Tom Dolby - The Trust

The group was silent for a moment.

“She’s not even in the Society,” Phoebe said after a moment.

“Maybe that’s the point,” Patch said. “They want us to know that they’re not afraid to get to our families.”

“Why Lauren, though?” Phoebe asked. “Why not any of the rest of us?”

“They think Lauren’s vulnerable right now,” Thad said. “And she’s the only one who has a younger sibling who’s not in the Society.”

“That’s true,” Patch said. “I’m just trying to figure out a pattern here. The rats were destroying Phoebe’s canvases. Phoebe’s an artist; that hits her where it hurts. Lauren, they put your job designing jewelry at risk. And the message to your sister is a further warning. But what about the bottle of gin? They could have done that to mess with any of us. Why Thad?”

“You’re right; it doesn’t match up,” Nick said.

Thad spoke slowly. “They must know more about my family than I usually tell people. My mom has been sober for ten years, but she used to have a drinking problem. They must have known that this would really bother me.”

Lauren gave his arm a supportive squeeze. “Hey-it would have bothered anyone.”

“What kind of sick stuff is this?” Phoebe said. “I can’t believe this-they’re not only messing with us physically, it’s like they’re trying to get to us psychologically. How do we know what’s next? If they could manage to screw up our lives this much in the last forty-eight hours, who knows what they could do?”

“We need to lay off,” Lauren said. “I mean, this is my sister we’re talking about. She’s a freshman at boarding school. It would be so easy for them to get to her. We need to go to the meetings. We need to do what they say.”

“I have a plan,” Nick said. “And it won’t put us in danger. I just need to work it out a little more before we get going on it.”

“What kind of plan?” Patch asked warily.

“I need you guys to hang tight for a couple of days. Can I fill you in on the weekend?”

Everyone nodded.

“In the meantime, maybe we all need to pretend to be model citizens, at least for a little while,” Thad said. “We need to get to know the other members.”

“I just don’t know if I can bear it,” Phoebe said. “They’re all like zombies. Claire Chilton going on about how the Upper East Side isn’t like it used to be. Who the hell cares?”

Lauren jumped in. “Speaking of Claire-I had an odd confrontation with her on Tuesday. Phoebe, I told you about this, right?”

Phoebe nodded.

“I ran into her at the Ralph Lauren store. She said that everyone had noticed that three of us were missing from the meeting, and then she started going on about how the Society was all about cultural advancement and how there was going to be a benefit for the museum. About how the Society was all about making the world a better place.”

“Oh, if only that were true,” Nick said sarcastically. “She’s totally bought into the whole thing. Her parents are both members. You know how seriously they take it.”

“There’s something else: they’ve given us a name. The five us are ‘the Infidels.’ That’s what the older members are calling us. I looked it up; it’s like when you don’t believe in a religion that everyone else believes in.”

“Well, that would be us,” Phoebe said.

Nick gave a half smile. “Maybe we should print T-shirts.”

“Yeah, right,” Patch said. “Talk about wearing a bull’s-eye on your back.”

“So let them call us that,” Thad said. “Let them think the group is about cultural advancement. We still need to fly under the radar. Don’t let them think we have anything planned.”

“Because the truth is, we don’t,” Patch said.

“That’s not entirely true,” Nick said. “I think I can figure something out. I just need some more time.”

“What should I tell my sister?” Lauren asked.

“Tell her that she’ll be fine. Tell her it doesn’t mean anything,” Nick said.

“How can you be so sure?” Phoebe asked. “I mean, we all thought that skipping a meeting wasn’t a big deal, and look what happened.”

“They’ve made their point,” Nick said. “From now on, we don’t miss any more meetings. Give me a few days-in fact, clear your Saturday, if you can. I’ll keep you posted.”

“You’re sure you can come up with something?” Patch asked.

Nick nodded. Nothing more had to be said. Patch trusted his friend, and the rest of them did as well.

After everyone left, though, Patch kept wondering about the Society, about its methods, and how they had gotten to Lauren by threatening her sister.

All he had in his family were Genie and his mother. And he wondered which one of them could be next.

On Friday morning at school, the junior class had a meeting with Chadwick’s director of college advising, Mr. Gregory. He went on and on about the importance of their grades and extracurricular activities, particularly in the second semester of their junior year. This would be the second-to-last official set of grades that admissions committees could use to evaluate the candidates from Chadwick, and for those who were applying for early admission to places like Yale, it would be the last full set of grades available before an admissions committee would make its decision. Phoebe noticed some of the students sitting in the back, their feet perched rudely on the desks in front of them, as if none of this applied to them. Phoebe wasn’t going to make any assumptions; she knew she still had to keep her grades up. She had met with a few alumni who were on different admissions committees last semester at a meet and greet sponsored by the Society. It had all been done under the auspices of a “private gathering sponsored by a group of helpful alumni.” But she didn’t feel like she could just coast on through.

Phoebe tried to focus on Mr. Gregory’s talk, but something had happened last night that she couldn’t get out of her mind. When she asked to use the bathroom at Patch’s apartment, he had directed her to Genie’s, as he said that his own was a mess. Phoebe had developed a terrible habit of snooping when she was in other people’s houses, and she couldn’t help taking a peek into Genie’s medicine cabinet. Besides, she was curious about the woman. There was something Genie wasn’t telling all of them about her past, and Phoebe was anxious to know what it was.

Just a few weeks ago, Genie had told Phoebe and Nick about her broken engagement with Palmer Bell in the 1940s. But Phoebe sensed that there was more to the story. Why had Genie ended up in the same apartment building as Palmer’s son and his family? Was it simply coincidence that Nick and Patch had become such good friends?

Phoebe imagined that Genie’s secrets might help them unravel the mysteries about the Society that they had been trying to uncover. She hadn’t wanted to pry Patch when he was so new to the group, but there were things she had noticed: the wistful, far-off look in Genie’s eyes when she had talked about Palmer that afternoon a few weeks ago, the way she fiddled with the locket around her neck, how Patch seemed to have such a strange relationship with the Bell family, as if he were both an outsider and a close family friend.

“Phoebe!” Nick tapped her on the shoulder. “We have to go. The presentation’s over.”

She nodded distractedly, only able to think of one thing: as she had stood in Genie’s bathroom the night before, amidst cold cream, perfume, and prescriptions, she noticed a blue glass bottle of tuberose perfume. It was vintage, not something Genie would have bought recently. From the gold script on the bottle, it might have been forty or fifty years old. Phoebe gently opened the bottle and held it to her nose, and the smell brought her right back to the same scent in that velvet-lined sarcophagus in the warehouse on Gansevoort Street at the Night of Rebirth.