by Tom Dolby
“We’ve made a decision,” Nick said. “We want the art returned. I don’t care how you do it, but we want it returned. I’m sure, for one thing, that you’d like your Pollock back.”
“Don’t you worry about that-we’ve made back more than its value in insurance. As for the rest of the pieces, Nicholas, I don’t think that’s a good idea. Those cases have all been abandoned long ago. No one is interested anymore. It’s best just to let it go.”
“Dad, we were led to it because he wanted us to find out. Palmer wanted us to return the art.”
Nick’s father sighed. “I would prefer that weren’t the case.”
“And I want it to happen publicly. People need to know what happened. So that it can’t happen again. So the people he worked with will think twice the next time they get an offer to do something like this.”
Nick looked at Patch, who was sitting on an ottoman, his brows furrowed in concentration. Nick couldn’t blame Patch for wishing they didn’t have the same father.
“I will facilitate the return of the art,” Parker said firmly. “But it will happen anonymously.”
Nick steeled himself. “Dad, I want it to be known what happened. I know you think it’s embarrassing, but I’m tired of living under the weight of so many secrets.”
“Do you have any idea of the sort of publicity this would create? Our lives would never be the same.”
“Maybe that’s a good thing.”
“Nicholas, I will release the art, but I won’t do it publicly. The world doesn’t need to know about your grandfather’s little hobby. It’s a private family matter. You need to trust me on this.”
“What about what Palmer promised us?” Nick asked. “That we would all be released from the Society?”
Parker laughed. “You really thought it would be that easy?”
Across the room, Patch winced.
“Easy?” Nick asked. “It wasn’t easy.”
“Nick, you don’t even know what difficult is. When you’re older, you’ll understand the concept of difficult. Going to war is difficult. Starting a business is difficult. Your life isn’t anything close to difficult.”
Nick wasn’t really sure what to say to this. “Dad, I-”
Across the room, Patch held up a hand, signaling Nick to stop speaking. Nick desperately hoped Patch had a better idea for how they were going to get out. Had he just ruined their chances by giving up the one piece of information that they had against the group?
“I think we’re done here,” Parker said. “Don’t you worry. I’ll take care of everything.”
Chapter Fifty-One
You’re joking,” Phoebe said after Nick had filled her in on the conversation. “All this art is going to be returned, and your grandfather is going to go down in New York history as this wonderful, philanthropically minded man who never did anything wrong?”
Phoebe, Nick, and Patch were standing in the kitchen. Genie had gone out to the enclosed sunporch to rest.
“Look, I don’t agree with it,” Nick said. “But we don’t have a choice. He said-”
Phoebe interrupted him. “You keep saying that we don’t have a choice. But maybe it’s up to us. Maybe we’re the ones who have to break free. As long as you keep believing your father, then you’re right, you don’t have a choice.” She was angry, but she needed Nick to know how she felt.
“Phoebe, he’s threatened us in the past. The Society has done things, appalling things. I just don’t know if we can-”
“Face it, Nick, you don’t want anyone knowing about your grandfather. It’s embarrassing. It would be in the papers for months. You and your family would face so much public scrutiny. And you can’t handle that.” She took a breath and looked at Patch. “What do you think?”
“Leave me out of it,” Patch said. “I don’t-I don’t really know.”
“You’ve got to have an opinion,” Phoebe said. “It’s your family, too.”
Patch gave her an angry look. “I don’t have to have an opinion,” he snapped. “I didn’t choose this. I’ll be on the sunporch with my grandmother. The one who raised me.”
Phoebe sighed as Patch left the room.
“Great,” Nick said. “Now you’ve gone and made him feel bad. As if he’s not feeling strange enough already, with everything that’s happened.”
Phoebe decided to ignore this. But she couldn’t deny how frustrated she was. “Nick, I’m so sick of all this. And let me guess: this gets us no closer to being free of the Society than we were in the beginning of January.”
“I’m not sure,” Nick said. “I think it may have been…”
His voice trailed off.
