The Match, page 30
He turned the knob and entered.
He had expected to see Daniel Carter. Instead, standing in the front hallway next to the stairwell, looking at him with her head held high and her gaze steady, was Sofia Carter, Daniel’s wife.
For a moment they both just stood there. Wilde noticed a quake in her lower lip.
“Is…” Wilde wasn’t sure what to even call him. “Is your husband okay?”
“He’s fine.”
Relief flowed through him. Wilde hadn’t expected that.
“Very little of what my Danny told you was true though,” she said.
Wilde said nothing.
“He is your biological father. That’s the most important thing for you to know. And he’s a good man. The best I’ve ever known. He is kind and strong, a wonderful father and husband, and I hope for your sake that you take after him.”
“Where is he?”
Sofia didn’t reply. “You figured out that we were in witness protection.”
“Are you guys safe?”
“We’ve changed identities.”
“What about your daughters?”
“We finally had to tell them the truth. The partial truth anyway.”
“They didn’t know?”
Sofia shook her head. “We became Daniel and Sofia Carter before they were born. They are such good girls, your sisters. We are so blessed. They always wanted to know about our families, but of course, Danny and I had to lie about it. Pretend we didn’t know anything. That’s part of being in the program. So do you know what these wonderful girls did? These girls who loved their father so much? They surprised him by putting his DNA in a database, so he could learn all about his family and heritage. They used one of our home COVID tests to get his DNA and they sent it in to that site. Clever, our girls. Your sisters. When they gave Danny the gift, we both went pale. It was such a breach. Danny ran to the computer and deleted the profile. But, well, too late, of course.”
“I’m sorry,” Wilde said. “I didn’t mean to cause you trouble. If I had any idea my father was in witness protection—”
“Danny isn’t the reason we’re in witness protection,” Sofia said. “I am.”
Wilde felt something icy slide down his back.
“Before I get into that,” Sofia said, “do you mind if I ask you a question?”
Wilde nodded for her to go ahead.
Sofia Carter was a small woman, beautiful, with high cheekbones and steely eyes. She lifted her chin. “I read an old article on you. It said you sometimes have old memories from before…” Her voice petered out.
“Not really,” Wilde said. His mouth felt dry. “I sometimes have dreams or like flashes.”
“You see things like snapshots.”
“Yes.”
“Like a red banister, the article said. A dark room. A portrait of a man with a mustache.”
Wilde couldn’t move, but he was starting to feel it.
Sofia lifted her hand and rested it on the white banister heading up to the second level. “This used to be dark red,” she said. “Blood red, really. The interior of this house? It used to be all dark woods. The new owners painted everything white.” She pointed to the left where a blue-and-yellow tapestry now hung. “A portrait of a man with a mustache used to hang here.”
Wilde felt dizzy. He closed his eyes for a moment, tried to regain his bearings. The woman’s screams began in his head, and then those familiar images—banister, walls, portrait—came back to him, rapid-fire, quick flashes, like strobe lights. He opened his eyes.
It had been here. In this very foyer. He was back.
“The screams,” Wilde managed to say. “I heard screams.”
Their eyes met.
“They were mine,” she said.
“So you’re…”
She didn’t bother nodding. “I’m your mother, Wilde.”
So there it was. After all these years, Wilde’s mother stood directly in front of him. He looked at her and felt his heart explode in his chest.
“This spot I’m standing on,” Sofia said, her voice numb, “this exact spot, is where I stood the last time I saw you. I opened this little door”—she pointed now at the storage door under the stairwell—“and I made my little boy promise not to make a sound until I came back. Then I closed the door and never saw you again.”
Wilde felt heady and faint.
“I can’t tell you names. I can’t tell you places or details. Like with your sisters. That’s part of the deal we made to set up this meet. And we don’t have much time. I’m scared because when you hear this story, you may end up hating me. I’ll understand that. But it’s time you knew the truth.”
