Page 131 of Old Money
He rears back with a look of dawning, dreadful recognition.
“Is that when you looked into getting the case reopened?” I ask. “Was that Jessie’s idea?”
“No. No, she had other ideas—wearing wires, getting the higher-ups involved. I thought that was batshit ridiculous. One thing at a time, y’know? Let me do some researchbeforecalling the district attorney.” He exhales a light tsk. “Thatwas the fight. Jessie was dead set on this stealth plan. She saidmyway was too risky—that Theo would catch wind of it somehow.”
Jamie looks away, and I wait for him to say it:And she was right.
“So I told him myself,” he says, gazing impassively into the hazy air.
I hold still, replaying the sentence in my head.
“Yeah.” Jamie gives a jerky, defensive shrug. “I was pissed. I’d known this guy my whole life, and she—”
He cuts himself off, looking back at me—suddenly remembering that I’m the one he’s pissed at now.
“Whatever. I told him,” Jamie says. “But only the part about getting the case reinvestigated—nothing about investigatinghim. We were getting beers after work one night, and I just mentioned I’d been looking into it, casually. Just to see what he’d say.”
“Jamie,” I whisper.
“And he freaked out,” Jamie continues. “In a big way—aweirdway. ‘You think you’re some hero? You think anyone cares?’ He wasn’t even making sense, but it was like he couldn’t stop. It was that tunnel-vision thing, but aimed at me this time. I got up to leave and he was still going—ranting. So I just left.”
Jamie shrugs again, slowly this time.
“Like I said, I already thought it was him. But after that, it was real. All those years—it had been him the whole time.”
I still can’t find the words to name it—the seismic shift that happens when you understand that someone you have loved unconditionally has also been a stranger to you. The way it fractures the very lens with which you look back on your own life. The desperate urge to mend it, knowing all the while that glass cannot be uncracked.
“What did you do?” I ask, though part of me already knows.
“Nothing. I dropped it—panicked, I guess,” Jamie answers in a hollow drone. “I figured it would come out anyway, with Theo becoming this big shot. It wasn’t on me to blow the whistle. I could just move on with my own life. Why nuke it all over whathe’ddone, right?”
Jamie sits back as far as the shallow booth will allow.
“Right,” I say quietly. “Then I came home.”
Jamie doesn’t reply. He just exhales, long and hard.
“Yeah,” he says finally, looking past me. “Yeah, you did. And I should’ve told you—I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gone along with your whole Patrick vendetta. I know I owe you an explanation, but I don’t have one right now—not a good one. I’m gonna need a minute.”
“Give me the bad version then,” I say, cutting through his bluster. “Try.”
Jamie puffs and leans over the table, his elbows landing with a hard thunk.
“It’s like—it’s the what-if. You can be ninety-eight percent sure, but as long as that two percent is there—I don’t know.” He looks away, still scowling. “I told you, it sounds like bullshit.”
I watch him, angry and shifting in his seat. Then I shake my head.
“No,” I say. “I get it.”
I would’ve done the same, I think.I would do the same right now.
If someone walked into this bar—some random girl fromhigh school, anyone—and told me Theo hadn’t killed Caitlin, I would shut my mouth and listen. Even with his confession still ringing in my ears, I would want to believe. I would leap at the thinnest shred of hope that it was somehow someone else. I might just settle for the fantasy of it—just play along for a month or two, and relish the relief.
Maybe Jamie’s reasons are entirely different. I don’t know—I don’t need them. I’m not much interested in reasons anymore.
Epilogue
On the Sunday of Labor Day weekend, I drive to the club for the last time. My bags jostle in the back seat of my rental car as I wind up the sloping front drive. I’m heading home today. I’ve already checked out of my little economy-express room at the Berrytown Motorway Inn, where I’ve been since early August. I had to stay local those first few weeks (“No sudden moves,” the lawyer said), but the Alcott was officially out of my budget now that my budget included a lawyer. Berrytown was barely six miles away, but I slept better on the plastic mattress of that roadside motel than I had all summer in the village. Partly, because it had air-conditioning.
