Darling Girl: A Novel of Peter Pan(84)

“Call her,” she says. “Find out if she knows anything and text me. I’ll be home as soon as I can. And let me know right away if you find him.”

Jane’s still talking, but Holly’s already moved on. She disconnects the call, then opens her messages. She texted Jack yesterday, after the meet and greet, and he never responded. She texts him again, a quick, Where are you? As she does, she remembers the GPS app she activated on his phone the night before she left London. She opens it on her own phone, where it spins and spins before telling her Jack’s device is inactive. Does she want to be alerted when it comes back online? She sure as hell does.

Finally she calls him. It goes to voicemail, so she leaves a message. “Jack! It’s me. Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, it’s okay. Call me back. Let me know you’re all right. Please.” Her voice breaks on the last word.

“What can I do?” She’d forgotten Barry, but his quiet voice is a lifeline in the storm that’s battering her. This time, she takes it. She doesn’t lie or dissemble, just tells him exactly what she needs.

“I have to get home, Barry. I need to find Jack before it’s too late. There’s so much going on . . . It’s too much to explain right now,” she says, hurrying on before he can reject her, before he can turn away. “But I will, I promise. The bottom line is Jack is in danger. Either from himself or . . . or someone else.”

That look is in his eyes again, but this time it’s not directed at her. Right now, he’s the old Barry, all the magnificent wheels of his brain turning on her behalf.

“What about that private detective you hired?” he says. “I’ll bet he could help.”

Christopher. Of course. If anyone can find Jack and bring him home, she’s certain it’s him. She’s already fumbling with her phone when Barry speaks again.

“And as for getting you back to London,” he says with a gleam in his eye, “let me make a call.”





Chapter Thirty-Two



Ascant two hours later Holly is winging her way across the Atlantic in a private plane, courtesy of Barry’s call to their new BFF Lauren Lander. Holly knows there’s a price for this speed, knows that Lauren will extract every last penny’s worth, but right now she’d sell her soul to the devil and throw in Jane’s for good measure if it meant finding her kids.

She uses the plane time to list locations Jack might have gone. It’s pointless, but it keeps her mind occupied, keeps it from rushing to places she can’t handle right now. Besides, it’s what Christopher told her to do. She knows she must have sounded unhinged when she called him. It’s like some terrible joke. How many children can one person lose? she’d half expected him to say in his coolly amused way. All of them, seemed to be the universe’s reply, and there’s nothing funny about it.

But Christopher hadn’t said anything close to that.

“He’s probably run off,” he’d assured her. She couldn’t tell from his voice whether he truly believed those words or whether he was trying to calm her down. Either way, he’d pointed out that without much money and with so few contacts, Jack wouldn’t be too difficult to find.

But that was hours ago and she hasn’t heard back. She knows in her heart that it’s more than her son being sulky, more than his taking advantage of her absence to go wild. Jack might worry her to death, but he’d never do that to Jane. And if Holly has to guess, she’d bet Christopher knows it too.



* * *





Holly takes a car to her mother’s house from the airport. Jane, grim-faced, is putting takeaway cartons directly on the table rather than transferring the contents into serving bowls, a sure sign of distress.

“Anything?” Holly asks. She gulps tea heavily doctored with cream and sugar and burns her tongue.

Jane shakes her head. “I’ve called everyone I can think of who has a child or grandchild his age. No one has seen him.”

“Any luck reaching Nan?”

“Not a bit.”

Holly’s not hungry, but she realizes she hasn’t eaten since yesterday, so she forces herself to spoon a few morsels of food onto her plate and eat. As soon as she’s finished, she grabs her purse.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m going out. We need to find him.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” her mother says. “You’re not charging out into the dark with no idea of where to go. You’re exhausted. The best thing you can do is be here if he comes home and wait for Christopher to call.”

But Holly can’t wait. She’s on the verge of a breakdown. If she doesn’t keep moving, if she doesn’t do something to find Jack and Eden, she’ll die.

“Fine,” Jane says when she sees the look on Holly’s face. “Then I’m driving.”

In the car, Holly shares the list she made on the plane. Jane has already checked most of the same places, but they drive past them again just in case. Jane has her own list of spots her friends say their grandkids go, so they try those as well—the local chippy shop, a dessert café, a coffee shop that is open late. They see plenty of teen boys, but none of them are Jack.

Holly’s not ready to go home, so Jane, with a sideways look, suggests some of the back-alley streets where they searched for Peter. Holly agrees, the dread of finding him there among the lost far surpassed by the dread of not finding him at all. She tries Jack’s phone again, first calling and then, when it goes straight to voicemail, using the GPS app. Still nothing.