“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.