“I have good news.” John hands her the cup. It rattles in its saucer. “I’ve found someone—that is, Michael and I have found someone who’s willing to…” He clears his throat. “I mean, there’s been an offer for your hand, Wendy.”
The words land like a blow, and all thoughts of apology fly from her mind. Wendy’s fingers go numb around the eggshell thinness of the saucer. The cup slips, crashing to the table. Shards fly and hot liquid splashes. John leaps up, knocking over his chair as he does. His cheeks are ruddy above his moustache. He’s flustered, but he recovers quickly, waving away the attendant standing at a discreet distance as he looks their way.
“Oh dear. Well, never mind, darling.”
He cleans the mess, and Wendy watches him, stunned. She is a creature made of skin wrapped around a core of ice, solid and immovable. She is a girl in a bathtub. She never climbed out. She is frozen through and through.
“I know it’s rather a lot to take in.” John doesn’t look at her; the color never disappears from his cheeks. “But Ned is a good man. His father is… His father has been rather a lot of help to me, in business. They are a good family. Ned will be a good match for you.”
Ned. The name echoes, a dull thud against the bones of her skull. Does John realize how many times he’s said the word “good”? Is he trying to convince himself or her? How good can Ned possibly be, to offer marriage to a woman he’s never met? And has John forgotten his last disastrous attempt to matchmake? But nothing has changed since then. As a woman, she is expected to marry, to find a husband to take care of her, and at twenty-seven, she is already nearly too old.
She pictures a towering man with Jamieson’s face, neck thick, smile the thin edge of a knife—the kind of man grown from a boy who delights in pulling the wings off flies. She pictures a man like Dr. Harrington, one with a kindly face but a keen eye bent on studying her. A man who might mean well, but who is all the same set on picking her apart.
And what does John mean by mentioning Ned’s father? The way her brother refuses to meet her eyes, the flush of his cheeks makes her wonder. Does John owe this man money? Is she to be sold to pay back his debt?
How could John do this to her? Just when she thought she understood him, just when she thought the broken thing between them might finally heal.
“I thought you would be happy. Even if… Even if you think you don’t want to marry, surely it would be better than being in this place, wouldn’t it?” John’s hands finally still, and he looks at her, his expression pleading. “Say something, won’t you, Wendy?”
“What should I say?” She meets his gaze, steady and unblinking. Buried within the ice at her core, Wendy Darling, the girl who remembers how to fly, screams.
“Say you’re happy. Or at least that you’ll consider it.” John pulls his chair closer, sitting and taking her hands. The cuff of his shirt is stained with tea.
“Michael and I only want to take care of you, the way you always took care of us. All those stories in the nursery, the games. The way you sat with us when we were sick. You stayed awake with me when I had bad dreams. You sang lullabies.”
He means every word, Wendy can see it. The rift inside her widens; she wants to forgive him, and she can never do so.
“You know,” John smiles, a fond thing, “Michael told me when he was over there, on the continent, it wasn’t Mother or Father he thought of. It was you. That was what got him through when the bombs were falling. When men were dying around him.”
Wendy wants to strike him. How can he sit here and tell her this like it’s a kindness? Has he never looked into Michael’s eyes? Does he think to make her feel better, giving her the burden of their little brother, alone and lost in the mud, whispering her name?
John lets go of her hands, straightening the cuffs of his jacket to hide the stain from the tea. His gaze is restless, uncertain where to land.
“You’ll be safe and cared for, Wendy. Please let us do this for you.”
John and Michael could take her out of this place any time. Being married is not a condition of her release, except that John is making it so. She should be furious with him. She is, but she’s tired as well. Wendy looks up at the sky again, the blue of it going through her like a blade. Accepting this proposal means she could walk through the gates, never look back. She could put all this, Dr. Harrington and Jamieson, behind her. She could finally lay the burden of Neverland aside and build a life for herself. Perhaps she could even bring Mary with her. A new life. A new Wendy Darling.
She lowers her gaze to look at John again. The fracture running through him is clear, the weight of Michael and her and everything else, the strain of trying to hold them all together wearing him down over the years. Whatever other reasons he may have, he genuinely believes that this should make her happy. There’s an earnestness to his expression—isn’t marriage and motherhood what every woman wants? He believes he’s giving her a gift, not delivering her to a new kind of imprisonment. Wendy takes a deep breath. Just this once, at last, she will choose kindness. Her brothers should not have to bear the burden of caring for
