Page 62 of Old Money

“ Y ’know, I knew this was coming,” Patrick continues. “But I never thought you’d actually crash the wedding.”

My gut churns with a queasy swirl of fear and anger and physical repulsion. I can’t bring myself to speak, or even open my mouth. I have no idea what might come out.

“If we’re going to do this, let’s get on with it,” he says. “I’d rather not spend my entire wedding day with you.”

I stay silent. Patrick sighs, then looks down, cracking an aggravated smile—that same one-sided smirk.

As a teenager, it made him look mature and debonair.

Now it makes him look younger, even with the weathered skin and faint dullness in his eyes.

It shakes something loose in me, this glimpse of the boy he was.

“It wasn’t you,” I say, my voice barely above a whisper.

But he hears me. The smirk vanishes, and Patrick’s face melts back into a somber stare. He takes a breath and lets it out slowly.

“No,” he answers heavily. “Of course it wasn’t.”

I shudder.

“Did you know it was him?”

Patrick hesitates. “I was pretty sure, yeah.”

“Why didn’t you say something?”

Patrick holds still, regarding me with caution. It hits me that I’m making him nervous.

“Because I was pretty sure,” he answers, watching me. “But I wasn’t positive.”

I could scream—I want to, desperately. Say more! Make me understand! Instead, I force my head into a nod.

“It didn’t click right away,” Patrick says. “I knew they’d talked. I knew how she could be—all the senior girls, I mean. I was a freshman once; it’s like torture.”

I file this away, afraid to interrupt.

“I never found out what she said to him,” Patrick adds. “But I saw him at the cloakroom after, all fucked up about it.”

“What do you mean?” I interject, unable to stop myself. “What did he say?”

Patrick turns his palms out, shrugging.

“Nothing, really. He just had that look, like he was going to set the place on fire. Definitely wanted to set me on fire. I was like, ‘Oh hey, what’re you doing here anyway?’ And he lost his shit.

Called me an asshole or something.” Patrick’s eyes go distant.

“I didn’t even remember at first. Not for weeks. They’d already closed the case.”

“That doesn’t matter. You still could have reported him.”

Patrick nods, solemn and deliberate. He looks like his father now—like a politician who’s been through this issue a hundred times, repeating his official stance.

“I wasn’t positive—not a hundred percent. And you don’t go calling someone a killer unless you’re sure.” Patrick glances at me again. “At least I don’t.”

“But you must have known she didn’t drown,” I press. “She wasn’t that drunk—you knew that. You were with her practically the whole night.”

Patrick’s gaze shifts downward, considering.

“Not the whole night,” he says at last. “I was also—”

He leans back against the sink.

“I was with someone else too,” he says. “In here. That’s where I was when it happened.”

I wait, confused. The sauna alibi? The one I know is bullshit?

“No, you weren’t,” I retort—then catch myself and try again, more carefully. “I know you weren’t with Alex, okay? I know what Alex said was—”

Patrick holds up a hand.

“I’m not talking about what Alex said, and—yeah, I think you’d better just leave him out of this.” He shoots me a look of simmering rage. “I’m not discussing Alex. Not with you. Not today.”

Patrick holds me in a hard look. I nod.

“So you were in here with another girl,” I state evenly.

“I was with Barbara.”

Barbara who? I think, blinking at him. There weren’t any Barbaras at school .

Patrick looks back, silent and neutral, waiting for me to puzzle it out. For me to realize he’s talking about my own aunt. Caitlin’s mother. My mother’s sister— my Barbara.

“You—” I stumble.

I see the clubhouse from above again, looking down at it like a dollhouse as another room lights up—the locker room this time. I see the figures in there—Barbara’s auburn hair and Patrick’s, dark and shaggy—but I can’t conjure the rest.

“You had an affair?” I hear myself say.

Patrick makes another noncommittal gesture with his head.

“It wasn’t an affair,” he counters quietly—that unmistakable mix of self-righteousness and shame. “We had sex a few times. It was stupid—nothing. It would’ve been nothing if things hadn’t happened the way they did.”

A vague, protesting syllable bursts out of me, and hangs there—the rest of the words, whatever they were, forgotten. My train of thought is getting away from me, derailed by this new, unthinkable fact.

“I was a little shit back then, okay?” Patrick spits back, bridling. “Not a killer.”

I look at him, pulling my focus back into the room. At least now the phone call makes more sense—the mysterious twenty-two minutes. Whatever he said to her, it wasn’t a confession.

“Why did you lie to the cops then? If you had a real alibi?”

He leans back, smirking.

