The Boy from the Woods(12)

“He didn’t say anything about you.”

Wilde almost smiled. “Nice loophole you found there.”

“A corollary of my occupation. Love me for all my faults.”

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 na?ve 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.”