He waited, afraid to move, afraid to disturb the air. This all felt like one of those dreams, the good dreams, and midway through, you start to realize it’s a dream and you’re trying to do all you can to not yet wake up.
“When I was a teenager, I attracted the attention of a horrible, vile man. A truly deranged and damaged psychopath from a deranged and damaged crime family. The vile man became obsessed with me, and when a man like that decides that you are his, you either acquiesce or you die. There are no other options.”
Her gaze wandered toward the stairs. Wilde had still not moved a muscle.
“You may wonder why my father and my mother didn’t help me. My father was dead, my mother, well, she encouraged it. I won’t go into my family or childhood. Suffice to say I knew no one who could help. I was a captive. The vile man put me through hell. I tried to escape once or twice. That made it worse. I was trapped in this big estate with three generations of the vile man’s family—his grandparents, his father, his two brothers. Crime bosses of the crime bosses.”
Sofia still looked up. “They had a furnace in the back of the estate. When I turned eighteen, the vile man took me up there and showed me the ashes. He said that’s where his grandfather used to get rid of the bodies. His grandfather stopped burning them there because his grandmother complained about the smell. But the furnace still worked. And if I ever tried to leave him, he would shackle me to that furnace and set it on low and come back in two weeks, and by then, I’d be ashes too.”
Sofia looked straight at Wilde. Wilde opened his mouth to say something—he wasn’t sure what—but she stopped him with a shake of her head.
“Let me get through this, okay?”
Wilde may have nodded.
“One day I met your father. It’s not important how or why. I fell in love with him. I was so scared. For me. For him. But”—she smiled now—“I was too selfish to give him up. I started to live a double life. God, we were both so young. I didn’t tell your father the truth. I should have, of course. But he was leaving to serve overseas anyway. It couldn’t last, and I was okay with that. We would only have two months together. That’s more than I could ask for. After that, I could stay with the vile man and live off the memories.” She smiled and shook her head. “That’s the sort of nonsense you tell yourself when you’re young. Can you guess what happened next?”
Wilde said, “You got pregnant.”
“Yes. I didn’t tell your father. You can understand that. Your father hadn’t asked for any of this. I was afraid he’d want to do the right thing, get married, and then the vile man and his vile family would find out the truth. Your father was—is—a strong man, but he was no match for this kind of family. No one man is.”
“So you pretended the vile man was the father?”
Sofia Carter nodded. “I told myself that was best. I would break it off with your father to protect him. I’d have his baby and say it was the vile man’s, and this way I would always have a piece of your father.” Sofia shook her head with a sad smile. “That was the young girl’s foolish fantasy. So crazy when I look back on it now.”
“So what happened?” Wilde asked.
“I tried to stick to my plan, but two years later, when your father finished serving, he came back for me. I tried to stay away, but the heart wants what the heart wants. I told him the truth. The whole truth this time. I thought that would repel him—when he knew who I really was, what I’d really done. But it didn’t. He wanted us to run away. He wanted to confront the vile man. But we’d have no chance. You get that, right?”
Wilde nodded.
“The FBI was always trying to turn anyone close to this family. No one ever accepted because we all knew that the family would find out. Then they’d kill you slowly. But your father and I, we were crazy in love. I decided to risk it. What other choice did I have? So I went to the FBI. They promised your father and I witness relocation if I got them more information. They sent me back to live with the vile man. I wore a wire. I stole documents. I got them more info. But then something went wrong. Very wrong.”
“They found out you’d turned?”
“Worse,” Sofia said. “The vile man found out he was not your father.”
The room seemed to hush. In the distance, Wilde heard the whir of a lawnmower.
“How?”
“Someone in the FBI leaked it to him.”
“What did you do?”
