Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
October 2010
W ith renewed love and a sense of peace (despite the stolen car in the line of trees), Ryan and Trisha left “the Reed Estate” and headed back to their apartment. Rhonda chased them as they drove off, hollering, “Wait, Trisha! Wait a second, honey!” She banged her wooden spoon on the porch swing in frustration. The fear in her eyes made Ryan think she knew about the car.
When he suggested this to Trisha, Trisha said, “She knows, all right. There’s no way she doesn’t. Maybe she even ordered my brothers to do it herself.”
“To protect you,” Ryan said.
“To get back at your family,” Trisha affirmed. “And yeah, sure. Protect me. Whatever that means.”
Ryan dropped his head against the headrest and watched the gorgeous landscape stream past his window. The car smelled of Trisha again, and he felt as though he was floating. He’d missed her.
He said, “I can’t believe how much I missed you.”
Trisha punched him in the arm. “You better have missed me.”
“Ow!”
“Don’t be a wimp, Lewis,” she said.
“Your last name is Lewis, too.”
“At least it isn’t Sutton,” Trisha scoffed.
He was beginning to understand why that was so.
Back at the apartment, Trisha and Ryan cozied up in bed for the rest of the day, avoiding the many phone calls from both sides of their family. When Ryan got up to order a pizza, he read over his mother’s and grandmother’s frantic text messages, which alternated between demanding where he had gone and reminding him that there were so many fish in the sea, he could start over. He could be free from “this pain.” Ryan didn’t read the messages to Trisha, but it was as though she could read his mind.
“They hate me, huh?”
Ryan sighed and curled up next to her in bed and kissed the back of her head. He couldn’t believe the torment of the previous week. They’d lost the baby, and they’d nearly lost each other.
“Ryan?” Trisha whispered through the darkness.
“Hmm?”
“You really didn’t know the car was taken?”
Ryan shook his head, shifting the pillows and sheets.
“Your grandmother didn’t notice?” Trisha asked.
“Not yet, I guess. My grandfather’s cars are kept in a garage a little ways away from the house. I doubt she goes in there very often.”
The doorbell rang. Ryan got up to pay the pizza deliveryman and open the box on the bed. Trisha sat up and crossed her legs beneath her and took a cheesy bite. Her lips glistened, and Ryan felt consumed with love.
Ryan said, “I don’t want your brothers to go to prison for this.”
Trisha closed her eyes. “Me neither.”
“I don’t want a big family dispute, either,” Ryan said quietly. He could already picture it: Grandma Dana versus the Reeds in the battle of the stolen car; court dates and lawyers; the Reeds racking up enormous legal debts they would never be able to pay back; Grandma Dana’s attitude toward Trisha getting worse and worse.
Ryan bowed his head. “I don’t know what to do.”
Trisha touched his shoulder gently. She didn’t say anything.
“I’ll go over there tomorrow and see if anybody knows anything,” Ryan suggested. “But if Grandma hasn’t noticed yet, maybe she never will.”
What troubled Ryan was that somebody on the Sutton Estate must have noticed. His grandfather had hired people to look after his cars and give tune-ups every now and then. Why hadn’t one of those workers said anything about the missing car?
Were they working with the Reeds?
For the time being, Ryan shoved the topic out of his mind and returned to the present—a beautiful evening of celebration and reunion. But the following evening, he drove over to the Sutton Estate to investigate. He felt like a sleuth. By chance, his mother and father had stopped by to say hello to Grandma Dana, and they were on the back porch, watching the waves roll onto shore and drinking cocktails that glinted with the orange light of the dying sun. Grandma Dana brightened when she saw him.
“The prodigal son returns!” she said, getting up to give him a hug. She put her hands on his shoulders and said, “Tell me it’s over. Tell me you finally finished it.”
Ryan was filled with revulsion. Over and over again, his grandmother reminded him of how little she respected him, his belief systems, and his heart. Did that mean he would eventually have to turn his back on her forever? Did it mean he had to close this door?
“Mom,” Jackie warned, “let’s let Ryan sit down and tell us what happened.”
