Tom Dolby - The Trust

Phoebe gave a half smile. “Well, at least the way you drive, we’ll be there before midnight.” She sat back in her seat. For the first time in weeks, it felt like they were on the right track. Phoebe had also noticed a lightness in Nick’s step as they were walking to the garage. It was the happiest she’d seen him since the day that they had officially started dating.

Nick picked up a soda and Phoebe opened it for him so he could keep his eyes on the road. After taking a gulp of root beer, he reached over to stroke her knee. “It’s sort of an adventure, right? I mean, no one knows we took the car, no one knows we’re going to the house.”

“I like it,” Phoebe said. “We should do it more often.”

“Under better circumstances,” Nick said.

They were silent for a few minutes, and Phoebe watched the sea of red taillights ahead of them. She thought she might doze off, she was so exhausted, but she fought to keep her eyes open.

“This is going to sound weird,” Nick said, “but do you think we would have ever met if it wasn’t for the Society?”

“You tell me.”

“I think we would have. I noticed you, that first day, when I handed you the flyer.”

Phoebe laughed. “Yeah, right! Amidst the ten thousand other people you were inviting to your party.”

“Do you think we would have met if we didn’t go to the same school?”

“I think so,” Phoebe said.

“Why’s that?”

Phoebe took a deep breath. “Because I believe things happen for a reason. That certain things are, I don’t know, not necessarily predetermined, but if they’re meant to be, they’re meant to be.”

“So would you say the same for the Society?”

Phoebe looked out the window. Was it meant to be? If she could do it over again, would she have wished for none of it to happen? Or was it somehow part of a bigger picture?

“I don’t know,” she said. “We might feel completely trapped right now, but I think there’s going to be a reason for all of this.”

“You’ve certainly become very Zen about it,” Nick said.

“Maybe it’s just getting off the island,” Phoebe said. “Getting away, especially with no one knowing where we are. Did you ever think about that? What if we turned around and started driving west, out of New York, across the country? Just got the hell out of here? Couldn’t we leave all this behind?”

Nick frowned. “What about the others? And can you imagine leaving our lives here? Besides, what would we do? How would we live? I can’t just-I can’t just leave everything I’ve ever known behind me.” He gripped the steering wheel tightly.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you,” Phoebe said.

He softened a bit. “No, it’s not that at all-you’re so damn smart. You’re the only person in my life who would ever even suggest that option. And it’s, like, by bringing it up, even if we never do it, just knowing that it’s there, that you thought it-it makes me feel like… I don’t know. It’s just cool.”

Phoebe smiled. Nick had a habit, when he was bordering on something profound, of backing away from it. Tonight she didn’t want to push him.

His face grew serious. “Anyway, we should think about what my grandfather said. Are you worried at all?”

“What I want to understand,” Phoebe said, “is why would he decide to help us? Why would he go behind your father’s back?”

Nick kept his eyes focused on the highway as he answered. “My grandfather and my father haven’t always gotten along. They hide it well, especially in front of strangers, but they’ve disagreed bitterly about a lot of things over the years. When he was a member in his early years, my father tried to rebel against the Society himself. And I think there’s something in my grandfather-it’s almost like regret. Why, I don’t exactly know.”

Phoebe nodded.

“All I know,” Nick said, “is that I don’t want my life to be like that.”

“If your grandfather doesn’t believe in rebelling against the Society, why is he trying to help you do it?”

“I don’t know exactly, but I’m not going to turn down the chance to make this right, to get us and the others out. I don’t know if we have any other option. We can’t work against them. We can’t skip the meetings. The police wouldn’t believe us, because we have no evidence. The only way to get out of it is to be officially released.”

“Has anyone ever done that?” Phoebe asked. “They don’t exactly seem keen on letting anyone out.”

“It’s not a question I want to pose to my father, not after what we saw on the island. I think we need to figure out this Palmer thing first.”

When they arrived at the Bell family estate two hours later, it looked as if it had been shut down for the winter. All the lights on the property were off and the ground was frozen. After parking on the gravel driveway, Nick opened the front door with his key.

“Home again,” Nick said as they stepped inside. The house was kept at a chilly fifty-five degrees in winter, and Phoebe shivered.

“Ugh, I wish I could just flop into bed,” Phoebe said. “Do you want to start our search tomorrow? For whatever we’re looking for. I guess we really should start now.”

“Oh my God,” Nick said. He stood in the central foyer facing the living room.

“What?” Phoebe asked.

Nick pointed to the space above the fireplace, and Phoebe looked up.

The Jackson Pollock painting, the one Nick had mentioned his mother had purchased at Sotheby’s for ten million dollars, was gone.

Nick sat with Phoebe in the living room, and they both looked up at the blank space above the fireplace where the Pollock had hung. There was nothing on the mantel, just a few family photos.

“Is this what he wanted us to find?” Nick asked. “This isn’t what I would call finding something.”

“More like the absence of something,” Phoebe said. “Maybe that’s part of the clue. Maybe we’re supposed to look for what isn’t there.”

“So we’re looking for something that used to be there in the first place? That doesn’t make any sense.” He rubbed his temples. A headache was starting to come on.

“Hey-more importantly: Should we tell your parents about the painting being gone?”

“We don’t have to. The caretaker will see it on Monday morning. Remember, we aren’t even supposed to be here.”

“Nick, they’re going to have police here eventually. They’ll see our fingerprints.”

Nick felt nervous for a moment before he relaxed. “We’ll just say we thought it had been sent out for restoration. My mom is always saying that the frame needs to be cleaned.”

“So what do we do now?”

“Search the place?”

They went through each room of the house, which was no easy feat, considering that it was a six-thousand-square-foot house with eight bedrooms and multiple public rooms. Luckily, because the house was built in the 1920s, it was not enormous in the way of newer houses in the area. Nick had always appreciated that; its size was manageable, and you didn’t need to run through every wing to find someone.

The house was immaculately clean but had that musty smell from windows not having been opened in more than a week. New Year’s Eve would have been the last time his parents were here.

After several hours of searching, however, they hadn’t turned up anything. It didn’t help that they had no idea what they were looking for.

It didn’t help, either, that it was four o’clock in the morning.

They went back to the living room and flopped down on the couches across from each other. “Your grandfather told you, ‘You’ll find everything you need at the beach,’” Phoebe said.