Page 41 of Old Money

J amie’s phone goes straight to voicemail, and I hang up, dial again, and it doesn’t even ring.

I give it one more try, and then I put the phone down and slowly ease into the intersection.

A police car comes screaming down the road, heading in the direction of the highway—but that doesn’t mean anything.

Jamie’s phone cut out barely three minutes ago; even if he was in an accident, they wouldn’t be on their way yet (right?).

Besides, the cops are all over the place tonight, handing out firework fines.

Like the saying goes, you can’t even get a speeding ticket on Fourth of July.

On this particular night, you can get away with just about anything.

I check the road in both directions, then hit the gas and turn left, speeding toward the club.

Those sounds I heard—that piercing squeal, that sickening whoosh—that could’ve just been traffic.

Or perhaps Jamie did have a near-miss while we were talking and decided to just put the phone down and drive. Better safe than sorry.

I make it to the club in decent time, despite the handful of cops that shoot past, nudging me toward the shoulder.

I take the service driveway up the back way, craning my neck as I reach the top of the hill and the staff parking area comes into view.

I circle it, searching the crowd of cars for Jamie’s.

“Hey,” someone calls as I crawl along the front of the lot. “Alice?”

I screech to a stop and turn to see Cory leaning out from the staff entrance. He waves urgently.

“Alice, hold up, there’s a situation.”

“Oh my God, what happened?” I roll down the passenger window.

“Do you know where Jamie is?” Cory asks. His voice is as dull and unbothered as ever, but his face is alert—almost stressed.

“No, that’s— So he’s not here?”

He said he was coming back first, right? To make sure the servers were pushing water? I run through the timing again. He should be here by now.

My stomach twists as Cory shakes his head.

“Damn, thought he was with you.”

“Cory, what’s going on then? What situation?”

“One of the wives is throwing a shit fit in the gallery.” Cory glances behind him. “She’s drunk and pissed at her husband. It’s getting kind of loud.”

I sit back, gathering myself. This guy.

“So? Go deal with it. Talk to them.” I shake my head. “Did Jamie call?”

“I tried dealing with it,” Cory snaps, ignoring my question. “She told me to fuck off, swear to God.”

I put the car in gear. This is a waste of time.

“I don’t know, Cory, try harder. Bring them some cake and coffee—that’s what Brody does.”

“Uh, that’s a little below my pay grade,” Cory calls as I reverse into a turn.

“That’s not the expression!” I shout, heading back toward the service drive. “And no, it isn’t!”

I pull back onto Route 9 and call Jamie again—voicemail.

It’s been over forty minutes now. Something is officially wrong.

I aim for Ashborough, thinking I’ll go by his apartment.

I don’t know the address, but I know it’s the same complex he grew up in—somewhere off the shopping center, near the Carvel.

I have a vague memory of it, having been in the back of the car when Mom picked Theo up there, probably hundreds of times.

I’m trying to picture the number on the door when I pass a familiar sign on my left: Riverside Hospital.

“Shit,” I whisper, stopping in the middle of the road.

I look back at the sign, gnawing the edge of my lip. Then I signal left and pull into the ER lot.

***

“Say again?” the woman at the front desk asks. “You were in a car accident?”

She scans me, uncertain.

“No, not me. There’s been an accident,” I repeat. “On the highway—the Taconic.”

She turns to a nurse seated at a computer a few feet behind her, typing. The nurse shakes his head without looking away from the screen.

“I don’t know what to tell you,” the woman says. “I couldn’t give you any information unless you were a relative anyway, but—it’s been a quiet night.”

I nod, thanking her absently as I turn for the door.

“You could try Valley Medical,” the nurse calls. “They’re the closest emergency surgical unit.”

I pause, confused. Valley Medical is something like twenty miles north. Why would they bring him all the way there, and not a local hospital? But then the word surgical sinks in.

I drive to Jamie’s apartment first. I still don’t remember which unit is his, but I don’t have to. There’s only one without a car in the driveway.

I smell charcoal , I think, my pulse pounding. I hear fireworks on the river. I see a darkened window.

I drive north toward the highway, my phone on speaker.

I punch buttons with my thumb, navigating Valley Medical’s phone menu, trying not to look at the time.

