by Harlan Coben
The woods remained silent, still. The car headlights provided the only illumination.
“Now what?” Tim asked.
“Stay in the car.”
“You can’t go out there alone.”
“But can’t I?” They both reached for their door handles, but Hester stopped him with a firm “Stay put.”
She stepped into the silent night and closed the door behind her.
The pediatricians who’d examined Wilde after his discovery estimated his age between six and eight years old. He could speak. He had learned how, he claimed, via his “secret” friendship with Hester’s son David and, more directly, by breaking into homes and watching countless hours of television. Along with living off the land in the warmer seasons, that was how Wilde had fed himself—foraging in human beings’ garbage cans, checking wastebaskets near parks, but mostly sneaking (aka breaking) into summer homes and raiding the fridge and cupboards.
The child didn’t remember any other life.
No parents. No family. No contact with any human other than David.
One memory, however, did come back. The memory haunted the boy and now the man, kept him up at night, startling him awake in cold sweats at all hours of the night. The memory came to him in snap-flashes with no discernible narrative arc: a dark house, mahogany floorboards, a red banister, a portrait of a man with a mustache, and screams.
“What kind of screams?” Hester had asked the little boy.
“Terrible screams.”
“No, I understand that. I mean, are they the screams of a man? A woman? In your memory, who is screaming?”
Wilde had considered that. “I am,” he told her. “I’m the one screaming.”
Hester folded her arms, leaned against the car, and waited. The wait didn’t last long.
“Hester.”
When Wilde stepped into view, Hester’s heart filled and exploded. She couldn’t say why. It had just been that kind of day maybe, and seeing her son’s best friend—the last person to see David alive—just overwhelmed her yet again.
“Hi, Wilde.”
Wilde was a genius. She knew that. Who knew why? A child comes out hardwired. That was what you learned as a parent—that your kid is who he is and what he is and that you, as a parent, greatly overstate your importance in his development. A dear friend once told her that being a parent is like being a car mechanic—you can repair the car and take care of the car and keep the car on the road, but you can’t fundamentally change the car. If a sports car drives into your garage for repairs, it isn’t driving out an SUV.
Same with kids.
So part of it was, well, that was what Wilde was genetically hardwired to be—a genius.
But experts also claim that early development is hugely important, that something like ninety percent of a child’s brain develops by the age of five. But think about Wilde by that age. Imagine the stimulation, the experiences, the exposure, if as a small child he really did have to take care of himself, feed himself, shelter himself, comfort himself, defend himself.
What would that do to intensify a brain’s development?
Wilde stepped into the headlights so she could see him. He smiled at her. He was a beautiful man with his dark sun-kissed complexion, his build of coiled muscles, his forearms looking like high-tension wires straining against the rolled-up flannel shirt, the faded jeans, the scuffed hiking boots, the long hair.
The very long hair of light brown.
Like the strand she’d found on the pillow.
Hester dove right in: “What’s up with you and Laila?”
He said nothing.
“Don’t deny it.”
“I didn’t.”
“So?”
“She has needs,” Wilde said.
“Seriously?” Hester said. “‘She has needs’? So you’re being—what, Wilde?—a Good Samaritan?”
He took a step toward her. “Hester?”
“What?”
“She can’t love again.”
Just when she thought that she couldn’t hurt any more, his words detonated another explosive device in her heart.
“Maybe one day she can,” Wilde said. “But right now, she still misses David too much.”
Hester looked at him, feeling whatever had been building inside her—anger, hurt, stupidity, longing—deflate.
“I’m safe for her,” Wilde said.
“Nothing’s changed for you?”
“Nothing,” he said.
She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. At first, everyone thought that they’d find the boy’s real identify fast. So Wilde—an obvious nickname that stuck—had stayed with the Crimsteins. Eventually, Child Services placed him with the Brewers, a beloved foster family who also lived in Westville. He started school. He excelled in pretty much everything he tried. But Wilde was always an outcast. He loved his foster family the best he could—the Brewers even officially adopted him—but in the end, he could only live alone. Other than his friendship with David, Wilde couldn’t really connect to anyone, especially adults. Take whatever abandonment issues any normal person might have and raise them to the tenth power.
There had been women in his life, lots of them, but they couldn’t last.
“Is that why you’re here?” Wilde asked. “To ask about Laila?”
“In part.”
“And the other part?”
“Your godson.”
That got his attention. “What about him?”
“Matthew asked me to help find a friend of his.”
“Who?”
“A girl named Naomi Pine.”
“Why did he ask you?”
“I don’t know. But I think Matthew might be in trouble.”
Wilde started toward the car. “Tim still driving you?”
“Yes.”
“I was about to hike over to the house. Give me a lift and tell me about it on the way.”
* * *
In the backseat, Hester said to Wilde, “So this is a fling?”
“Laila could never be a fling. You know that.”
Hester did know. “So you spend the whole night?”
