Darling Girl: A Novel of Peter Pan(48)

There’s such longing on Jane’s face that Holly can barely look. She has to wrap her own arms around herself for comfort. Has her mother ever wanted anything else as much in her life? Did she ever feel that way about Holly, about her father? And what would Jane do if she knew the real reason Peter has stayed away all these years?

Holly doesn’t want to think about it.

“I suppose,” she says. If her mother is going to look for Peter anyhow, it would be safer for everyone if Holly can keep an eye on her. But she won’t tell Jane about Christopher. There’s a strict line the Darlings aren’t supposed to cross when it comes to talking about their problems with outsiders, particularly those affiliated with the police or the papers. And Christopher skates perilously close to it. And then there’s the oddity of his name, of his arm. It makes her uneasy, and Jane would demand answers Holly can’t give. So she’ll keep him to herself. For now. “We can try it.”

“Do you really think he has Eden?”

Holly nods. “There’s no way Eden could have left Cornwall on her own. Even if she did wake up on her own, why wouldn’t she stay? Why wouldn’t the nurses notice? And she has no money, no way of getting around. She had to have assistance. Peter is the logical choice.”

“It might help,” Jane says slowly, “if I knew why he came for you. It might help us find Eden. Or draw Peter out.”

They’ve never talked about it directly. And Holly can’t tell Jane the whole truth, but she can tell her pieces. “It’s not like the stories. It’s not innocence that draws him. When Peter came to me, it was after . . . after Robert and Isaac.” It hurts to say their names. “I was at the end. I wasn’t sure I could go on.” Something occurs to her. “The night he came to Grandma Wendy, wasn’t she upset as well?”

“Yes. She’d been banished from the nursery, remember? Condemned to grow up. It was to be her last night there. She’d sleep in her own room after that.”

Holly thinks of the leather album she’d found in the attic, all those pictures of Wendy and a man with his face cut out. She’s sure now that there was more to Wendy’s story, secrets that her grandmother kept. Reasons Peter came for her that had nothing to do with a last night in the nursery, but with moving to a room where she’d be alone. “Maybe it’s not the innocence, it’s the loss of it.”

Jane leans forward, clearly intrigued. “You think he’s drawn to emotions?”

Holly hesitates. “I think he’s drawn to pain. That could be what happened in Cornwall. If Eden woke up after all these years and found herself alone, even if it was only for a short time, she might have despaired. She might have thought she’d lost everything, and that’s what drew him in. And he’s connected to our family, to the Darlings. Maybe he can somehow sense our feelings, the way sharks sense blood.”

“Not a very flattering interpretation. He must have changed terribly from what by all accounts was an enchanting child. But then again, I had no idea he could grow older.”

“The story never says he can’t grow older,” Holly says. “Only that he can’t grow up.”

“Fascinating,” Jane muses. “I’d never thought of that.”

“And as for changing, I don’t think what I saw was innocence,” Holly says slowly. “More . . . willful ignorance. A deliberate decision not to know.”

She pauses, trying to put it into words. “When he came in through the window that first night, he was like . . . like everything you can imagine. Christmas and springtime both. If there’s truly magic in this world, that was the closest I’ll ever come to experiencing it.”

“Goodness. It sounds terrible,” Jane says. Her voice is entirely without sympathy.

“I was so broken that night, so close to giving up,” Holly says, ignoring her. “And it was as if he healed everything that was wrong with me.” She thinks back, shivers. And then deliberately broke me all over again. “For a bit, anyways.”

There’s no way Holly can explain, not in words. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t remember.





Chapter Eighteen



She’s never spoken of that night to anyone, let alone Jane, but it haunts her dreams. The way Peter had reached out, curious, and traced a finger across her shoulders, along her collarbone, then down her side to her exposed knee, his touch as delicate as a butterfly, but curious too, as if he’d never touched anyone before. She’d stood motionless, barely breathing, afraid a single careless movement would drive him away. As if he were a wild creature visiting her room.

The breeze from the window moved through her thin nightgown, but she already had goose bumps. He kissed her in odd places: The crook of her elbow. The back of her wrist. The nape of her neck. Each kiss accompanied by the warmth of his breath, the heat of his lips, so that the contrast with the cold air from outside made her dizzy. She closed her eyes, shivered. When he kissed her lips, she wouldn’t let herself think at all. But her body, starved for touch since the crash, had a mind of its own. When at last she wrapped an arm around Peter’s neck and slowly, gently, drew him down to the bed, she’d almost forgotten who he was. Or, rather, who he wasn’t.

She kept her eyes closed, concentrated only on sensation: Hands spread like starfish over her breasts, cupping them through the fabric. Warm lips along her collarbone. Fingers running along her legs, up the inside of her thighs, rucking her nightgown to her waist. Weight, surprisingly solid, pinning her to the bed, pressing her hips down. A long hesitation, during which she remained perfectly still. When she felt him enter her, she gasped, willed herself to stay where she was, someplace between awake and dreaming. Someplace she’d been only with Robert.