Page 56 of Old Money

I toss an empty can of hair spray into the bin, wincing as it clangs against the others.

“Come on,” I say and wave over the next waiter—a new one I don’t recognize. “Shut your eyes.”

The server dutifully covers his face with his hands.

I crack open a fresh can of Aqua Net and spray down his wavy blond hair, pressing it back into place.

I’ve converted the library’s oak bar into a grooming station, stocked with combs and safety pins, and enough aerosol product to fuel a chemical-weapons program.

“You’re good,” I cough, turning away from the acrid mist. “Don’t forget to blot.”

He gives a stiff thumbs-up and wheels around, speeding toward the lobby.

“Do not run,” I bark. “Next!”

Jamie wasn’t kidding. He really did need me for the rehearsal dinner.

In fact, I’ve been on touch-up duty all week.

Thanks to the swelling heat wave and the hordes of early-bird wedding guests, club attendance has effectively tripled, and the staff have been sweat-stained and overwhelmed all day, every day.

I’ve been posted up in the boot room with blotting papers and stacks of fresh undershirts, shoving Gatorade at teenagers like a JV soccer coach.

Jamie’s hired virtually every kid in town with a valid license, along with a dozen temp servers, scavenged from local catering companies.

Jamie himself has been a passing blur, zooming around the clubhouse to put out fires and fill in gaps: uncorking at dinner, fetching cars from the lot and plunging the powder-room toilet every ninety minutes or so.

I’ve barely seen him all week, but when I have, he’s been holding a plunger.

“Okay, gang.” He strides in from the lobby, hands pressed together. “Halfway through salads, and we’re all still standing.”

Tonight, it’s a whole other level of chaos—the edgy, silent kind, where everyone’s sweating before they step foot out into the buggy heat.

The rehearsal guests are outside under the tent, and the clubhouse is echoing with hurried footsteps and ominous, distant bangs from the kitchen.

It sounds a bit like a haunted house, complete with the occasional sob as another server comes back from an encounter with Liv Yates.

The wedding coordinator declared all staff be “camera ready”: no wrinkles, no frizz and, please, no blemishes.

But it’s clearly Liv Yates who’s enforcing the order.

“She’s already made two of them cry over hair issues,” I tell Jamie once the servers leave—quickly touching a hand to my own head, ensuring my French twist is still tidy. “And this thing about the handkerchiefs being floppy?”

“I know,” he says. “And the tie knots—I know.”

On top of the grooming rules, everyone’s decked out in wedding-weekend attire.

I’m only here for hair spray duty, and even I had to borrow a blazer to throw over my regular work top and skirt.

The floor staff are dressed in freshly tailored suits, accented with lavender-gray handkerchiefs, and silk ties, dyed in the club’s signature green and tied in Patrick’s signature knot—that fussy four-in-hand.

“I spent the first hour redoing everyone’s,” I say. “God, even yours is lopsided.”

Jamie tugs it absently, then checks the lobby exit. I glance at the staff door—both clear.

“I think we have a window,” he says. “They’re starting speeches.”

My heart jumps to a staccato beat. It’s not panic or trepidation this time. This time, I’m champing at the bit.

“You put your bag in the office?” Jamie murmurs.

“Bottom-left drawer of your desk.” I nod. “You stashed the rest of the booze downstairs?”

“This morning,” he replies with a nervous smile. “The perks of sleeping at work.”

Jamie decamped to one of the upstairs guest rooms earlier this week, citing the mayhem at the clubhouse (not to mention all the wedding deliveries).

When the liquor arrived yesterday— including a whopping fifty cases of gin—Jamie took receipt himself.

As usual, he set aside a quarter of them in the subbasement, where the backup booze was kept.

Then, in the wee hours of this morning, he sequestered another two quarters.

It was a party crisis waiting to happen.

“For real, we’re going to need that gin soon,” he adds. “We did something like three hundred martinis at cocktails—the parents are tanked.”

I pause, catching his eye.

“Which parents? His?”

“Hers, mostly. Her dad is—” He glances toward the window, shaking his head. “I think they’re nervous.”

A blistering sadness comes over me, imagining the sweet, bewildered Joyces out there in the WASP nest. But thinking of them makes me think of Susannah. And I can’t think about her right now.

“Brody’s out there?”

“Oh yeah. Hasn’t left his post since appetizers. The way Liv Yates is on everyone—”

“Right, sure, he needs to show her he’s on them too.”

“I’ll let them finish topping glasses. Five minutes—then I’ll rush him and ask for the keys.”