Ryan’s father looked nervous. Ryan knew for a fact that Josh was always on edge around Grandma Dana. Dana liked Josh, but she was always about two seconds away from deciding she hated anyone and throwing them under the bus. Josh wasn’t family. Not really.
When Grandma Dana prodded him about where he was staying, Ryan just told her, “In my apartment.”
“He pays rent,” Jackie reminded Dana with a shrug. “It makes sense that he wants to go back.”
They didn’t know Trisha was back, but what they didn’t know couldn’t hurt them.
Ryan had to twist the conversation. He had to find a way to his grandfather’s vehicles. It took him a little while to figure it out. But eventually, when the subject of his grandfather’s old sports coat and suit jacket came up, Ryan interjected to say, “I’d really love to have more things that belonged to him.” This wasn’t a lie. The loss of his grandfather was an ever-present wound.
Grandma Dana began to list the rest of the items of clothing Grandpa had upstairs—all of which, she reminded Ryan, she wanted him to try on. “You’ll be dating again soon. I imagine you’ll want some of his finer things.”
“The kids don’t dress up anymore for dates,” Jackie said.
“We didn’t much when we were dating, either,” Josh reminded her with a laugh.
Dana raised her shoulders as though the inappropriate ways in which kids today behaved were beyond her. “Well, take whatever you want. You’re growing up. You’ll be a family man someday when you finally settle down.”
Ryan’s hands were in fists on his thighs. He loosened them out and tried not to glare.
“What about bigger stuff?” Ryan asked. “Grandpa collected so many things. The boats? What are you going to do with them?”
“Oh, Ryan. You know you can take those things out on the water if you want to,” Dana said. “I have no use for going out to sea. I never really did.”
“You used to go sailing with Dad all the time,” Jackie reminded her.
“Until I put a stop to it,” Dana said.
Josh got up to make fresh cocktails, seeming eager to get away from the snippy nature of their conversation. Ryan cupped his hands. The car! How do I talk about it without bringing attention to it? He didn’t know. His head throbbed.
“I’m going out to look at them,” Ryan said, standing up and zipping his jacket to his chin.
“You want company?” Jackie asked.
“Nah. I’ll be fine.”
Ryan shot out from the porch and headed around the side of the boathouse, looking through the windows to see his grandfather’s old boats, stacked up and unused and growing dusty. Ryan’s heart felt bruised. He could still hear his grandfather’s voice, instructing him how to tie up a rope and steady the sails. From the side of the boathouse, he could see his grandmother, father, and mother stationed around the table with another round of cocktails. They weren’t looking at him. Very soon, he ducked the opposite way and headed toward the garage where his grandfather kept his sports cars. But when he reached the garage itself, it was locked, and he didn’t have the key nor the fob to open the garage door. Stumped, he stood by the door with his hands in his pockets, hoping for a sign. Very soon, one of the Sutton’s maids swept out of the side door of the main house, carrying three buckets awkwardly. She stopped in the center of the driveway and put them down, wiping sweat from her brow. Ryan waved a hand, and she smiled at him.
“Hello, Mr. Sutton,” she said, which was how she referred to all the men who came by the Sutton Estate, even Ryan’s father, Josh Lewis. “How are you today?”
“Doing just fine, thanks.” Ryan cleared his throat. “I think I might have left something in one of my grandfather’s old cars. Do you happen to know where the key to get into the garage might be?”
The maid hunted through her pockets to retrieve a key ring that she used to open the side entrance of the garage. “How long do you need?” she asked nervously. “I have to lock it up again.”
“Just five minutes,” he assured her.
“I have to dump the buckets,” she explained. “I’ll come back in five.”
Ryan thanked her and entered the oil-stinking garage, turning on the lights as he went. There was an empty spot where the red Cadillac had been, but otherwise, the garage was exactly as his grandfather had left it. Ryan wasn’t sure what he’d expected. Proof of a break-in? Probably the only person who ever came in here was the maid, and it wasn’t her business to ask if they’d sold or moved around some of the cars.
Would the car thief slip through Dana Sutton’s fingers unnoticed?
Ryan left the garage just as the maid returned to lock it up. “Did you find what you were looking for?” she asked.
“I didn’t,” Ryan said sadly. “But thanks for your help.”
