“May I speak to Naomi?”
“Why?”
“I’m…” Hester tried on her legendary disarming smile. “Look, I don’t mean any harm. I’m not here in any sort of legal capacity.”
“Then why are you here?”
“I know this is out of the ordinary, but is Naomi okay?”
“I don’t understand—why is my daughter any of your business?”
“She’s not. I don’t mean to pry.” Hester tried to consider all the angles on this and decided to go with the most personal and truthful reply. “Naomi goes to school with my grandson Matthew. Maybe she’s mentioned him?”
Pine’s lips tightened. “Why are you here?”
“I…Matthew and I just wanted to make sure that she was okay.”
“She’s fine.”
He started to close the door.
“Can I see her?”
“Are you serious?”
“I know she’s been out of school.”
“So?”
Enough with the disarming. She put a touch of steel in her voice. “So where is Naomi, Mr. Pine?”
“What right do you—?”
“None,” Hester said. “No right. Zero, zilch. But a friend of Naomi’s is worried about her.”
“A friend?” He made a scoffing noise. “So your grandson is her friend, is he?”
Hester wasn’t sure what to make of his tone. “I’m just asking to see her.”
“She’s not here.”
“Where is she then?”
“That’s really not your business.”
A little more steel in the tone now: “You said you’ve seen me on TV.”
“So?”
“So you probably know that you don’t want to get on my bad side.”
She glared at him. He stepped back.
“Naomi is visiting her mother.” His grip on the knob of the door tightened. “And Ms. Crimstein? My daughter doesn’t concern you or your grandson. Get off my property now.”
He closed the door. Then, as though to add emphasis, he bolted the lock with an audible click.
Tim was outside and waiting. He opened the car door as she approached.
“Douche-nozzle,” Hester muttered.
It was getting late. Night had fallen. The lighting out here, especially near the mountains, was near nonexistent. There was nothing more to be done about Naomi Pine tonight.
Tim slid into the driver’s seat and started up the car. “We should probably start heading back,” he said. “Your segment starts in two hours.”
Tim met her eye in the rearview mirror and waited.
“How long has it been since we’ve been to Wilde’s?” Hester asked.
“It’ll be six years in September.”
She should have been surprised at how much time had passed. She should have been surprised that Tim recalled the year and month so quickly.
Should have been. But wasn’t.
“Do you think you could still find his road?”
“This time of night?” Tim considered it. “Probably.”
“Let’s try.”
“You can’t call?”
“I don’t think he has a phone.”
“He may have moved.”
“No,” Hester said.
“Or he may not be home.”
“Tim.”
He shifted the car into drive. “On our way.”
CHAPTER
FIVE
Tim found the turn on his third pass along Halifax Road. The thin lane of a road was almost entirely camouflaged so that it felt as though they were driving through a giant shrub. The vegetation scraped across the top of the car like those sponge noodles at a car wash. A few hundred yards south was the Split Rock Sweetwater Prayer Camp of the…what did they call themselves now? Ramapough Lenape Nation or Ramapough Mountain People or Ramapough Mountain Indians or simply Ramapoughs, with their murky genealogy some claim came directly from the indigenous people native to this area or maybe native tribes mixing with the Hessians who fought in the Revolutionary War or maybe runaway slaves that hid amongst the old Lenape tribes before the Civil War. Whatever, the Ramapoughs—she’d keep it simple in her own head—were now a reclusive albeit dwindling tribe.
Thirty-four years ago, when the little boy now called Wilde was found half a mile from here, many had suspected—many still did—that he had to somehow be connected to the Ramapoughs. No one had any specifics, of course, but when you are different and poor and reclusive, legends spring up. So maybe a tribeswoman had abandoned a child she’d had out of wedlock or maybe in some whacky tribal ceremony the child had been sent into the woods or maybe he’d wandered off and gotten lost and now the tribe was afraid to claim him. It was all nonsense, of course.
The sun had set. Trees didn’t so much line the sliver of road as crowd onto it, the top limbs bending up and over and reaching across like children’s arms playing London Bridge Is Falling Down. It was dark. Hester figured that they’d hit one sensor when they made the turn, probably two or three more as they coasted down the road. When they reached the dead end, Tim made a K-turn so they were now facing the way out.
The woods remained silent, still. The car headlights provided the only illumination.
“Now what?” Tim asked.
“Stay in the car.”
“You can’t go out there alone.”
“But can’t I?” They both reached for their door handles, but Hester stopped him with a firm “Stay put.”
She stepped into the silent night and closed the door behind her.
The pediatricians who’d examined Wilde after his discovery estimated his age between six and eight years old. He could speak. He had learned how, he claimed, via his “secret” friendship with Hester’s son David and, more directly, by breaking into homes and watching countless hours of television. Along with living off the land in the warmer seasons, that was how Wilde had fed himself—foraging in human beings’ garbage cans, checking wastebaskets near parks, but mostly sneaking (aka breaking) into summer homes and raiding the fridge and cupboards.
The child didn’t remember any other life.
No parents. No family. No contact with any human other than David.
One memory, however, did come back. The memory haunted the boy and now the man, kept him up at night, startling him awake in cold sweats at all hours of the night. The memory came to him in snap-flashes with no discernible narrative arc: a dark house, mahogany floorboards, a red banister, a portrait of a man with a mustache, and screams.
“What kind of screams?” Hester had asked the little boy.
“Terrible screams.”
“No, I understand that. I mean, are they the screams of a man? A woman? In your memory, who is screaming?”
Wilde had considered that. “I am,” he told her. “I’m the one screaming.”
Hester folded her arms, leaned against the car, and waited. The wait didn’t last long.
“Hester.”
When Wilde stepped into view, Hester’s heart filled and exploded. She couldn’t say why. It had just been that kind of day maybe, and seeing her son’s best friend—the last person to see David alive—just overwhelmed her yet again.