Page 49 of Old Money
The game of Truth or Dare had escalated into an all-out competition, the two of us taking turns daring each other. I’d put salt in someone’s coffee. She’d hung a teaspoon from her nose. We’d both asked the band for song requests (“Happy Birthday!” “The Macarena!”) and run away giggling. Then Caitlin coaxed me onto the dance floor, daring me to twirl.
Now we were both spinning. The band was playing some old jazz standard, and we sang out lyrics when we knew them. (“No, no, they can’t take that away from me.”) I stumbled backward into a couple behind me, and Caitlin reached out, yanking me toward her, apologizing through laughter.
“Time out!” she declared and pulled me through the crowd, suddenly producing a glass of water.
“Drink thewholething,” she shouted over the music, leaning me against a wall—blissfully cool against my back. “I’ll be right back!”
I nodded, lifting the glass, forcing the water down. When I lowered it, I saw Aunt Barbara, standing with Caitlin on the edge of the dance floor. Her head was bent close to her daughter’s face as she spoke, and her eyes were hard and searching—angry in a way I’d never seen before. The water roiled horribly inside me as I watched them in their quiet argument: Barbara inching closer, Caitlin looking away, her thumb and middle finger picking at each other.
There was a brief blip of quiet as the band ended one song and swung into another, and in it I could hear Caitlin snap at Aunt Barbara. “He’s right,” I thought she said, but wasn’t sure. Then the music resumed and Caitlin spun away from her mother, striding toward me in a hurry. I caught sight of my own mother then, standing beside Theo at the coffee station, their faces in identical flat frowns. Then Caitlin had me by the hand again, walking me out of the ballroom.
I remember the silent walk down the gallery. I remember waiting outside the cloakroom while Caitlin got her shawl. I remember her saying we needed fresh air, and the sudden wave of tiredness that came over me.
“It’ll help, I promise,” she said, bending over with a hand on my shoulder, so close I could smell the liquor on her breath and a hint of her violet perfume.
“It’s my turn, right?” she said, smiling. “Come on. What’s my dare?”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Iget to the restaurant twenty minutes early, but Susannah is already there. She waves to get my attention—as if I could miss her sitting at that table, smack in the center of the room. I wave back and sidle through the crowded restaurant, the whole place so boisterous with chitchat it sounds like one big birthday party.
Adelina’s, I growl at myself.What the hell was I thinking?
I wasn’t, really. I’d been caught completely off guard yesterday, when Susannah texted:Just circling back about lunch!Two weeks had passed since that strange moment in the parking lot, and I hadn’t heard from her. I’d started to worry—she’d been so insistent, squeezing my hand—and then her text appeared. I’d written back immediately:Tomorrow? Adelina’s?It was the first restaurant that that came to mind, and now I realize why. I was probably seventeen the last time I was here. And I was definitely with Susannah.
“I just can’t believe it,” Susannah marvels, surveying the room. “It looks exactly the same.”
Growing up, Adelina’s was the special-occasion restaurant, reserved for major milestones: graduations, big birthdays, the day I finally got my license after failing the road test twice. There were nicer, more culinary, restaurants in town, but Adelina’s had a dressy, festive vibe, with its gilded chandeliers and cushy velvet chairs. It also had an outrageous chocolate lava cake—a dessertI’d believed Adelina’s invented. Even after I learned it was a ’90s restaurant staple, I maintained that Adelina’s was the finest—well worth the forty-minute wait.
“Smells the same too,” I reply, taking my seat, suddenly overcome with the scent of sautéed garlic, browned butter and the charred edges of last night’s steak au poivre—a trio so familiar that it stuns me like a spell.
“They haven’t changed the menu! Look, the ham salad. Remember?”
She reaches over, tapping on the menu in front of me, and the light catches the gleaming, gray diamond on her finger. I nod and sit back, the nostalgic haze clearing. I glance over, taking in the rest of Susannah’s prim new look: her hair is freshly blown out and barretted. She’s dressed a notch too formally, in a creamy shift and pale yellow jacket. I’m not positive, but I think she’s even wearing pantyhose. This is not Susannah Joyce, with the big hair and vicious laugh. This is the future Mrs. Patrick Yates.
I have a thousand questions for her:Why did you come back early? Why did you want to see me so badly?Above all:What the hell happened?But I’m not asking questions today. Today was her idea. I need to be listening when she tells me why.
“I already ordered the lava cake,” she says. “Well, two.”
I feel my own surprised smile.
“I was worried they’d run out!” she says with a big shrug, her fingers splayed cartoonishly—a flash of the old her.
I let myself laugh. And, with hesitancy, she does too. The knot in my chest slackens as the both of us break down in quiet hysterics.
And for thirty miraculous minutes, everything’s fine. It’s very close to fun. We both order the house salad: a pile of iceberg lettuce, delivered with a gravy boat of tangy, pink dressing and silver bowl of garlic bread. My stomach is still too anxious for me to eat much, but the rest of me is having a surprisingly great time. We chat. We swap memories from Adelina’s, and talk abouthow weird it is that the village still doesn’t even have a Starbucks. We sidestep the touchy subject of family, and other than that, it’s oddly comfortable. Then, Susannah forgets herself.
“How’s work these days?” she asks.
“At the club? It’s fine. It’s—”
“Right,” she says, touching her fingertips to her forehead. “I meant, before you— I forgot for a second. We just saw you there.”
Both of us stare at the table, the sound of that “we” setting in like a storm. And that’s the end of lunch.
“Susannah,” I murmur. “We don’t have to tiptoe around him. All right?”
“I was just trying to be sensitive.”
