“Hi, Wilde.”
Wilde was a genius. She knew that. Who knew why? A child comes out hardwired. That was what you learned as a parent—that your kid is who he is and what he is and that you, as a parent, greatly overstate your importance in his development. A dear friend once told her that being a parent is like being a car mechanic—you can repair the car and take care of the car and keep the car on the road, but you can’t fundamentally change the car. If a sports car drives into your garage for repairs, it isn’t driving out an SUV.
Same with kids.
So part of it was, well, that was what Wilde was genetically hardwired to be—a genius.
But experts also claim that early development is hugely important, that something like ninety percent of a child’s brain develops by the age of five. But think about Wilde by that age. Imagine the stimulation, the experiences, the exposure, if as a small child he really did have to take care of himself, feed himself, shelter himself, comfort himself, defend himself.
What would that do to intensify a brain’s development?
Wilde stepped into the headlights so she could see him. He smiled at her. He was a beautiful man with his dark sun-kissed complexion, his build of coiled muscles, his forearms looking like high-tension wires straining against the rolled-up flannel shirt, the faded jeans, the scuffed hiking boots, the long hair.
The very long hair of light brown.
Like the strand she’d found on the pillow.
Hester dove right in: “What’s up with you and Laila?”
He said nothing.
“Don’t deny it.”
“I didn’t.”
“So?”
“She has needs,” Wilde said.
“Seriously?” Hester said. “‘She has needs’? So you’re being—what, Wilde?—a Good Samaritan?”
He took a step toward her. “Hester?”
“What?”
“She can’t love again.”
Just when she thought that she couldn’t hurt any more, his words detonated another explosive device in her heart.
“Maybe one day she can,” Wilde said. “But right now, she still misses David too much.”
Hester looked at him, feeling whatever had been building inside her—anger, hurt, stupidity, longing—deflate.
“I’m safe for her,” Wilde said.
“Nothing’s changed for you?”
“Nothing,” he said.
She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. At first, everyone thought that they’d find the boy’s real identify fast. So Wilde—an obvious nickname that stuck—had stayed with the Crimsteins. Eventually, Child Services placed him with the Brewers, a beloved foster family who also lived in Westville. He started school. He excelled in pretty much everything he tried. But Wilde was always an outcast. He loved his foster family the best he could—the Brewers even officially adopted him—but in the end, he could only live alone. Other than his friendship with David, Wilde couldn’t really connect to anyone, especially adults. Take whatever abandonment issues any normal person might have and raise them to the tenth power.
There had been women in his life, lots of them, but they couldn’t last.
“Is that why you’re here?” Wilde asked. “To ask about Laila?”
“In part.”
“And the other part?”
“Your godson.”
That got his attention. “What about him?”
“Matthew asked me to help find a friend of his.”
“Who?”
“A girl named Naomi Pine.”
“Why did he ask you?”
“I don’t know. But I think Matthew might be in trouble.”
Wilde started toward the car. “Tim still driving you?”
“Yes.”
“I was about to hike over to the house. Give me a lift and tell me about it on the way.”
* * *
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.