Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
T hree months was all Josh, Jackie, Ryan, and Trisha needed to get the Sutton Bed-and-Breakfast into shipshape for the first guests. Three months meant a soft opening on June 23rd. But those months weren’t without their difficulties. Because they needed capital to buy antiques and redecorate the rooms and upgrade the kitchen, Jackie and Josh got a loan from the bank—a loan that required a cosign by Victor Sutton and reminded Ryan and Trisha of that horrible day back in Chicago when they hadn’t had more than a few pennies to rub together. When the bank loan came through, the four of them cooked a feast in the Sutton Estate kitchen and made list after list of what needed to be bought and repaired and painted. Trisha poured glass of wine after glass of wine, and Ryan sat back, overjoyed to see Trisha and Jackie laughing together for the first time.
Ryan kept selling houses, praying for the day they could close up the real estate practice and throw all their time and energy into the Sutton Bed-and-Breakfast. Because his mother was now out of real estate completely, whatever mole had passed along Sutton Real Estate information to Sarah Strong no longer had anything to go on.
The line was cut. Sarah Strong would be fine on her own. Revenge was no longer on the table.
According to Trisha, Sarah Strong was no longer welcome at Reed family dinners. “Mom told her to stop,” Trisha explained. “She told her to stop for the sake of Willa, Rudy, and Gavin. But she doesn’t want to. She wants to get back at anyone who hurt our family. I don’t understand it. I don’t understand why she won’t let go.”
“Not everyone can,” Ryan admitted, thinking of his grandmother.
Gavin, Rudy, and Willa were overwhelmed with excitement about the refurbishment of the Sutton Bed-and-Breakfast. The plan was for the five of them to move into the back of the mansion and keep the front for guests. Rudy, who was fast becoming the most social of all their children, couldn’t wait to meet people from all over the world. He suggested buying a bunch of games to put in the living room so that guests could interact with each other. Ryan decided to put a bar in the living room so guests could buy hot cocoa or soft drinks or wine while they relaxed and socialized.
Of course, Ryan and Trisha were nervous about how Willa would handle so many intruders. But in April, Willa’s new doctor prescribed a medication that seemed to calm her considerably. She stopped having to leave school as often. She made another friend.
One evening, Willa asked to call her friend back in Chicago, her only autistic friend and the daughter of Ryan’s friend Scott. From the next room, Ryan and Trisha listened for a few minutes, their hearts bursting as Willa told her friend about how much she liked her new school and new friends. “You will have to come visit,” she said.
After their conversation, Willa passed the phone to Ryan because Scott wanted to talk. It was the man Ryan had been forced to fire back in January. The man who’d shown Ryan just how desperately he’d wanted to get out of that job in advertising.
To Ryan, the day he’d fired Scott and subsequently quit himself felt like a thousand years ago.
“Hey, man,” Ryan said, hurrying into his office and closing the door behind him.
“Ryan!” Scott sounded happier than he had in years. “Man, she’s so happy to talk to Willa. We have to get the girls on the phone together more often.”
“Willa was giggling the whole time,” Ryan said. “Made my heart happy.”
“Mine too.” Scott sounded like he was grinning into the phone. “I wanted to thank you.”
Ryan was caught off guard. “For what?”
“For firing me,” Scott said. “Happiest day of my life.”
Ryan cackled and sat in his swivel chair. From where he sat, he could smell fresh paint and freshly cut wood from their hard work on the bed-and-breakfast. They were getting somewhere.
“It was a pretty good day, in retrospect,” Ryan admitted. “I needed to get out of there somehow. I was miserable.”
“So was I.”
“What are you up to now?” Ryan asked.
Scott explained that he was starting his own company—an illustration business that echoed his long-lost love of art. “I already have three clients,” he said, “and they really like what I’ve done for them. I have hope for the first time in years. I couldn’t have imagined that back in January.”
Ryan agreed about that. He explained his situation—the bed-and-breakfast, his and Trisha’s decision to forgive their families and move on.
“Wow, man. We have done some real growing up this year,” Scott said with a laugh.
