Page 134 of Old Money

With that in mind, I turn off the car and get out. Just one last pit stop, here in the past.

***

Mr. Brody sits bent over his desk, writing in one of his ledger books. He looks up, squinting at me.

“Ms. Wiley?” he says. “You surprised me.”

For once, I realize, it’s actually true.

“I’m on my way home. Back to the city, I mean.” I inch forward, resting my fingertips on the back of the visitor’s chair. “But I was hoping—”

“Sit,” he says, gesturing to the chair. “Please.”

He closes the binder and slides it to the side of the desk, watching with a thin smile as I step around a stack of papers and settle into the chair. Then he nods for me to begin.

If only I knew how.

“The last time I was in here,” I heard myself say, “when you told us what you saw that night on the terrace. Seeing him sneak out and hide in the trees.”

I look up, watching his face as I say the next part.

“When you said that, did you know I was recording you?”

“My dear,” he chuckles. “As I said, I am not omniscient. Merely old.”

He searches my face, his smile dwindling, but still wide enough to show his teeth. I think it’s the first time I’ve seen them.

“I ask,” I say, my own voice turning stern, “because I’m still trying to understand what you knew. And when.”

Mr. Brody nods and clears his throat—not the phony littleahem, but an actual, human cough.

“Ms. Wiley, I may not have told you the whole truth, but I have never told you a deliberate lie,” he says, his voice light and clear. “A small distinction, granted, but as you and I both know, it’s the little things that make the difference.”

I look at him. I should’ve just left.

“What I mean, Alice, is that I made my own mistakes that night,” he says more quietly. “And I had my own uncertainties about who I saw and when.”

I think of the incident report—its glaring lack of specificity. No names, no physical descriptions.

I told you I saw Patrick Yates, he’d said.And I did, among others. Others. More than one.

“They were thick as thieves, those two—always together, always up to something,” Brody says. “I was none too pleased about Jamie working in the cloakroom that night, knowing your brother would be at the party. On top of everything else, I’d have to keep track of them too.”

I can see it in my memory: Brody, always looming in the near distance, his glare always pointed in our direction. But we were used to those disdainful looks at the club. We stuck out like sore thumbs in our borrowed shoes and clothes that never fit right.

I look up, something clicking.

“The suits?” I ask, thinking aloud.

I see Jamie in his father’s jacket—he’d stuck out too that night.

“Well, no,” Brody says, nodding his head sideways. “Not that alone. All the young men wore those baggy suits back then—dreadful fad. But yes, I take your point. One can always tell.”

He averts his gaze, and I feel my cheeks heat up. Of course it wasn’t just our clothes. It was our haircuts and our names and the stench of our self-consciousness. One could tell just from the way we carried ourselves. One could spot an outsider from a mile away. And standing on the terrace that night, Brody was much closer than a mile.

I look at Brody. He looks back, his face heavy with despair.

“I didn’t know which one of them it was.”