Page 2 of Old Money
I look up from the book at her shining, grinning, almost-giggling face.
“You should probably keep that in your bag,” I tell her.
My voice is even and completely polite—very close to friendly. But she blanches and tilts backward as though I’ve spit at her.
“People there don’t talk about it the way they do on that podcast and...”
I gesture at the book. She drops it to her lap.
“And online, and all that,” I finish meagerly. “It’s not really like that, in the village. It’s...”
“No, I know,” the girl says, mouselike. “It’s different.”
No, I think.You don’t know. If you did, you’d never have gotten on the train.
We sit, rocking in silence. In the corner of my eye, I see her nibble the edge of her thumbnail, tilting her head so that her hair falls in a curtain of curls. It reminds me of Susannah, and the reminder throbs like a headache.
I close my eyes, although I can feel the train beginning to slow. I picture the girl wandering the village, befuddled to find there’s nothing actually there for her. Certainly she’ll find no trace of Caitlin. No memorial benches on the village green or framed snapshots by the register at Giordano’s, where Caitlin used to get pizza with her teammates after Thursday practice—her slice always doused in red pepper flakes. They don’t even have signs up at the old Roosevelt barn, or Dutch Tavern, with its mottled windows, still flecked with Revolutionary musketballs, and those are things they’re proud of. That’s just one harmless, minuscule way the village is “different”—a word that doesn’t begin to describe the icy unreality of Briar’s Green.
It’s a place that tourists only think they’ve visited. That’s the best way I can put it. This girl might spend all day there, but she’ll never see the real Briar’s Green, because that place exists on private property—none more private than the club. She may walk the tiny village square, but beyond that she’ll find nothing but pretty stone walls and iron gates. She probably knows they’re all unlocked (it’s part of “the Briar’s” lore) but that doesn’t mean she’ll get past them. You know when you’re unwelcome in Briar’s Green. She could walk right up to the club’s own gates—which aren’t merely unlocked but wide-open, always—and no one would stop her. But she’d stop herself.
The train judders, and there’s a deafening screech as we come to a halt. Then silence. Then the doors sigh open.
“We’re here,” the girl murmurs.
I turn and see her hesitant smile, nothing like the high-beam grin she had before. I clear my throat, but don’t say anything. (There I go, slipping into local parlance again.)
I stand and turn, reaching for my bags, grateful to be overburdened with luggage. The bell is ringing by the time I get to the vestibule, and I shove through the closing doors and stumble onto the platform, relieved to be alone at least.
But I’m not. I turn toward the overpass, and there she is, squinting in the sunlight, thumbs looped around the straps of her backpack.
“I’m sorry,” says the girl, in that same uncertain tone. “I feel like maybe—did I offend you?”
My mouth makes a vague O shape, but again, no sounds emerge.
The girl shifts her weight from one leg to the other. When she speaks again, it’s almost inaudible.
“Did you, like, know her?”
I almost tell her, right then—everything, from the beginning right up until today: who I am and what I did, and what I’m going to do next. I almost even tell her why. The truth roils up inside of me, and I clench my teeth against it, quietly.
I shake my head.
“Only a little. She was older.”
It’s the truth and also bullshit. But that’s how people talk here—in decorous lies and discreet omissions, every ugly truth cottoned in five layers of courtesy. It’s true that Caitlin was a few years older than me, and thus I only knew her a little—as much as any eleven-year-old girl can know a sixteen-year-old young woman. But it’s also true that one night, not quite twenty years ago, I saw Patrick Yates hit and kick and throw her down, cracking her skull against the concrete edge of the club’s swimming pool. I’m the one who first saw her lifeless body in the water, and ran screaming to tell everyone—two hundred party guests, the paramedics and the police. I don’t think anyone actually believes that Caitlin drowned, but I’m the one who knows.
Patrick Yates got away with murder that night, and he remains a free and happy man. And I’ve come home to remedy that.
Chapter Two
If Patrick Yates is “the club kid” on that podcast, I wonder what they call me. Back in 1999, the media referred to me as “the child witness,” or “a minor relative of the alleged victim.” I remember thinking it seemed somehow dismissive—as though I were just some little kid throwing around names.
“It’s like they don’t believe me at all,” I’d say to my mom, over and over those first few weeks. “Nobody does.”
“It’s not that,” she’d answer. “They can’t legally identify you. Those are the only details they have. It’s nothing to do with what you said.”
Sometimes she’d put an arm around me, murmuring into my hair. Other times her mouth went tight, her bloodshot eyes glaring at the wall. But she always knew what I needed to hear:
