Page 17 of Old Money

C aitlin vanished for the first time during cocktail hour. All the teenagers did.

Every party began in the yellow ballroom, kitted out with bar stands and a shrimp-cocktail spread that no one ever touched.

Families would sit together at dinner, but here, everyone split off into their demographics.

Kids my age hung around in corners, sometimes playing UNO or passing around a Game Boy until Mr. Brody confiscated it.

The adults shuttled between conversations, the volume rising slightly with each round of drinks.

With their parents pleasantly sloshed, the older kids would start to dip out, meeting up for their own private gatherings on the back steps or the tennis courts.

Sometimes I’d see them from the terrace—a cluster of them smoking at the bottom of the hill, or a couple making out in the trees beside the pool. But it wasn’t much fun, spying on my own.

Susannah never came to parties—no staff kids did, unless they’d snagged some little one-off job like Jamie had, filling in at coat-check for twenty dollars and unlimited sodas.

I knew most of the kids playing games in the corners—I was friendly with some of them at school.

But they had their own social circles at the club, and I knew without asking that they were closed to me.

So that night, like most nights, I spent cocktail hour leaning against one of the open French doors, drinking Shirley Temples and half watching the room like a dull TV rerun I’d seen a dozen times.

I wish, just that once, I’d paid closer attention.

I do know from various news reports that Caitlin was with Patrick for at least part of that hour.

They were seen on multiple occasions by multiple guests, though no one recalled specifics—they were just darting around the clubhouse together, like the rest of the teenagers.

Nobody noticed the looks on their faces, their tones of voice or whether they were holding hands or not.

I’m guessing they still were at that point—though perhaps not in front of people.

Whatever conflict arose, I don’t think it had even begun yet.

The one thing I do recall from that point in the evening is the moment they both returned.

It was just before dinner, and she appeared first, slipping in through the doorway and weaving through the crowd to join her dad, chatting with a group at the far end of the ballroom.

She looped her arm through Uncle Greg’s, laughing at something he said.

Her cheeks were flushed with a candy-apple shine.

Patrick came in just a minute later. A ripple of quiet went through the crowd, and all conversations paused, just for a breath, as he walked through the door—his own face glowing too.

Everyone was talking again, pretending not to look at him, but stepping out of his way.

The party seemed to move around him as he ambled across the room—hands in his pockets, chin high and head cocked, the right side of his mouth turned up, as always, in that delicate smirk.

It looked both obnoxious and utterly dashing.

I’d never thought of a boy as sexy, but I knew Patrick was something other than cute or handsome, and that it made me feel pleasantly ill.

I could see, objectively, that his suit was too big and his shaggy hair was dirty.

But Patrick had a preternatural confidence—the same kind Caitlin had—that made everything he did or said or wore seem exactly right.

Even that fussy little four-in-hand knot.

He stopped beside his mother at the French doors, barely thirty feet away from me. Liv Yates was locked in conversation with an older woman, a martini held casually at her side. Patrick lifted it from her hand—gently, but with no attempt to hide it—and turned to take a sip.

Just as the glass touched his lips, he noticed me staring. His eyes locked on mine and he froze, as if I were a ghost.

Two heartbeats and it passed. The fear dissolved, his face relaxing back into its easy grin. I watched him tip his head back, draining the martini glass, Caitlin’s words echoing in my head: They scare easy.