“No. Never.”
So, she thought, he really was the same. “And Laila is okay with that?”
Wilde replied by asking a question of his own: “How did you figure it out?”
“About you and Laila?”
“Yes.”
“The house was too tidy.”
Wilde didn’t respond.
“You’re a neat freak,” she said. That was a polite understatement. Hester didn’t understand official diagnoses or any of that, but Wilde had what a layman might consider obsessive-compulsive disorder. “And Laila is anything but.”
“Ah.”
“And then I found a long brown hair on David’s pillow.”
“It isn’t David’s pillow.”
“I know.”
“You snooped in her bedroom?”
“I shouldn’t have.”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry. It’s just weird. You get that, right?”
Wilde nodded. “I get it.”
“I want Laila happy. I want you happy.”
She wanted to add that David would want that too, but she couldn’t. Probably sensing her discomfort, Wilde changed topics.
“So tell me what’s up with Matthew,” Wilde said.
She filled him in on the Naomi Pine issue. He watched her with those piercing blue eyes with the gold flakes. He barely moved as she spoke. Some had nicknamed him—probably still nicknamed him—Tarzan, and the moniker fit almost too well, as though Wilde were playing into that role, what with the build and the dark skin and the long hair.
When she finished, Wilde said, “Did you tell Laila about this?”
She shook her head. “Matthew asked me not to.”
“Yet you told me.”
“He didn’t say anything about you.”
Wilde almost smiled. “Nice loophole you found there.”
Wilde looked off.
“What?”
“They’re pretty tight,” Wilde said. “Laila and Matthew. Why wouldn’t he want her to know?”
“That’s what I’m wondering.”
They sat back in silence.
When he was eighteen years old, Wilde had gone to West Point, where he finished with all kinds of honors. The whole Crimstein clan—Hester, Ira, all three boys—had taken the forty-five-minute drive to the United States Military Academy for Wilde’s graduation. Wilde then served overseas, mostly in some kind of special force—Hester could never remember what it was called. It was secret stuff, and even now, all these years later, Wilde couldn’t or wouldn’t talk about it. Classified. But in a song with a too familiar refrain, whatever Wilde saw over there, whatever he did or experienced or lost, war had pushed him over the edge or maybe, in his case, it had awoken the ghosts of his past. Who’s to say?
When he finished serving and returned to Westville, Wilde gave up the pretense of trying to assimilate into “normal” society. He started working as a private investigator of sorts at a security firm called CRAW with his foster sister Rola, but that didn’t really pan out. He bought a small trailer-like dwelling that brought minimalism to a new level and lived off the grid in the foothills of the mountains. He moved the dwelling around a bit, though he was always within shouting distance of that road. Hester didn’t understand the technological minutiae of how Wilde knew when he had visitors. She just knew it had something to do with motion detectors and sensors and night cameras.
“So why tell me about this?” Wilde asked.
“I can’t be out here all the time,” she said. “I have court in the city. I have the TV appearances, obligations, stuff like that.”
“Okay.”
“And who would be better at tracking down a missing person than you?”
“Right.”
“And then there was that hair on the pillow.”
“Got it.”
“I haven’t been there for Matthew enough,” Hester said.
“He’s doing fine.”
“Except he thinks a girl who’s been missing from school is in serious danger.”
“Except that,” Wilde agreed.
When Tim made the turn, they both spotted Matthew walking away from the house. It was a teenage walk—head down, shoulders hunched protectively, feet scraping the ground, hands jammed aggressively deep into his jeans’ pockets. He had white AirPods in his ears and didn’t hear or see them until Tim nearly cut him off with the car. Matthew pulled out one of the earpieces.
Hester stepped out of the car first.
Matthew said, “Did you find Naomi?”
When he spotted Wilde getting out of the passenger door, Matthew frowned. “What the…?”
“I told him,” Hester said. “He won’t say anything.”
Matthew turned his attention back toward his grandmother. “Did you find Naomi?”
“I spoke to her father. He said she’s fine, that she’s visiting her mother.”
“But did you talk to her?”
“The mother?”
“Naomi.”
“Not yet, no.”
“Then maybe her dad is lying,” Matthew said.
Hester looked over at Wilde.
Wilde stepped toward him. “Why would you think that, Matthew?”
Matthew’s gaze darted everywhere but on theirs. “Could you just, uh, make sure she’s okay?”
It was Wilde who moved closer to the boy, not Hester. “Matthew, look at me.”
“I am.”
He wasn’t.
“Are you in trouble?” Wilde asked.
“What? No.”
“Talk to me then.”
Hester stayed back. Here was the main reason she worried so about this new relationship between Laila and Wilde. It wasn’t about David’s memory and the pain of him being forever gone—or at least, not only about that. Wilde was Matthew’s godfather. When David died, Wilde had been there. He answered the call, stepped up his role in Matthew’s life. He wasn’t a father or stepfather or anything like that. But Wilde was there, more as an involved uncle, and Hester and Laila had been grateful, believing, sexist as this might sound, that Matthew still needed a man in his life.
