Page 2 of Old Money

“It’s like they don’t believe me at all,” I’d say to my mom, over and over those first few weeks. “Nobody does.”

“It’s not that,” she’d answer. “They can’t legally identify you. Those are the only details they have. It’s nothing to do with what you said.”

Sometimes she’d put an arm around me, murmuring into my hair. Other times her mouth went tight, her bloodshot eyes glaring at the wall. But she always knew what I needed to hear:

“No matter what, Alice, you did the right thing.”

It didn’t make a difference, though. By the morning after Caitlin’s death, even I understood that Patrick wasn’t getting arrested on the basis of my word alone.

He hadn’t even been questioned yet. I’d been the one they brought straight to the station, where I stayed up half the night repeating the gruesome details of “my story.” I hadn’t even been allowed to change out of my party dress until some forensics person arrived to snip off a section of the hem.

That’s when I noticed the rusty stain on the edge of the fabric, recalling the moment by the pool, when I’d realized I was kneeling beside a puddle of Caitlin’s blood.

At the sight of the stain, I’d pitched forward and heaved, and the officers had grabbed me by the elbows, rushing me toward the trash can just in time.

They didn’t bring in Patrick until the following afternoon, after the news broke.

It was an explosive story from the start—not even the Yateses could stop that.

A teenage girl found horribly dead at a country club was always going to be news.

But the teenage girlfriend of Patrick Yates III, notorious rich kid with the starlet ex-girlfriend and the DUI?

That was going to blow up. By noon, Caitlin was the princess of Briar’s Green—a brilliant and beautiful golden child, her life cut brutally short by (according to an unidentified child eyewitness) none other than her boyfriend, the Patrick Yates.

When he finally did go in for questioning, at the leisurely hour of 4:00 p.m., there was a small crowd waiting for him.

I watched his arrival on local news, my mom and brother seated on either side of me on the couch.

Patrick crossed the parking lot, flanked by his parents, Senator Whitney Yates Jr. and Livia Wells Yates.

Patrick had his father’s height, but everything else was his mother’s: thick hair, a diamond-shaped face and a faintly olive complexion that made him look fresh from the beach, even in February.

And he almost always had a grin on his face—a big sideways smile that dimpled his left cheek.

But not that day in the parking lot. His father smiled and raised a hand to the shouting reporters, but Patrick kept his head down.

I felt queasy with relief when he stepped inside the police station and the door swung shut behind him—finally.

“What a joke,” my brother said bitterly.

“What?” I asked.

“Well...” Theo scoffed. “Nothing. Let’s just see what happens.”

An hour later, Patrick walked right back through the door, and drove home with his parents. That’s what happened.

***

“I know, I’m sorry, I couldn’t get off the phone,” says Theo. “Campaign stuff.”

He shoves my last bag into the back seat of his car. The trunk is already cluttered with sneakers and soccer cleats and bottles of spray-on sunblock.

“I get it, you’re important now.”

I toss my tote onto the front seat, thrilled by the blast of air conditioning on my arm. Even though my older brother was twenty minutes late to pick me up, I’m happy we’re together now.

“But you’re going to have to take me straight there.”

Theo stands back, shielding his eyes from the sun.

“Straight there, really? I thought we’d get lunch.” He bends his head, contrite. “Squires? Tuna on rye—double pickles? My treat.”

“Theo.”

“Alice.” He crosses his arms.

“Don’t start.”

“I am not starting.”

We stand beside the open doors until the car begins to ding-dong, nudging us to close them.

“Got it, no time for lunch,” Theo concedes, then cracks another smile. “A hug though.”

Before I can reluctantly agree, he slams the rear door and wraps me in a bear hug—the kind he started doing when he became a dad.

I’m still not used to it—the hugs, the elbowing, the tight shoulder squeezes.

It’s not that we don’t love each other; it’s just not how we grew up.

In France, people greet each other with two cheek kisses.

In Briar’s Green, we nod, once, from a polite distance.

“Are you actually trying to make me miss this interview?”

“Oh, shut up,” Theo says fondly. “I said I’d get you there, and I will. God help me.”

I roll my eyes, but I bite my tongue and let him grumble. If I were him, I’d be grumbly too.

When I first told Theo I’d applied for a job at the club, he thought I was joking.