I imagine Jamie laughing at me. You went to the hospital?

Seriously? He’d say something about how the amateur sleuthing had gotten to me.

Then he’d give me the perfectly reasonable, obvious explanation for what had happened.

Except I can’t think of one that doesn’t end with something terrible happening to him. And the idea of something terrible happening to him—on this night, in this year—while I listened on the other end of the phone, seems too surreal a coincidence.

There’s a click on the line as someone answers my call.

“Emergency,” the voice says. “Nurses station.”

“Hi, I’m trying to find a friend of mine who may have been brought in.”

“Are you a relative or emergency contact?”

“No, I—”

“I won’t be able to help then.”

“No, I know. But is there any information you can give me?”

“Not regarding patients. Is that all?”

“No, wait.”

I strain for a reason.

“I was at a bar with my friend,” I spit out suddenly. “We left at the same time, around ten.”

The voice waits. I wince into the silence.

“He wasn’t drunk. I just— He split off and took the highway. He was somewhere near Ashborough—”

The nurse cuts in.

“And he was in an accident?”

“I think so. I think I heard it.” I cringe again, preemptively. “We were talking on the phone.”

Another long pause. I can hear the hospital in the background: overlapping voices, distant beeps, the click-clack chatter of keyboards.

“I’m looking,” the nurse says finally.

“Thank you, thank you so much,” I say, though my shoulders tense up.

“We did have a car accident around eleven. Came in via ambulance.”

“Oh my God, really? You did? Are they—” I clear my creaking throat. “Were they discharged already? Does it say that?”

“You’re not an immediate relative, correct?”

“No.” My voice wobbles. “A friend.”

The nurse sighs hard into the receiver.

“Then I can’t disclose details. But nobody from that accident was admitted,” she says. “Or discharged.”

“Oh.”

“Do you understand?”

“You mean he’s still there? In the ER?”

“No, ma’am.”

Now I hear it—it’s there in the “ma’am.” Solemnity. A little sympathy. The nurse waits another moment, then speaks again.

“I’ll have to hang up now. I’m sorry.”

My lungs pull in a sharp breath. I drive in a daze, muscle memory guiding me back south on the highway, toward Briar’s Green.

Inch by inch, reality descends. Jamie is dead.

A few hours ago, he was sitting in a pub with his feet propped up, his face flushed and animated, making him look even younger than his thirty-two years.

He’d had iced tea and some soggy fries—the last meal he’d ever eat.

I was the last person he’d ever talk to.

And it’s all my fault. I involved him. I’m the reason he was out tonight. I’m the one who called.

I come to a red light at a four-way intersection.

It takes several seconds before I register the orange flare on the road, just past the traffic light.

I hadn’t been thinking when I turned back south on the same highway Jamie was on.

I’ve driven directly into the scene of the accident.

It’s real. Even from here, I can see how bad it was.

The light changes, and I roll slowly through the intersection, nauseated as I navigate around lingering shards of plastic—bumper parts, maybe.

The car is gone, and most of the mess has been cleaned up, but it’s clear there was a mess.

The road glimmers with smashed glass, and there’s an acrid stench in the air—that ominous mix of oil and burnt mechanics.

A lone police vehicle remains, its red light twirling silently.

The driver’s side door is open, and the officer stands beside it with a small, chunky laptop perched on the roof.

Her hair is tied back in a braid, and at first, I think of Jessie.

Then I see the uniform: a State Trooper, not a village cop.

( But oh my God, Jessie. Who will tell her?

) The officer glances back, waving me onward.

I roll down my window.

“Everyone all right?”

“Just go around please, ma’am,” the officer says, not looking back. “Thank you.”

I don’t want to though. I don’t want to see the rest of it.

My knuckles go white on the wheel as I gently press the gas, rumbling forward, my eyes straight ahead.

Passing the police car, I glimpse something shiny on my right.

I hold my gaze forward, trying to stop thinking of what it might be: twisted metal.

Mirror shards. The glasses he kept above the visor.

“Alice?”

My foot jerks to the brake and the car stops with an eek , my head thwacking against the headrest as I look out the open window.

It’s an emergency blanket—the same crinkly, shiny kind they gave me.

And it’s him. It’s Jamie.