Page 14 of Old Money
“Of course.”
We stand there nodding vigorously at each other.
“I didn’t know if you were in touch,” he says, a splotch of blush emerging on his forehead. He lifts a hand, rubbing at his hairline. “Sorry, no. ’Course you’re not.”
I smile through a wave of sadness. It’s nice to hear someone else say it.
“No. Not in years. Not since before she moved back here.”
I leave it at that, as though Susannah’s move and our estrangement had nothing to do with each other—just coincidental timing. This sends another wave of heartbreak through me. I wish it were that simple.
Chapter Seven
Ten days after the murder, village police held a press conference and declared the investigation closed. Caitlin’s death, they said, was an accidental drowning—no evidence of Patrick’s involvement or of foul play. It was a tragedy, not a crime. The murder allegations were “a misunderstanding, at best.”
Susannah appeared at my bedroom door that evening, carrying her sleeping bag. I hadn’t called her—I hadn’t spoken at all in hours. But just the sight of her filled me with immeasurable relief. She slept on the floor by my bed that night, and for the first time in days, I slept too.
Susannah slept over at least once a week for the rest of the summer. She never asked me about the murder and I never wanted to talk about it, but I’d wake from screaming nightmares almost every night. Susannah would sit up, bleary but calm, and grab me by the wrist, gently shaking me back into reality. I’d crumple to the floor with her and let it all spill out—the horror I relived in perfect detail each night: Caitlin’s needle-sharp shrieks, the crack and thud of fists against flesh, the way I’d somehow known I was too late, even as I ran to her.
Susannah listened, every time—although it was a story no eleven-year-old should hear. Only later did I realize how terrifying it must have been for her, sitting knee to knee with me in the throes of acute PTSD.
As a recovered, functional adult, I’m ashamed for putting her through that, but the fact is, without her, I’d never have recovered or learned to function. I only made it to adulthood by following her there.
Susannah was a stalwart, even as a kid—the type who committed and never looked back, whether it was field hockey or friendships. When we returned to school that fall, she stuck by me—sometimes literally pulling me to her side when I drifted back a step, walking behind her and hiding my own face behind her mass of curls. Everyone else seemed to wish I’d vanish too. Teachers wouldn’t even call on me, and if I so much as raised my hand for the bathroom pass, the whole room froze as if a ghost had spoken.
“Ignore them,” Susannah would say, like it was that easy. For her, it might’ve been. Susannah never bothered much with other people’s opinions, even when they applied to her. She didn’t care about being a normie, or blush if someone mentioned that her dad was their tennis instructor.
“They’reinsultingyou,” I’d hiss.
“How is that an insult?” she’d reply, not even lowering her voice.
Sometimes it drove me up the wall—this relentless maturity and confidence. But I counted on it. Susannah was the only one who still saw me as Alice after I became “the child witness.” I leaned on her character and unshakable sense of self—herselfandmine.
In truth, I probably leaned on it a little too long. Each passing season felt a little less surreal, and though I wouldn’t say I had a normal adolescence—what with the spontaneous fainting and all that—I had moments of normal. I made friends, I kissed boys, and squished into the backs of cars with a pack of kids, all of us in hysterics. But those were occasions. Susannah was my constant. She was the one with whom I laughed the hardest. She was the one who baked birthday cookies and quizzed meon French verbs, even though she took Latin. She daydreamed of her bright, ambitious future—psychologist or city planner, maybe married but no kids—and in doing so, reminded me that I had a future outside of this place too. And on bad days, when the nightmares returned and I retreated into darkness, it was still she who tugged me into the present.
I’d have done the same for her, of course, and whenever I did get the chance to be the supportive one, I supported with all my might. When she got dumped by the lifeguard from her summer job at Mirror Lake Camp, I was there ten minutes after she called. When she hit a deer with her dad’s car, driving home from SAT prep, I came (and brought Theo to deal with it). I was there when she got rejected by her second-choice college in the city. Two days later, when she got accepted by her top-choice school in California,withfinancial aid, I was there again, with a cake. I’d be going to the first state school within driving distance that accepted me. Yes, I envied her getting to leave Briar’s Green and start fresh in a place where normies were just the norm. But the fact that we’d be separated was the part that crushed and terrified me. I never let on though. Susannah had borne enough of my terror—and because of that, I knew, I would be okay.
And I was. We both were, miraculously, and so was our friendship. If anything we grew closer in college, shrugging off the cast of our childhood bond and reshaping it into something more balanced. The normal moments stretched out into normal months and years, both of us stepping into adulthood on opposite sides of the country, holding one another’s hands via cell phone. Yes, I was surprised when Susannah decided to stay in California and take a position at a San Francisco marketing firm (since when wasmarketingher plan?). But plans changed, I understood. I was busy falling into my own unexpected career, having been poached from my temp job at a SoHo hotel, by a guest—a director in town for a two-month movie shoot, in dire need of a second assistant to manage his personal calendar and keep his minifridge stocked with Lean Cuisine.
Susannah and I still talked constantly, swapping stories from our days in real time. (“I’m picking up sneakers for my boss, and you won’t believe what they cost!” “I’m trying a Pilates class, because all anyone talks about here is Pilates. You won’t believe how muchitcosts.”) But then our days got busier. Our lives got busier. Twenty-five felt different than twenty-one. By twenty-six I’d landed my third full-time-assistant position, and realized that I was both good at this job and content in it. I’d swapped my silver flip phone for a smartphone the size of a brick, and an auxiliary laptop I kept fully charged in my backpack at all times, along with my passport, running shoes and a backup cocktail dress sealed in a freezer bag. My life had gelled intomylife, unrecognizable from the one I’d shared so intimately with Susannah. The same was true for her, I knew. I could hear it when we talked—all the names I didn’t know, the promotions and new apartments she could’ve sworn she told me about.
Things slip through the cracks when you’re three thousand miles apart, and those cracks can quickly widen into chasms. Our constant calls became intermittent voicemails, and eventually, unanswered texts. At first it just seemed like we kept missing each other—the time difference and everything. But at some point, the silence became a tense silence. I didn’t know why, but I didn’t worry about it. Maybe she was just extra busy with her own new life, and all the Pilates and corporate jargon I didn’t understand. I knew we’d sort it out whenever we did find time to talk.
We didn’t though. A month passed, and then three more. And then she called me late one night and told me she’d gotten a new job back home, working for the Yates Foundation.
“I— Sorry, the water’s running, hang on.”
I was in the bathroom, floss wound around my fingers. I blinked at myself in the mirror. I looked down at the phone beside the sink. Susannah’s name looked up at me. I turned the faucet off.
Do over, I thought.I misheard. “Hey,” I said, picking up the phone. “Okay, what did you say?”
Susannah’s sigh came garbled through the speaker.
“I said it’s the Yates Foundation. I’m going to be director of communications.”
Her voice was flat. Not hesitant, not defiant. Nothing.
“I don’t get it,” I said, part of me still certain I’d misunderstood.
