The Match, page 9
I just want peace.
That was the exact same wording used in PB’s desperate message. Little doubt now—Peter Bennett was PB.
Wilde clicked on that final posting and read the comments:
Jump already!
Buh, bye!
Can’t wait for you to die.
Hope you land on a hard rock and survive in agony and then an animal comes along and starts eating your skin and then fire ants crawl up your rectum and…
Wilde sat back. What the hell…?
He skipped back. Bennett’s photos over the previous few months were solo shots. No Jenn. Wilde traveled back. The last shot with the #PB&J hashtag featuring both of them was dated May 18. The #DreamCouple, as the frequent hashtag described them, sat in matching beach chairs in Cancun, both holding a frozen margarita in one hand and a bottle from a major tequila label in the other. Sponsorships, Wilde realized. Pretty much every photograph doubled as a paid advertisement.
After that last photo of the beautiful couple, no new post appeared on Bennett’s page for three weeks—a lifetime, it seemed, in this social media world. Then there was a plain graphic with a quote inside of it:
Don’t be so quick to believe
what you hear,
because lies spread quicker
than the truth.
The total likes on his last picture with Jenn in Cancun? 187,454.
Total likes for this quote? 743.
Wilde spent the next two hours finding out as much as he could online about his possible cousin. Wilde read boards, social media, and the cesspool of all cesspools, the comments. It all made Wilde want to shower and vanish even deeper into the woods.
Staying away from the details for now, here’s what Wilde was able to glean:
Peter Bennett was a contestant on a reality program called Love Is a Battlefield. Good-looking, charming, kind, polite, modest, Bennett quickly became the season’s most popular male contestant. The ratings for the season finale—when Jenn Cassidy picks Peter Bennett over bad-boy Bob “Big Bobbo” Jenkins at the Final Battle—were the network’s highest in the past decade.
That was three years ago.
Unlike most couples who hook up on shows like this, Peter and Jenn—yes, PB&J—defied the odds by staying together. Their wedding—not to mention their engagement party, bachelor party, bachelorette party, couple’s shower, bridesmaids’ luncheon, groomsmen’s cigar night, welcome party, Stag and Doe (whatever that was), rehearsal dinner, morning-after-wedding brunch, honeymoon—were major televised and social-media events. Their entire life, it seemed, was for public consumption and commercialized, and the happy couple didn’t appear to mind that in the least.
Life was grand. All that was missing, it seemed, was a baby PB&J. The boards started speculating on when Jenn would get pregnant. There were surveys and even betting lines on whether she would have a boy or girl first. But when no pregnancy came in the next year, Peter and Jenn jointly announced, in a far more somber tone than anything Wilde had seen on their social media before, that the happy couple were having fertility issues and would deal with them the way they dealt with everything in their lives: with love and unity.
And publicity.
Peter and Jenn then began to document the medical procedures they had to endure—the shots, the treatments, the surgeries, the egg harvesting, even the sperm collection—but the first three rounds of IVF failed. Jenn did not get pregnant.
And then everything went kaboom.
It happened on the Reality Ralph video podcast in about as cruel a way as possible. Ralph had invited Jenn on his show purportedly to talk about her struggles with infertility so as to give others with the same problem some hope and support.
Ralph: And how is Peter holding up under this stress?
Jenn: He’s amazing. I’m the luckiest woman in the world.
Ralph: Are you, Jenn?
Jenn: Of course.
Ralph: Are you really?
Jenn: (nervous laughter) What are you trying to say?
Ralph: I’m saying that maybe Peter Bennett isn’t who we all thought he was. I’m saying maybe you could take a look at these…
Ralph showed a shocked Jenn text messages, screenshots, dick shots—all, Ralph claimed, sent by Peter Bennett. Jenn grabbed the water bottle with a shaking hand.
Ralph: I’m sorry to show you these—
Jenn: You know how easy it is to fake this stuff?
Ralph: We hired forensic people to go over these. I’m sorry to tell you this, but they came from Peter’s phone, Peter’s computer. The, uh, more intimate photos—are you going to tell us that’s not your husband?
Dead air.
Ralph: It gets worse, folks. We have one of the women here with us.
Jenn removed her microphone and angrily rose from her chair.
Jenn: I’m not going to sit here and—
Ralph: Guest, please go ahead.
Guest/Marnie: Jenn?
Jenn froze.
Guest/Marnie: Jenn? (Sobs) I’m so sorry…
Jenn couldn’t speak. Marnie, it turned out, was Jenn Cassidy’s younger sister. Using some of those text messages and screenshots, Marnie told a story of Peter’s steadily pursuing her until, one horrible night, Marnie had gotten drunk in Peter’s presence, really drunk. Or perhaps—she couldn’t say for sure—Marnie had been roofied.
Guest/Marnie: When I woke up…(sobs)…I was naked and sore.