“A setup? Admit it, Nick, we’ve played their little game once again. We’re too trusting, that’s our problem. We can’t believe them, any of them. I’m so tired of this!” She was getting hysterical, and she felt badly about yelling at Nick.
“Phoebe, calm down,” Nick said.
“You know something else?” she said. “We’ve never considered this, but I don’t think there really is a Society.”
“What?” Nick said. “What do you mean?” He gave her a sideways look, as if she were insane.
“What I mean is, sure, there’s a group of people, and they’ve gotten together and they’ve done some good things and many bad things. But in terms of its meaning, remember how the scroll we got was written and adapted by each class? That’s exactly how they’ve constructed it-none of it has meaning in and of itself. We are the ones who have given it meaning. It’s all created to keep us in line, to keep us trapped. Initiation rituals, bonfires, Egyptian mythology, swimming parties, French philosophy, stories about drowning, people dying-”
“You’re saying that people dying wasn’t real?”
“No, it was real, but we were the ones who gave it meaning. We were the ones who decided that we couldn’t go to the police. No one told us we couldn’t. We came up with that idea, remember? We were the ones who decided to be so afraid all the time.”
“But they threatened us-when we didn’t attend meetings-” Nick sputtered.
“Right, but we decided we couldn’t handle it. I didn’t tell my mom about the rats because I was scared. Thad couldn’t tell the truth about who planted the gin bottle because he was embarrassed about his mother’s past. Lauren couldn’t say who she thought put the earrings in her bag, because they would have said she was nuts.”
Nick shook his head. “I get what you’re saying, but Phoebe, this is still as real as anything I’ve ever seen. There is stolen art in that basement, and my grandfather is responsible for it. No one can deny that. Do you really want the world to find out about that?”
“There you go again-you’ve put so much value in your family’s privacy, you’re ignoring what’s better for the rest of us.”
“Phoebe, you wouldn’t understand,” Nick said. He tapped the kitchen floor in frustration with his right foot. “And I think-I think you’re being crazy. All this stuff does have meaning. You know that. You can’t pretend it doesn’t.”
Phoebe regarded Nick. She had never been more upset with him. It was a horrible, empty feeling, as if a cavern had opened in her heart. She considered the idea that he wasn’t the person she was meant to be with.
She grabbed Nick’s shoulder and held it tightly. “Don’t ever call me crazy.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “That was stupid.” He put his head on the table, cradling it in his arms. When he lifted up his head a moment later, his eyes were red. “I’m so sorry. Phoebe, I love you. I really do.”
As if her body had taken over from her mind, she found herself shaking her head. “I don’t know if you do,” she said quietly. “I feel like you love your life in New York more. Your family. Everything it affords you. And maybe you even love this. All the drama. All the mystery. I mean, really, would our lives be as interesting without all this? Would we even be together? If we could break free, where would that really leave us?”
“How can you say
that?” He looked at her, his face streaked with tears. “How can you say such a horrible thing?”
“I don’t know,” Phoebe said. “I don’t quite feel like myself. I’ve just…” Her voice trailed off. “I should probably stop talking.” She sighed deeply, and only then did she realize how exhausted she was from everything. “Maybe we’d better get going. We have to get back to Manhattan for that damned cocktail party.” Claire Chilton and her parents had invited them all to a cocktail party that evening to celebrate the success of the Dendur Ball.
“Do we have to go?” Nick said. “I’m not exactly in the mood.”
“I would kill to skip it,” Phoebe said. She felt horrible for the things she had said, and now it felt like she couldn’t take them back. The worst part was that she didn’t want to take back some of it. She really would have loved to skip the party, to have some time alone to figure things out.
“Maybe we go for twenty minutes,” Nick said.
“Twenty minutes,” Phoebe said. “And that’s it.”
