Page 64 of Old Money

I sit in the back booth of the Martha Washington, keeping one eye on the door.

It’s strange to be here in the middle of the afternoon, with the bright August sunshine pouring in the foggy windows, highlighting the splintered floorboards and the faint haze of smoke from the sputtering fireplace.

I check my phone for messages—nothing new—then put it back on the table, face down.

I’m still breaking the habit of idle scrolling.

I check the news each day, and my phone is always on in case of updates or calls from the lawyers, but other than that, I tend to stay offline.

It helps to stay in the moment and remember to mind my own business. I’ve got plenty.

***

It’s been a week since I drove Theo to the station and watched as he turned himself in.

The surrender itself was an awkward scene.

The young officer behind the desk hadn’t quite understood at first, and Theo had to clarify that he was not the victim of a crime, but that he’d committed one—a felony—and he’d like to report it.

There was some commotion as calls were made, and a handful of cars came zooming into the lot, sirens wailing.

Finally, the chief arrived, appraising Theo with a look of muted disappointment.

Then he’d silently waved him to the back.

I haven’t seen or spoken with him since.

I sat on the bench in the station for half an hour, lulled by the chaotic bustling around me and the pleasant feeling of being invisible. Then, someone said my name.

“Alice?”

It was Officer Jessie. She shook her head, wide-eyed.

“I heard about Theo, but I didn’t know you were here.”

I just nodded. I was suddenly so tired.

Jessie sat down next to me, her face thoughtful. It occurred to me that this was the first time I’d seen her go more than a minute without grinning.

“Do you need a ride home?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “My car’s out front.”

“I’ll walk you to it then.” Before I could protest, she stood and nodded sternly toward the lot.

***

This was how I learned that it was Jessie who’d slipped a note in the mailbox that morning: “Take care, Alice.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, a hand to her chest. “I felt awful scaring you, but I had to do something. You weren’t safe in that house.”

She paused to let me catch up. I’d run through the morning in my mind. Had she waited until I was alone in the house? Had she been keeping tabs on me that closely?

“Wait, why?” I asked. “What do you mean you had to do something?”

“I knew what you were doing. I knew the specifics—I’d processed your request for the records.” She’d sighed, her face pained. “And I gave them to you.”

“You stole them for me,” I said. “That was—”

“Oh Alice, I know. It was reckless, giving you that drive.”

“Brave, I was going to say, but—yeah, that too.”

“ Completely reckless. If he’d found it while you were staying in his house?” She shut her eyes and shook her head rapidly. “I should have been straight with you, or just told you to get out of there.”

She put a hand on my arm and squeezed.

“But I knew what you were doing,” she repeated, with a small, tearful smile. “And I wanted you to do it.”

“I don’t understand,” I said eventually. “Anything.”

And Jessie—whom I’d underestimated from the moment I saw her sunny, bright-eyed face—explained.

She’d always known about the rumors, but only in the nonspecific, unsaid way that most people in the village seemed to know.

She’d never consciously considered whether or not they were true (if so, surely someone would’ve done something about it back then).

But she didn’t really think about the murder at all.

It was a club thing, and club things were not the business of outsiders, especially those with names like Jessie Applebaum.

It was just lore to her, until five years ago, when she’d the joined village PD.

There were still plenty of cops on the force from “back then,” and now they were all her superiors.

It was a slow, uncomfortable realization, but she couldn’t shake it.

She certainly couldn’t ask about it. But she kept an ear out, always listening.

“The way they talked about Theo—or no, not ‘talking.’ ” Jessie paused, squinting into the dusk.

“It was just the way they were about him. Like, he got written up in the newspaper once, for some big case. And a few of the older guys were passing the paper around, but in this very deliberate way. Not casually—not like ‘Here, I’m done with it’—and it was that one specific item they were reading.

Something like that happens once and maybe you don’t even clock it.

But then Theo was blowing up and getting all this press, and those weird moments were happening a lot . Little comments too.”

Jessie was clocking everything . But what could she do? The more she noticed, the harder it was to ignore. The rumor was slowly gelling into something like fact.

“Then, one day, someone made a crack about Theo getting canceled,” Jessie told me.

“It was nothing. ‘Oh, he better quit getting famous or they’ll cancel him.’ This was when ‘canceled’ was the big new buzzword—they were always making shitty jokes about it, like it was the most hilarious thing.

