Wilde sat next to him. Matthew kept his eyes on the cold cereal in front of him.
“I thought you and Mom were done.”
Wilde said nothing.
“I know you used to stay over. You don’t think I’d hear you sneak out?”
“I’m not going to talk about this with you,” Wilde said.
“Then maybe I don’t want to talk about PB.”
Wilde remained silent. He pulled over the box of cereal and emptied some into his palm. He ate a few pieces while he waited for Matthew to stop giving him the sullen.
“She’s involved with someone right now,” Matthew said. “I told you that.”
“I’m not going to talk about this with you.”
“Why the hell not? I’m not a kid anymore.”
“You’re acting like one.”
“Hey, I’m not the one sneaking out of the house at six in the morning.”
Matthew took a spoonful of cereal and jammed it in his mouth with ferocity.
Wilde said, “What did you mean by ‘it runs in the family’?”
“You and PB.”
“What about us?”
“Do you ever watch reality TV?”
Wilde kept his expression blank.
“Right,” Matthew said. “Dumb question. But you’ve heard of it, right? Shows like The Bachelor and Survivor?”
Wilde continued to stare.
“PB’s real name is Peter Bennett. He won a big reality show.”
“Won?”
“Yes.”
“Like a game show?”
“Not exactly. I mean this isn’t Jeopardy! Have you heard of Love Is a Battlefield?”
“Sure,” Wilde said. “Pat Benatar.”
“Who?”
“She sang the song.”
“What song? Love Is a Battlefield is a reality show.”
“You win a show?”
“Of course. Sheesh, Wilde, where have you been? It’s kind of like a contest. The show starts out with three women and twenty-one men all vying to find true love. But it’s a hard road to get there. Fierce, the host always says. Love is like a war. Guess where they host it?”
“On a battlefield?” Wilde replied with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek.
“Right.”
“You’re serious?”
Matthew nodded. “In the end, there is only one woman who selects one man. Destined for each other. They’re the only two standing. They get engaged right then and there. In the finale.”
“On a battlefield?”
“Yes. Last season it was at Gettysburg.”
“And this relative of mine, PB—”
“Peter Bennett.”
“Right. He won?”
“He and Jenn Cassidy, his true love.”
“Jenn?”
“Right.”
Wilde said, “Please tell me you’re joking.”
“What?”
“Peter Bennett and Jenn,” Wilde said. “Is that what PB&J stands for?”
“Clever, right?”
Wilde shook his head. “Maybe I don’t want to meet him.”
That made Matthew laugh. “They’re pretty famous. Or they were. This was like a year or two ago.”
“When he won this show?”
“Yes.”
“I assume PB&J are no longer together,” Wilde said.
“Why do you assume that?”
“Because One, I imagine — and this could just be me — that this probably isn’t a great way to meet your lifelong soulmate. On TV during a contest.”
“You’re an expert on relationships now?”
“Fair,” Wilde said again. “Harsh but fair.”
“And what’s Two?”
“Two, you got mad at me and said it ‘runs in the family.’ So I assume PB — Peanut Butter or whatever — cheated on this Jenn.”
“You’re good,” Matthew said.
“How did you learn all this?” Wilde asked.
“I’ve seen an episode or two, but Sutton and her sorority sisters watch religiously. Before every episode, they down edibles and watch and laugh their asses off.”
“So where is he now?”
“Peter Bennett?”
“Yes.”
“That’s the thing. No one knows. He’s disappeared.”
The kitchen door opened. Laila entered wearing a terry cloth robe and a frown.
“Damn,” Laila said. “I thought I heard voices.”
The two men looked at her. Matthew broke the silence.
“Do you want to tell me what’s going on?”
Laila turned her gaze on him. “Do I answer to you now?”
“Maybe you should.”
“No, I’ll continue to be the mother, you continue to be the son.”
“You broke up with Darryl?”
Laila flicked a glance at Wilde, then back to Matthew. “What are you doing home anyway? I thought you were spending the night at Sutton’s.”
“Nice deflection, Mom.”
“I don’t need to deflect. I’m the mother.”
“Well, my plan was to stay at Sutton’s, but I needed to tell Wilde something. So I came home to get the car keys and I heard noises upstairs.”
Silence.
Laila gave Wilde a look that made his next move obvious.
Wilde rose and started for the door. “I’ll leave you two alone.”
Without so much as a backward glance, Wilde headed out the back door, closed his eyes, and sucked in a deep breath. He wondered for a moment or two about the fallout of last night. He wondered what Laila had wanted, why she had called him, where she would go from here. It might be smart for him to vanish again, to not complicate her life, but thinking like that was insulting to Laila. She wasn’t a wallflower. She could figure out what she wanted or needed without him playing savior.
When Wilde hit the edge of the woods, he called Rola. It was early, but he figured that she’d be up or have her phone off. She answered on the first ring. He could hear the cacophony of morning breakfast with five kids in the background.
“What’s up?” Rola asked.
He filled her in on what Matthew had told him about Peter Bennett.
“When you say he’s missing,” she began.
“I don’t know. I need to do some research too.”
“Well, we have his name now. That should be enough. I’ll run his credit cards, phone bills, the usual. I’m sure it won’t be that hard to track him down.”
“Okay.”
“We also got a new guy at CRAW named Tony, who is good at family tree stuff.”
“Why would a security firm need ‘family tree stuff’?”
“You think you’re the only person looking for a biological parent?”
“Kids from closed adoptions?”
“Less and less. What happens is, a lot of people sign up for one of the DNA sites, mostly for the fun of it. To learn their ancestry or whatever. Ends up, they learn that their father — mostly it’s the father, though it can be the mother or both parents — isn’t really their father. Blows families apart.”
“I can imagine.”
“A lot of times, the father doesn’t even know. He thought the kid was his and he raised them and now when the kid is grown up — twenty, thirty, forty years old — he finds out his wife slept with someone else and his whole life is a lie.”
“That must get unpleasant.”
“You have no idea. Anyway, I’ll get Tony to start working up a genealogical breakdown on Peter Bennett. Someone on it may connect to you.”
“Thanks.”
“I’ll call you back when I have something,” she said before disconnecting.
Wilde retrieved his charged laptop from the Ecocapsule and found a spot two miles away where he could hook up to the internet without any chance of being tracked. He Googled “Peter Bennett” and “PB&J.” The sheer amount of hits overwhelmed him. Love Is a Battlefield had fathered thousands if not millions of fan pages, social media hits, podcasts, Reddit boards, whatever.