How would the romantic relationship between Laila and Wilde affect Matthew?
The boy wasn’t stupid. If Hester saw the signs in a few minutes, Matthew had to know about the romance too. So how was the boy handling his godfather shacking up some nights with his mother? What would happen to Matthew if the relationship went south? Were Laila and Wilde mature enough to make sure Matthew didn’t get hurt in the fallout—or were they being naïve in their thinking?
Matthew was taller than Wilde now. When the hell had that happened? Wilde put a hand on the boy’s shoulder and said, “Talk to me, Matthew.”
“I’m going to a party.”
“Okay.”
“At Crash’s house. Ryan, Trevor, Darla, Trish—they’ll all be there.”
Wilde waited.
“They’ve been picking on her more lately. On Naomi.” Matthew closed his eyes. “Supercruel stuff.”
Hester joined them. “Who has been picking on her?”
“The popular kids.”
“You?” Hester asked.
He kept his eyes on the ground.
Wilde said, “Matthew?”
Matthew’s voice, when he finally spoke, was soft. “No…” He hesitated. They waited. “But I let it happen. I didn’t do anything. I should have. Crash and Trevor and Darla played a prank on her. A mean one. And now…now she’s gone. That’s why I’m going to Crash’s party. To see if I can learn anything.”
“What kind of prank?” Hester asked.
“That’s all I know.”
A car driven by one teen with another riding shotgun pulled up to them. The driver honked the horn.
“I have to go,” Matthew said. “Please…just keep looking too, okay?”
“I’m having someone from my office trace down Naomi’s mother,” Hester said. “I’ll talk to her.”
Matthew nodded. “Thanks.”
“Is there anyone else we should talk to, Matthew? A friend of Naomi’s maybe?”
“She has no friends.”
“A teacher, a family member—”
He snapped his finger and his eyes lit up. “Miss O’Brien.”
Wilde said, “Ava O’Brien?”
Matthew nodded. “She’s, like, an assistant art teacher or something.”
“And you think—?” Hester asked.
The driver honked the horn again. Hester silenced it with a glare.
“I gotta go. I’m hoping to learn something at the party.”
“Learn what?” Hester asked.
But Matthew didn’t reply. He hopped into the backseat of the car. Wilde and Hester watched them drive away.
“You know this Miss O’Brien?” Hester asked Wilde.
“Yes.”
“Should I ask how?”
Wilde said nothing.
“That’s what I thought. Will she talk to you?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” When the car disappeared around the bend, Hester asked, “What do you think?”
“I think Matthew isn’t telling us everything.”
“Maybe Naomi’s mother calls me back. Maybe she lets me talk to Naomi.”
“Maybe,” Wilde said.
“But you don’t think so.”
“No, I don’t think so.”
They both turned and looked down the cul-de-sac toward the Crimstein homestead.
“I have to get back to the city to do my show,” Hester said.
“Uh-huh.”
“I don’t have time to get into this with Laila now.”
“Probably best,” Wilde said. “Do your show. I’ll talk to Laila, then I’ll talk to Ava O’Brien.”
Hester handed him a b
usiness card with her mobile number on it. “Stay in touch, Wilde.”
“You too, Hester.”
CHAPTER
SIX
When Laila answered the front door, she asked, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Then why are you using the front door?”
Wilde always came in through the back door. Always. He hiked through the woods that came up behind the Crimstein house. He’d been doing that since the days David sneaked him inside when they were little boys.
“Well?”
Laila had this passion and energy that turned her beauty into a living, breathing, pulsating entity. You couldn’t help but be drawn in, to watch, to want to be a part of it.
“I can’t stay for dinner,” he said.
“Oh.”
“Sorry. Something just came up.”
“You don’t owe me an explanation.”
“I can come back later, if you want.”
Laila studied his face. He wanted to tell her about Matthew and this Naomi situation, but after weighing the pros and cons, he’d decided that keeping his godson’s confidence trumped informing on him to his mother. For today anyway. For now. It was a close call, but Laila would understand.
Maybe.
“I have an early morning anyway,” Laila said.
“Got it.”
“And Matthew is out tonight. I don’t know what time he’ll get back.”
Wilde mimicked her in the gentlest way as he quoted her: “‘You don’t owe me an explanation.’”
Laila gave him a smile. “Ah, what the hell. Come back if you can.”
“Might be late.”
“I don’t care,” she said. Then: “You didn’t tell me why you’re using the front door.”
“I spotted Matthew on the street.”
Not a lie.
“What did he say to you?”
“That he was going to a party at someone named Crash’s house.”
“Crash Maynard,” she said.
“As in?”
“Yeah, the Maynard Manor. Son of Dash.”