He tore out of the garage. Gentry’s Farm wasn’t far from their house, about a ten-minute drive in bad traffic. Which was always in Franklin. It was one of the reasons they walked everywhere, the constant traffic jam of locals and tourists. Tonight was no different—the roads were busy, the lights were barely synced, and his quick ten-minute jaunt was inching into twenty before he broke free of the melee and flew west down Highway 96.

He tasted bile every time he thought about Gentry’s Farm. Wilde knew exactly how to punish him.

It was their first trip out after the baby was born. They’d taken Dashiell to look at the pumpkins. Halloween was past, but there was still plenty of fall flora around, leftovers from the recent holiday haunted hayrides. Sutton couldn’t resist the idea of a baby in a cornucopia, à la Anne Geddes.

He had to agree, “Dashiell in the Field” was an unexpected pleasure. They’d almost filled the memory card on the camera, they’d taken so many shots. It was how they announced the birth of their boy, a photo of him snuggled in an angelic white sleep suit, surrounded by green-and-yellow gourds and bright orange pumpkins and a small haystack Sutton had laughingly constructed, the whole tableau dotted with the red-gold maple leaves they’d found in a tidy pile nearby. Their bountiful babe. Their bounty.

Colin Wilde knew about the photos. They’d put them on their social media accounts gleefully, racking up likes and comments. Surely that’s why he’d picked this place, to stick the knife in a bit farther, twist it inside Ethan’s intestines, make them jump and roil.

Ethan was going to kill the bastard. He knew this as certainly as he knew the moon dictated the tides.

It was simply a question of when.

Take a Walk on the Wilde Side

TAKE A WALK ON THE WILDE SIDE

Ethan parked near the main entrance to Gentry’s Farm. The gate was closed, but he knew that wouldn’t be allowed as an excuse for missing this meeting. The darkness was severe, clouds blotting out the moon, so he switched on the Maglite and climbed over the metal railings. The farm hadn’t tried very hard to keep people out, trusting the good area and their tony, well-heeled neighbors. And really, what were people going to do in a field?

His mom’s face floated in front of him, and he remembered the stupid joke she’d told him when they’d sat him down to talk about the birds and the bees. They, because the Montclairs did everything together, including explaining how sex worked to their teenage son, who knew everything already, but humored them because this was a rite of passage and he wanted to see how they handled it.