Darling Girl: A Novel of Peter Pan(83)

Holly doesn’t answer. What else is there to say? And suddenly the rage that fueled her march to Barry’s office is back. Barry’s secretary, the people waiting to see him in the outer room, keep their heads down. Some have seen her storm before. But what they don’t know is that she isn’t furious with Barry or Elliot.

She’s angry at herself.





Chapter Thirty-One



Grief, Holly knows from experience, doesn’t begin the day a person dies. The loss can start when the person is still alive, when the time is taken up with doctors’ appointments and tests and treatments and plans. The busyness helps hide the fact that you’ve already begun grieving.

Right now, Darling Skin Care is still the company she built with Barry, and she’s still busy. She does the afternoon meet and greet with another round of celebrities and beauty editors, then sits on a magazine panel with other skin care experts. Work has always been her escape, and right now it’s no different. But it’s a double-edged sword. What’s keeping her so engaged is also what she could lose. It’s a strange kind of torture, seeing the company as something that might go on without her. As just a business, as Barry put it, instead of the almost living entity the two of them coaxed into being.

But being tortured is better than going home to her empty apartment. Ever since her conversation with Barry, she’s been keenly aware of what she’s missing. She’s never had a personal life, not really. Not since the car crash. She’s had Jack, and then Eden, and a career she loved. And soon she’ll have none of the above.

She finds herself thinking of Christopher, the warmth of his back when she leaned against him on the bike, the ridiculous way he sparks something inside of her whenever he’s around, and it makes her blush. She shakes her head at herself. What’s inside her chest beats like it’s supposed to, but it’s just muscle memory. It’s not a real heart, and it hasn’t been for years.



* * *





When the building is quiet and most of the employees have gone for the day, she heads to her lab. Knowing Elliot was there, that he went through her notes and experiments, makes her feel violated. Still, she pores over them with a critical eye, trying to see the information the way he might have. Perhaps she’ll find something she’s missed before.

She works until late into the night, meticulously going over line after line of data. At some point, she falls asleep at her desk. She must, because she dreams that the entire building is filled with pixie dust, a shimmering golden blanket that carpets the floors, a thousand times more beautiful than the product she designed in the lab. And then the sun comes up and the soft dawn light touches the room, turning it from clinical white to rose gold. It’s lovely, and she reaches out a hand to capture it on her skin. But someone is calling her, and at the sound the sunbeams and dust scatter.

“Holly?” Barry’s shaking her awake. The light is ordinary fluorescent light, harsh and cold.

She blinks blearily, trying to make sense of his words, to shake off the loveliness of the dream and clear her head.

“. . . been trying to reach you. When you weren’t at the apartment and I couldn’t get you on your phone, I figured you must be here.”

She glances at the wall clock, sees that it’s close to four in the morning, and comes instantly awake.

“What’s wrong?”

Barry’s face is too pale. He licks his lips.

“Barry?” Her heart is pounding.

“Your mother’s been trying to reach you. When she couldn’t get you, she called me.” He’s still talking, but Holly isn’t listening. She’s picking up her phone, which is facedown on her desk. She turned the ringer to silent when she did the last meet and greet, and now she sees a string of missed calls from Jane snaking their way across the screen. Her hands are shaking so badly she can barely hit the number to call her mother back.

Jane answers on the first ring. She doesn’t even wait for Holly to speak.

“Jack hasn’t come home in two days,” she blurts. “I don’t know where he is. I can’t find him, Holly.”

Holly sags against the desk. From the corner of her eye she sees Barry start to reach out a hand to steady her, then stop. But he doesn’t leave.

“I’ve been all over the streets, searching for him. At first I didn’t even realize he was gone. I had a dinner party, and when I came home there was a note saying he’d be home late. In the morning, I assumed he was up before me.”

“A teenage boy up before you? Jesus, Mother.”

“He left another note, this one upstairs, saying he needed space and not to worry. I found it when I searched his room after he didn’t come home last night. What do you want me to do?”

Holly tries to think, presses her palm to her forehead, tries to stop her mind from leaping to horrible images so that she can concentrate. As if she had the power to summon him, she cuts off any thought of Peter, but the shadow of him runs beneath every word she says. “Have you talked to Nan? Ed might know something.”

“She asked for this week off. She’s been so miserable lately I thought it wouldn’t be a bad idea.”

That gives Holly pause. She’d assumed Nan’s recent angst was simply Holly’s own presence getting under her skin, but perhaps there’s more to it. Perhaps whatever is going on with Jack, Ed is involved as well.