Харлан Кобен - The Boy from the Woods

No pressure, right?

Oren had trusted Hester to order. Now the table was loaded up with dumplings — three-color vegetable, shrimp and mango, pork and crab soup (another favorite), crispy oxtail, black truffle chicken.

“Heaven,” Oren muttered between bites.

“You like?”

“It’s so delicious I’m almost forgetting how wonderful the company is.”

“Smooth line,” Hester said. “Can I ask you about your ex-wife?”

His chopsticks had just clamped down on a dumpling. “Seriously?”

“I’m not good with subtlety.”

“Nice demonstration of that.”

“And it’s on my mind.”

“My ex-wife is on your mind?”

“I just have a few questions. I can sit here and let them distract me or I can just ask them.”

Oren picked up the dim sum. “I don’t want you distracted.”

“I found Cheryl’s Instagram page.”

“Ah,” he said.

“You’ve seen it?”

“I haven’t, no. I don’t do social media.”

“But you know about it?”

“I do, yes.”

“Do you still think about her?”

“I’m supposed to answer no, right?”

“I saw the pics.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So I don’t blame you.”

“Of course I still think about her — but not like that. We were married for twenty-eight years. Do you still think of Ira?”

Hester didn’t answer right away. She had tried on a dozen outfits before settling on this dress. It was only as she caught her reflection in a window on the street that she realized it was a dress Ira always said made her look sexy.

“We both have pasts, Hester.”

“I just...” She wasn’t sure how to put it. “We’re so different. Cheryl and I.”

“Yes.”

“I know this is only a first date, but she’s just so... sexy.”

“So are you.”

“Don’t patronize me, Oren.”

“I’m not. I get it. But this isn’t a competition.”

“Thank God for that. You said Cheryl left you.”

“She did and she didn’t.”

“Meaning?”

“I think I left her first. At least emotionally. She left me because in part I left her.” He put down his chopsticks and wiped his napkin with his chin. His movements were deliberate now. “When the kids were gone, I think Cheryl felt adrift. You know our town. It’s about raising families. When that’s gone, well, you, Hester, have a career. But Cheryl just looked around her and the kids are gone and I’m still going to work every day and she’s either at home or playing tennis or going to Zumba or whatever.”

“So she just ended it?”

“One of us doesn’t have to be at fault. Divorce doesn’t mean your marriage was a failure.”

“Uh, sorry to disagree, but divorce seems to be pretty much the definition of a failed marriage.”

Oren clenched his jaw and turned away for a moment. “Cheryl and I had twenty-eight years together. We raised three good kids. We have a grandchild and another on the way. Put it this way: If you owned a car for twenty-eight years and then it breaks down, does that make the car a failure?”

Hester frowned. “That analogy is a stretch.”

“Then how about this one? If life is a book, we are both starting new chapters. She’ll always be important to me. I’ll always wish her happiness.”

“She’s just — to continue with this analogy — not in your chapters anymore?”

“Exactly.”

Hester shook her head. “God, that’s so mature I want to barf.”

Oren smiled. “Not until I try that crispy oxtail dim sum please.”

“Okay, one final question,” Hester said.

“Fine, go ahead.”

Hester cupped her hands in front of her chest. “Cheryl had a boob job, right? I mean, those puppies are high enough to double as earrings.”

Oren laughed as Hester felt her phone vibrate. She counted the pulses in her head.

“Three pulses,” she said. “I have to take it.”

“What?”

“One pulse is just a regular call. Two pulses means it’s work. Three, it’s something important and I should pick it up.”

Oren gestured with both hands. “Pick it up already.”

She put the phone to her ear. It was Sarah McLynn from her office.

“What’s up?” Hester asked.

“Are you on your date?”

“You’re interrupting it.”

“Sneak a photo of him. I want to see.”

“Was there another reason for this call?”

“Does there have to be?”

“Sarah.”

“Fine. I reached out to Naomi’s mother like you asked.”

“And?”

“And she refuses to talk to you. She said to mind your own business and hung up.”

Gavin Chambers was at the window of his office high-rise in midtown, looking down at the “protestors” — a ragtag group of aging grunge-ola that probably numbered no more than twenty — mulling inside the building’s courtyard. The chant — “Release the tapes!” — was hardly catching fire. The quasi-vagrants held up signs for every left-wing cause. Two of the women donned faded pink knit caps. According to the various signs, they wanted to Free Palestine, Resist, Abolish ICE — but their hearts didn’t seem to be in it today. The march looked to Gavin more like a languid sway.

Delia joined him at the window. “Isn’t that—?”

“Saul Strauss,” Gavin said with a nod. His old war buddy wasn’t hard to spot, Saul being close to six six and sporting the long gray ponytail that was so on point it could only be there to be on point.

Dash finished up a phone call and moved next to his wife. There was an ease between Dash and Delia, always, a flow, and while Gavin had had plenty of great relationships in his life, he envied these two. People can fool you — they fool you every day — but Gavin had been hanging around the Maynards long enough to recognize that Dash and Delia were the real deal, the kind of love that makes yours, no matter how good, seem somewhat inadequate. It wasn’t just what they said. It wasn’t just how they looked at each other or casually touched. There was an intangible here, that mix of great friendship and physical attraction, and maybe that was something Gavin was projecting on them, but when they talk about a soulmate, one person in this world that is perfect for you and almost impossible to find, Dash and Delia seemed to have done just that.

“What do the protestors want?” Delia asked.

“You can hear them,” Gavin said. “They want the tapes.”

“There are no tapes,” Delia replied.

“They don’t believe that.”

“Do you, Gavin?” she asked.

“Doesn’t matter.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“I’ll protect you either way.”

Dash finally spoke. “That’s not what she asked.”

Gavin looked at Dash, then back at Delia. “Of course there are tapes,” Gavin said. “Are they as damaging to Rusty as our hemp-adorned friends below would like to believe? Not for me to say.”

Dash moved back toward his office desk. “You understand the situation then.”

Gavin didn’t bother with a response.

“We aren’t safe,” Delia said, moving with her husband. “If Crash could be approached like that in his very school—”

“That won’t happen again.”

Dash put his arm around his wife’s shoulder. Again Gavin couldn’t help but notice the ease, the naturalness, the tenderness, in this everyday move. “Not good enough.”

“Who was that man?” Delia asked.

“Crash didn’t tell you?”

Delia shook her head. “He said he kept asking about Naomi Pine.”

“They call him Wilde.”

“Wait, he’s that weird mountain guy they found in the woods?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t get it. What does he have to do with Naomi Pine?”

“He is something of a surrogate parent for Matthew Crimstein. For some reason, Matthew and his family are interested in Naomi’s whereabouts.”