“I guess it was about time,” Ryan said. “It won’t be long till our kids are adults, too.”
Of course, Ryan and Scott knew their daughters would probably struggle to leave home. Sometimes that made Ryan incredibly sad. Other times, it thrilled him to know that he would always have Willa and Willa’s love around.
In early May, Trisha and Ryan invited Rhonda and Tommy to the Sutton Bed-and-Breakfast. Trisha was jittery, so much so that she burnt the chocolate chip cookies and spilled half a bottle of wine. Willa noticed how nervous her mother was and gave her a hug, and Rudy and Gavin were on their best behavior, recognizing the intensity of meeting “brand-new” grandparents.
An hour before Rhonda and Tommy were set to arrive, Jackie popped by with a basket of cheeses, crackers, and wine. She hugged Ryan close and said, “Give them our love, won’t you?” Her eyes glinted with tears. Then she turned to Trisha and squeezed her even tighter, saying, “I don’t know why you’ve decided to forgive us. I don’t know if we deserve it. But we love you so much. And we’re so glad you’re here.”
Overly emotional, Trisha wasn’t able to speak, save for a brief croak of, “I love you, too.”
Ryan stepped outside to greet Rhonda and Tommy’s truck. When Rhonda got out, she smiled that same mischievous smile up at him and slammed the door with more power than her little frame should have allowed.
“Look at this place!” she cried back to Tommy. “We haven’t been here since the kids’ wedding!”
Rhonda got closer to Ryan and stopped short, crossing her arms over her chest. Her smile never wavered. “I prayed every night you’d come back,” she said finally. “It was all I ever wanted.”
Rhonda threw her arms around Ryan and sobbed into his shirt. Tommy stood by, tugging on the collar of his shirt, until Trisha came out to peel her mother off Ryan and bring her inside to meet the kids. Ryan and Tommy shook hands and shook their heads and said, “What a life, huh?”
Before Ryan slipped inside after Trisha, Tommy touched his hand and beckoned for him to step back. “I have something to say,” he explained.
Ryan’s head spun. “Okay.” He went back down the porch and bent his head slightly to look Tommy directly in the eyes.
Tommy swallowed several times and wiped his brow with his handkerchief. He was even more nervous than Trisha.
“I know you know,” Tommy said finally. “And I want to thank you for not turning them in when you had the chance.”
Ryan had no idea what Tommy was talking about. “I’m sorry?”
Tommy lowered his voice, adding, “The car. I know you know about it. I know you’ve known for years.”
Ryan raised his eyebrows, remembering that bright red Cadillac tucked into the line of trees behind the old Reed house. Tommy’s sons, Trisha’s brothers had taken it. When he’d learned of the robbery, Ryan had had their future in his hands.
But he hadn’t wanted to throw them overboard like that.
“My family was going through a lot at the time,” Ryan said, palming the back of his neck. “I didn’t want to add to the mess.”
“What a mess it would have been,” Tommy agreed.
“My grandmother and grandfather had too much,” Ryan said, waving his arms toward the mansion before them. “They spent and spent and spent. They assumed anyone else with less money than them wasn’t good enough. As a kid, it was just the environment I knew. But as an adult, I see how disgusting that was. Who cares about a sports car? Who cares about something that was stolen fourteen years ago? My grandmother spent two million in a year on clothes. Clothes! I can’t even fathom that. If she had lived longer, she would have had to sell the Sutton Estate.”
Ryan had never talked so long or passionately about how his grandmother had wronged the world.
Tommy remained quiet for a long time. “I tried to teach my children right from wrong. I think I got it right with Trisha. She’s a good one. And she’s a good mother, too.”
“Parenting isn’t easy,” Ryan said, trying to laugh.
From inside the house came the sounds of Willa and Rudy singing a song they’d learned at school for their new grandmother.
A blush crept across Tommy’s cheeks. “That’s the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard.”
Ryan laughed. “Go on in and meet your grandchildren. They’ve been waiting for you.”