The reaction was both swift and obvious. The hashtag #cancelpeterbennett trended in the top ten on Twitter for almost a week. A potpourri of past Love Is a Battlefield contestants took to the various airwaves, podcasts, streamers, and social media platforms to let the indefatigable fans know that they always suspected something was “off” about Peter Bennett. Some anonymous leaks “confirmed” that Peter Bennett had conned the show’s producer into thinking he was a nice guy; others claimed the producers had “created” a nice-guy Peter Bennett because they knew he was a sociopath who could play any part.
For his part, Peter Bennett proclaimed his innocence, but those proclamations got zero traction with the growing horde. For her part, Jenn Cassidy declined to speak at all, choosing instead to go into seclusion, though “sources close to her” revealed that Jenn was “devastated” and “seeking a divorce.” Jenn issued a statement asking for “privacy during this private and painful time,” but when you live your joys out loud, you don’t get to go private for the tragedies.
Wilde felt his phone vibrate. It was Rola.
“Bad news,” she said.
“What?”
“I think Peter Bennett is dead.”
Chapter
Ten
Have you had time to Google your cousin?” Rola asked.
“Yes.”
“So you got the whole sordid PB&J story?”
“Enough of it,” he said.
“Sheesh, am I right?”
“You are.”
“Most people think he jumped off that suicide cliff.”
“And you concur?”
“I do, yeah.”
“Why?”
“Because Peter Bennett is either dead or he’s really good at hiding—and most people aren’t that good at hiding. I’m still combing through this stuff, but so far, there is no activity on his credit cards, on his bills, on his phone, no ATM withdrawals, nothing. So you take all that, you add in those social media posts, that cryptic message to you, the bullying deserved or not, the pain of getting canceled and, let’s face it, hated by the entire world. You drop all of that in a blender and hit puree, and the outcome is probably something really bad.”
Wilde considered that. “Anything on his family tree yet?” he asked.
“Peter Bennett’s father died four years ago. Mother Shirley lives in a senior center in Albuquerque.”
“One of those two is my blood relative.”
“Right. He also has three older siblings. Your best bet? Peter’s sister Vicky Chiba. Vicky is also his manager or handler or something. She lives with her husband, Jason Chiba, in West Orange.”
“Got it.”
“Wilde, do you know how close West Orange is to my place?”
“I do.”
“I’m texting you Vicky Chiba’s address right now. Maybe after you see her…?”
Rola didn’t see a need to finish the sentence. West Orange was only half an hour away with no traffic. Wilde rented a car at the Hertz on Route 17 and found himself pulling up to the Chiba home before noon. He hit the doorbell. Vicky Chiba tentatively opened the wooden door but kept the screen door locked.
“May I help you?” Vicky asked.
Vicky Chiba’s hair was white. Pure and blindingly white. Wite-Out white. The kind of white that had to come from a bottle rather than age. She had it cut in a tasseled fringe running straight above the eyeline. Her arms jangled with bracelets. Her earrings were long feathers.
“I’m looking for your brother, Peter.”
Vicky Chiba didn’t look surprised. “And you are?”
“My name is Wilde.”
She sighed. “Are you a fan?”
“No, I’m your cousin.”
Keeping the screen door locked, Vicky Chiba crossed her arms and looked him up and down as though he were a purchase she was considering.
Wilde said, “Your brother Peter—”
“What about him?”
“He signed up for a DNA ancestry site.”
Her eyes flared for the briefest of moments.
“We were a match,” Wilde continued. “As second cousins.”
“Wait, why do you look familiar to me?”
Wilde said nothing. He had experienced this many times before. The story of the boy from the woods had made headlines more than three decades ago. Vicky probably would have been a young teen at the time, but once a year or so, some cable network, desperate for material, did a “where is he now” story on him, even though Wilde never cooperated.
“That means,” Wilde said, hoping to just push on, “you and I are cousins too.”
“I see,” she said in a flat voice. “So what do you want from my brother? Money?”
“You said I look familiar.”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember the story of the boy from the woods?”
Vicky snapped her fingers and pointed at him. “That’s how I know you.”
Wilde waited.
“You never knew how you ended up in the woods, right?”
“Right.”
“Wait”—her mouth formed an O as she got it—“so we’re related?”
“It seems so, yes.”
Vicky quickly unlocked the screen door. “Come in.”
Her décor, like her look, was what one would likely label bohemian. Chaotic patterns and untidy textures and unruly layers, swirls of colors, everything seeming to somehow move and flow, even when nothing moved or flowed. There was something that looked like a crystal ball on the table along with tarot cards and books on numerology. One wall was covered by a gigantic tapestry with a silhouette of someone sitting lotus style with the seven chakra gemstones running from the crown of the head down to the root. Or was it the other way around? Wilde couldn’t remember.
“You look skeptical,” Vicky said.
He had no interest in getting into this, so Wilde said, “Not at all.”
“It has helped a lot in my life.”
“I’m sure.”
“Your being here. It’s not an accident.”
“I know.”
“But I have to say I’m surprised. Are you saying that my brother signed up for a DNA site?”
