The group used this network to gain and grant advantages to its members, sometimes legitimately, and other times in ways that were illegal. By the time members learned about the Society’s criminal ways, they were in too deep; they were either culpable for some of the Society’s deeds, or the Society had enough information on them to blackmail them effectively.
The Society also had a public face: the Bradford Trust Association. The members used the Trust as a cover, sometimes giving the group the appearance of a benevolent charitable foundation. Phoebe suspected that some of the members didn’t even know about the Society’s misdeeds, that they were only aware of it as a social group associated with the Bradford Trust.
Trust was a funny word: Phoebe couldn’t think of a single person in New York City, apart from Nick and her three friends, whom she truly, honestly, could trust.
Like the others, Phoebe yearned desperately to get out of it, to tell the world about the Society, but she couldn’t. If she and her friends were going to reveal anything, they didn’t want to do so until they had a plan. It had seemed unwise to make a move until Alejandro’s memorial service had taken place. The fact that Nick’s family was so directly involved in the coverup-a revelation that had become apparent to Phoebe only in the last week-made things even more complicated.
Nick was, after all, the first and only boy she had ever loved. And she wasn’t about to ruin that.
At the moment, though, Phoebe didn’t want to come up with a plan or do anything remotely strategic-there would be plenty of time for that later. She wanted to comfort her friend. This was Lauren, after alclass="underline" Lauren, who had approached her in a nightclub four months ago and taken her under her wing; Lauren, who had made Chadwick bearable.
Lauren, who had encouraged Phoebe to follow her to the Society initiation when both of them had been invited.
Phoebe looked at her as the two of them rode up in the elevator to Lauren’s mother’s Park Avenue apartment. Even when she was exhausted, Lauren was so beautiful. Phoebe had always felt like the ugly duckling next to the swan. Lauren had blond hair while Phoebe had reddish brown; Lauren was lithe and graceful, while Phoebe, though still slim, worried about her hips. Before they reached her floor, Phoebe reached forward and grabbed her friend, giving her a private hug.
She couldn’t say it was going to be okay, because she didn’t honestly know if it would be.
When the two of them arrived at the apartment, Lauren’s mother, Diana, was already home. She had taken a car from the cathedral and arrived ten minutes before them. In the kitchen, it was as if Diana was hosting a wake for three. Lauren’s little sister, Allison, was already away at boarding school, and Lauren’s father lived across town.
Diana Mortimer was not exactly the most nurturing person Phoebe had ever met; she was so thin that Phoebe imagined hugging her might not be a pleasant experience. Today, though, she had come through with exactly what Lauren needed. On this Saturday afternoon, she stood with a mimosa in her hand and welcomed the girls into the kitchen. There was a beautiful spread of food that had been prepared: two kinds of quiche, a salad, Lauren’s favorite variation on eggs Benedict, pastries, a Linzer torte, coffee, tea, and freshly squeezed orange juice. Phoebe found herself touched at the sight of it all. From what Lauren had told Phoebe about her mother, Diana had never been one to equate food with love-her wavelength was more handbags and jewelry-but right now luxury goods weren’t going to cut it.
Lauren sat down in the breakfast nook and smiled weakly at Phoebe and her mother. “You know something? I’m actually hungry. For the first time in days, I’m hungry. I’d better eat, before the feeling goes away.”
Phoebe knew what this was like, the feeling of fear-induced nausea that was so constant that as soon as it went away, you tried to get a little food down. Lately Phoebe’s stomach had been in knots as well, and so instead of trying to control her hunger as she might before a big night out, she found she was actually grateful to be able to eat a few bites without feeling sick.
The two of them dug in, asking the cook to pile their plates with eggs Benedict, quiche, and pastries. Diana asked them if they’d like mimosas, but they both declined. There was something about the Society that made them not want to drink too much-it was the drinking, after all, that had gotten their friends into so much trouble. Jared at Cleopatra’s Needle, freezing to death and dying of exposure after a night of bingeing. Alejandro, making a fool of himself at a club in the Hamptons, and then, of course, overdoing it that night at Prohibition, the club on the Lower East Side where the Guardians had kidnapped him.
No, Phoebe knew, and she sensed Lauren did, too, that staying sober and aware would be the best policy, at least for the next few weeks.
Lauren was silent as she took small bites of her food, and Phoebe resisted the urge to check her phone, which kept buzzing in her purse. It was probably Nick, but she felt it would be rude to answer. Her relationship with Nick had gone so well during all of this that she wondered what they would do if they weren’t facing an external crisis, if they didn’t have the constant outside stimulation to keep them going. They had started dating at Thanksgiving and had made it through the stress of exams, the aftermath of Jared’s and Alejandro’s deaths, the Society retreat, and Patch’s disappearance and initiation. Though it had only been a few weeks, Phoebe did worry a bit about whether things, once they settled down, would seem slow.
After eating, Lauren assured Phoebe that she really didn’t need her to stay, that she hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before and was going to take a nap. Phoebe gave her friend a hug, said good-bye to Diana with a double air kiss, and let herself out.
She wasn’t going home, though, to the town house where she and her mother were living on Bank Street.
Via text, Nick had asked her to meet him in Central Park, at a location she remembered all too well from the falclass="underline" the chess tables.
Chapter Five
Somehow, this felt appropriate,” Nick said. He was sitting on a bench near one of the chess tables outside the Chess and Checkers House in Central Park as Phoebe approached.
“You couldn’t have picked a place that wasn’t freezing?” Phoebe said, giving him an anguished grin. It was late in the afternoon, and the Chess and Checkers House was closed. He handed his scarf to Phoebe, who wrapped it around her neck. In an attempt to warm up, she stomped her shoes against the ground as they sat on the ice-cold bench.
Nick gave her a big bear hug, but it didn’t seem to help. “Sorry,” he said, slightly embarrassed at not having realized how cold it would be inside the park. “We can keep walking.”
Phoebe gave him a kiss on his ear. “Hey, it was a valiant effort. I feel like I haven’t been inside the park in weeks.”
They looked around. The wisteria, so lush in the summer, had gone dormant. No one was playing chess. Nick remembered back to that night several months ago when they had been challenged to decode the address of the Society’s town house, and how new and exciting it had all seemed: the perks, the thrill of membership, the doors that would open for them. And that second Society event had almost seemed like a second date between Phoebe and him. He thought back to how he had imagined she would never like him, and how they were both so happy when they had finally gotten together over Thanksgiving. Now they started walking together out of the park.