Page 21 of Old Money
Jamie waits until we’re back in the office and sitting down, and then he tells me: the wedding—Susannah’s wedding to Patrick Yates—is happening here.
“Why?”I demand, no longer keeping quiet. “Why would she—why wouldhe?”
I grip the arms of my chair with clammy fingers.
Jamie sits with his hands folded.
“So, you didn’t know then.”
Now I recall the little exchange at the end of our interview yesterday. Jamie double-checking that I knew “about Susannah” and “everything going on here.”
“Notthatpart. I knew they were getting married here, but nothere. The wedding announcement said Briar’s Green.”
Announcements—I’d read three of them. One in theTimes, one in theHudson Valley Journaland one in the Wheaton alumni newsletter. They’d all been revoltingly breezy, as though this were any other charming couple, not a murderer and a woman voluntarily marrying a murderer. And none had said anything about the club.
“Well,” Jamie says, tilting his head. “This is the usual Yates wedding venue. His parents, his grandparents, all of them.”
I glare across the desk.
“I’m justsaying,” he says, hands flying, a little whine in his voice—a little of the old Jamie Burger. “Trust me, I get it, but if you think about it from their side—Alice, quit looking at me like that. From their side it’s like, if he doesn’t get married here like everyone else, then how would it look?
Respectful? Rational? The only reasonable thing to do?
Every inch of me wants to argue, but he’s right. To them it would look like acknowledgment—maybe even an admission of guilt. Patrick, of all people, getting married here, of all places (of all summers), is a great way to demonstrate how unbothered he is.
“Alice, I apologize,” Jamie says calmly, a professional again. “I should’ve been more explicit. If this changes things with the job, I understand. No harm, no foul, you can just leave.”
I turn my eyes downward, giving his desk a hard stare.I see a leather blotter, I think.I smell shoe polish and oiled wood. I hear someone hitting tennis balls outside.
“When is it exactly?” I ask, breathing slow breaths. “I know it’s August, but—”
“Second of August.”
I exhale in a gust. The second of August is pretty much July.
“It doesn’t change anything. Of course I’ll stay.”
Jamie looks incredulous. “Really? Because she’ll be here more than usual. With wedding stuff.”
I shrug—a little forced, but I pull it off.
“It’s fine. She’ll be out there, planning centerpieces or whatever, and I’ll be—” I pause. “Actually, where will I be? When I’m not ‘floating’?”
Jamie bows his head and gestures to me—to exactly where I’m sitting. I look at the desk again and see the blotter’s been nudged to one side and the computer monitor to the other, making space for my laptop. I’m not sure where my knees are supposed to go.
“It’s tight, I know,” Jamie says, scooching up in his chair. “I’d find you another closet, but this is the only one with an internet hookup. And without asbestos.”
I feel the paneled walls closing in. How am I going to get anything done? Any of myrealwork? I picture it: Jamie on one side of the desk, yakking with Susannah’s wedding planner, and me on the other, investigating the groom.
Jamie’s face is shifting into that curious-suspicious look I noticed earlier.
“It’s fine,” I repeat in a game voice. “It’ll be fun.”
Jamie’s eyebrows lift just slightly.Toogame—I try again.
“It’ll be funandweird. But I mean it, the wedding changes nothing about the job. I’m here to do spreadsheets and scanning, so—” I nod, trying to put a period on the end of this conversation “—where shall I start? Who’s first on the list?”
The suspicious look holds for one more second, then Jamie cracks a smile.
