Page 98 of Old Money
“Gordon,” I begin, stepping toward him. “It’s not just the magazine piece. I’m here—”
“Enough!” He raps his knuckles on the counter.
Duncan yelps, and I jump back.
“I’m sorry, Alice, but I’d like you to leave now. And don’t come here again.”
I take another step back and bump into the kitchen island.
“Fine,” I mumble, alarmed and frustrated and out of otheroptions. Duncan watches as I head haltingly back into the hall.
At the front door, I glance back one last time, still half-expecting to Gordon to stop me.On second thought, to hell with it.But all is still and silent enough that I can hear the morning birdsong outside. I reach for the doorknob and twist.
“You do have things to lose, Alice,” Gordon calls, spinning me around. He stands at the end of the hall, his face no longer angry—merely cold. “Consider it, before you do anything you can’t take back. You have a life. You have family—not much, I know.”
He cups a hand on Duncan’s head.
“Take it from someone who doesn’t have any. Not much family is better than none.”
Chapter Forty-Three
“So do it yourself,” says Jamie again. “Forget Gordon, you don’t need backup.”
He keeps typing as he speaks, this refrain so familiar he doesn’t have to think about it.
“Says the guy who suggested I needed backup,” I reply. “Going to Gordon wasyouridea.”
Jamie looks up from the monitor.
“Two weeks ago. A lot can change in two weeks. Anyway, it was a bad idea. My specialty, right?”
A lot can change in two weeks, but the trouble is, it hasn’t—not since those frenzied first days of July. Alex Chapman is still missing somewhere near the Adirondacks. The car that smashed Jamie’s into oblivion has yet to turn up. Mr. Brody is still downstairs in his lair, and we are still sequestered in our closet—the three of us in a silent standoff and all of us still employed. Then again, there’s nobody here to fire us.
“It’s just the lull,” Jamie says, eyes fixed on his screen. “Happens every year.”
He keeps saying this too. When the clubhouse suddenly emptied out, he shrugged it off cheerfully. (“It’s because of the wedding. Everyone took their August trips early.”) But it wasn’t just here—the whole village had gone still, and half the stores were shuttered. Today it’s so quiet you can hear the horses, restlessand whinnying down at the stables. The sky is low and rumbling, always just about to rain.
It’s been like this for weeks. I felt the shift that morning, leaving Gordon’s house—that sudden drop in air pressure. There’s no name for this strange phenomenon that rolls through every Hudson Valley summer like a mild plague. The atmosphere turns dense and tactile, gathering itself into a storm that never breaks—just looms and roils above. Breathing is effortful, and sleep impossible, and you start to get the awful feeling—you’d never say it, but youfeelit—that it’s always going to be like this. The world has stopped spinning, and you’ll be stuck forever, choking in this purgatory
And that’s exactly what I’m doing. I’m choking—just like Gordon did. The recording of Mr. Brody’s confession is still sitting in my phone, unknown to anyone but me and Jamie. I haven’t sent it anywhere. I can’t even make myself listen to it again. That’s how hard I choked.
I drove away from Little Farm Lane with every intention of tracking downThe Club Kid’s producers—maybe contacting the magazine too. I’d started playing it out in my mind, picturing the conversation in some anonymous café. But—no, that’s not how it would go. There’d have to be a phone call first, where I convinced (or compelled) them to meet me at the anonymous café. How would I do that? How would I even get someone on the phone? Would I leave some creepy voicemail?I have information. I think you’ll be interested.No, of course not—in order to even get a phone number, I’d have to write a creepy email first. The more I thought about it, the more implausible it sounded.
“Who in their right mind would reply to that email?” I say aloud, restarting the conversation we’ve had a dozen times.
“Any journalist,” Jamie says with a thin wire of frustration. “We’ve been over this. You know this.”
“Think it through. Wouldn’t you assume I was a crackpot?”
“But you’re not.”
“And thoseClub Kidpeople probably receive four hundred crackpot emails an hour.”
“But you’renot.”
Jamie hooks a finger into the collar of his shirt. He yanks it sideways, displaying the spray of broken blood vessels still lingering on his neck.
“Want me to talk to them?” He lifts an eyebrow at me. “I’ll write the email, no problem.”
