Fresh guilt swarms Wendy. She can’t remember. When she was first here, any brothers Tiger Lily had would only have been more boys to Wendy, and she’d already been surrounded by more than enough.
Looking at the man beside Tiger Lily, Wendy finds herself suddenly thinking of John. Perhaps she should have gone to him before leaving, and told him what she’d planned. Perhaps she should have given him instructions for what to do if she didn’t come back.
In the eleven years since Wendy left St. Bernadette’s they’ve found their way slowly back to trusting each other. If she’d asked him, would he have trusted her one last time, as mad as her words might sound, if she’d told him she was going to Neverland to look for Jane? There was a moment, not too long ago, when Wendy thinks they finally saw each other clearly—not trying to bury the past, but recognizing the scars it left on each of them.
John had come to her shyly, and told her of his intention to ask Elizabeth to be his wife. The words had surprised Wendy, but she hadn’t been able to resist teasing him, delighted that she could do so again.
“Shouldn’t you be speaking to her then? What have I to do with it?”
John’s face had deepened in its red hue, not quite embarrassment or pain but some complicated thing in-between. All at once she saw laid bare the ways he’d been trying to find his way back to her since her release from the asylum and recognized the missing pieces in herself as she’d been trying to do the same.
“I want you to approve, Wendy.” He’d said the words softly, and she’d been glad, because suddenly her heart had been close to breaking with a new weight it had never known before. “Without Mother and Father… I mean, it’s just you and me and Michael. We’re the only Darlings.”
Her name. Their name. Despite Wendy’s marriage, John had still called her Darling, giving her back to herself in a way she’d never expected. The idea had overwhelmed her, and she’d nearly missed that John had continued speaking.
“…it does matter to me what you think, Wendy.”
“Of course! Of course I approve, and of course I’m happy for you.” She’d got the words out somehow, and after a moment, she’d thrown her arms around him, holding her brother tight. She willed every terrible thing between them to fall away, to never have been, even knowing they never could have come to this moment without them.
When she drew back, she had truly looked at John—the hope in his eyes, the pink in his cheeks speaking more to his love for Elizabeth and his relief at Wendy’s approval than anything else.
“Wait here a moment.”
She’d left John, baffled, in her parlor, and run to her bedroom. There she’d rooted among the contents of her jewelry box and at last found the small, round case scarcely bigger than the ring it contained. The box’s top, blue enamel, was painted with gold roses, and all around the sides of the box were printed with the same pattern. She’d nearly tripped running down the stairs so John had caught her as she stumbled into the parlor, looking at her like she was a mad woman as she grinned up at him.
She pressed the box into his hands and he stared at her in bewilderment.
“You don’t remember it? Go on, open it.”
Wendy had bounced on her toes slightly in her eagerness. John had opened the box, gazing at the ring that had been their mother’s, a gift from their father when Wendy was born, and gifted to Wendy in turn on her tenth birthday. A plain silver band, gleaming like moonlight, and set with a single, tiny stone such a pale blue as to almost be white.
Once it had been a star to set her sights by, to wish on. After their parents’ deaths, she had seen it as a chip of ice, a daily reminder of their loss. She had stopped wearing it, and tucked it away safe for some future she couldn’t imagine yet, until the moment she’d handed it to John. As she watched John lift the ring from the box, she could suddenly see the ring without grief, thinking on the small stone as a piece of the future again, a gift she could give her brother as he began his new life.
“It belonged to Mother,” Wendy said, and almost before the words were out of her mouth, John said, “I remember now,” his voice rough.
“I couldn’t, Wendy…” He’d tried to press the box back into her hands, but she’d refused to take it.
John’s lower lashes had been damp with the threat of tears. She’d felt her own eyes grow hot, all the more at John’s struggle to hold back.
“Jane should have it,” he’d said. “Shouldn’t you give it to her?”
Wendy had thought of gifting the ring to her daughter, but despite the way Jane looked at the night sky, it was always this world she seemed most rooted in. A stone on her finger should be deep green, like growing leaves, or perhaps the blue of beetle shells. Wendy had shaken her head.
“It should be with you. Mother would want you to have it.”
John had stopped trying to hold back his tears then, sweeping her into a hug. They’d stood together for a long time, crushed against each other, and when John spoke again, Wendy had lost the first part of his words into her hair.
“…such children back then.” He’d straightened, pulling away from her to meet her eyes again. “And look at
