Epilogue
Out in the coastal countryside sat a tiny cottage, not three miles from the ocean shore. Nestled between two green hills, it rested at the edge of a forest that was neither too dark nor too deep. Light and laughter streamed out into the night, illuminating the tiger lilies in the window planters. Inside, four old friends began to wind down after a long and enjoyable evening of catching up.
Gwendolyn Hoffman offered to put on a pot of coffee, and cleared the dishes off the table as her guests ambled into her living room and sat down beside the little house's smoldering hearth. The fire had almost dwindled away, but James Hoek pulled another log out of the wood pile beside the fireplace. He threw it into the hearth before the fire could dissolve into embers. She listened to her guests' conversation from the kitchen.
“I spend six months at a time deployed in the Pacific,” James announced, “dreaming of the comforts of home, and what do I do when I get back to the states? Drive all the way out to the coast to spend my evening in a little house barely bigger than the berthing quarters, and without so much as central heating.”
“Oh hush. Don't you dare whine about that beautiful ocean. If you spent any time in it instead of just skirting over it, you wouldn't complain.”
“If it's so marvelous, why did you leave it, Andrea?”
“Believe me, I find myself asking that question more often every year…” Lasiandra Meyers answered.
“No, the ocean's no good,” James joked. “I think Peter's got the right idea. Where do I sign up to spend my days finger painting and feeding kids graham crackers?”
Peter Sweet continued fiddling with the wooden puzzle box he'd picked up off Gwen's coffee table, barely glancing up at James as he informed him, “Oh I got fired from that job weeks ago.”
“What?” James asked. “Why? Don't try to tell me the school found someone they thought would be better for the job.”
“No, no,” Peter answered peacefully uninterested as he fixated on the painted puzzle box amusing him. “Apparently I wasn't authorized to take the kids into the forest to track animals, and it's against school rules to eat wild blackberries. I wasn't sticking to the curriculum, which is all kinds of nonsense if you ask me. The kids know it's nonsense, too. If you give them finger paints and graham crackers, half of them try to eat the paint and build houses out of the crackers.”
James laughed, his smile spreading wide beneath his dark beard. Peter getting fired was neither surprising nor unusual; he lost jobs like he lost girlfriends, cars, and everything else in life. Nothing lasted long in the happy flux of Peter's life, except for his friends. Gwen didn't worry about him—he'd already gone to the Anomalous Activity Department last week so they could set him up with a new job and keep him out of trouble.
“Let me give you a hand with the dishes,” Lasiandra offered, following Gwen into the kitchen while Peter and James continued to talk about the enjoyable misadventures leading to Peter's dismissal.
It seemed odd, at times, that the four of them still met like this. Fifteen years ago in the thick of their turmoils it would have been unimaginable—but the grief they had caused each other had melted away like so much high school drama and teenage angst. It was Neverland's final kindness that it receded in their memories, diminishing its own importance as time took it away and ushered them into adulthood. The younger ones like Barbara hardly even remembered their time in Neverland—and it was Peter's theory that all the time they now spent in college only washed it further from their minds.
So Peter, Gwen, Lasiandra, and James gathered every so often for the comfort of company that remembered Neverland, its strange seas, and the marvelous adventures it had contained… even if those adventures had pitted them against each other at the time.
“I'll have to run in a bit,” Lasiandra told her, helping load plates and cutlery into the dishwasher. “Phil is absolutely useless with the girls—they never go to sleep until I get home to tuck them in—and I've got to be up early for a meeting with the other partners at the firm.”
Lasiandra had won everything she ever set out to achieve in life, but it seemed her life spent more time living her than she did living it.
“How are Violet and Lavender doing these days?” Gwen asked, rinsing and scrubbing their glasses. She had been left-handed for so long, she no longer thought twice about which hand to do simple tasks with.
“The girls hate me,” Lasiandra sighed. “I have to make them go to swim lessons after school—I swear, they can't even be my children.” She rolled her eyes and stood by as Gwen loaded soap into the dishwasher. “I wanted to ask, though,” Lasiandra ventured, “I heard you and Steven split up? What happened?”
Gwen shrugged as she closed the dishwasher and started it running. Lasiandra meant well with her inquiry. She always meant well, but she had never grasped that intentions and realities did not align as nicely as stars and destinies. Gwen answered simply, “Steven was great but… there just wasn't any magic there.”
“Oh Gwen,” Lasiandra sighed. “You can't spend your life looking for magic in love. Love is just love—it doesn't have to be magic.”
Not wanting to press the point, Gwen ceded, “Maybe you're right.” She had learned early on not to take advice from those dully disappointed and mildly unhappy adults that flourished in reality. She knew better than to trust adults who couldn't get along with children.
Lasiandra knew better than to dismiss the issue so fast and she knew—maybe even better than Gwen did—what lay at the heart of it. “Neverland was magic, Gwen. You can't expect to recapture that.” When Gwen didn't answer, Lasiandra pried further, “You don't still miss being
