Page 9 of Old Money

“ P iggy attaaaaaaaack!”

I see a blur of blond hair as Simon leaps off the couch. I reach back, catching him just as he crash-lands onto my back.

“Simon!” Jules steps out of the kitchen, sponge in hand, looking her youngest in eye.

Simon relaxes his choke-hold grip around my neck and slithers off my back, giggling.

“We always do piggy attack,” he shouts.

“But we always ask first, right?” Theo calls from the kitchen sink, hollering over the clatter of dishes. I’ve arrived on Dad’s Spaghetti Night. The house is steamed up with garlic and pasta water.

“Right!” Simon hollers back, flopping onto the couch.

“What else do we do?” Jules asks patiently.

“I’m sorry, Aunt Alice, and are you okay?” Simon says, his head dangling above the carpet.

I’ve been kneed in the kidneys by a flying six-year-old. I may never stand upright again, but I’ll be damned before I lose my reputation as Cool Aunt Alice.

“Yeah, buddy! Just give me a warning next time.”

I extend my palm for an upside-down high five. Simon slaps it, then falls off the couch on his head.

Simon is the baby of his family, and it suits him. He’s like a golden retriever puppy: jumpy and destructive, but you simply can’t get mad at him. Isaac, his older brother, is just as sweet, but in the opposite way: a sensitive, thoughtful kid—the kind who notices everything.

“Are you sure you’re okay, Aunt Alice?” Isaac asks. “You’re sitting kind of funny.”

He pauses by the dining table, dirty plates in his hands, watching me. Isaac is also a bit of a worrier.

I straighten up and smile back, nodding. I feel a hand patting my foot and look to see Simon beaming up at me from under the coffee table.

“Aunt Alice, may I please have a piggy attack, please?”

Jules and Theo’s house is always a mess, but it’s ten times nicer than the condo we grew up in.

Two bedrooms, two bathrooms and an honest-to-God basement.

It has a brick walkway out front, and a driveway where the boys are always leaving their bikes, even though the garage is right there.

It has a front and backyard, and a kitchen floor with not one single missing tile.

It also has a massive mortgage and a roof they’re always staring at.

Whenever I see Jules and Theo on the front lawn, hands on hips, muttering about shingle, I simply swell with pride.

I can’t help it. Theo’s life is far more modest than the one our mother wanted for him, but it’s also better than she could’ve dreamed of.

I just wish she’d gotten to see more of it.

“Hey,” says Theo, stepping out of the kitchen, drying his hands on a dishcloth. “You okay?”

“Yeah. You?”

“Yep.”

This is how we talk about mom. She died three years ago—cancer, quick and awful.

By the time she was diagnosed, the disease was so entrenched that surgery was ruled out and other treatments were deemed too great a strain for her body to endure.

She was in hospice ten weeks later, and died four weeks after that.

We hadn’t even adjusted to the fact that she was sick, and suddenly, she was gone.

Years later, Theo and I still haven’t found actual words to talk about it.

Instead, we stand in the messy, loud living room watching Simon and Isaac flick LEGOs at each other while Jules checks emails at the dining table, sipping peppermint tea and reminding them not to aim for the eyes.

I give Theo the mom-would-have-loved-this nod.

He gives me the don’t-I-know-it clap on the shoulder. That’s that.

“Let’s get you settled.” Theo nods toward the hall, where my bags sit heaped by the basement door. “Big day tomorrow.”

I peer at him, knowing full well that “get you settled” means “carry your bags to the basement, then hold you hostage with a lecture.” But I do have a big day tomorrow—and a busy night tonight, though Theo doesn’t know that part. If I’m squeezing in a lecture too, I’d better get it out of the way.

“Say goodnight!” Theo calls to the boys, waving me to the basement door.

“What?! No!” Simon bellows. “We were gonna do the puzzle she brought!”

“She has a job now, buddy,” Theo calls, heading downstairs. “She’ll be here all summer.”

My neck goes hot and prickly as I descend the carpeted steps. All summer. Unless I get fired first.

“It’s nothing fancy,” says Theo, hitting the light switch at the bottom of the stairs. “But Jules did jazz it up a bit. And I know everyone says this, but the foldout’s actually very comfortable.”

I look around, once again knocked out by the suburban domesticity.

It’s a classic shag-carpet basement, complete with a plastic tub of Christmas decorations and a dehumidifier moaning in the corner.

