Page 4 of Old Money
He releases me and jogs around to the driver’s side, checking his watch. His sleeves are neatly cuffed at the elbows, and he’s wearing belted khakis that look professionally pressed.
“God, Theo,” I say, getting in the car. “It’s like you’re in a congressman costume.”
He shifts into Drive, smirking.
“Candidate costume,” he corrects. “I know. Get this, Jules has to do my sleeves for me.”
Hands on the wheel, he points an elbow at me, showing off one perfectly crisp and even cuff.
“Apparently when I do it, they look ‘bunchy.’ Can you believe that?”
“Uh, yeah. You couldn’t do your own tie until, what? Law school?”
“One of many challenges I’ve faced—and overcome. So, vote for Theo Wiley. My wife rolls my shirtsleeves, but Icando my tie.”
He waves proudly to an imaginary crowd, then drops the hand and leans sideways.
“Don’t tell the voters,” he adds in a stage whisper. “But the truth is I’m still pretty lousy at it.”
No, the truth is that, shirtsleeves aside, he’s amazing at just about everything. Fine motor tasks are basically the only thing I do better than Theo, and he takes every chance to highlight my aptitude—which just makes it worse. “Look at those shoelaces!” he once proclaimed. I was twenty-four. And he was clerking at the Supreme Court.
***
Theo was always an overachiever. Every school year, some teacher would ask Mom if she’d considered letting him skip agrade, not realizing he already had. But after the murder, Theo’s focus hardened into something more like mission. He hadn’t witnessed Patrick kill Caitlin, but he knew I wasn’t lying and that everyone else was. He’d seen Patrick walking toward the pool that night—a small yet crucial detail, which dozens of other guests surely witnessed too, but Theo was the only one who reported it. Which made it even easier for the cops to dismiss it.
“I don’t even think they wrote it down,” he’d repeated for weeks after, muttering to himself at the dinner table.
“You did the right thing,” Mom would tell him too. But for him, it didn’t help.
It was the murder that changed my life, but for Theo it was the aftermath. He developed an almost pathological devotion to justice, seizing onto every wrongdoing he encountered with equal fervor—gym-class bullies, the oil industry, you name it. In high school, he lobbied the governor to shut down the Kisco power plant, which had failed to report several radioactive-steam leaks. And it worked. Theo’s righteous anger successfully fueled him through college, law school and into his inevitable career as a civil rights attorney—and now he’s running for Congress. All this because our family couldn’t afford therapy.
***
“Is it round-the-clock mayhem by now?” I ask. “The campaign?”
Theo takes one hand off the wheel and waves me off.
“It’s fine. It’s ridiculous, but it’s fine.”
We turn off Station Hill Road and onto Route 9. The road is already narrow, having been originally designed for horses. But in summer, it seems even smaller: a verdant tunnel, with roadside bushes and a dense canopy of oak leaves bursting over the pavement.
Theo’s phone buzzes in the cup holder.
“Do you need to get that?”
“No, but—if we’re not having lunch, I should get back,” he says. “I’ll take your bags with me.”
“Are you sure about me staying with you?” I gesture at the phone. “With everything going on?”
Theo tosses me a look that says he knows what I’m doing.
“Don’t even try it.”
I consider trying anyway, but this is a battle I’ve already ceded. Theo’s one caveat to finally “approving” my summer plans was that I stay at his house. I should’ve told him I’m thirty-one and I’ll stay wherever I like, but I agreed because, again, my brother is a litigator.
“I just don’t want to...”
I notice something down the road and lose my train of thought.
