Darling Girl: A Novel of Peter Pan(4)

“Eden. Eden Estelle. Her birth was . . . complicated,” Holly says. She hits redial. Still nothing. “And then, a few years after, she had an accident. She and Jack had been playing. They climbed a tree and she fell . . . The doctors didn’t think she would survive. She’s been on life support ever since.” Also true, in its own way.

“Oh, Jesus, Holly,” Barry says again, but his tone has softened. “I wish you would have let me help.”

“I didn’t talk about it because I couldn’t bear to go through it again.” And that is true, completely. Losing Robert, and Jack’s twin, Isaac, and almost Jack . . . if Eden had died that day, she’s not sure she would have recovered. Even now, with all the years she’s had to prepare, all the time she’s spent already mourning her daughter, there’s a deep well of sadness opening at her core. If she’s not careful, she’ll fall back in. “Losing Eden has never been a matter of if, just when. Being here, at work, helped me forget at least part of the time.”

“What do you mean, losing? Maybe she’s sick. Pneumonia or something. Kids get sick all the time.”

Holly shakes her head. “I have round-the-clock care for her at our old house in Cornwall. I get an email update at the end of every day, and talk to the nurses at least once a week. They wouldn’t call if it was anything but . . . but this.”

She doesn’t say what “this” is, but Barry has always been talented at reading between the lines.

“I’m so sorry. Do you need me to call Jack?”

“He doesn’t know, Barry.”

“Doesn’t know?” His face is puzzled.

“Doesn’t know about Eden. At all. And I want it to stay that way.” Holly’s firm on this.

Barry stares at her in disbelief, as she’d known he would. “Yeah, but Holly, come on, this is his sister you’re talking about. He has a right to know about his family.”

Barry is knowledgeable about many things—contract law, fine whiskey, and, back in the day, mutually agreeable sex—but he has no idea what he’s talking about on this particularly complex subject. “Jack doesn’t remember her—he was still so little, and he’s repressed so much from that time. I wanted to shield him. I still want to shield him. He’s been through so much already.”

Barry starts to respond, but the assistant pokes her head around the door, exhales hard. “I’ve got her,” she whispers to Holly. “Please hold for Dr. Darling,” she says into her headset, then points with her chin to the phone on the desk next to Holly. “I’ll put her through whenever you’re ready.”

Barry waits, but Holly motions to the door. “Go. You need to get back in there and close the deal.”

He looks at her, uncertain.

“I’m okay, Barry. I promise,” she says. “I’ve been expecting this. The surprise is that she lasted as long as she did. I mourned Eden a long time ago. The call took me off guard, that’s all.”

He hesitates. “If you’re sure . . .”

Holly makes a shooing motion with her free hand. “Go. I’ll try to come back in if I can.”

“All right,” he says dubiously. “You’re the boss.” He squeezes her shoulder before he leaves.

She’s finally alone, and in the few seconds she has, she thinks of Eden as a baby, as the precociously beautiful child she was before the fall. She thinks of the girl who never sat still, instead of the one who has not been able to move for ten years. And then she takes a deep breath, because she knows before she even picks up the phone what the nurse is going to say.

Which is what makes the actual words so astonishing.

“Dr. Darling? I’m so sorry,” the voice on the other end of the line says. It hesitates, then continues. “But your daughter? She has vanished. We cannot find her anywhere.”





Chapter Two



The nurse is talking, a deluge of words. Holly’s brain tries to catch at them, but she’s drowning. Your daughter has vanished.

Vanished.

“Stop,” Holly says. “Slow down. I can’t understand you. Tell me what happened.”

The nurse, having conveyed her point, gets her speech under control. “Eden was in her room at breakfast. I checked on her after tea. Her room is empty! No sign anywhere!”

A hard knot forms in Holly’s chest. She grasps at any possibility that could explain what happened. “Did you check under the bed? Could she have fallen and rolled beneath it?”

“I checked everywhere! Under the bed, in the closet! She is nowhere!”

Holly tries to think, but all she can see is Jack, leaping with catlike grace across the lacrosse field, radiating good health and vitality from every atom of his being. Jack, smiling at her, the scars that once crisscrossed his face nearly invisible. How will Jack survive if his sister is gone?

“What about the other nurses? Did they see anything?”

“I have asked them all. I have called the gardener. Nothing. But . . .” The voice on the other end of the phone hesitates. “The window in her room was open, and I am sure I left it closed.”

The knot in Holly’s chest changes to a fist, squeezing her heart. She sees a shining head framed against the dark sky, mischievous eyes watching her. The scent of springtime. And then bruises blossoming against her skin like dark flowers. She swallows hard. “Are you certain?”