A tinny drip echoes from the narrow bathroom, and the wood-paneled walls look identical to those in Jamie’s closet-office.

But the room has indeed been cozied up. The foldout’s made up in crisp white sheets and a set of jewel-toned throw pillows.

There’s a nightstand on each side where Jules has placed two table lamps that light the room with a buttery glow.

“It’s wonderful,” I say, and I mean it. “Thank you, Theo. I’m glad I’m here. This was the right call.”

He nods at the room, a blank expression on his face.

“Hey,” I say, leaning sideways to catch his gaze. “Don’t know if you caught that, but I said you were right. About staying with you all.”

He nods. “Of course. You’re family, Alice. We don’t have much of that left.” He turns, somber, and locks eyes with me. “I just wish you’d tell me what you’re really doing here.”

My breath catches. I grasp at my stash of prebaked answers—the stuff about reparative experiences and closure, or something like that—but I can’t quite get ahold of them.

So I just look back at my brother and nod.

We stand there, listening to the thump and holler from upstairs.

Theo turns to leave. He waves good night without looking back.

***

I wait until the house is still and I’m that certain everyone’s asleep.

Then I reach under the bed, pull out my smallest suitcase and turn the dial on its tiny combination lock.

It’s light—the only things in here are four pairs of shoes lined up in vinyl shoe bags, and beneath them, my laptop and thick manila file of printed forms. They’re already signed and notarized, I just need to do a once-over for typos before I bring them to the police station.

Tomorrow is my first day of work, and I already have lunch plans: I’m filing a request for all police records related to the death of Caitlin Dale.

This is just a first step, and mostly ceremonial.

I don’t expect to get much from village PD (and I loathe the idea of asking them for anything), but I need a public record showing that I tried.

I’ll likely spend the rest of my life in some degree of legal trouble over what I plan to do here.

I don’t plan to break the law, but if I have to, I won’t hesitate—I won’t mind a bit.

I’m getting Patrick Yates. That’s what I’m really doing here.

Starting tomorrow, I’m going to scrape the whole village for evidence. There’s plenty of it out there—plenty of mouths kept politely shut all these years, many of them glugging cocktails at the club right now. Maybe there’s even some physical evidence locked up in somebody’s dusty old safe.

How I’ll get any of this, I don’t know. I’ve got some ideas and I’ve got the summer.

All I know is I have to try, and I have to try now , when all eyes are on the village again.

I’ll get whatever I can, and then I’ll report it—not to the cops this time, but to everyone.

I’m going to the media and those creepy murder fans to tell them what I know and what I saw twenty years ago.

I’ll tell them another thing too: my name.

I flip the last form over and stack it on top of the others, closing the file.

I slip it carefully into my tote, then lift the bag and tuck it between the bed and the nightstand.

I look down at it for a moment, then lean over, tutting at myself, and zip the tote bag shut with its tiny, decorative zipper.

My eyes are dry and clicky, but I’m exhausted in a wired way.

I lie back, settling into the fresh sheets and firm, new-smelling pillow.

Make no mistake—I want Patrick Yates locked up and legally demolished.

I’ll involve law enforcement eventually, but I can’t go to them first. I reported Patrick “the right way” back when I was the child witness, and I failed.

I can’t let that happen again. I need to make it impossible for his family or this village to protect him this time.

Because this time, unbelievably, the stakes are even higher.

I pull out my phone, open Instagram, my thumb navigating automatically to the post—the one I stare at every night, sometimes until I fall asleep.

It’s a macabre ritual, like picking at a wound until it bleeds again.

But I do it—I’ve done it every night for the last four months, because some small, pathetic part of me still thinks it might be gone.

Maybe she’s deleted it . Maybe it was never there .

It’s there tonight though. The picture appears before my eyes, each pixel of it painfully familiar and still unthinkably strange.

Susannah faces the camera, standing on a beach beneath a dusky sunset.

Her dark, black-coffee curls have been ironed straight and lightened to a warm chestnut.

Her cheeks are pink from the sun, and she’s laughing hard, eyes closed and mouth wide open, showing her molars.

She holds her left hand up, displaying the ring.

The man with his arms around her waist looks freshly tanned too—but then, he always did. His head is bent against her shoulder. He wears a reverent smile. His eyes are closed, but even so, he’s instantly familiar. I’d know Patrick anywhere.