“Yes, darling. Of course I will.” Ned kisses her brow. Wendy stands perfectly still; his lips on her forehead burn.
Darling, darling, darling. She knows the word for fondness, knows Ned means nothing by it, but she can’t help loathing it. The word has become a weapon, not in Ned’s mouth, not on purpose, but over the years it’s been a word to soothe, to dismiss, to hush. Her own name taken from her and turned against her—a gag, a chain. She would be happy never to hear it again.
With Ned still looking after her, and guilt dogging her steps, Wendy retreats to her room.
She allows herself a moment to sag, to feel the ache of Jane’s loss. As she does, a memory drops from nowhere, jarring and sharp. She’s running, her hand in Peter’s hand, the ground shaking, the earth bellowing.
It’s so real, so present, Wendy has to lean her weight against the post of her bed to remind herself she’s a grown woman in London. She isn’t a child, tagging along at Peter’s heels. There’s a lifetime of difference between who she was then and who she is now.
And yet over the years, in the quietest moments, she’s allowed herself the indulgence of remembering what it felt like to fly, to play follow the leader, to chase Peter along the twisting paths of Neverland’s forests. She wants that now, the purity, the simplicity, the freedom.
But this is something different. Not running for joy—running from something. Something terrible.
She can almost touch it. Her reaching fingers meet solid wood, a door, the memory locked away behind it. Something secret. Important.
She pushes it away. Now isn’t the time to think about what she’s lost. She needs to focus on what she has, how she will rescue Jane. Peter stole from her; she will steal from him in turn. She’s learned a great many things since he last saw her, and she will use every one of them against him to bring her daughter home.
Peter told her once that girls couldn’t go to war. Back then, she’d thought it terribly unfair, but he was right in a way. Wendy isn’t a soldier. She stayed home while her little brother went off to face guns and trenches, gas and grenades—but that doesn’t mean she isn’t a fighter. More than a fighter, she’s a survivor as well.
She survived St. Bernadette’s using the first skill that ever made her useful to Peter. That must count for something. As a child, her sewing was clumsy, but thanks to Mary’s patient instruction, she’s so much better now. Three years under Mary’s guidance with nothing else to do in that white-walled prison except practice making her stitches neat and tight.
Here, in the outside world, pockets are a convenience, a luxury; in the asylum, they were a necessity. Mary taught her to sew small, secret compartments into the hems and sleeves of her shapeless uniform, quick stitches strong enough to hold but easy enough to unpick so they wouldn’t be discovered in the laundry; invisible from the outside, tucked close against her skin. Sometimes merely touching them, even if they were empty, just knowing they were there, was enough to keep Wendy steady, anchoring her.
John had believed a private institution would mean better care. But Dr. Harrington had been the only full-time doctor in residence, and with less oversight, it was easy for the attendants to practice casual cruelty. Jamieson especially.
If Dr. Harrington’s attention was elsewhere, Jamieson would rally his fellow attendants against Wendy. They would trip her walking through the hallways, trying to loosen her temper, make her “hysterical,” so Dr. Harrington would prescribe bromides or have her locked in her room. There, they might “forget” to feed her, or her food would arrive with splinters or bits of broken glass tucked inside. And there were other things, too. Punishments she didn’t deserve. Torture.
But for every cruelty dealt to her, Wendy had retaliated. She stole unimportant things. Buttons. Shoelaces. Half a tin of loose tobacco leaf, a whole stack of rolling papers. Everything went into her secret pockets while she hid her smiles, watching the attendants grumble and search fruitlessly. Then she would return the stolen item days later, in a different place, making the attendants doubt their sanity the way they tried to make her doubt her own.
And never once was she caught. Those are the other skills St. Bernadette’s gave her. Stealth, silence, the ability to slip beneath notice. All she had to do was pretend to take her medicine. Be good, be calm. Remember. Lie. Pretend to forget.
But of course, she couldn’t forget. Peter had lodged beneath her skin like a splinter. Even at her lowest points—when she was tempted to give in and let go the way John and Michael did—she couldn’t dig him out. Peter was and is a part of her; Neverland is a part of her. The angled planes of Peter’s face, the fire of his hair, the gleam of his eyes—they are as familiar to her as her own features, as Ned’s, as Jane’s. She will use that to her advantage, too.
Even now Wendy can call to mind perfectly the innocence in Peter’s eyes the first night she met him. The way he held his shadow draped over his arms like the skin of some animal, hope lighting the planes of his face, asking her to make him whole. She’d taken the proffered shadow, silky and cool in her hands like the finest of fabrics, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Of course a boy might become separated from his shadow, and of course a girl might sew it back on again.
At the time, she hadn’t thought it at all strange. Not even when, at the first touch of her needle, he’d shrieked as though she’d stuck him with a hot poker. Afterward, he’d gone around crowing and strutting