“I got a heads-up, so I just jumped in the car with you and drove away. I called your father. A friend of his had a house by a lake we could use. No one would find us. That’s what I thought. So you and I, we ran here. I was afraid to call the FBI. They’d been the leak. But we did know George Kissell by then. I called him when we got to this house. He said to sit tight. So I did. Except the vile man found us here first. He came with three other men. I saw them pull up right out there, right where George is parked now. The vile man came to the door and started pounding on it. He had a knife in his hand. He started screaming about how—”
She stopped, her chest hitching.
“—how he was going to slit you open right in front of me. I was so scared, desperate. You have no idea. I’m standing right here, right where I am now…”
Her eyes looked off as though she were back and seeing it.
“The vile man is coming in, trying to break the door down. What can I do? So I hide you under the stairs. I tell you to stay quiet. But that’s not enough. The door gives away. The vile man bursts in. All I can think is that I need to get him away from you. I scream as loud as I can and I run upstairs. The vile man follows. That’s good, I think. He’s not downstairs. He’s farther away from my son. I get to a bedroom window. He’s right behind me. So I jump out into the hedges. I want to get them all away from you. You’re safe in that closet. So I run across the street and into the woods. The vile man and his men run after me. That’s good. They won’t find you. Maybe they’ll think you’re with me. I run. It’s dark. At times I think I can actually escape them. But then what? I can’t lose them because then they might give up and go back to the house and find you. So I keep running and sometimes I’ll even make a noise so they stay close to me. I barely care if I get caught. Because if I do, if they kill me, you’ll still be alive. I don’t know how long we do this. Hours. And then…then they catch me.”
Wilde realized that he was holding his breath.
“The vile man starts to beat me. He broke my jaw. I can still feel it crack some days. He kept pounding on me and demanded to know where you were. I told him I lost you in the woods. I told him to keep looking for you because you ran ahead of me. Anything—anything—to keep them from going back to that house. I don’t know how long they had me. I passed out. At some point, your father and the marshals showed up. The vile man and his henchmen ran. I remember your father wrapping his arms around me. The marshals wanted to take me to the hospital, but I said no, that I needed to get back to the house, to get back to you…”
Sofia Carter just shook her head. The tears started flowing.
“We searched for you. But you were gone. The vile man started burning the world down to find us. The marshals said we had to go now.” She looked at Wilde, and his heart broke. “The marshals took us away. I let them in the end. We were given new identities and relocated. You know this. We had daughters of our own. It’s the weird part of the human condition. We are forced to go on. What else can we do?”
Now the tears started coming down harder.
“But I abandoned my son. I should have stayed. I should have kept combing through the woods looking for you. I should have done it for weeks or months or years. My baby boy was alone, lost in the woods, and I gave up looking for him. I should have found you. I should have rescued—”
And then Wilde moved toward her, shaking his head, and let her fall into his arms.
“It’s okay,” he whispered.
Through her sobs, she kept repeating, “I should have saved you.”
“It’s okay,” Wilde said, holding her closer to him. Then: “It’s okay, Mom.”
And when Sofia heard the word “Mom,” she sobbed even louder.
Chapter
Forty-Three
Oren worked the barbecue because that was the kind of guy he was. Laila was in the kitchen. Wilde sat on an Adirondack chair in the back with Hester. They looked out into the woods from the backyard of the house that Hester and Ira built over forty years ago.
Hester drank a white Chablis. Wilde had an Asbury Park Brewery ale.
“So now you know,” she said.
“Most of it.”
“What?”
“Some of what she said—there were holes.”
“Like?”
He and his mother had talked more, but suddenly George Kissell was there telling them time was up. The danger, he said, was still real. Wilde wasn’t sure how much he bought that, or if he bought that when that little boy was found in the woods, his parents didn’t hear about it or put it together.
“It doesn’t matter,” Wilde said. “We know the important stuff.”
“Your mother abandoned you to save you,” Hester said.
“Yes.”
“That’s all that really matters.”
Wilde nodded and handed her an old Polaroid. Hester took it, put on her reading glasses, studied it. The colors in the photo had saturated with age.
“Looks like a dance floor at an old wedding.”
