Darling Girl: A Novel of Peter Pan(29)

“You’re quiet,” she says at last, glancing sideways. He’s fingering the rock he picked up on the beach. “Everything all right?”

“Yeah,” he says absently. “Hey, what kind of a kid was I?”

“What?”

“You know—when I was little. What was I like?”

“Well,” she says cautiously, “you were serious. Even before, you were always the serious one. But you loved sports. You loved to run.”

That had been one of the hardest things to watch, after the crash. Once she’d gotten over the immediate fear of his dying, of course. But his agonizingly slow movements, the dawning recognition in his eyes that it would always be like this, the way he’d eventually all but given up . . . that had been unbearable.

She clicks the radio on, searches till she finds a classical station. She waits. Sure enough, a few minutes later, he asks again.

“Was I . . . Did I have a good imagination?”

“I would say you were typical of your age.” An inkling of unease pricks at her. “Why?”

“No reason.” He looks down at the stone in his hand. “I don’t remember a lot about when I was little.”

“Well, a lot happened to you in a short time, so it makes sense you would block some of it out,” she says. “Plus, you had a few surgeries, and being under anesthesia can impact memory.”

“Yeah, I guess,” he says. “But when we were at that house today—at Grace House,” he corrects himself, “I started to remember. Just a few things. Only they don’t make sense.”

“What type of things?” Dread pools in her body, heavy and cold. She was so very stupid to bring him here. “Skipping stones on the beach? You did a lot of that, you and Isaac.” Maybe the name of his twin will distract him. But Jack only shakes his head.

“No. I don’t really remember him. Except as a feeling, you know? Something that’s always there . . .” He trails off. “Anyways, I kept seeing this girl. She’s my age, maybe older? But she can’t be real—the stuff I keep seeing . . .” He shakes his head. “That’s why I asked what I was like as a kid. Was I the kind who would have an imaginary friend?”

This is the moment. This is when she tells him. Holly’s heart is pounding and her hands are slick with sweat, but he’s given her the perfect opening and she has to take it. She has to. She takes a breath, but the words don’t come. How does she tell him? He’ll freak out; he’ll never speak to her again; he’ll stop taking the injections that are keeping him whole. She can’t do it.

She has to.

Jack, mistaking her silence, shakes his head again. “She had to have been imaginary. You know how I know?”

“How, honey?” Her voice sounds shaky even to her own ears. She knows, before the words are even out, what his answer will be.

“Because she could fly.” He laughs, but it’s forced. “At least in my head, I thought she could. Just saying it sounds crazy, right? Grandma must have read me Peter Pan one too many times.”

“Crazy,” Holly agrees. She thinks back to the day of the accident, the way she found them in the tree. Mummy, Eden says she can fly! Tiny tinkling bells. But she doesn’t tell him, and in her silence the moment for truth passes.

“I must have been a weird little kid,” he mutters. He goes back to staring out the window.

Only a very small part of Holly is sorry.



* * *





    Traffic picks up a few miles outside of London, and it takes all of Holly’s concentration to navigate the city. When at last they pull into Jane’s street, it’s late. Darkness swirls outside the soft glow of the streetlights. A shadow slips from the topmost corner of the Darling house, raising the hair on the back of Holly’s neck. She strains to follow the shape with her eyes, glad that Jack is still inside the car, unseen. Then the shadow vanishes in the blackness of the night sky.

Holly wishes Jack were ten years younger so that she could scoop him into her arms and carry him up the stairs, cradling his head against her shoulder, protecting him. But he’s not. So she takes a deep breath, parallel parks with an aplomb she does not feel, finds the spare key Jane keeps buried in the planter, and unlocks the front door. She hustles Jack inside and sends him up the stairs to get ready for bed.

She finds milk in the refrigerator, heats a mug of it in the dented old saucepan her nanny once used. There’s hardly any food, but she finds bread and cuts thick slices, toasts them, and spreads them with butter and honey. She carries everything upstairs to the guest room where she’s put Jack. He’s bundled under the covers, exhausted.

“Drink this,” she says. “It will help you sleep. My nanny always said it would keep away bad dreams.”

His eyes are closing before he’s finished. She takes the mug from him, smooths out the coverlet, and kisses him on the forehead.

“Sleep tight,” she says. “Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

“Night, Mom,” he says.

And then, even though he’s almost sixteen, she clicks on the night-light. She makes sure the windows are closed and locked before she leaves the room and descends the stairs.

The Darling house is large. Kitchen, library, dining room, parlor, and drawing room on the first floor. An office and a handful of bedrooms, including Jane’s, on the second. And on the third, a warren of storage space, servant quarters, and the nursery. It’s a big house to be alone in on a black London night, and not for the first time, Holly glances at the windows and shivers. Still, when a floorboard creaks upstairs, she pays it no mind. As a teenager, Holly spent many evenings wandering the house alone, waiting for Jane to return from a gala or reception or dinner party. She knows its sounds intimately because she’s explored every inch, from the butler’s pantry to the attic, and found secrets everywhere. Sherry hidden behind the oatmeal tin by the cook. A packet of love letters, tied with pink ribbon, written in her mother’s hand and forgotten in the bottom drawer of her father’s desk. Jewelry and clothing and box after box of photos in the attic, including a curious leather album with photos of a very young Wendy in a white gown, a man standing stiffly behind her with his right arm on her shoulder.