Page 45 of Old Money
It happened then: a hot flood of tears streamed from my eyes, and I looked into my napkin, unable to stop them.
“Oh!” Caitlin cried. “Oh, honey!”
She scooted her chair closer.
“Alice! Oh my gosh, I’m kidding. Hey, shh, it’s okay.”
It was too late though. I was crying for real, like the baby I was. My shoulders trembled, tears plop-plopping on the skirt of my dress, leaving small, silvery stains.
“Come on now, hey.” Caitlin put a firm hand on my shoulder. “Deep breath.”
A white-haired woman was looking at me from across the table, her gaze somewhere between concerned and repulsed.
“Does she need her mother?” the woman asked Caitlin quietly.
Yes, I thought. I needed mom to take me home, help me get out of this awful dress and sit on the couch watching theTwilight Zonemarathon in pajamas with me until I fell asleep.
“Oh no,” Caitlin answered politely. “She’s fine.”
She waited for the woman to look away. Then she picked up her glass of sparkling water.
“Here,” she murmured. “Have a little sip.”
Without thinking, I took the glass and did as she instructed. My head jerked up as a sharp, floral flavor hit the back of my throat.
“It’s nothing,” Caitlin said before I could ask. “Just gin and soda.”
I looked at the glass, putting a hand to my mouth.
“Don’t worry, it’s pretty light,” Caitlin said, smiling at me. “Just a couple sips. It’ll help.”
I looked at her—the pity all over her face. I could have broken into sobs. Caitlin would’ve gone to fetch Mom, and I’d have begged her to take me home, and she would have, there and then. And none of the rest would’ve happened. All I had to do was cry.
But I didn’t. Instead, I took a breath and looked Caitlin in the eye. I pictured Patrick—the way he’d drained the martini glass—and leaned my own head back, taking a long, dramatic drink.
“Um, okay,” said Caitlin. The pity was gone from her face. Now she watched me with slightly nervous eyes.
Good, I thought. The alcohol spread warm across my chest. I remembered what she’d said to me in her bedroom earlier—that movie-dialogue line. I leaned over and put on my best Caitlin voice.
“Donottell my mother.”
Caitlin laughed again, but it was different this time—a laugh at my joke, not me.
“You got it,” she said. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”
Caitlin took her glass back and raised it for a sip. She paused, holding it just short of her lips, considering. Then, instead of taking a drink herself, Caitlin extended the glass back to me. She raised her eyebrows.
“Dare?”
Chapter Twenty-One
Iturn out of the police-station parking lot, make a left and floor it. My hands shake as I grip the wheel, glancing in the rearview mirror. I don’t know what Jessie’s given me, but I know it’s something. I have something.
It’s barely a ten-minute drive to get home, but I can’t wait that long to find out what it is. I reach the village center and park in the near-empty lot beside the grocery store. I pull the little box out of my bag and open it. It’s a thumb drive. I knew it. Iknewit.
I pull out my laptop and slot the drive into the USB port. It takes an eternity to load the drive’s contents, and when the files finally appear, I see why. Because it’s everything. Jessie has given me absolutely everything.
The records are all tucked into zip files—a dozen or so in each. Each PDF inside is labeled with what looks like a random string of characters. You can’t tell what an individual file contains until you open it. At first I wonder if Jessie obscured them on purpose, but my guess is she didn’t have time for that. There are more than sixty files in here—more than I even requested. She must have been dragging and dropping the entire time I was in there with the redacted files.(Don’t rush!)And she’d handed them over to me right in front of another officer.
