The Match

Chapter Nineteen

When Wilde arrived, Vicky Chiba, Peter Bennett’s sister, was gardening in her backyard. She wore gardening gloves so thick they made her hands look like Mickey Mouse’s. Her eyes were down, a hand trowel working on the loose dirt.

Wilde had decided on the direct approach. Before she could even turn around, he said, “You lied to me.”

Vicky spun her head toward him. “Wilde?”

“You said you’d check your family tree for me.”

“Yes, of course. I will, I promise. What’s wrong?”

“My colleague met with Jenn.”

“Right. So?”

“She said that Peter was adopted.”

Her mouth went slack.

“Vicky?”

“Jenn said that?”

“Yes.”

She closed her eyes. “So Peter told her. I didn’t know.”

“It’s true?”

Vicky slowly nodded her head.

“So you’re not genetically related to me. Your parents, your other two siblings, none of you share my blood.”

Vicky just looked at him.

“Why did you lie to me?” Wilde asked.

“I didn’t lie.” She squirmed. “I just didn’t think it was my place to tell you. Peter didn’t want anyone to know.”

“Do you know anything about his birth family?”

Vicky exhaled, stood, and brushed herself off. “Let’s go inside. I’ll tell you everything. But one thing first: Did you find Peter?”

“Weren’t you sure he was dead?”

“I was, yes. But not anymore.”

“What changed your mind?”

“I thought Peter killed himself because of the fallout with PB&J and that podcast.”

“And now?”

“Now my brother is related to you by blood.”

“So?”

“So now I’m thinking whatever happened to him,” she said slowly, “maybe it isn’t about Jenn and that show. Maybe there’s something more.”

“Like what?”

“Like you, Wilde. Like whatever happened to you as a child, I don’t know, somehow years later, the echo of that came down to him.”

Wilde stood there, not sure what to say.

“I need a second,” she said. “This is very upsetting. But I’ll tell you everything.”

Vicky Chiba prepared a “healing herbal tea” she claimed was “magically medicinal.” Wilde wanted her to get to the point, but there was a time to crowd in and a time to give space. He bided his time and watched her. Her focus on preparing the tea was total, her movements deliberate. Rather than store-bought tea bags, she used loose tea leaves and a strainer. Her kettle had a gray stone finish and a wood-pattern handle and whistled loudly when it was ready. One of the ceramic teacups read “Om Namaste” (she gave that one to him), while the other read “What We Think, We Become — Buddha.”

She took a sip of tea. Wilde did likewise. There were hints of ginger and lilacs. She took another sip. He waited. She put the cup down then and pushed it away from her.

“One day nearly thirty years ago, my parents came home from what was supposed to be a Florida vacation. I don’t remember how long they were gone. The three of us — me, Kelly, and Silas — stayed with Mrs. Tromans. That was our babysitter back then. She was a nice old woman.” Vicky shook her head, reached for the tea, stopped, and put her hand back in her lap. “Anyway, we were living in Memphis at the time. I remember my dad picking the three of us up at Mrs. Tromans’s. He was acting all weird and faking being excited. He said we were moving to a great big new home. Silas, he was only like two or three years old, but Kelly and I were old enough to get what was going on. I remember looking at Kelly. She started sobbing. She was worried because her friend Lilly was having her eleventh birthday party at a Chuck E. Cheese that Friday, and she really wanted to go. I asked where Mommy was. Dad said that she was at our new house and couldn’t wait to see us. Anyway, we drove for a long time. Kelly cried for hours. When we finally arrived, Mom was there — with a baby boy. She told us this was our new brother, Peter.”

Vicky held up a hand. “I know I should have told you, but you have to understand. We never talked about it. Even back then. Telling you would have been, I don’t know, a family betrayal. I know this sounds crazy, but my mom and dad just said, ‘This is your brother Peter.’ No explanation — not at first anyway. I remember they were all smiles and acting excited, but even to me and Kelly, it felt forced. They were trying to sell it, you know, with ‘Won’t it be nice for Silas to have a little brother?’ and ‘Isn’t this just the most wonderful surprise?’ And I remember Kelly asking where the baby came from, and my father just said, ‘Oh, honey, the same place you did.’”

She stopped and, with a shaking hand, took hold of the tea.

Wilde treaded carefully. “Your parents didn’t tell you he was adopted?”

“No. Not then. Eventually, they had to.”

“What did they say?”

“Just that. They said it was a private adoption, but part of the deal was that no one could ever know. My parents made us swear we would never tell anyone. And after a while — I know this sounds weird — but it just became what it was. We all loved Peter so much.”

“Did Peter know he was adopted?”

She slowly shook her head. “My parents never told him. He was a little baby when they brought him home. He never knew that he was adopted.”

“When did Peter find out?”

“Not until he went on Love Is a Battlefield.”

“Who told him?”

“I probably should have. He was an adult. He had the right to know.” She stared down at the cup of tea. “He found out from the producers.”

“The producers from Love Is a Battlefield?”

Vicky nodded. “That’s what he told me. They do a full medical workup on all the contestants. Something came back showing that he couldn’t be our parents’ biological son.”

“That must have been a shock.”

She didn’t reply.

“How did Peter react?”

