Page 52 of Old Money

G oogle Maps still claims it’s twenty minutes to Aunt Barbara’s house. I get there in seventeen. Seventeen! A lot shorter than your leisurely phone call with the guy who killed your daughter!

I turn the cranky old car in between the hedges at the top of the long driveway, and leave it parked there, deciding to walk the rest of the way. This is an ambush, after all.

My shoes crunch loudly on Barbara’s gravel driveway, and I slow myself down. I cannot be livid when I knock on the door. But I am livid. Twenty years and she hasn’t spoken a word to us. But she gave him the time.

The house is large for one person—a white, Mediterranean-style rectangle, built on the far end of a cliff-side street, overlooking the Hudson.

This side of the river has a different feel to it—the streets are wider, and the driveways are all hedge lined and ungated.

The trees aren’t so tall and overgrown, allowing for more breeze and sky and a hell of a lot less humidity.

But I don’t know what possessed her to stay here all these years.

She may be across the river, but her view is Briar’s Green.

I’m about ten feet away from the front door, when suddenly, it opens.

“Alice?”

Aunt Barbara stands in the half-open door, her eyes narrowed.

“I—” I begin, the sight of her startling me out of my angry fugue. “Hi.”

She stares at me, unblinking, her lips parted.

“What is it, Alice? Are you all right? Is Theo all right?”

She asks in a quick, mechanical tone, as though getting it out of the way.

“Everyone’s fine,” I say, firming up my own voice—remembering why I’m here.

Aunt Barbara holds still, looking at me. She closes her mouth.

“May I?” I gesture to the door. “I won’t stay long.”

She takes a step back into the dark entry, her mouth a pinched line. Finally, she opens the door.

“I was having tea,” she says as I step into the cool front hall.

I wait for her to ask if I’d like some, but she just extends an arm out and turns crisply on her heel, leading me down the hall.

She looks—well, she looks so much like her .

Aunt Barbara always reminded me of the Roman statues I’d seen on school museum trips: tall and broad shouldered, her hair piled atop her head in thick auburn swoops.

It’s paler now, and glinting with silver strands, but overall, she’s shockingly familiar.

“The house is nice,” I say—some childhood reflex kicking in at the sight of the aunt I once adored.

It is a nice house, though very different from the one she shared with Uncle Greg and Caitlin.

Their home had knotty hardwood floors, almost soft to the touch from a century of polishing.

There were photos on the walls and a broken grandfather clock in the foyer, which chimed at odd hours, and the whole place smelled a bit like fireplace.

This place smells like nothing at all. The floors are dark and make no sound beneath our footsteps, and there’s nothing on the walls but sandy-cream paint.

“That’s right,” Aunt Barbara says in front of me as we enter the open living room. “You’ve never been here before. I’ve never invited you.”

I stop in my tracks. Barbara stops too, turning halfway back to me.

“Man,” I say. “I don’t know why I expected you to be nice to me.”

There’s a caustic satisfaction in her plain, unguarded rudeness. The child in me could sob; the rest of me—the angry, aggrieved adult—is utterly relieved. I don’t have to be nice to her either. At least we don’t have to fake it.

Behind her, I see glimpses of the river through the wide windows of the living room. A glass door opens onto a veranda, accented with shrubs and small potted trees. There’s a table too, but something tells me she won’t invite me out there either.

“What did you expect, Alice?” she asks. “Sincerely?”

“Good question. I guess this seems about right.” I give a shrug. “This is how I’d act if you showed up on my door—not that you know where it is. Or anything about me.”

She lifts her chin, taking me in.

“The city, I heard. You do some sort of admin work.”

I feel myself blanch.

Holding her hard gaze, she gestures toward a glass coffee table and a pair of white sofas on the left side of the room.

“Shall we?”

I take the sofa facing the windows, and Barbara settles in the opposite one, her frame sharply backlit by the sun.

She perches at a slight angle, one elbow on the back of the sofa and one ankle resting on her knee.

I remember this—the funny way she sat on a sofa.

On someone with less confidence, it would be an awkward pose, but it just made Barbara look cool.

It made her look even more like Katherine Hepburn—a resemblance everyone noticed, and she always laughed off.

She waits, her jaw set and readied.

“Right then. You’re fine. Theo’s fine.” She lifts a hand. “Let’s have it.”

I open my mouth to give it to her, but instead, an apology comes out.

“I should’ve called first,” I say, my eyes drifting. “I’m sorry.”

Barbara drops her chin and looks at me from under heavy lids.

“Oh dear, we’re not going to do that, are we? Sit here saying ‘sorries’ to each other?”

It makes me chuckle, I can’t help it. All these details I’d forgotten: her scolding glare, her sharp propriety. The interior steeliness I’d admired, even as a child.

“No, no,” I say, composing myself. “ ‘Sorry’ is dull conversation. I remember.”

She gives me an approving nod, and it feels so surprisingly good that for a second, I want to drop this whole thing. For a second, I think I would , if it meant I could be her niece again. But it doesn’t look like that’s on offer. She didn’t even offer tea.

So, I suck in a breath and do what I came to do:

“I’m here to ask about the phone call,” I say, my face up but my eyes on the coffee table.

“When your mother was ill? Alice, I don’t know what Theo told—”

“What? No ,” I retort, my back rigid. “Not the phone call Theo made to tell you your sister was dying. I actually do not want to talk about that.”