Wilde nodded. “Silas found tons of old photos his mother had stored in the basement. A lot were water damaged, but I went through them all. This one is from the early seventies.”
“Okay.”
“See the girl in the back by the drums?”
Hester squinted. “There are three girls in the back by the drums.”
“The one with the green dress and ponytail.”
Hester found her. “Yes.” Then: “Wait, that’s…?”
“Mom, yep.”
“Did Silas know who she was?”
Wilde shook his head. “No recollection of her. The wedding would have happened before he was even born.”
Hester handed him the photograph. She closed her eyes and tilted her face toward the sun.
“You’re spending more time here, aren’t you?” Hester asked.
Laila came out back with a large empty platter. Oren started moving a tremendous amount of food off the grill and onto it.
Oren shouted, “Hope you’re hungry.”
Hester looked back at both of them and waved. “We both did good.”
“Outkicked our coverage,” Wilde agreed. “I love her.”
“I know.” She put her hand on his arm. “It’s okay. He would be happy about it.”
They sat back now. Wilde closed his eyes and worked up his courage.
“I have something I want to ask you,” Wilde said.
But before he could go on, he heard Matthew from behind him. “Yo, Wilde, holy crap, you have to see this.”
Matthew ran toward him with Sutton at his side. Sutton was holding up her cell phone.
“What’s up?” Hester asked.
“It’s the Love Is a Battlefield fan page,” Matthew said. “It’s been insane lately. Marnie is like a big-time hero-martyr now. They made that storage place where they found her body into like a giant shrine. And Jenn, she’s still working on her excuses, but a lot of people are defending her. Some say she was just playing the game right. Others think she must have been abused or something so it’s not her fault.”
“But that’s not the big news,” Sutton said. She handed Wilde her phone. “Here, let me click this link.”
Sutton hit the link, and the screen loaded an Instagram page.
Peter Bennett’s Instagram page.
The last time Wilde had looked, the most recent post was the one of the suicide jump at Adiona Cliffs.
Now there was a video. It was dated twenty-two minutes ago. The location, listed in the upper right-hand corner, read simply FRENCH POLYNESIA.
Sutton hit the play button.
Peter Bennett appeared. He wore a long unkempt beard. He smiled for the camera.
“I’m alive, Battlers,” he announced, smiling big for the camera, “and now that you know the truth, I’m coming home.”
Sutton’s phone rang in her hand. The video disappeared. She took the phone back and moved away, holding the phone to her ear. “I just saw it,” she said excitedly to whoever was on the other end. “I know, incredible, right? He’s alive!”
Matthew looked down at Wilde. “What do you think?”
“About?”
“Were the fan boards right? Was Peter behind it all the time?”
Wilde told the truth. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
Matthew looked over at Hester. Hester shrugged.
“But since you’re here,” Wilde said, his nerves returning, “I want to ask you both something.”
Matthew moved closer. Hester sat up.
“What’s up?” she asked.
“Do I have your permission to ask Laila to marry me?”
Hester and Matthew both smiled. Hester said, “You need our permission?”
“And your blessing,” Wilde said. “I’m old-fashioned that way.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Let’s do this quickly because you don’t want to read a long acknowledgment and I don’t want to write one. I’ll start with Ben Sevier, who has been my editor/publisher for over a dozen books now. The rest of the team includes Michael Pietsch, Wes Miller, Beth deGuzman, Karen Kosztolnyik, Autumn Oliver, Jonathan Valuckas, Matthew Ballast, Brian McLendon, Staci Burt, Andrew Duncan, Alexis Gilbert, Joseph Benincase, Albert Tang, Liz Connor, Flamur Tonuzi, Kristen Lemire, Mari Okuda, Rick Ball, Selina Walker (heading up the UK team), Charlotte Bush, Lisa Erbach Vance (agent extraordinaire), Diane Discepolo, Charlotte Coben, and Anne Armstrong-Coben.
