Peter Bennett.
Wilde stared at a few of the many, many images online of his cousin’s face. Did Wilde see some resemblance between his own face and Bennett’s? He did. Or he thought he did. It could be projection or want, but the darker skin tone, the hooded eyes, the shape of the mouth... something was there. Peter Bennett’s Instagram had 2.8 million followers. Wilde assumed that was a lot. There were over three thousand posts. Wilde scanned through them. Most featured a smiling Peter Bennett with a glowing Jenn Cassidy, the photographs’ composition signaling that these two were in love and rich and, for many, probably crossed the line between aspirational and envy-inducing. Wilde clicked on Jenn Cassidy’s profile link and saw that she had 6.3 million followers.
Interesting. Do women reality stars just have more fans?
He headed back to Peter Bennett’s page for a deeper dive. Bennett’s profile image featured him shirtless. His chest was waxed smooth. His stomach had the kind of chiseled six-pack that screamed show (as opposed to strength) muscles. For a couple of years, Peter Bennett had posted at least one photograph a day — him and Jenn on vacation in the Maldives, attending openings and premieres, trying on designer clothes, making extravagant meals, working out, dining in fancy restaurants, dancing in the clubs. But the posts had slowed down over the last year or so, petering out until the final one, four months ago, was a view of a large cliff with a cascading waterfall. The location was listed as the Adiona Cliffs in French Polynesia. The caption read:
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:
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.