That afternoon, Ryan and Trisha sat on the back porch, watching Tommy, Rhonda, Willa, Rudy, and Gavin play a game of croquet with the new set they’d purchased for the upcoming opening party for the Sutton Bed-and-Breakfast. Ryan was surprised to see how at ease Willa was with Tommy and Rhonda. Apparently, Trisha had given her parents a pep talk ahead of time, telling them how to speak to Willa, what to do when she panicked, and how and when to hug her if Willa allowed it.
We’re all learning. All the time , Ryan thought.
Much later that evening, Ryan and Tommy operated the grill while Rhonda and Trisha made potato salad and the kids chilled by the television. It was an overcast night and chilly, and Ryan pulled on a Chicago Cubs sweatshirt.
“Traitor!” Tommy cried, pointing at the shirt.
“Man, I lived in that city for fourteen years! I turned into a fan,” Ryan said.
Tommy rolled his eyes. “Maybe we can watch a game one of these days.”
Ryan laughed. “Any time, my man.”
There was talk that Rhonda and Tommy planned to move back to Nantucket, if only to get away from the more poisonous of the remaining Reeds.
“There are some bad eggs in that family,” Tommy said, flipping steaks as the fire licked the griddle. “Sarah let all the power go to her head. I think it was her marriage to that Max Strong guy. He started losing money fast. And the rumor was that she’d married him for his money in the first place.”
“Never good to marry for money,” Ryan said. “It can be slippery.”
Tommy smiled and looked thoughtful. “What did it feel like when you knew you wanted to marry Trisha?”
Ryan’s heart swelled. He stepped back, listening to Trisha’s laughter echoing inside the kitchen. “It felt like a miracle that anyone so beautiful and smart and funny would want to spend more than five minutes with me,” he explained quietly. “It felt like a miracle that I would get to wake up every day beside her.”
“You didn’t think she’d say no?” Tommy asked.
Ryan laughed. “I was worried about it. I was stressed, tossing and turning in bed, wondering how I would say it, how it would go. But instead of saying yes, she said what took you so long? Which made me laugh a lot. I think I fell on the beach. After that, we went swimming at night, and we were yelling to the stars, and it was magical. We felt like the world belonged to us alone. I’ll never forget it.”
Tommy nodded and flipped the steaks again. He took his job very seriously.
“What did it feel like when you knew you wanted to marry Rhonda?” Ryan asked.
Tommy puffed out his cheeks. “It felt like when the sails first open on a boat and you really start to fly, you know? It felt like, all my life I’d been a messy Reed. I’d stolen things. I’d been told I wasn’t good enough to live anywhere but on the fringes of society. But Rhonda, she forced me to look at the beauty around me. She forced me to count the stars in the sky and look at every rainbow. We never had more than a few dollars, you know? And we struggled a great deal. But every night, we settled in together and reminded each other of how much we loved each other and our children. It was enough.”
Ryan couldn’t believe this was the first heart-to-heart he’d ever had with his father-in-law. He hadn’t known Tommy Reed was capable.
They’d wasted so much time apart.
Or—Ryan corrected himself—they hadn’t wasted that time. They’d needed that time to grow and heal and change. They’d needed time to separate and come back together again to make a family; to make a whole.
When Trisha came out to ask about the steaks, Tommy excused himself to check on Rhonda. Out on the back porch, Ryan wrapped his wife in a hug and kissed her hairline.
“It isn’t going too bad, huh?” Trisha breathed into his shirt.
“It’s going wonderfully.”
“The kids like them!” Trisha exclaimed.
“It’s like a dream,” Ryan affirmed, adjusting his head so that he gazed down at Trisha. His heart was bursting. “I love you.”
Trisha smiled. “I love you, too.”
Ryan wanted to say, I can’t believe we spent any time ignoring each other. I can’t believe we stopped communicating. I can’t believe we flirted with the idea of not being in love anymore.
But before he had the chance, Willa opened the door and called, “It’s time for dinner, or what?”
Trisha and Ryan laughed. It was time for dinner. They would sit together and engage with one another and never take for granted the art of loving one another fully.
Never again.