The Boy from the Woods(66)
Bernard Pine stopped.
“So what happened?” Wilde asked.
“I read somewhere that even adoptive mothers can suffer from postpartum depression or something similar. I don’t know if that’s what it was, but Pia kinda lost herself. It was awful. She couldn’t connect to her daughter in any way. Not even in like a cellular way. It was like our baby was a new kidney Pia’s body was rejecting.”
Interesting way to put it, Wilde thought. “So what did you do?”
“I hired nannies. Pia kept firing them. I tried to get her to see a shrink, but she flat-out refused. And I still had a job. The commute from out here to the city, no matter how you slice it, is at least an hour each way.” He closed his eyes hard, then opened them. “One day, I came home and there was a bruise on Naomi’s arm. She fell, Pia said. Another day, there was a cut over her eye. The girl is clumsy, Pia said.”
Bernard made a fist and put it near his mouth. “This is very hard to talk about.”
“Do you want a glass of water or something?”
“No, I want to get through this before I chicken out. I’ve never told this story. Not to anyone. I should have done more, I guess. I should have insisted Pia get help or…”
He stopped again, exhausted, and for a moment, Wilde feared that he wouldn’t go on.
“We’ve come this far,” Wilde said. “Tell me the rest.”
“I started to get scared for Naomi’s health. So one day, I didn’t go to work. I just pretended like I was heading to the bus, but I hung in town. I can’t say exactly why. Something felt extra-off that morning. Or maybe I had a premonition, I don’t know. I came home an hour after I left. Totally unexpected. I could hear the screaming from the driveway. Both of them. Screaming. I ran inside. They were upstairs. Pia was giving her a bath. The water. It was so hot, I could see the steam coming up off the top.”
He squeezed his eyes shut now.
“That was it. The straw that broke the camel’s back. I forced Pia to get help, though ‘help’ is a relative term. We got divorced—quietly. No reason to let the world know what happened, right? Pia gave up all parental rights. Buying my silence maybe. Or maybe she just knew that she’d never care. That was fifteen years ago. Naomi hasn’t seen her mother since.”
Wilde tried to wade past what he’d just heard, tried to get past this horrible tale and keep moving ahead with his investigation. Then: “Are you sure?”
“What do you mean?”
“Could Naomi and your ex have started seeing each other behind your back?”
“I don’t think so. Pia still battles with severe mental health issues, but she’s managed to lasso in a rich new husband. My guess? She stopped thinking about Naomi long ago.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX
Hester called Aaron Gerios, a former FBI Special Agent who’d worked hostage situations and kidnappings. “I have a hypothetical situation for you.”
“A hypothetical,” Gerios repeated.
“Yes,” Hester said. “You know what the word ‘hypothetical’ means, don’t you, Aaron?”
“When you call, it means the situation is real, not hypothetical, but you can’t tell me who it is.”
“I’ll pretend you said that in a hypothetical way.”
Hester laid out the kidnapping-ransom situation. The suggestions Aaron made were pretty close to what Wilde had already set up. In short, they were doing everything right, considering the circumstances. Gerios also questioned the likelihood that this was a legitimate kidnapping.
“It sounds more like this kid is pranking his parents.”
“Could be.”
“Or some hot girl seduced him into doing this.”
“A man thinking with his dick first,” Hester said. “I didn’t know such a thing existed.”
“You’ve always been a na?ve waif, Hester.”
“Yes. Yes, true. Thanks, Aaron.”
“No worries. But may I offer you one last piece of repetitive advice?”
“Sure.”
“Convince your hypothetical parents to contact the very real FBI. Even if it’s a big nothing, these situations tend to go sideways when we aren’t involved.”
Aaron hung up.
Hester was still walking the grounds of Maynard Manor. There was little doubt that the estate was grand in the old-school way in which it was intended to be, but some of the modern touches were jarring. Right now, Hester was walking past a “sculpture garden” with somewhat tacky bronze likenesses of the Maynard family from several years ago. The twin girls who were now fourteen—Hester couldn’t remember their names, something with K’s like Katie or Karen—looked to be about seven or eight in the bronze. One flew a bronze kite while the other kicked a bronze ball. Bronze Crash was probably around twelve or thirteen and carried a lacrosse stick on his shoulder like Huck Finn with a fishing pole. Bronze Delia and Bronze Dash watched their bronze children and laughed. The entire Bronze Maynard family were laughing, their faces frozen in that laugh, forever and ever, and that was kind of creepy.
Hester’s phone buzzed. The caller ID read OREN. Despite everything, her cheeks still flushed just seeing his name.
“Articulate,” Hester said.