did she look at his face? Still, there were things to learn about it.
“I love you, you know.” She sounded defiant and broken at the same time.
“I love you more than anything and anyone,” he said. “We’re going to get through this.” He pressed his lips together, pondering something, then added, “And we’re going to do everything in our power to make sure Ryan’s wife feels all right with us.”
The aura of dominance in Josh’s words surprised Jackie.
Jackie wanted to protest. She wanted to say that she didn’t have time for that girl right now.
But she knew Josh was right.
He went on before he dropped the subject altogether. “I love your mother dearly. But she’s given that girl nothing but misery. If we love Ryan, we have to step in.”
Jackie steeled herself. She had to help.
“I just hope too much damage hasn’t already been done,” Josh added.
A few minutes later, Jackie managed to pick herself up and return to the wake, where she was accosted by a great-aunt who wanted to talk her ear off about her stock portfolio and her eighteen-year-old tabby cat. Jackie scanned the crowd, pretending to listen, looking for Ryan and Trisha. Maybe they were hiding out somewhere, avoiding the Suttons. The look of awe on their faces had reminded her of something she couldn’t quite name. Was it a joy she could no longer fathom?
As the wake cleared out, Jackie’s mother cornered her in the kitchen. She held a glass of white wine and spoke eloquently, like the queen of England minus the accent.
“I think I’ve made my stance known to Ryan,” she said.
Jackie snorted. Maybe she’d had one too many glasses of wine.
“Do you have something to say, Jacqueline?”
“Ryan knows your stance, Mom. You aren’t vague.”
Dana’s eyes glinted murderously. “Perhaps I’d better mention to him that the will is now completely in my name. His grandfather’s generosity died along with him. Everything is up to me now.”
Jackie lost her breath. Would her mother really remove Ryan from the Sutton will? Would she pull the rug out from under his life like that?
Would she do that to Jackie and Josh, too?
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…”
“We know who you are.” The brother came forward and wiped his hands on his jeans. “Mom? We got visitors.”
Try as Jackie might, she’d never been able to figure out where the Reeds had gotten their accent from. Trisha sounded like an East Coaster, but the brother, Rhonda, Tommy, and a few of the others sounded straight from Appalachia. To Jackie, the accent was endearing but confusing. Sometimes she wondered if they played it up.
Rhonda burst from the front door. She wore an apron covered in dried sauce, and she looked frantic and free in a way Jackie was sure Jackie herself never had. Suddenly, Rhonda’s arms were around Jackie, and she was jumping up and down.
“I can’t believe it! Can you?” she cried. “I just can’t believe it!”
Jackie’s heart felt crooked. She tried to get Josh’s attention, but he was walking over to the grandfather to shake his hand. It was easy for Josh to accept everyone. It was easy for him to move through the world with forgiveness and love.
“When she told me, I started jumping for joy,” Rhonda said. “And I haven’t been able to stop!”
Finally, Jackie sputtered, “What do you mean? What did she tell you?”
Rhonda stopped jumping but continued to grin madly at Jackie. Jackie had a prickly sensation on the back of her neck. She felt like someone was watching her.
“I thought that’s why you came over here!” Rhonda cried. “To celebrate.”
“I can’t find them,” Jackie said, feeling flustered.
Rhonda twisted around and jogged over to Josh to hug him, too.
Jackie repeated herself. “I really don’t know where they’ve gone.”
But Rhonda was already back inside, rustling around. Josh was conversing with the grandfather, but Jackie couldn’t understand anything he said. Rhonda reappeared with glasses and a bottle of what looked to be homemade wine. Jackie winced and wondered how she could get out of drinking it.
“That’s the thing about being grandparents together,” Rhonda said, pressing a glass into Jackie’s hand. “We have to learn to celebrate together. We have to learn to find the beauty in every little thing! That’s part of what it means to be a grandparent. Don’t you think?”
Jackie gaped at Rhonda as the truth unfolded over her. In her stomach, dread and joy mixed into a boiling soup.
Josh was the first to speak. “Wait a minute!” His eyes were enormous. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
Rhonda was euphoric. “The kids are pregnant!” After that, she filled her own glass to the brim and tossed it back.
It took a little while to get all the information out of Rhonda—at least, everything that Rhonda knew for sure. Trisha had learned she was pregnant almost immediately after the wedding. She’d told Ryan about the pregnancy on the day of his grandfather’s funeral. After that, Ryan had told Trisha to quit her job, and he’d taken her on a little road trip along the coast.
“It’s really romantic, isn’t it?” Rhonda suggested with stars in her eyes.
Jackie’s heart thudded. Although she was overjoyed for Trisha and Ryan, she’d suddenly faced the horrible consequences of the Sutton family’s actions.
Ryan and Trisha were more than happy to turn their backs on them.
Jackie had to find a way to repair what had broken. She couldn’t live her life without her grandbaby. She had too much love to give.