Darling Girl: A Novel of Peter Pan(64)

“You’re not helping,” Holly growls when she discovers the subterfuge.

“Believe me, I am,” Jane says, snagging an errant chip that’s dropped onto the counter. Despite her alabaster skin, chips have always been her weakness. “You want him to eat, don’t you? The poor boy is going to waste away on whatever foolish diet you’ve concocted. And Nan is truly going to quit if you keep making her cook these revolting messes.”

“There are other housekeepers in London, you know,” Holly says. But it’s half-hearted.

“I do know,” Jane says, dousing the errant chip in vinegar. “I’ve tried most of them. And I’m not losing this one.”



* * *





Holly is settling into the office when her mobile rings. She glances at it and does a quick time calculation, expecting Barry or perhaps Elliot. But it’s Christopher.

“Please tell me you have good news,” she says.

“That depends,” he answers. “I haven’t found your Peter yet. So I decided to approach it from a different angle. I talked with Maria.”

It takes Holly a moment to process what he’s saying. And then it hits her. She has to sit down.

“You went to Cornwall? But how did you . . .” She trails off.

“I told you. I like to know as much as I can about my clients. Turns out, I learned a lot.”

“You have no business investigating me,” Holly snaps. “You took my money and you’re supposed to be doing what I say, and that’s helping me find my daughter. What about looking for Peter? That’s what you said you were going to do.” She can hear the hysteria in her voice. She fights to control it, to stay calm and discover what he knows. She was stupid not to have expected this.

“Peter wasn’t panning out, if you’ll excuse the pun,” Christopher says, and Holly feels that familiar urge to throttle him. “I don’t have enough to go on. So I decided to pull on the other end—to see why, rather than how, your daughter might leave. And that took me to Cornwall. Now I know what you were doing. But what I don’t understand is why.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she stalls.

He sighs. “We can play that game if you want. But it won’t work. Before my accident, people used to say I was typical Irish, a mix of charm and temper both. Well, these days I’m down an arm and short on charm. But I’ve picked up plenty of rage, especially when it comes to the safety of children. I need to know what you were doing with that kid. And trust me, you won’t like what happens if you stonewall.”

“If you must know, I was trying to cure my daughter.” It’s the truth. Part of it, at least.

“It might have been useful to mention she’d been in a coma for years,” he says. “Somehow you happened to omit that tiny detail in our conversations. It certainly explains why you have no photos of her with her eyes open.”

Holly struggles to think, decides that the best way to get information is to give some. “Fine. As I mentioned when we met, Eden has a rare genetic disease—it causes her to grow too fast. When she was young, she had an accident. She fell and hit her head. The doctors think her body couldn’t heal and sustain that rate of growth, so she essentially went into a type of hibernation. Over the years I’ve tried everything to wake her up.”

“That’s why all the medical equipment? The IVs and everything else?”

“Yes.” She swallows hard. “I have a PhD in immunology and microbial pathogenesis, and my postdoctoral training is in stem cell biology. I’ve been studying Eden’s blood, hoping to find the answers to curing her.”

Now it’s his turn to pause. “It’s a good story,” he says at last. But his next words are a blow. “But I’m not convinced it’s true. Or at least not all of the truth.”

“Excuse me?” Holly’s gotten her voice under control. She’s cool and crisp, the way she would talk to an assistant, especially one she’s about to fire. There’s absolutely no reason at all for him to doubt her.

“Do you know what they call your daughter? Those women who cared for her?” he asks. He doesn’t wait for a reply. “They call her anghel ng mga himala—the angel of miracles.”

“What?”

“The angel of miracles,” he repeats. “They think her blood will heal them—heal almost anyone—no matter what’s wrong with them.”

Holly’s gripping the phone so tightly her fingers are numb. “That’s ridiculous,” she scoffs, putting as much scorn into her voice as she can without letting it shake. “You must have misunderstood. English isn’t their first language. I’ll talk to them myself and clear this up.”

“Funny, they thought you’d say that. So they decided to head home, back to the Philippines. All of them,” he says. “They made me promise not to talk to you until they’d already left. Now why would they worry about a thing like that?”

She pictures it. A drop of blood falling onto a nurse with a cut or a scar. She’d insisted they wear gloves, be fully gowned, every time they came in contact with Eden, but someone must have been sloppy. She can see the blood, ruby red, a single drop suspended when they cleaned around the port or gathered up the vials.