“Why didn’t I tell them I was fucking my girlfriend’s mom? You mean after you told them I killed her?”

He chuckles to himself. I wait it out.

“Yes,” I reply. “They’d have confirmed your story with Barbara. It would have been uncomfortable, but it would’ve made your life easier in the long run. God—it might’ve changed everything.”

They might have investigated properly. They might’ve found Jamie sooner. This might have been a private tragedy with an ending.

“Twenty years,” I murmur, my mind still reeling with what-ifs. “If you’d just—”

Patrick lunges forward.

“Do you hear yourself?” he barks, a drop of spittle arcing through the air. “I’d just watched them pull my dead girlfriend out of the pool. I was in shock—and there’s this kid screaming that I killed her.”

He jabs a hand at me, the other one gripping the edge of the sink.

“I was fucking delirious! I kept thinking it was a mistake and it wasn’t her, or that she wasn’t completely dead, and they just had to, you know, get her heart going again.

I mean, for like a week, I’d be like, ‘Did they check? Are they sure?’ ” He shakes his head and exhales a shaky sigh.

“So no, no, I wasn’t thinking about alibis.

I wasn’t worried about convincing people that I wasn’t a murderer—because, again, I wasn’t . ”

He leans back and clamps his head by the temples with his thumb and middle finger.

“So yeah, when they questioned me—I mean, it hadn’t even been twenty-four hours. I was still totally out of it,” he mutters. “Totally useless, couldn’t even talk really. Not that it mattered.”

“What does that mean?” I ask carefully.

“What it sounds like,” he snaps, still holding his head by the temples. “What you fucking know already. My dad had the whole thing worked out before they even talked to me.”

He trails off into a mumble, the venom drained from his tone.

“He thought I’d done it too. My dad. Didn’t even ask before he went and made the deal.”

Patrick looks wilted inside his wedding suit. His gaze drifts past me, hazy and soft.

“I walked in there, and—God, all their faces. They thought they were letting me get away with something.”

His phone buzzes, startling us both. He turns away and answers in a lowered voice. I can’t hear what he’s saying, but it’s obvious who he’s talking to. I see his smile in the mirror—a real one.

No , I plead in silence. No, we’re not done . I need this strange détente to hold, just one more minute. My mind is still tangled with questions. What kind of deal exactly? Did you tell them the truth—the cops, your dad? Did anyone believe it?

But Patrick’s standing straight now, slipping the phone back into his pocket. He checks his reflection in the mirror, touching a hand to the buttons on his jacket. Then he clears his throat and turns back to me.

“I’m going back to my wedding now.”

He strides forward, heading for the door behind me. I don’t move.

“Why did you have it here?” I ask. “The wedding. Of all places.”

Patrick answers without hesitation.

“Because it meant something to Susannah. Or to her parents. And—sorry, what the fuck is it to you?”

“Don’t you think it’s a little strange? A little—” I gesture around the room, feeling my shoulders rise “—complicated?”

“Nope. I love her. It’s not complicated.” He leans in close. “And I didn’t kill anyone. So why shouldn’t I come back here?”

The corner of his mouth lifts into a small, mean hint of a smile.

“You though?” he murmurs. “I honest-to-God don’t know how you could.”

He makes for the door, but I hold my ground. This can’t be it. I need more answers .

“Wait. Patrick.”

He stops with his hand on the door and sighs, his annoyance plain.

“How did you know it was Jamie?” I ask, stepping closer. “You said you were pretty sure, but how? Did you see him walking to—”

“Who’s Jamie?” Patrick frowns.

I stand there, frozen, looking through him. Everything in me goes still.

He waits another moment, then shakes his head and walks out.

Upstairs, the guests cheer, welcoming Patrick back. The roar of their united voices rumbles the ceiling above me.

Not Patrick. Not Jamie either.

I was a freshman once , Patrick said.

I thought he’d just mistaken Jamie for a freshman. He was so tall.

I knew they’d talked. He had that look—like he was going to set the place on fire .

Again, I assumed it was Jamie he’d seen by the cloakroom. Jamie was the one working there.

I stand still and force myself to think in slow, deliberate thoughts: it could’ve been anyone.

There were tons of other Wheaton kids there—freshman, seniors, lower-school students.

Just because it wasn’t Jamie does not mean it was him .

I can’t jump to conclusions like this anymore. I don’t know anything.

My relief is shallow and short-lived. It lasts only until I open the door and see him sitting there, on the bench in the hallway, by himself.

My brother smiles at me, tears standing in his eyes. He raises a hand.

“Hey, Alice,” he says, his voice high and watery. “I need to tell you something.”