She hasn’t decided what truths or lies she’ll tell to others yet, but there’s one thing Jane is certain of—she will not lie to herself, and she will always remember.
LONDON – TWO DAYS AFTER NEVERLAND
Wendy sits in the window bay overlooking the street. She runs her hands over her skirt, touches her sleeves. There are no secrets hidden there now; the time for secrets is done. She rubs absently at her knee, the pain almost faded. She folds her hands into her lap, but they immediately want to fly away again. It’s an effort to keep them still.
It’s been two days since she returned from Neverland with Jane. Two days, and she still hasn’t found the right words to speak to Ned. She’d told him that she’d found Jane lost among the trees, a half-truth, letting him assume she meant the park. She had not had to pretend to be exhausted, or terrified. She had been all of those things, her emotions catching up to her all at once—fear and grief, but also joy at having Jane home. It had left her drained, and she had pled for time.
Part of her wants to lie sick in bed like when she first returned from Neverland all those years ago. Let fever wrack her. Let her loss manifest physically. But she is a mother now; she has responsibilities, and she cannot hide from them.
Wendy had promised, if Ned would give her a little time to recover herself, she would tell him everything, which she fully intends to do. But that doesn’t mean she isn’t afraid. She and Ned have always been partners, but now she sees suspicion and doubt in his eyes. And Jane—she can’t quite read her daughter’s expression; she only knows that it hurts to look at her in a way it never did before.
That isn’t even the end of the lies and half-truths piled up against her skin, weighing her down. She must think of her brothers and her father-in-law. The story Wendy holds in her mind is that Jane crept out of the house at night, intent on having an adventure all on her own. But then she’d gotten confused and uncertain how to find her way home, and she’d been afraid of getting in trouble, so she’d hid until Wendy had found her. It makes her daughter sound flighty and foolish, two things which Jane is not, but as much as it pains her, Wendy is certain that her father-in-law especially will believe it. Girls are fanciful creatures after all, without much sense in their heads, no matter what their age.
Her brothers might have more doubt, but their own determination to forget might save her for once. It will be easier for them to swallow her lie than accept the truth.
Which only leaves Ned. At the end of the day, Wendy doesn’t truly care whether or not her father-in-law or her brothers believe her. The belief and trust she wants is from Ned.
Wendy glances toward the hall. She won’t have the house to herself for much longer. All the truths will have to come out of her soon.
She looks at her hands. The minor cuts and scratches she and Jane both received fleeing the cave, the ones Wendy barely felt at the time, are almost gone. It’s likely they won’t even leave scars. She should be relieved. Instead, there’s only a kind of hollow numbness. It isn’t like the hollowness she lived with for years, the sense of something missing where Peter tore her memory away. This is the ache of a thing she knows should be there and now is gone, like a trinket or a photograph meant to sit on the mantelpiece, broken beyond repair.
The last two nights, Wendy has sat at the window long after everyone else went to bed, straining to pick out the second star to the right from the sky’s darkness. All the stars look the same to her now, and she’s searched within herself too, reaching after the ragged fragments of Neverland. She can’t feel it anymore. It isn’t gone, but she can’t touch it. Either it’s changed, or she’s changed, or both. Either way, a door has closed, and she fears no amount of picking at the lock will ever open it to her again.
Even the memories that sustained her all through her time at St. Bernadette’s have begun to fracture. When she closes her eyes now, she sees Tiger Lily burning. She sees Peter with his tattered shadow trailing behind him, monster and boy rolled into one. She chose Jane, and she would never choose differently given a thousand lifetimes, but that doesn’t ease the hurt.
Some part of her always believed Neverland would be there for her forever, an escape if she ever needed it. Now that way is barred to her, and she must live from here on out in one world alone.
Outside, trees stir against a clouded sky. Despite the threat of rain, Ned and Jane went for a walk. Wendy doesn’t blame either of them for not wanting to be cooped up in the house with her. Ned has been patient with Jane, but Wendy knows it must be a strain on them both. She’d gently explained that Jane had been frightened, that she needs time, and that she will talk to Ned when she is ready, but the hurt in Ned’s eyes as she’d said it had almost undone her.
The truth had almost come rushing out then, but she’d been a coward. What if Ned doesn’t believe her? And what if he does? How will their lives change?
She watches the leaves shiver, flipping to show silver undersides to the wind. There is a storm coming. She wants to trust Ned, trust that if she gives him this secret he’ll be strong enough, kind enough, to forgive her. But what if