But when someone made the joke about Theo, nobody laughed. Total silence.”

Jessie shook her head, staring past my shoulder.

“I felt like such a dope,” she added. “How did I not get it until then?”

“God. If you’re a dope, what does that make me?”

“No, Alice, that’s different. I didn’t—”

I waved off her hurried apologies. My brain was already soupy with information, unable to absorb any more.

“Doesn’t matter. You got it. And then... ?”

“Then—well, then I met Jamie,” Jessie sighed. “And you know that part, I’m sure.”

“That part?”

She looked at me, surprised.

“He didn’t tell you?”

I shrugged. I could feel myself growing foggy. Another five minutes and I would need someone to drive me.

“Huh,” said Jessie, then paused, considering. “Well, that’s his story. I’ll let him tell it.”

***

I hear the door swing open and look toward the front of the bar. Jamie turns to the bartender and lifts a hand in greeting, then drops it as he sees me. He makes his way to the booth and folds his hands on the table.

“Hey.”

He’s dressed in khakis and a button-down, rolled up to the elbows.

“Day off?” I ask.

He shakes his head.

“Had my interview at the station.”

This time around, everyone’s getting questioned, and not just by village police—who’ll soon be under investigation themselves.

Every law enforcement body in the state seems to have a stake in the shocking confession of Theo Wiley, congressional hopeful and civil rights champion, who allegedly—and horrifically—killed his teenage cousin.

Each day more cars and cameras appear in the station parking lot—I make a point of driving by, even if I don’t have to be there.

Theo himself is keeping quiet and, by all accounts, completely cooperative.

The media seems to expect a drawn-out legal fight, but Theo won’t mount one—that much I know.

I think of the look on his face when he surrendered and said goodbye.

I won’t say it was gratitude, but it wasn’t merely resignation either. He was resolved.

I’m all sorts of things. Relieved, of course, and gratified to see so many people not only taking interest but action.

And I’m devastated too. And angry, and guilty, and hopeful, and worried.

There’s a strange, gloomy calm above it all, knowing the storm has passed.

I can take my time picking through the wreckage.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

Jamie sits back against the booth, his shoulders softening. “Thanks,” he answers flatly, his eyes on the table between us. “You okay?”

“Sure.” I shrug. “Not really, but—”

“Yeah. Me too. Not really, but...” He glances up briefly. “Guess I’m sorry too. I should’ve told you months ago.”

Or years ago , I think. Or decades.

Jamie shakes his head, reading my silence.

“I didn’t know, back then. I knew there was a rumor,” he begins. “But I never believed it. There were a lot of rumors about that night, especially that first year. God, one week, everyone at school was saying it was a mob hit.”

He exhales sharply—part laugh, part exasperation.

“The one about Theo—yeah, that one stuck around. But it’s not like everyone was talking about it all the time.”

Not in front of you . His best friend.

“I thought it was just local talk or whatever,” Jamie continues. “Theo was this hometown hero, and I thought it was just the village trying to take him down a peg.”

Jamie looks at the table.

“But I guess—no, I did. I did sometimes wonder, just for a second. I’d see how he’d get laser-focused sometimes—like when something didn’t go his way with a case.

Or, one time, Isaac had a teacher who put him in a time-out—I don’t remember why, but this was like a kindergarten thing.

And Theo was fucking livid . It was all he could talk about for a week—this shitty teacher who had no business being anywhere near children.

The school should fire him. The school should be shut down.

Eventually, I was like, ‘Yeah, but Isaac seems okay, right?’ And I was at the house that night—Isaac was fine .

He was goofing off, singing some song from school.

But then I said that thing to Theo, and Theo bangs his hand on the table and goes, ‘That’s not the point! ’ ”

Jamie’s face tenses at the memory.

“And I kind of—” Jamie sits back with a jolt. “Isaac too. He looked all scared, then he just started wailing.”

Jamie opens his hands and sighs.

“But I don’t have kids, right? So, what do I know? And it wasn’t like he did that every day.”

I have the thought again, but this time Jamie says it:

“Or maybe he did.” Jamie blinks slowly, shaking his head. “I wasn’t there a lot.”

“Me neither,” I add quietly.