“All right,” she says calmly. “Good then. Neither do I.”

I pause, gathering myself.

I hear seagulls. I smell my sweat. I see a glass coffee table, and a puckered face reflected in it.

“Your phone call with Patrick Yates. That’s why I’m here.”

I watch Barbara’s shadowy figure in the glass tabletop—still and silent, but something in it shifting.

When I look up, her taut face has gone bloodless.

She turns toward the wall, looking at the empty space where no pictures hang.

The hollow room is so quiet that I hear the faint pop as she parts her lips. But no other sound comes out.

“Patrick Yates called you on—”

Barbara raises a hand, stopping me.

“You know what? I’m not going to ask,” she says. “I’d rather not hear your explanation.”

“I found out—incidentally. I didn’t mean to invade your privacy.”

“Well, as long as you didn’t mean it.” She recenters herself on the sofa, anger burning bright in every gesture. “Go on then, Alice, out with it. Fire away.”

I knit my hands together in my lap, and give them a tight squeeze.

“First, I’d like to know why he called you.”

“I didn’t ask.”

“What do you mean? What did he say?”

“He said a number of things, none of which is your business.”

She turns toward the wall again and exhales a fiery breath through her nose.

“I’m not asking for every detail,” I say. “But I do need to know.”

“You don’t, actually. You’ll survive.”

I can feel myself shrinking and squeeze my hands tight again.

“If you tell me, I’ll go. I won’t bother you again.”

I wait for her to cross her arms and tell me not to be maudlin. But she doesn’t even look at me.

“I think he—” Barbara sighs at herself, annoyed. “Alice, I really do not appreciate this.”

I hold my ground and fight the instinct to apologize. Again.

“I’ll tell you what I recall, but only because I’d like this conversation finished sooner rather than later. Are we clear?”

I nod.

“Honestly, I think he called so he could say he called. So he could tell himself he’d made the effort. He’s getting married and racked with guilt, naturally. So he called to ‘acknowledge’ how hard it must be for me.”

Barbara looks up, rolling her eyes.

“God,” I say, repulsed as well. “That is— gross .”

“Agreed.”

“What did you say?”

“I said, ‘That’s very big of you, Patrick. Kindly fuck off, and congratulations.’ ”

A bubble of pride swells in my chest. I hope she did actually say some of that.

“Oh, you know, I told him it was fine,” Barbara says, waving a hand. “It makes no difference if he’s married or not. It won’t change anything that matters.”

I see the tears now, slipping down her cheeks and under her chin. She clutches a hand to her throat.

“It’s not right though,” I say, sadness clouding my own anger. “You being so fair to him. He doesn’t deserve it.”

“Oh, good Lord, Alice, no one gets what they deserve. None of us did.”

She gestures at the air between us.

“Your generation astonishes me,” she blusters, her eyes still tearing. “This righteous obsession with justice—as if you invented the concept! As if you were the first people on earth to look around and realize things aren’t as they should be.”

“Okay?” I say, my shoulders slowly rising. “I don’t know. Kids these days.”

She shoots me a look like a poison arrow.

“You aren’t though, are you? You’re not children anymore. But it’s taking you so goddamn long to grow up.”

I straighten up. I’m not here for a scolding.

“What else did he say?”

“What else? Nothing. He just wanted to atone.”

“And that took twenty minutes?”

Aunt Barbara freezes. Then her eyes start darting left and right in cartoonish confusion.

“Did it, Alice?” She scoffs. “It sounds like you might know better. I wasn’t watching the clock.”

“I do know better. I think he confessed to you.”

It’s the only thing that makes sense. I knew it, Jeremy knew it, and looking at Barbara, I can see she knows it, too. What else would keep her on the phone that long?

“I think he did feel guilty,” I continue, my voice steadying. “Like you said. I think it got overwhelming. With the wedding, yes—but also the anniversary, and all the press this year.”

And me, of course. Nosing around. Getting close to something.

“I think he wanted to unburden himself, and he used you to do it,” I finish.

Aunt Barbara sits in bewildered stillness.

“I would tell you how ridiculous that sounds, but I don’t think there’s much point.”

She shakes her head, both weary and disturbed.

“ ‘Confession’—my God,” she mutters, looking past me. “If he’d confessed to anything , he’d be in handcuffs by now, or dead. Dead if I had my way.”

Her eyes drift back to me, that leery look on her face again—like she’s wavering on something.

“Well.” Her expression snaps shut again. “Time to go, I think.”

She unfolds from the couch in one swift motion. She’s done with this, and with me.

“No, I—”

But she’s halfway down the hall already. I rise, obedient, and follow.

At the front door, Barbara folds her arms.

“No need for niceties.” She steps back to let me pass. “Off you go.”

I wish it didn’t sting so much—this frigid goodbye. I wish a lot of things.

“Bye.” I step out onto the stone landing, letting the door swing shut behind me.

She catches it.

“Alice.”

I stop short and look back.

“It really doesn’t matter,” she says in a husky, tremulous voice. “All right? Do you understand?”

Her face is full of something. Anguish? Fear? It twitches at her eyelids and the corners of her mouth.

“What doesn’t?”

“Never mind, just—” She turns away sharply, eyes shut tight. “Just try to remember that. Yes?”

I search her face another moment, then nod.

“Good,” she says. “And watch where you step.”

Aunt Barbara lets the door close with a thud. Before I turn back to the driveway, I heard her lock the dead bolt.