Darling Girl: A Novel of Peter Pan(56)

Nan nods. “I’m so sorry, Dr. Darling. I didn’t mean to cause problems.”

Holly doesn’t reply. Nan scribbles a note on the pad by the kitchen phone, rips it off, and leaves it on the table. “Here’s the address of the lacrosse field.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Jane says. “Enjoy yourself today.”

Nan scoops up her sweater from the back of the chair and hurries away. Holly waits until she hears the door shut before she rounds on her mother.

“How dare you,” she seethes. “Do you know what she did?”

“Of course I do. I could hear you all the way in the library,” Jane says calmly. “Be that as it may, the girl has done nothing wrong.”

“She’s been after Jack to go to lacrosse, and this morning, her brother took him. Without telling me.” Holly knows, even as she says it, how ridiculous it sounds, how overprotective to Jane’s ears. But she doesn’t care.

“She’s not Jack’s babysitter, Holly. Nor is she your personal assistant, to be fired at will.” Holly starts to speak, but Jane holds up her hand. “Please. I’m well aware of the fact that every time I call your office, someone new answers the phone. Keeping help has never been your strong suit. But Nan does not work for you. She works for me, and she’s the best housekeeper I’ve had in quite some time.”

“And that’s more important than your grandson’s health?” Holly snaps.

Jane takes off her glasses and polishes them with the hem of her silk shirt. “How bad is it, really?” she asks.

Holly slumps down into her seat, her anger draining away. “It’s bad,” she admits. “Very, very bad.”

She takes a breath, decides to tell Jane the truth. At least some of it. “After the crash, Jack never really . . . He didn’t recover. Not like you think. He made some progress, of course, but . . . and then, by accident, I found . . . not a cure, exactly, more a temporary reversal. From Eden.”

“The fall,” Jane guesses. “That day he walked. I thought it must be something like that. Because of . . . who Eden’s father is?”

“Yes.” Holly nods. She skates to safer ground, to the science of it. “So far as I’ve discovered, a protein in Eden’s blood works like an antibody, binding to damaged cells and repairing them. But the reversal is short-lasting—a month, maybe two, without the protein and Jack will return to the way he was, like he did that first time. And I haven’t been able to duplicate the results with a synthetic version. Not yet. I’ve made a portable cream that combines the leftover plasma and serum, but it doesn’t work nearly as well as Eden’s blood. If I don’t find Eden soon . . .” She lifts a hand, lets it fall. Hearing the words aloud, what she’s done, makes her sound like a monster to her own ears, as if she’s sacrificed one child for the health of the other. It wasn’t like that, she wants to say. I did everything I could for both of them! But she won’t defend her choices, won’t waste time or energy that could go toward finding her daughter and keeping her son safe.

“If Jack gets hurt or sick, I can’t fix it,” she says instead.

Jane puts her glasses back on, looks at Holly over their rims. “I imagine that’s true for most parents,” she says quietly.

She leaves Holly sitting in front of her cooling tea.





Chapter Twenty-One



After her dustup with Nan, Holly had planned to drive to the lacrosse field to retrieve Jack. But her mother’s words keep ringing in her head. She can’t protect Jack, not really. If it’s not lacrosse, not drinking, it will be something else. He’s pushing the envelope of the perfectly safe world she’s created, testing all the time for gaps. And someday soon he’s going to discover one.

Still, she can’t do nothing. Maybe she can reason with him. At the least, she can watch the game and be there if he needs her. But as she grabs her keys from the nursery bureau, she finds herself captivated by the crib in the corner of the room. She can see the twins in sleep, pink and plump and so curled about each other it was impossible to see where Isaac ended and Jack began. She sees Eden too, but never sleeping. In those days, Eden was like a chrysalis on fast-forward. Every morning when Holly walked into the room and saw Eden’s toothy grin, she knew there’d be some new miracle, some new skill her daughter had impossibly mastered. Back then, Holly could barely bring herself to close her own eyes, she was so afraid she’d miss something.

She’s been watching her children so closely all these years. So how is it possible that they’ve changed so much without her realizing?

She’s still standing there when she hears footsteps pounding up the landing. Her heart jackrabbits. Something’s wrong. She’s on her feet when Jack bursts through the door, his face white.

She rushes across the room to him, already scanning for signs of damage.

“What’s happened?” she asks, grasping his arm. “Are you hurt?”

He shakes her off. “Ed got a call when we were on the field. From Nan. She was in tears. She said you’d tried to fire her.”

“That’s an exaggeration. But she shouldn’t have sent you off with Ed to play lacrosse. What if you got hurt? I talked to you about this last night, Jack.”

“You told me not to drink. You didn’t tell me I couldn’t play lacrosse. What am I supposed to do, live in some kind of bubble for the rest of my life?”