The Match (Wilde, #2)(2)

“Nah.”

He said nothing.

“Wilde?”

“What?”

“You’re being a candy-ass,” Hester said.

“Candy-ass?”

“My grandson taught me that phrase. It means coward.”

“Yeah, I got that.”

“Go talk to him already. Ask him why he left a little boy alone in the woods. Oh, then call me immediately because I’m super curious.”

Hester hung up.

Daniel Carter’s hair was white, his skin sun-kissed, his forearms ropey probably from a lifetime of manual labor. His family, Wilde had observed, seemed pretty tight. Right now, his wife, Sofia, was smiling and waving goodbye as he got into his pickup truck.

The past Sunday, Daniel and Sofia had a family barbecue in their backyard. Their daughters Cheri and Alena and their families had been there. Daniel worked the grill wearing a chef’s hat and an apron reading “Trophy Husband.” Sofia served sangria and potato salad. When the sun dropped low, Daniel lit the firepit, and the entire family actually roasted marshmallows and played board games, like something out of a Rockwell painting. Wilde expected to feel a pang as he watched them, pondering on all he had missed, but in truth he felt very little.

It wasn’t a better life than his. It was just different.

A big part of him wanted to drive to the airport and fly home. He had spent the last six months living something of a normal, domestic existence in Costa Rica with a mother and her daughter, but now it was time to return to his remote Ecocapsule deep in the heart of the Ramapo Mountains. That was where he belonged, where he felt most at home.

Alone. In the woods.

Hester Crimstein and the world at large may be “super curious” about the origin of “The Boy from the Woods,” but the boy himself was not. He had never been. In his view, his parents were either dead or had abandoned him. What difference did it make who they were or what their reason was? It wouldn’t change anything, at least not for the better.

Wilde was good, thank you very much. There was no reason to add unnecessary upheaval to his life.

Daniel Carter turned the ignition key of the pickup truck. He headed down Sundew Avenue and made a left on Sandhill Sage Street. Wilde followed. A few months back, Wilde had succumbed to the temptation and reluctantly put his DNA into one of those online genealogy databases that were all the rage. It didn’t mean anything, he told himself. If a match came in, he could still ignore it if he chose to. It was a noncommittal first step, nothing more.

When the results came in, there was nothing earth-shattering. His closest match was someone with the initials PB, whom the site described as a second cousin. Big deal. PB reached out. Wilde was about to respond, but life ended up throwing him a massive curveball. Surprising even himself, Wilde ended up leaving the woods he had always called home for an unconventional attempt at family life in Costa Rica.

It hadn’t gone as planned.

Two weeks ago, while packing to leave Costa Rica, the DNA genealogy site had sent him an email with the subject: “IMPORTANT UPDATE!” They’d matched him to “a relative sharing far more DNA” than “any other in your relative chain.” This account went by the initials DC. At the bottom of the email, a hyperlink urged him to “LEARN MORE!” Against his better instincts, he clicked it.

DC was, according to the age, gender, and match percentile, Wilde’s father.

Wilde had just stared at the screen.

Now what? The door to his past was right in front of him. All he had to do was turn the knob. Still, Wilde hesitated. Didn’t this crazy, intrusive website work the other way too? If Wilde had received notification that his father was on the site, didn’t it stand to reason that his father received one saying that his son was here too?

Why didn’t DC reach out to him?

For two days, Wilde let it go. At one point, he almost deleted his entire genealogy profile. No good could come of this. He knew that. Over the years, he had gone through all the possible machinations that might explain how a little boy had ended up in the woods, left alone for years, left (if we want to be frank) to die.

When he’d called Hester about this paternal match and his reluctance to pursue it, she’d said, “You want my take?”

“Sure.”

“You’re a schmuck.”

“Helpful.”

“Listen to me closely, Wilde.”

“Okay.”

“I’m a lot older than you.”

“True.”

“Quiet. I’m about to drop some knowledge on you.”

“Did you get that line from Hamilton?”

“I did.”

He rubbed his eyes. “Continue.”

“The ugliest truth is better than the prettiest lie.”

Wilde frowned. “Is that from a fortune cookie?”

“Don’t be a wiseass. You can’t walk away from this. You know that. You need to know the truth.”

Hester was, of course, right. He may not want to turn that knob, but he couldn’t spend the rest of his life staring at the door either. He signed back onto the DNA site and wrote a message to DC. He kept it short and simple:

I may be your son. Could we speak?



When he hit send, an auto-reply bounced back. According to the website, DC was no longer in the database. That was both suspicious and odd—his father choosing to delete his account—but it suddenly hardened Wilde’s resolve to get answers. Screw turning the doorknob; it was time to kick the damn door down. He called Hester back.