When he realized I wasn’t, he hit the ceiling.

That much I’d expected—and even prepared a list of bullet points to argue in favor of my plan.

It wound up taking numerous calls to convince him I was of sound mind, and doing this whether he liked it or not.

Theo gives me a final squeeze.

“I hate this. But I love you, kiddo.”

“I know, and I know.” I pat him briskly on the back. “Now we’ve gotta go.”

He releases me and jogs around to the driver’s side, checking his watch. His sleeves are neatly cuffed at the elbows, and he’s wearing belted khakis that look professionally pressed.

“God, Theo,” I say, getting in the car. “It’s like you’re in a congressman costume.”

He shifts into Drive, smirking.

“Candidate costume,” he corrects. “I know. Get this, Jules has to do my sleeves for me.”

Hands on the wheel, he points an elbow at me, showing off one perfectly crisp and even cuff.

“Apparently when I do it, they look ‘bunchy.’ Can you believe that?”

“Uh, yeah. You couldn’t do your own tie until, what? Law school?”

“One of many challenges I’ve faced—and overcome. So, vote for Theo Wiley. My wife rolls my shirtsleeves, but I can do my tie.”

He waves proudly to an imaginary crowd, then drops the hand and leans sideways.

“Don’t tell the voters,” he adds in a stage whisper. “But the truth is I’m still pretty lousy at it.”

No, the truth is that, shirtsleeves aside, he’s amazing at just about everything.

Fine motor tasks are basically the only thing I do better than Theo, and he takes every chance to highlight my aptitude—which just makes it worse.

“Look at those shoelaces!” he once proclaimed.

I was twenty-four. And he was clerking at the Supreme Court.

***

Theo was always an overachiever. Every school year, some teacher would ask Mom if she’d considered letting him skip a grade, not realizing he already had.

But after the murder, Theo’s focus hardened into something more like mission.

He hadn’t witnessed Patrick kill Caitlin, but he knew I wasn’t lying and that everyone else was.

He’d seen Patrick walking toward the pool that night—a small yet crucial detail, which dozens of other guests surely witnessed too, but Theo was the only one who reported it.

Which made it even easier for the cops to dismiss it.

“I don’t even think they wrote it down,” he’d repeated for weeks after, muttering to himself at the dinner table.

“You did the right thing,” Mom would tell him too. But for him, it didn’t help.

It was the murder that changed my life, but for Theo it was the aftermath.

He developed an almost pathological devotion to justice, seizing onto every wrongdoing he encountered with equal fervor—gym-class bullies, the oil industry, you name it.

In high school, he lobbied the governor to shut down the Kisco power plant, which had failed to report several radioactive-steam leaks.

And it worked. Theo’s righteous anger successfully fueled him through college, law school and into his inevitable career as a civil rights attorney—and now he’s running for Congress.

All this because our family couldn’t afford therapy.

***

“Is it round-the-clock mayhem by now?” I ask. “The campaign?”

Theo takes one hand off the wheel and waves me off.

“It’s fine. It’s ridiculous, but it’s fine.”

We turn off Station Hill Road and onto Route 9. The road is already narrow, having been originally designed for horses. But in summer, it seems even smaller: a verdant tunnel, with roadside bushes and a dense canopy of oak leaves bursting over the pavement.

Theo’s phone buzzes in the cup holder.

“Do you need to get that?”

“No, but—if we’re not having lunch, I should get back,” he says. “I’ll take your bags with me.”

“Are you sure about me staying with you?” I gesture at the phone. “With everything going on?”

Theo tosses me a look that says he knows what I’m doing.

“Don’t even try it.”

I consider trying anyway, but this is a battle I’ve already ceded. Theo’s one caveat to finally “approving” my summer plans was that I stay at his house. I should’ve told him I’m thirty-one and I’ll stay wherever I like, but I agreed because, again, my brother is a litigator.

“I just don’t want to...”

I notice something down the road and lose my train of thought.

“Is that—is that the Wishing Well?”

Theo follows my gaze, confused.

“Yeah?”

We pass the old, familiar shop—the candy store we used to go to on Friday afternoons, when they gave out soft pretzels. It’s built like a gingerbread house, with stained-glass windows, and an old covered well out front that we’d all been warned not to climb on.

