There was a Mercedes SL 550 parked in the driveway. “Mom get a new car?” Hester asked.
“No, that’s Darryl’s.”
“Who is Darryl?”
Matthew just looked at her. Hester tried not to feel that deep, hard pang in her chest.
“Oh,” she said.
Tim pulled to a stop behind Darryl’s Mercedes.
“You’ll let me know if you find him?” Matthew asked.
“I’ll call.”
“Don’t call,” Matthew said. “Just come back when you can. I know Mom wants you to meet him.”
Hester nodded a little too slowly. “Do you like Darryl?”
Matthew’s reply was to kiss his grandmother on the cheek and slide out.
Hester watched her grandson walk toward the front door with the same gait as his father. She and Ira had built this home forty-three years ago. The cliché holds—it felt like forever ago and like it was yesterday. They had sold the house to David and Laila. Hester had been hesitant about that. It seemed odd to raise your family in the same house in which you’d been raised. Still, it made a lot of sense for a lot of reasons. David and Laila loved the place. They completely transformed the interior and made it their own. Ira also loved keeping the house in the family and would come out often so he could still hike and fish and do all that outdoorsy stuff that Hester so didn’t get.
But then again, even if you don’t believe in the butterfly effect, what if she had insisted that David and Laila buy someplace else? It drives you nuts to think of such things, and intellectually she understood that none of this was her fault, but if she had done that, the world’s timeline would have changed somewhat, right? David wouldn’t have been on that mountain road when it was so slippery. The car wouldn’t have gone off the edge. Ira wouldn’t have died of a heart attack—heartbreak, in her eyes—soon after.
So much for letting go what you can’t control, she thought.
“I guess Laila has a boyfriend,” she said to her driver, Tim.
“Laila is a beautiful woman.”
“I know.”
“And it’s been a long, long time.”
“I know.”
“Also, Matthew’s at college. She’s all alone now. You should want this for her.”
Hester made a face. “I didn’t hire you for your empathetic insights into my family dynamics.”
“I won’t charge you extra,” Tim said. “Where to?”
“You know.”
Tim nodded and circled through the cul-de-sac and back out. It took longer to find than she would have thought. Wilde always kept the hidden lane off Halifax Road camouflaged and hard to locate, but now it was overgrown to the point where Tim couldn’t turn the Escalade onto it. He pulled the car onto the shoulder.
“I don’t think Wilde uses this anymore.”
If that was the case, Hester was out of ideas. She could talk to Oren, her beau, about having the park rangers comb the area for Wilde, but if he didn’t want to be found, he wouldn’t be—and if something bad had happened to him, then, coldly put, it would probably be too late.
“I’ll take the path on foot,” Hester said.
“Not alone you won’t,” Tim replied, rolling out of the driver’s side with a speed that defied his bulk. Tim was a big slab of a man in an ill-fitted suit and military-style crewcut. He buttoned his suit coat—he always insisted on wearing a suit to work—and opened the back door for her.
“Stay here,” Hester said.
Tim squinted and scanned the surroundings. “It could be dangerous.”
“You have your gun, right?”
He patted his side. “Of course.”
“Wonderful, so watch me from here. If someone tries to abduct me, shoot to kill. Wait, unless it’s a hunky man, then bid me adieu.”
“Isn’t Wilde hunky?”
“An age-appropriate hunky man, Tim. Oh, and thanks for being a literalist.”
“Also, do Americans still say ‘hunky’？”
“This one does.”
Hester headed toward an opening in the thicket. Last time she’d been here, there’d been enough room for the car to slide through. Tim had driven in, setting off whatever motion-detector sensors Wilde used. They’d waited and he soon appeared. That was how it worked most of the time with Wilde. He took living off the grid to an art form. Part of it was for reasons of personal safety. During his years of clandestine work in both military and then private security with his foster sister Rola, Wilde had made his share of enemies. Some would like to find him and see him dead. Good luck with that.