Chapter Fifty-Two
Lauren had been dreading the Chilton cocktail party that night. A snow had started falling earlier that day in Manhattan, and by evening it had turned into a blizzard. The cars along Park Avenue were inching through the powdery banks, and it was the kind of night when you wanted to stay in and relax, not go to a cocktail party. Luckily for Lauren, Claire and her parents lived only a few blocks away. Thad would be picking Lauren up at seven.
When he arrived, Thad’s cheeks were pink from the cold outside, and he still had a few snowflakes in his curly blond hair. Lauren knew that he had started something with that guy, Kurt, whom he had met at the ball, and she was eager to get the details from him.
“You getting excited for your Paris trip?” he asked her. She had told him about the opportunity that Sebastian had offered her.
She shrugged as she buttoned her wool overcoat and stepped into the elevator. “To be perfectly honest, not really. I wish I were. Something doesn’t feel right about it.” She was supposed to leave in several weeks; the trip was scheduled for the second week of spring break. “I know it’s an amazing opportunity, and I should be thrilled.”
“Well, the question is, what exactly are the strings, right?” He looked thoughtfully at the numbers in the elevator as they descended.
“That’s what I’m worried about. Is it right for me to be going on this trip alone?”
“Do you want me to come with you?” Thad asked. “I mean, I don’t mean to invite myself along or anything, but it would be amazing…”
She smiled. “I could tell them that you have to come with me. But are you sure I won’t be keeping you from being with Kurt?”
Thad shrugged. “It’s so new, I think I’m allowed to go away for a week, right?”
“How’s it going, anyway?”
Thad blushed, and Lauren started tickling him in the elevator. “Stop, stop, I’ll tell you!” he said, laughing. “It’s going great. He’s wonderful. He’s, like, one of the smartest guys I’ve ever met. I didn’t think they even made guys that smart in New York.”
“Well, he’s from New Jersey,” Lauren said.
“And I like that about him-he’s not all stuck-up like everyone around here.” The elevator doors opened and they stepped out.
“Does he know about… you know.” She was referring to the Society, but they were walking through the lobby and she wanted to be discreet.
“I don’t think so,” Thad said quietly. “I haven’t told him. I haven’t gotten a haircut recently, so he can’t really see the tattoo. I keep wishing that by the time we have that conversation, we’ll all be out of it.”
“Here’s hoping,” Lauren said with a sigh as she stepped out from under her building’s awning and through the five inches of snow that had already fallen on the sidewalk. “Well, I’m really happy you can come on the trip.” She took Thad’s arm as they walked. “With you along, I’m starting to think it might be fun.”
The cocktail party was being thrown to celebrate the success of the Dendur Ball, though Lauren recognized it all as a sham. Letty Chilton-and probably Claire as well-felt awkward about the power outage and the jewelry theft and, more than anything, that the media coverage of the ball had focused more on its scandalous aftermath than on the new additions to the museum, the money that was raised, or all the hard work that Letty and her daughter had done.
When they got to the party, the first thing they noticed was the music. Mrs. Chilton had clearly made an attempt to keep the atmosphere “youthful” as opposed to the classical selections she usually would have played at an event like this. Lauren recognized the Rolling Stones’s song “Play with Fire,” a creepy, bizarre song about a woman with an heiress mother, beautiful clothes, diamonds, and a chauffeur. It seemed appropriate, somehow, for the evening: vapid and mysterious.
It also reminded Lauren of Alejandro, for it was one of the songs that had come on when they swam in that heated pool last November. Since that day, Lauren had found it on iTunes and would sometimes play it over and over again, as it reminded her of that moment. A moment she would never have again.
How would she ever get over his death, when she was reminded of him constantly? When every song, every movie, every novel was about love: finding it, having it, losing it?
“Hey-” Thad poked her. “You’re totally zoning out. Phoebe’s coming over here.” Thad had graciously taken Lauren’s coat and given it to the attendant.
Phoebe had just arrived at the party, separately from Nick, it seemed.
“I need to talk to you,” she whispered after she and Lauren had embraced.