I’d expected to find the village center full of unsettling changes—a Starbucks where the old pharmacy stood, the candy store bulldozed for a parking lot.

But the place hasn’t moved a muscle. There’s the old stone church with its tiny cemetery full of Dutch sailors and slanted headstones.

There’s the Little Village Bookshop, and the ice cream stand that served chalky soft-serve and amazing lemonade.

“What?” Theo asks, still confused.

“I just— How is it all still here?” I reply. “Exactly the same as it used to be?”

He snorts.

“Come on, that’s the village motto, right? ‘Briar’s Green: Just like it used to be”

***

Briar’s Green literally runs by its own rulebook.

It’s one of a handful of colonial-era villages that still operate under their own charters.

I couldn’t tell you what a charter is, or why they get to have one.

It’s one of those remnant scraps of legislation, like daylight saving time, that everyone abides by without knowing why.

But what it means in practice is that Briar’s Green has its own set of laws, which—with shockingly few exceptions—cannot be overruled by the state or federal government.

This made for all sorts of rumors when I was a kid.

We used to believe you could get arrested for blowing gum bubbles or kissing with your tongue.

The reality is far less thrilling, though equally absurd.

Village law is more concerned with your house and garden than your tongue.

No asphalt driveways, for example. No neon storefront signs.

No gates above six feet, or boundary walls below four.

No invisible fencing or visible sprinklers, no barn renovations and no new-build homes unless village council approves your architect (it won’t—I think that codicil might be sarcasm).

The village guards its visible history with an iron fist. There are stone walls here that pre-date the Mayflower , and countless outbuildings and haylofts where Revolutionary generals slept or ate or died from typhus.

The phrase old money conjures images of grandeur—feather beds and gilded mansions—but in Briar’s Green it looks like musty houses with worn-out floors and doors that stick in the summer.

It looks like acres of neglected meadow, and knotty trees with half-rotted rope swings that one of the Roosevelts swung from as a child.

No one will ever specify which—goodness, how inelegant—and if you ask, they’ll feign ignorance, and slip out of the conversation. They’ll know you’re not like them.

***

“Get this,” says Theo. “They’re trying to establish ‘tourist hours.’ ”

We’re past the village center now, back in the tunnel of green.

“Hmm?” I say, still dazed by the time warp.

“Basically, no outsiders allowed before noon or after five,” Theo scoffs. “I guess they’ve had a few more than usual this year, but it’s like, sorry, these are public roads.”

“Right,” I say, picturing the train girl, grinning like a kid. “I met one. One of those true-crime creeps obsessed with Caitlin.”

We reach a stop sign, and Theo brakes just hard enough for me to realize my mistake.

“Is that what this is about?” Theo asks softly. “All the media stuff?”

I’m already shaking my head.

“Nope. It’s not. And I’m not having this conversation again.”

Theo leans over, trying to catch my eye.

“Because I’d understand. It gets to me too, you know? And for you—”

“Theo.”

“Especially with this whole Susannah thing.”

“Theo!” I bark, turning a hard stare on him. “I said no.”

He calmly closes his mouth, his eyes going soft and understanding.

Except he doesn’t understand. He thinks he does, and nothing I say will sway him.

The problem with Theo’s evident brilliance is that he always thinks he’s right, and anyone who disagrees is wrong.

And all wrongs must be righted. This is what makes him so great in court and an absolute nightmare at Thanksgiving.

Another car approaches behind us, forcing Theo to drive on.

We sit in the strained silence, arguing in our heads. I’m dimly aware of a pale stone wall running alongside the road. Theo sighs.

“I’m just worried, Alice,” he says. “I think this is a bad decision—an unhealthy one.”

“I remember,” I answer as the gate appears. “It’s ‘an unhealthy environment,’ for me. My hometown.”

We pull up to the entrance. The wrought-iron spears glimmer like fresh tar in the heat, and the car fills up with the sharp, green smell of lawn.

“I’m not just talking about the village,” Theo says quietly. “The village is one thing.”

“I know,” I finish for him, my own voice softening too. “I really do.”

I nod forward, and Theo obliges, driving slowly up the path.

On that point, Theo’s right—no question. I don’t need him to tell me, because I know better than anyone. The village is one thing. The club is another.