The Match (Wilde, #2)(49)

“Weren’t you sure he was dead?”

“I was, yes. But not anymore.”

“What changed your mind?”

“I thought Peter killed himself because of the fallout with PB&J and that podcast.”

“And now?”

“Now my brother is related to you by blood.”

“So?”

“So now I’m thinking whatever happened to him,” she said slowly, “maybe it isn’t about Jenn and that show. Maybe there’s something more.”

“Like what?”

“Like you, Wilde. Like whatever happened to you as a child, I don’t know, somehow years later, the echo of that came down to him.”

Wilde stood there, not sure what to say.

“I need a second,” she said. “This is very upsetting. But I’ll tell you everything.”

Vicky Chiba prepared a “healing herbal tea” she claimed was “magically medicinal.” Wilde wanted her to get to the point, but there was a time to crowd in and a time to give space. He bided his time and watched her. Her focus on preparing the tea was total, her movements deliberate. Rather than store-bought tea bags, she used loose tea leaves and a strainer. Her kettle had a gray stone finish and a wood-pattern handle and whistled loudly when it was ready. One of the ceramic teacups read “Om Namaste” (she gave that one to him), while the other read “What We Think, We Become—Buddha.”

She took a sip of tea. Wilde did likewise. There were hints of ginger and lilacs. She took another sip. He waited. She put the cup down then and pushed it away from her.

“One day nearly thirty years ago, my parents came home from what was supposed to be a Florida vacation. I don’t remember how long they were gone. The three of us—me, Kelly, and Silas—stayed with Mrs. Tromans. That was our babysitter back then. She was a nice old woman.” Vicky shook her head, reached for the tea, stopped, and put her hand back in her lap. “Anyway, we were living in Memphis at the time. I remember my dad picking the three of us up at Mrs. Tromans’s. He was acting all weird and faking being excited. He said we were moving to a great big new home. Silas, he was only like two or three years old, but Kelly and I were old enough to get what was going on. I remember looking at Kelly. She started sobbing. She was worried because her friend Lilly was having her eleventh birthday party at a Chuck E. Cheese that Friday, and she really wanted to go. I asked where Mommy was. Dad said that she was at our new house and couldn’t wait to see us. Anyway, we drove for a long time. Kelly cried for hours. When we finally arrived, Mom was there—with a baby boy. She told us this was our new brother, Peter.”

Vicky held up a hand. “I know I should have told you, but you have to understand. We never talked about it. Even back then. Telling you would have been, I don’t know, a family betrayal. I know this sounds crazy, but my mom and dad just said, ‘This is your brother Peter.’ No explanation—not at first anyway. I remember they were all smiles and acting excited, but even to me and Kelly, it felt forced. They were trying to sell it, you know, with ‘Won’t it be nice for Silas to have a little brother?’ and ‘Isn’t this just the most wonderful surprise?’ And I remember Kelly asking where the baby came from, and my father just said, ‘Oh, honey, the same place you did.’”

She stopped and, with a shaking hand, took hold of the tea.

Wilde treaded carefully. “Your parents didn’t tell you he was adopted?”

“No. Not then. Eventually, they had to.”

“What did they say?”

“Just that. They said it was a private adoption, but part of the deal was that no one could ever know. My parents made us swear we would never tell anyone. And after a while—I know this sounds weird—but it just became what it was. We all loved Peter so much.”

“Did Peter know he was adopted?”

She slowly shook her head. “My parents never told him. He was a little baby when they brought him home. He never knew that he was adopted.”

“When did Peter find out?”

“Not until he went on Love Is a Battlefield.”

“Who told him?”

“I probably should have. He was an adult. He had the right to know.” She stared down at the cup of tea. “He found out from the producers.”

“The producers from Love Is a Battlefield?”

Vicky nodded. “That’s what he told me. They do a full medical workup on all the contestants. Something came back showing that he couldn’t be our parents’ biological son.”

“That must have been a shock.”

She didn’t reply.

“How did Peter react?”

“He was angry, disoriented, confused, even depressed, which is something I’d never seen in him. But he also said that there was relief too. Knowing the truth at long last. He said that he always felt like he didn’t belong, like he never fit in. I started listening to a bunch of podcasts on the stuff. There’s one called Family Secrets; when the host was an adult, she found out the father who had raised her wasn’t her biological father. I listened to a bunch of stories like hers and Peter’s, people who found out, mostly through DNA tests, that they were adopted or the product of sperm donation or an affair or whatever. What they all seemed to share was a lifelong feeling of displacement, like they’d never truly belonged. I don’t know if that’s true or not.”