“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’?”
Wilde nodded. He debated asking why someone “too good” would have roofied his sister-in-law, but he imagined that Vicky Chiba would either deny it or shut down entirely, and neither of those results would be fruitful right now; instead, he asked, “You said you blame yourself for Peter.”
“Yes.”
“Could you tell me why?”
“Because I got him into this,” Vicky said. “I knew he’d be a star, and then I did a tarot reading that encouraged me to be active, not reactive — that’s what it said over and over, ‘Be active, not reactive,’ and I had always been so reactive, my whole life — so I filled out the application for Peter to be on the show. I didn’t think anything would come of it. Or maybe I knew. I can’t say anymore. But I didn’t really comprehend the long-term impact on Peter’s psyche.”
“In what way?” Wilde asked.
“Fame changes everyone. I know that sounds like a cliché, but no one gets out unscathed. When that fame beacon hits you, it’s warm and soothing and the most addictive drug in the world. Every celebrity denies it — they pretend to be above craving fame — but it’s so much worse for reality stars.”
“How so?”
“No reality star stays a star. There is always an expiration date. I worked for a while in Hollywood. I always heard, ‘The bigger the star, the nicer they are.’ And you know what? That’s true — the big stars are often really nice — but do you know why?”
Wilde shook his head.
“It’s because they can afford to be. Those big superstars are secure that the fame will always be in plentiful supply for them. But for reality stars? It’s the opposite. Reality stars know that beacon is at its brightest when it first hits you and that it will only dim with time.”
Wilde gestured to the family photograph in her hand. “And that’s what happened to your brother?”
“I thought Peter handled it as well as anyone could. I thought he’d built a life with Jenn, a happy one, but when it all fell apart...” Her voice faded away. Her eyes grew moist. “Do you really think Peter is alive?”
“I don’t know.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” she said, trying to sound resolute. “If Peter was alive, he’d have contacted me.”
Wilde waited. Vicky Chiba would get there soon enough.
“But then again, if Peter had decided to leave this world” — Vicky Chiba stopped, blinked back the tears, regained her composure — “I think he would have contacted me. To let me know. To say goodbye.”
They both stood there for a moment. Then Wilde said, “Let’s go back for a second. When did you last see Peter?”
“He was staying with me.”
“Here?”
“Yes.”
“When did he leave?”
“You saw Peter’s social media profiles?”
“Some of them,” Wilde said.
“He left three days before his last Instagram post.”
“The one with the cliff?”
“Yes.”
“How did that happen?”
“What do you mean?”
“You said he was staying with you.”
“Yes.”
“What precipitated him leaving? What did he tell you?”
Again her eyes welled up. “On the surface, Peter seemed to be getting better. There was that post about not being so quick to believe what you hear. Did you see that one?”
Wilde nodded.
“So I thought maybe Peter was turning a corner, but looking back on it, I see it was all kinds of forced. Like he was psyching himself up for a battle he knew he couldn’t win.” She headed toward a computer on a desk in the corner. “Did you read the comments under any of his posts?”