“Yes,” she says.
The word passes her lips, and it seems to come from somewhere beyond her. She looks past John, to the hedge, as if she could see the horizon beyond it. Perhaps a fresh start would be the best thing after all, a new life that protects her brothers from her, protects her from herself.
“Oh, Wendy. I’m so glad. I’ll speak to Dr. Harrington straight away and arrange everything for your release.” John catches her hands, pulls her to her feet and kisses her cheek. “And Ned, of course. You’ll have the opportunity to meet Ned, but I’m certain you’ll be very happy with him.”
Does John intend to bring him here, to let him see her caged in this place? What sort of man would be willing to marry her not only knowing the truth of her, but seeing it with his own eyes?
Ned. That name again. It doesn’t ring like a clear bell, signaling the morning, a bird trilling up the dawn. It falls flat, like a stone. Ned. The sound of a window shuttered against the sky.
She knows without asking that he doesn’t have hair the color of copper and flame. That he doesn’t know how to crow like a rooster. That he cannot fly. John’s words flow over her, and Wendy fails to listen. Then John leaves, promises to return soon trailing behind him. She’s left alone beneath the tree with one shattered cup only half cleaned up, and the other full of liquid gone cold.
She picks up one of the shards, lifting it to see the sunlight stream through it. How easy would it be to bury the shard in her skin? In Dr. Harrington’s skin? Could she do it?
She lets it fall. That is the way the old Wendy Darling would think, but she is going to be a new Wendy. Shouldn’t the thought make her happy? Then why is her chest so tight? Why is it so hard to breathe? She hurries across the lawn to where she’d promised to meet Mary after her brother left. Mary rises as Wendy approaches, leaving the embroidery spread across her lap to fall to the ground.
“What happened?”
“I… I’m getting married.” Wendy’s shoulders hitch. She puts her face in her hands. Her cheeks are dry, but she shakes her head in disbelief.
Mary touches her shoulder, a simple, comforting thing. She doesn’t ask what’s so terrible about the idea of marriage, and for that, Wendy is grateful.
“It means leaving this place.” Wendy speaks between muffling fingers. “But…” She shrugs. Her shoulder blades feel like wings stripped of their feathers.
“If you had your choice in leaving,” Mary asks, “where would you go? Would you go back to Neverland?”
The question startles Wendy. She lowers her hands. Once upon a time, the answer was simple, so that it was barely even a question. The word yes is on her tongue, quick as a heartbeat, but she falters. Mary waits patiently on her answer; her eyes make Wendy think of pine bark after a hard rain.
Neverland isn’t her home, but is London really her home either? She doesn’t belong with Michael and John, and besides, they ought to have lives of their own. Where then? She wants to say with you—after all, Mary is the only other home Wendy has known—but it seems unfair to need another person so much. Could she be a home for Mary too? Could they need each other enough to make a life away from this place? And even if they could, who would let them? The world is full of men granting and withholding permission, leaving women like Mary and herself to exist by their sufferance alone.
Suddenly, it all feels so hopeless. Wendy shakes her head, letting out something like a laugh.
“Neverland.” She leans her head against the tree and closes her eyes. The harder Dr. Harrington and John worked to take it away from her, the more fiercely she held on, until Neverland became something else entirely. But it isn’t perfect, and it isn’t a home. Because home means family and consequence, and taking the good with the bad. Neverland is simply a place to run away and hide.
Wendy feels around the edges of the hole left inside her, the thing behind the locked door. She’s tired of it. Weary to the core.
“Neverland is a lie.” She opens her eyes and looks at Mary. “I don’t mean it isn’t real, because it is. I mean things there aren’t what they should be. Neverland is a story, a little boy’s idea of pirates and Indians and mermaids. Except Peter isn’t really a boy. He’s something else. I don’t know what he is, but I think he made himself into the idea of what a boy should be, and sometimes that’s a very dangerous thing.”
Wendy takes Mary’s hand, lacing their fingers together and looking at them joined, light and dark.
“What about you,” Wendy asks. She is half afraid of the answer, but she doesn’t know what answer to give to Mary’s question, and so turns it back on her instead. “What would you do if you could leave tomorrow? Where would you go?”
Mary looks startled in her own right, and Wendy’s breath catches a bit, her pulse wanting to go faster. This feels different than the stories they’ve told each other over the years, of what they would do if they ever escaped. Those were mere fantasy, a way to survive. This is frighteningly close to real. Not running away from something, but running to something, a real life, a new home, a different kind of family.
“Would you…” Wendy hesitates. The thought of Mary going back to Canada, an ocean between them, is too much to contemplate, so she asks a different question instead.
“Would you look for the man who married your mother?”
Revenge. She doesn’t say the word aloud. Would she strike back at Jamieson if she could? And Peter? If Mary