“He was angry, disoriented, confused, even depressed, which is something I’d never seen in him. But he also said that there was relief too. Knowing the truth at long last. He said that he always felt like he didn’t belong, like he never fit in. I started listening to a bunch of podcasts on the stuff. There’s one called Family Secrets; when the host was an adult, she found out the father who had raised her wasn’t her biological father. I listened to a bunch of stories like hers and Peter’s, people who found out, mostly through DNA tests, that they were adopted or the product of sperm donation or an affair or whatever. What they all seemed to share was a lifelong feeling of displacement, like they’d never truly belonged. I don’t know if that’s true or not.”

“You don’t think those feelings are real?”

“Do you have them, Wilde? Talk about displacement, anger, confusion. You were abandoned in the worst way as a child.”

“We aren’t talking about me.”

“Aren’t we? Look, I don’t know if Peter’s feelings were real or not. I don’t know if he looked back after the fact and felt displacement — he always seemed pretty well-adjusted — or if he somehow on some kind of cellular DNA level always knew that something was off. It doesn’t matter. It hit Peter hard, all the years of lies and deceit. So he put his name in a bunch of DNA sites. He wanted to find out the truth about his birth family.”

“Do you know what he learned?”

“No. He never told me.”

“Did Peter tell Kelly he knew?”

“No.”

“Or Silas?”

“No.”

“Wait. How old was Silas when your parents adopted Peter?”

“Not yet three.”

“So...” Wilde wasn’t sure where he was going with this. “Did Silas know Peter was adopted?”

Vicky shook her head slowly. “We never told him.”

“When you say ‘never’—”

“Still. To this day. It was Peter’s secret to tell. He made me promise not to tell anyone.”

“Not even his own brother?”

“Their relationship is complicated. Do you have any siblings? Wait, sorry, dumb thing to say, I’m sorry. Silas was two grades ahead of Peter, but Silas was still in his shadow. Peter was more popular, the better athlete, all that. Silas was jealous and maybe even bitter, and then what with the show and all that fame Peter got? That made it worse.”

Wilde thought about that, but nothing came to mind. He switched tracks. “Does the name Henry McAndrews mean anything to you?”

“No.” Vicky tilted her head. “Is that Peter’s biological father?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Then who is he?”

“DogLufegnev.”

Her eyes widened. “You located that maniac? How?”

“That’s not important.”

“Can he be arrested? I mean, I know the laws on cyberstalking and bullying aren’t strict enough, but if there’s evidence he targeted—”

“Henry McAndrews is dead. He was murdered.”

Vicky’s hand fluttered to her mouth. “Oh my God.”

“The police will be on this now.”

“On what?”

He gave it a second. She saw it. “Wait. Are you saying that Peter might be a suspect?”

Wilde said nothing.

“Of course, he would be,” Vicky said, answering her own question. “But he didn’t do it. You have to know that.”

Wilde was thinking of all the things Peter Bennett was dealing with when he vanished. The huge rise to stardom, the discovery that he was adopted, the harsh revelations from his sister-in-law on that podcast, the merciless cancellation in the #metoo era, the destruction of his marriage, his fame, his career, his life really. How untethered Wilde’s cousin must have felt. How desperate, so desperate that he reached out as PB to WW, and WW didn’t even care enough to respond.

“What did your parents do for a living?”

“Dad was a custodial manager. After we moved, he worked at Penn State managing the Pollock Housing Area. Mom worked part-time in the admissions department.”

Wilde made a mental note of that. He would get Rola to look into their time at Penn State, but what would he hope to find? The bigger clue might be in tracing down Peter Bennett’s birth certificate and papers. Even if the adoption was private, there should be some records of his birth parents.

Except the Bennetts chose to move.

Suddenly. Without any kind of warning. They leave their children with a sitter, the father comes home, he drags them to some remote spot where no one knows them, they now have a new baby boy.

Something was way off.

“You said your dad is dead and your mom is, I think your words were ‘in and out.’”

“Dementia. Probably Alzheimer’s.”

“I think it may be worth talking to her.”

Vicky shook her head. “What good would that do, Wilde?”

“We want answers.”

“You want answers. I get that. But whatever happened all those years ago, however my family ended up with Peter, I mean, what good will it do to dredge that all up now? She’s an old woman. Fragile. In a bad mental state. She would get so agitated whenever I asked about Peter’s birth that I stopped.”

Wilde saw no point in pushing this right now. Rola would be able to find out where the mother was staying. They could decide what to do then.

“Wilde?”

He looked at her.

“I don’t know how to say this, but for me and my family, I think this is over.”

“How do you mean?”

“You said Peter is a suspect in this McAndrews murder.”

“He will be, I think, yes.”

“So think about it. Peter has been destroyed in so many ways. He lost everything. Let’s say what we both think is possible. Let’s say he found this McAndrews and somehow ended up involved in the man’s death. Accident. Self-defense. Or even, though I can’t believe it, murder. That would be the last straw for any man, wouldn’t it? That would be when a man would run away and find a cliff or waterfall and...”

Wilde shook his head. “But what about his last post?”

“What about it?”

“Peter said lies spread quicker than truth and not to be so quick to believe what you hear. He told me the same in his message to me — that people were lying about him.”

“That was before.”

“Before what?”

“I think you should leave.”

“If there is something more—”

“There isn’t, Wilde. It’s just... it’s over. Peter’s dead.”

“And if he’s not?”

“Then he ran away and doesn’t want to be found. Either way, I think you should leave.”