He strolled back to the porch to politely decline his cocktail and tell his grandmother he’d be on his way. He had no interest in hanging around the Sutton Estate—not as long as they refused to accept him and his wife. Trisha and Ryan had a life to plan. Maybe that life would have nothing to do with the Suttons. Perhaps they’d be free.
When Ryan got home that night, Trisha threw her arms around him and kissed him. “Did they know about the car?”
“They don’t know anything,” Ryan said. “Maybe my grandmother will figure it out in three to five years. By then, it’ll be too late.”
Trisha wrung her hands. “I wish I could say I was surprised my family did this. But they’ve stolen all sorts of stuff over the years. Once, my brother tried to rob a bank in Delaware.”
Ryan’s heart seized. “You never told me that.”
“He didn’t manage to get any money!” Trisha said, trying not to smile. “He scared a ton of people and ran away when the cops showed up.”
Ryan and Trisha cracked beers and sat on the balcony of their apartment and talked about what they might do next. Ryan took one of Trisha’s feet in his hands and kneaded the knots that had accrued there—from stress? From the horror of the miscarriage? For the first time, they reckoned with the fact that nothing was keeping them on Nantucket Island. Ryan was in marketing and advertising, and those jobs were elsewhere with far higher salary opportunities. Trisha still wasn’t sure where she wanted her career to go. She was good at all kinds of things, but she’d never gone to college, and she was newly fixated on being a mother.
“Where should we go, my love?” Ryan asked softly, willing Trisha to name the next era. “Detroit?”
Trisha giggled and pressed her lips together, thinking. “California?”
“Hawaii,” Ryan said.
“Maine,” Trisha said.
With each state or city they said aloud, a new image flashed up in Ryan’s mind: Trisha and Ryan on a ski slope; Trisha and Ryan in a log cabin; Trisha and Ryan at the end of the world, together.
Trisha finally squeezed his hand. “Why don’t you look for jobs and see what’s out there?”
So that was what Ryan did.
Ryan spent the next three weeks looking. He applied for jobs in Manhattan, Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco, and Boston. He applied far and wide. He got three interviews, two in Chicago and one in Seattle, and performed well over the phone for each. By December, he had an in-person interview for a large advertising firm in Chicago.
By Christmas Eve, he had a job offer.
On Christmas Day, Ryan went to the Sutton Estate to celebrate the holidays and announce his departure. Trisha didn’t go with him. He couldn’t blame her. They were on a different path now. She didn’t need to take any more of their abuse. She didn’t have to sit in rooms with them and make false conversation and compliment their nice things.
Trisha spent the day at the Reed Estate—telling them of her plans to leave. She told Ryan later that she had no idea what happened to the car. She wasn’t going to bring it up. It felt too ridiculous.
When Ryan announced his plans, Grandma Dana had what Ryan thought was a pretend panic attack. “I can’t believe you’d do this to me,” she said before disappearing upstairs to cry loudly.
Jackie hugged Ryan for a long time. Her eyes were red. Maybe because of anger, perhaps because of sorrow, or maybe because of an emotion Ryan couldn’t fathom yet because he wasn’t a father, Jackie said, “I didn’t raise you to be so selfish.”
The statement took Ryan totally off guard. He gaped at his mother, then glanced at his father, searching Josh’s face for some sign that he’d heard what Jackie had said. Nobody could look Ryan in the eye. He departed, having eaten nothing and opened none of his presents. Back at home, he found Trisha in a heap, took her hands in his, and said, “That’s over with. Let’s start again.”
It was all they could do.
In Chicago, they got new phone numbers. They stayed off social media. They didn’t pass on their home address.
This was how they launched brand-new identities for themselves.
This was how they got rid of the Suttons.
And in early 2011, Trisha was miraculously pregnant again. She gave birth to Gavin on January 2, 2012. Ryan wrote it was the happiest day of his life on a notepad he kept for advertising ideas. And it was. But his life wasn’t over yet. So much darkness—and light—awaited them. He hoped he’d be ready for anything when it came.
What he didn’t want to admit, not even to himself, was how much he missed Nantucket and his family. He never mentioned this to Trisha. It was as though Nantucket had been wiped from the face of the planet.