Харлан Кобен - The Boy from the Woods

In the backseat, Hester said to Wilde, “So this is a fling?”

“Laila could never be a fling. You know that.”

Hester did know. “So you spend the whole night?”

“No. Never.”

So, she thought, he really was the same. “And Laila is okay with that?”

Wilde replied by asking a question of his own: “How did you figure it out?”

“About you and Laila?”

“Yes.”

“The house was too tidy.”

Wilde didn’t respond.

“You’re a neat freak,” she said. That was a polite understatement. Hester didn’t understand official diagnoses or any of that, but Wilde had what a layman might consider obsessive-compulsive disorder. “And Laila is anything but.”

“Ah.”

“And then I found a long brown hair on David’s pillow.”

“It isn’t David’s pillow.”

“I know.”

“You snooped in her bedroom?”

“I shouldn’t have.”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry. It’s just weird. You get that, right?”

Wilde nodded. “I get it.”

“I want Laila happy. I want you happy.”

She wanted to add that David would want that too, but she couldn’t. Probably sensing her discomfort, Wilde changed topics.

“So tell me what’s up with Matthew,” Wilde said.

She filled him in on the Naomi Pine issue. He watched her with those piercing blue eyes with the gold flakes. He barely moved as she spoke. Some had nicknamed him — probably still nicknamed him — Tarzan, and the moniker fit almost too well, as though Wilde were playing into that role, what with the build and the dark skin and the long hair.

When she finished, Wilde said, “Did you tell Laila about this?”

She shook her head. “Matthew asked me not to.”

“Yet you told me.”

“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 naïve 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.”

Wilde waited.

“They’ve been picking on her more lately. On Naomi.” Matthew closed his eyes. “Supercruel stuff.”

Hester joined them. “Who has been picking on her?”

“The popular kids.”

“You?” Hester asked.

He kept his eyes on the ground.

Wilde said, “Matthew?”

Matthew’s voice, when he finally spoke, was soft. “No...” He hesitated. They waited. “But I let it happen. I didn’t do anything. I should have. Crash and Trevor and Darla played a prank on her. A mean one. And now... now she’s gone. That’s why I’m going to Crash’s party. To see if I can learn anything.”

“What kind of prank?” Hester asked.

“That’s all I know.”

A car driven by one teen with another riding shotgun pulled up to them. The driver honked the horn.

“I have to go,” Matthew said. “Please... just keep looking too, okay?”