“Yes.”
Vicky shook her head, the feathers on her earrings bouncing against her cheeks. “That’s not like him. And he gave out his name?”
“No. He just used his initials.”
“He didn’t tell you his name?”
“That’s right.”
“So how did you find out who he was?”
Wilde didn’t want to get into that, so he replied, “I understand your brother is missing.”
“Peter is not missing,” Vicky said. “Peter is dead.”
Chapter
Eleven
Vicky wanted to hear Wilde’s story first, so he told it.
“Whoa,” Vicky said when Wilde finished. “Just so I have this straight: A female relative of ours traveled to Europe in 1980. While there, she met a soldier on leave, who got her pregnant. Am I right so far?”
Wilde nodded.
“Somehow, that baby, you, a boy, was abandoned in the woods at an age so young, the boy doesn’t remember any time before he was fending for himself. Eventually you were rescued and raised and now, what, thirty-five or so years later, you still don’t know how you ended up in those woods.” Vicky looked over at him. “That sum it up?”
“Yes.”
Vicky looked up as though in deep thought. “You’d think if it was someone related to me, I’d have heard about it.”
“She might have kept the pregnancy secret,” Wilde said.
“Could be,” Vicky agreed. “Based on what you said, your mother would probably have been, what, eighteen at the youngest, and probably under twenty-five, when she met your biological father?”
“That’s about right,” Wilde said.
She chewed on that for a moment. “Well, my father is dead, and mom, well, she’s in and out, if you know what I mean. But I can try to get you a family tree. Some relatives on my father’s side are into genealogy. They can probably help you.”
“I would appreciate that,” Wilde said. Then he switched gears. “Why do you think your brother is dead?”
“Tell me the truth. Are you a viewer?”
“A viewer?”
“Of Love Is a Battlefield or any of that. Is that part of your interest here?”
“No,” Wilde said. “I never heard of the show before this morning.”
“But you did contact Peter via this genealogy site?”
“I didn’t know who he was. He used his initials.” Then Wilde added, “Peter wrote me first.”
“Really?” Vicky gestured toward Wilde’s phone. “May I see what he said?”
Wilde opened the messages app on the genealogy site and passed his phone to her. As Vicky read her brother’s words, her eyes began to well up. “Wow,” she said softly. “These are hard to read now.”
Wilde said nothing.
“So much hurt, so much pain.” She shook her head, still staring at the message. “Did you look at my brother’s social media at all?”
“Yes.”
“So you know what happened to him?”
“Some of it,” Wilde said. “Do you think he jumped from that cliff in his last post?”
“Yes, of course. Don’t you?”
Wilde chose not to answer. “Did Peter leave a suicide note?”
“No.”
“Did he send you a message of any kind?”
“No.”
“Did he send anyone else, maybe your mother or Jenn Cassidy, a suicide note?”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
“And they never found a body.”
“They rarely do with jumpers at Adiona Cliffs. That’s part of the allure. You jump off the end of the earth.”
“I raise all this,” Wilde said, “because I’m wondering why you seem so sure he’s dead.”
Vicky thought about that for a moment. “A few reasons. One, well, you won’t like this one because you simply won’t understand.”
Wilde said nothing.
“There’s a life force in the universe. I won’t go into details, especially with a skeptic who has blocked chakras. It isn’t worth it. But I know my brother is dead. I could actually feel him leave this world.”
Wilde bit back the sigh. He gave it a moment, and then let the moment land with a dull thud. “You said ‘a few reasons.’”
“Yes.”
“One is you feel Peter is dead. What are the others?”
Vicky spread her hands. “Where else would he be?”
“I don’t know,” Wilde said.
“If Peter were alive,” she continued, “well, where is he? I mean, do you know something about the situation I don’t?”
“No. But I’d like to look for him anyway, if that’s okay.”
“Why?” Then Vicky Chiba saw it. “Oh, wait, I get it.” She held high Wilde’s phone before passing it back to him. “You feel obligated. Peter sent you this distress message, and you didn’t reply.”
Vicky Chiba didn’t say it accusingly, but then again, her tone didn’t take him off the hook either.
“I blame myself too, if that helps. I mean, look at Peter’s face.” Vicky picked up a framed photograph of four people—Peter, Vicky, and what Wilde assumed were the other two siblings.
“Is that your other sister and brother?”
Vicky nodded. “The four Bennett children. I’m the oldest. That’s my sister Kelly. The two of us were thick as thieves. Then came our brother Silas. Kelly and I spoiled him rotten until, well, until Peter came along. Look at this face. Just look at it.”
Wilde did as she asked.
“You can sense it, can’t you?”
Wilde said nothing.
“Peter’s innocence, his naïveté, his fragility. The rest of us, well, we are attractive enough, I guess. But Peter? He had that intangible. These reality shows—sure, they’re all fake and scripted, but the viewer still somehow sees through all that and finds the real you. And the real Peter was pure goodness. You know the expression ‘too good for this world’?”
