Харлан Кобен - The Boy from the Woods

“Was she a close friend?”

“Sister,” Wilde said. Then: “Foster sister.”

Ava led him into a classroom-cum-art-studio. There were splashes of color everywhere. Wilde took it all in. The room was comforting, what with the creations of the über-amateurish blended in with the super-gifted, the half-baked sculptures with works that could find a place in a museum. There was just life here. Lots of life.

“So I checked already,” Ava began.

Her tone was matter-of-fact. Wilde waited.

“Naomi has been out for a few days,” Ava said. “The absences are unexcused. The school has sent out warnings by email.”

“I heard it was bad when she got back from the last disappearance.”

“Heard from whom?”

“Her father,” he said. No reason to bring Matthew in. Wilde quickly updated her on the rest — Bernard Pine reaching out to him, Naomi’s bedroom, the missing clothes and backpack.

“Yeah, it was bad,” she said when he finished. “As expected.”

“How did Naomi react?”

“To the bullying?”

“Yeah.”

“Naomi, I don’t know, maybe she became withdrawn. I tried to get her to open up, but she didn’t share much.”

“Was there anyone else she might have talked to?”

“Not that I know of.” Ava tilted her head. “She told me you were the one who found her. She said you two talked in her basement.”

“Yes.”

“She liked you, Wilde.”

“I liked her too.”

“Did she tell you why she went along with that awful game?”

“She hoped that it would be a reset,” Wilde said.

“A reset?”

“A way to start again with her classmates. A do-over. She thought that maybe if she did it, really made a splash, everyone would look at her differently.”

Ava shook her head. “I get it, but...”

Wilde said nothing.

“I wish these kids could understand how short high school is,” she said.

“They can’t.”

“I know. My grandfather up in Maine turned ninety-two recently. I asked him what that was like — reaching that age. He said it’s a finger snap. He said, ‘One day I turned eighteen. I joined the army. I headed south to basic training. And now I’m here.’ That fast. That’s what he said. Like he got onto a bus with his duffle bag in 1948 and he got off now.”

“He sounds like a cool guy,” Wilde said.

“He is. I’m not sure why I told you that, except that if it’s hard for us, two adults, to believe that — that our lives are going to whiz by that fast — it’s impossible to convince a bullied sixteen-year-old girl that the world isn’t this stupid high school.”

Wilde nodded. “So do you have any thoughts on where Naomi is?”

“I think we both agree she probably ran away.”

“Probably.”

Ava asked, “Did you try her mother?”

“I thought you said—”

“Yeah, I know. But that was before. What Naomi said to you about starting over? She said something like that to me too. But after what happened with that Challenge game, she knew that it couldn’t happen here, in this town. The fresh start meant a fresh place.”

“So you think she could be with her mom?”

“Naomi told me her mother was going on a trip. I didn’t really think about it at the time, but maybe there was longing in her voice.”

“Do you know where the mother was going?”

“Just overseas.”

“Okay, I’ll reach out.”

Ava looked at her watch. Wilde caught the hint.

“You probably have a class,” he said.

“Yeah.” Then: “About those texts I sent you the other night.”

Wilde knew the ones she meant, of course: Come over tonight. I’ll leave the door unlocked. And then: I miss you, Wilde.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I wouldn’t want anything more than we had. I just, I mean, I had a lonely moment.”

“I get them too.”

“You do?”

He saw no reason to repeat himself.

“It was odd,” she said, “what we had. Now isn’t the time. But...”

“It was nice,” Wilde said. “Really nice.”

“But it couldn’t last, could it?” She didn’t ask it with regret or anything like that.

Wilde didn’t respond.

“It was like one of those vibrant creatures that only survive a short time. A whole life cycle packed into a few days.”

He thought that was well put. “Yeah, pretty much.”

They both stood. Neither was sure what to do. Ava stepped toward him and kissed his cheek. He looked in her eyes and almost told her that he was available. Almost. But he didn’t.

Change the subject: “Do you know the Maynard kid?”

She blinked, took a step back. “Crash? By reputation.”

“Which is?”

“Crappy. He used to torment Naomi, though maybe there was something more.”

“More?”

“He doth protest too much methinks,” Ava said in her best Shakespearean accent.

“Like he had a crush on her?”

“I wouldn’t say that. He’s dating Sutton Holmes. But I think Naomi fascinates Crash in ways that he probably couldn’t quite articulate himself.”

“Is Crash Maynard in school today?”

“Probably, why?”

“What time does school let out?”

Hester donned her swim cap and did laps for forty-five minutes in the indoor pool on the lower level of her office high-rise. Swimming laps — freestyle down the lane, breaststroke back — had been her major exercise activity for two decades now. Before that, she hadn’t really liked the pool. Changing out of a wet suit is a pain. You smell like chlorine. It does awful things to your hair. It is numbingly boring. But it was that last point — numbing boredom — that eventually sold Hester on it. Moments of pure alone, of pure silence, of yes, pure boredom — rote strokes you’ll repeat hundreds if not thousands of times this very week — ended up being what others considered Zen. With her body encased in water and chemicals, Hester rehearsed summations, testimony, and cross-examinations.

Today though, alone in that pool, her body gently slicing through the water, she didn’t think about work. She thought about Oren. She thought about tonight.

It’s just a dinner , she reminded herself.

He’d asked her out.

It isn’t a date. Just a meal with an old friend.

Wrong. A man doesn’t drive to your place of work and ask you to share a meal as two old friends. This was not a drill. This was a date. The real McCoy.

Hester showered, blew out her hair, got dressed in her best power suit. When she got off the elevator, Sarah McLynn, her assistant, handed her a bunch of messages that needed her attention. Hester grabbed them, headed into her corner office, and closed the door. She sat at her desk, took a deep breath, and brought up the web browser.

“Don’t, Hester,” she said out loud.

But since when did Hester Crimstein take advice from anyone, especially from Hester Crimstein?

In the search field, Hester typed in “Cheryl Carmichael.”

Yep. Oren’s ex.

Half of Hester floated up and out of her body and tsk-tsked disapprovingly. The other half — the half still in the chair — frowned at the floating half and countered, “Yeah, right, like you’re too good for this.”

Hester hit the return button and let the screen load. The top searches were for a Cheryl Carmichael who worked as a professor at CUNY. Uh-uh, no — that was definitely the wrong Cheryl Carmichael. Hester scanned down the page. She wasn’t sure what she’d find online about a divorced woman in her mid-to-late sixties. But when she found the right one — Cheryl Carmichael living in Vero Beach, Florida — what Hester uncovered was far worse than she’d imagined.