Darling Girl: A Novel of Peter Pan(62)

He doesn’t argue, which is the biggest tip-off that he isn’t well. She leaves him to hurry to the nursery, where she’s hidden the jar of cream made from the byproducts of Eden’s blood in her top dresser drawer.

When she returns, Jane is standing by his bed.

“Is he well?” she asks. Her long silver hair is piled loosely atop her head, and she brushes aside a stray strand as she peers in concern at her grandson.

“I think he overdid it yesterday,” Holly answers. She tries to keep any note of I told you so out of her voice. Even if it is true, it won’t help Jack.

Instead she rubs the cream sparingly along his temples and then his chest as Jane looks on with interest.

“What’s that?”

“The cream I’ve been working on,” Holly says. “The one I told you about. It can’t hurt.” That’s true, but she’s not certain it will help. Jack has no visible injuries or actual pain. But she has nothing else to try. And after a few moments he does appear better. His cheeks, although still pale, have lost that sickly whiteness, his forehead isn’t as clammy, and he’s sitting up unaided. Holly tells him to stay in bed, then runs back downstairs and asks Nan to make up a plate of toast and eggs.

It’s Jane herself who takes the plate from Holly at the door and sits with Jack while he eats, who regales him with stories of how Holly once spent an entire week in the nursery with chicken pox, refusing to eat anything but strawberry-lemonade sorbet, which her then-housekeeper normally made once a year, on St. Swithin’s Day, and how Jane had to pay her extra to get her to stay. By the time she’s finished the tale, Jack has recovered enough to talk about calling some of the kids he met during dinner the other night and going out. Holly suspects a good part of it is bravado.

“Well, I’ll let you two decide the wisdom of that,” Jane says, standing up from the bed and taking the plate. “But if you stay home, I’ll see if we can find the recipe and let Nan try her hand at it. No promises though. And now I really must finish my calls for the charity auction.” She looks at Holly. “Perhaps you’ll consider donating a collection of skin care products.”

And with that she glides from the room before Holly can even mouth a silent Thank you. She shakes her head. Only her mother. She turns her attention back to Jack.

“I think you should chill today,” she tells him. “Maybe tomorrow, okay?”

He bunches the sheet through his fingers. Looks down at his hands, avoids her eye.

“Do you ever wonder why we’re alive?” he asks quietly.

After the lightness of the last few moments, Holly wasn’t expecting this. Not now. She sits down on the bed.

“What do you mean?” she says, buying time. She knows exactly what he means.

“After the crash. Why we lived and Dad and Isaac didn’t. You never wonder?”

“No,” Holly lies. “I don’t. You can’t think like that.”

“I see him sometimes. I’ll be passing by a window or turning a corner and I’ll catch a glimpse of him. And then I realize it’s just me.”

“You never told me that.”

He ignores her. “And then the accident with Eden. I fell too. But she’s the one who died. And I look at that picture of me in the wheelchair and I try to remember . . .” He trails off. “It’s like I’m bad luck to everyone around me.”

“Jack. There is nothing bad luck about you. If I hadn’t had you after the car crash . . .” She can’t tell him her real thoughts in those days, so she amends it. “I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

And it’s true.

The only thing Holly had in her life besides her family before the crash was her work at the lab, and she doubts that alone would have been enough to sustain her after losing them, to get her out of bed in the mornings the way her drive to care for Jack did. She imagines a version of that self living with Jane in London postcrash and shudders.

“But Dad and Isaac,” Jack says. “And Eden.”

Holly takes his hands, starts again. “Jack, look at me,” she tells him, forcing his eyes up from the comforter. “Cars crash. Accidents happen. It’s not your fault. None of it is your fault.”

“But Eden,” he says again.

Now is the time. Holly starts to tell him, starts to say the words. “Eden . . . ,” she begins. And stops. What can she say? She doesn’t know if Eden is alive or dead. She doesn’t know if they’ll ever find her. And if they do, if Christopher Cooke somehow manages to bring her home, what if she’s awake? That’s the question that’s been keeping Holly up at night with both anticipation and terror. Will she see what Holly’s done and understand, or will she decide that ten years of being a living science project is too much to forgive? Holly doesn’t know. And it’s not fair to put that burden on Jack.

“Eden,” she says, “Eden loved you so very much. She would have done anything for you, Jack.”

And as she leans over to kiss his forehead, she prays that it’s still true.





Chapter Twenty-Four



The next day dawns bright and clear. When Jack straggles downstairs, he’s rubbing his eyes, but his color is good and he has no trouble downing the plate of eggs and bacon Nan puts in front of him. He takes one look out the window and perks up.