The last time the club ran out of gin was The Descent of 2016—a disaster Mr. Brody will recall well. It’s the reason they keep so much in reserve. So when Jamie comes running (another red flag), we’re banking on him to panic just enough to hand over his keys without asking questions.

Jamie’s already backing toward the lobby, glancing toward a distant shout from the kitchen—something about the sorbet.

“I’ll text when I’ve got them,” Jamie says. “Stay close.”

He turns and jogs out into the lobby, heading for the gallery. I rush after him.

“You’re positive this is the window? No one’s making moves for the bathroom?”

Jamie pauses on the other side of the grass-green carpet.

“Nah, not during speeches. Susannah’s mom is up next, and she’s already weepy. No one’s walking out during Mother of the Bride.”

I flinch again, thinking of her. The upside to all this chaos is it’s allowed me, occasionally, to stop thinking about Susannah, and her admission in the parking lot.

Susannah did not believe—had never believed—that Patrick killed Caitlin.

It was such an implausible statement that I just stood there in a wordless daze.

She too seemed stunned by her own words, and we’d both just wobbled there for a moment, eventually drifting apart toward our cars.

It took hours for the shock to wear off. How had she kept her doubts hidden for so long? Why tell me now? Above all, how could she, of all people, possibly believe Patrick was innocent? I couldn’t find a single logical answer, until finally, the obvious one hit.

She didn’t. She doesn’t. She’s full of shit.

There’s no complicated explanation. Susannah just changed sides.

She’s just going along with the official story, like rest of the village—like Caitlin’s own parents—because it’s easier, and because she’s with Patrick.

And why is she with him? Perhaps I’ve overlooked the obvious there too.

He’s a powerful, handsome and profoundly wealthy man.

She wouldn’t be the first to look the other way in exchange for all that.

And haven’t I been self-deluding too? All this time, looking for a deeper, darker story, instead of facing the sad truth.

We were friends; now we’re not. People change.

People lie to each other and themselves.

It’s that simple. I’m the one complicating things.

“Hey.”

I whip around, startled, and see Cory, holding his green tie.

“I heard you know how to do this?”

I can hear the frantic bustle echoing from down the hall. But Cory, as ever, seems immune to the stress around him.

“You don’t know how to knot a tie?”

“I can do a regular one.” He rolls his eyes. “Just not this stupid, old-school one—four-hander, or whatever. I guess the mom complained about it.”

“Four-in-hand,” I correct. “Did you try YouTube?”

I know he hasn’t. Everyone else at least tried to do it themselves, but Cory’s not a real staffer. In four weeks he’ll be done with doorman duty and go back to being a member kid, as bratty and entitled as ever. The least I can do is give him a hard time.

“Can you do it or not?” he huffs. “I gotta get back on the door.”

I sigh and wave him over, quickly looking at my phone, face up on the bar—nothing from Jamie yet.

“Look up,” I order Cory, taking his tie.

He’d never get it from YouTube anyway. The whole point of this knot is it’s a pain in the ass. It took me a few tries to get it just right, my muscle memory rusty after twenty years.

“How is it out there? Still on speeches?”

“Huh? I guess. Can’t see much from the front door.”

I glance discreetly toward my phone. No vibrations. Nothing on the screen.

“How do you even know how to do this?” Cory asks, sighing at the ceiling, impatient and bored.

“It was a thing at school,” I reply absently. “Patrick’s thing.”

Cory’s chin drops.

“No shit, you were at Wheaton with Yates?”

The look on his face—like he’s only just realized I too am a person, just like him.

“Different year.” I nudge his chin. “Head up.”

“Did you know that girl he killed?”

It’s the casual certainty in his voice. The nonchalance. That girl he killed . It’s just a fact. He doesn’t even say it quietly.

“Yes,” I answer. “I knew her a little.”

“So fucked up,” Cory says to the ceiling.

Again, that mumbled, offhand certitude, like it goes without saying—this thing I’ve waited decades to hear someone else say.

I give the tie a final pinch, then step back to check it, though my eyes are filmed with tears.

“Good enough.”

“Cool,” Cory says, already turning toward the staff door—oblivious as usual.

I put a hand to my abdomen and tell myself to breathe.

I smell the fireplace. I hear the crowd laughing outside. I see—

My eyes come to rest on a bookshelf by the door—on one shelf in particular. I see —I see a row of books that don’t quite fit in. They stick out, just slightly, over the edge of the shelf. And though the spines are leather bound and dusty like the others, they aren’t actually books. They’re binders.