“Sure,” Lauren said. “Let’s find somewhere quiet.” She left Thad at the bar and took Phoebe to a far corner of the living room. She surveyed the living room and noted that her mother would have her work cut out for her. The current arrangement was twenty years of chintz sofas and reproduction nineteenth-century furniture against faded yellow-and-white-striped wallpaper.
“I don’t even know where to start,” Phoebe said as they sat down on a couch near the window. “Nick and I had this terrible fight. I guess that should be the least of it. The important thing is that I think we had a chance to get out, and he totally blew it.”
Lauren felt her spirits drop. “Oh my God. What do you mean?”
“I can’t talk about it here. We might still have a chance. But the thing is, I completely screwed up, and now I feel like I can’t take it back. I said some really terrible things to him, about how he only cares about his family, and how he loves the adventure of all this more than he loves me.”
Lauren shook her head. “Love makes you do crazy things, right?”
“I guess so,” Phoebe said. “I was so frustrated with him. I just want us to break free from-” She motioned out at the room, at the Society members who had started to trickle into the living room, clustering around the fireplace. “From all this.”
“But how do we do that?” Lauren looked nervously out at the crowds that were gathering, at Anastasia and Jeremy and Bradley, all chatting excitably. Aside from the five of them-the “Infidels,” as they were called-the older class had merged with the younger one perfectly, as if they had always been friends.
“I think we just do it, consequences be damned.”
“Phoebe, I don’t think we can do that. What about the message my sister got? What if they do something to our families?”
“We don’t know that they would do anything,” Phoebe said. “But I suppose there’s no way of being certain.”
“Lauren!” They heard a voice from across the room.
The two girls looked up. It was Emily van Piper, headed their way. She was wearing a pair of high heels that must have been impossible to walk in outside.
“Lauren, I heard about your Paris trip!” She gave Lauren a hug and kissed her on both cheeks. “Are you so thrilled?”
Lauren had told Phoebe otherwise, but thankfully, Phoebe was smart enough not to say anything i
n front of Emily.
“Um, sure,” Lauren said. “It’s going to be gorgeous. I love Paris.” She hoped she was enthusiastic enough to sound convincing. With Thad, though, it would be fun. Still, something didn’t feel quite right about it.
“I need to go talk to Charles about something,” Emily said, looking over the girls’ shoulders. “But let me know if you need any tips about the city-I was just there a few weeks ago. I found the most darling little tea shop in the Marais.”
Lauren nodded as Emily flitted off. At the entrance to the living room, Claire Chilton was greeting everyone. Lauren saw that she was wearing another outfit from Giroux, a black cocktail dress Sebastian had designed.
“Look at her, she thinks she’s this grand hostess or something,” Lauren said bitterly.
“Just ignore her,” Phoebe said. “She’s not worth our time. Okay, so you’ve got to tell me: What do I do about Nick? Do I talk to him?”
Lauren sighed. “I don’t know, Phoebe, maybe you need to spend some time apart.”
Phoebe looked surprised at this statement, and Lauren was even startled that she had said it. Was she jealous of Phoebe? She didn’t want to date Nick herself, as they had known each other since they were in elementary school. But maybe she was jealous that Phoebe had someone at all. Was it better to have someone you were fighting with than to be completely alone? She immediately regretted being so underhanded. Phoebe had become her best friend over the past several months, and she should have been supportive.
“Maybe you’re right,” Phoebe said. “We do spend an incredible amount of time together. Maybe I should get out of town or something.”
“No, Phoebe, I didn’t mean-I don’t think you should do that.”
“Why not? You just said-”
Lauren sank back on the couch in resignation. “I don’t know, Phoebe. I don’t really know what you should do.”
Chapter Fifty-Three
As Patch and Lia rode up together in the Chiltons’ elevator, Patch examined himself in one of its panels of antiqued mirror. He was glad he had dressed up a little bit for the cocktail party, even if that had only meant trading his sneakers for loafers and jeans for wool slacks. Even after all these years, he still never felt like he knew what to wear to functions like this one.
