Darling Girl: A Novel of Peter Pan(80)

It has nothing to do with his dreams. Or his sense—and hers—that there’s some other link between them.

He sends her the occasional text, each one a single question. The information he asks for is esoteric, details about Peter that have long since slipped her memory, or that she never knew in the first place. He asks about Jack as well—whether the injections give him an immediate sense of euphoria, whether they wear off in a gentle decline or sudden crash.

He hasn’t asked her point-blank if she uses Eden’s blood herself. She doesn’t volunteer the information, either.



* * *





The night before she leaves, Holly does two things. She waits until Jack is asleep, then sneaks into his room and activates the GPS-location function on his mobile. Even at the worst of times in New York, she’s always respected his privacy. Now? At least this way she’ll be able to keep tabs on him, if she has to.

And then, even though it is late, she goes in search of her mother. She finds her propped up in bed, reading a book. Holly can see the title—Sexual Politics and Peter Pan: How to be a Tinker Bell in a Wendy World. She tries hard not to roll her eyes, she really does, but given Jane’s terse “Yes?” she clearly failed.

“I wanted to remind you I’m leaving first thing in the morning,” she says. Her mother’s hair is pinned in loose waves about her head, and if it weren’t for its color and the fine lines that cross her face, she could have been Holly’s age or younger.

“So you’ve told me. Multiple times.” Jane places her finger in the book to mark her place but doesn’t shut it. “Surely at sixteen Jack can survive without you for a few days.” Jane seems to think this is a good idea, a chance for Jack to grow. Holly tries to explain that in actuality, there’s a chance he could die.

“You need to watch him every minute,” Holly insists. Between the phantom of Peter, never far from her mind, and Jack’s willingness to compromise his own health, she’s almost canceled her trip a dozen times. But she owes Barry too much to let him down. And she’s come to the realization that there’s nothing else she can do in London for Eden or Jack. Plus, Elliot is in New York. If she can meet with him alone, if she has him face-to-face, she may be able to persuade him to help.

Jane peers at Holly over her reading glasses and may or may not give her own version of an eye roll.

“I raised you, didn’t I?” she says.

Holly thinks of all the days she spent alone in the Darling house while Jane was at a fundraiser or dinner. The way she scaled the roof at night or slipped easily in and out after curfew.

“That,” Holly says, “is exactly my point.”





Chapter Thirty



Holly goes directly to the office after landing. Her assistant has scheduled almost every minute. She attends the launch kickoff, held at a swanky restaurant and packed with fashion editors and beauty bloggers. The entire space has been dusted with gold glitter, and models dressed as fairies with oversized wings circulate, holding trays of champagne. Huge faux flowers line the walls, and in the corners are fountains with chocolate and punch. In the center of the room a girl dressed in green and silver dangles from the ceiling, delicate battery-operated sparkly wings flapping slowly up and down. The wires holding her are so fine they are almost invisible, and every now and then she performs a lazy somersault or low swoop, drawing oohs and aahs from the guests.

“Don’t you just love it? Isn’t it divine?” Lauren Lander gushes, wrapping an arm through Holly’s.

Holly grits her teeth. The party has all the elegance and sophistication of a sixteen-year-old girl with little taste and an unlimited budget, a far cry from Jane’s exquisite affairs. Still, she smiles and lets Lauren show her off as if she’s some rare species trapped under glass. Lauren seems to take special pleasure in dropping Holly’s last name into every possible conversation, cooing and holding on to her arm as if they were best friends. But it’s almost—almost—worth putting up with to see Barry smile. When Lauren’s not looking, he winks at Holly and rolls his eyes.

Over the next two days, Holly also meets with board members, sits in on strategy sessions, even drops by a few photo shoots. Pixie Dust is everywhere—on billboards, in magazines, plastered across the front of every cosmetic store. Barry has left her a folder filled with celebrities sighted with the product, along with a chart detailing current marketing efforts and future expansion. Sales are crazy good, and Holly has to admit, being back in this part of her life is a wonderful escape. Still, she makes sure to text Jack between meetings, getting monosyllabic responses for her troubles. When she asks how he’s doing, he sends a single thumbs-up emoji.

She doesn’t bother texting or calling Jane, who is notorious for being impossible to reach. If there’s a problem, her mother will call. She hopes.

Meanwhile Barry is pushing her to consider a full line of makeup. When she reminds him that this means more money into R&D, he laughs.

“We’ve finally made it. This is the big time, kid. You’ll have all the R&D you can handle, if that’s what you want.” He looks as if he wants to say something else, but settles for “Enjoy it.”

It’s not until the middle of the second day that Holly finally makes it back to her lab. Even now, she’s supposed to be at a lunch, glad-handing a few CEOs who weren’t interested in Darling Skin Care two years ago but now can’t wait to develop a line with her. Barry is the one who hooked them, but it’s her they want to meet. Normally she’d take this moment to gloat, to celebrate that her little company has come this far. But she’s desperate to see Elliot alone. All she thought about on the plane ride to New York was how to persuade him to help her, how the two of them working together might be able to solve the roadblocks keeping her from developing a fully functional synthetic version of the proteins in Eden’s blood. If the sheer excitement of the science won’t do it, then she’ll have to appeal to his human side, assuming he has one. She’ll say anything, take any risk. Even if it means losing everything. Because everything is worth nothing without Jack and Eden.