Page 113 of Losing Wendy
The playfulness finally drains from Peter’s face. “I’ve already told you everything you need to know about my past. Everything else is irrelevant.”
I huff. “The past is always relevant. It shapes who we are, whether we ignore it or not.”
“Not here,” he says, the twinkle returning to his eyes. He gestures around him toward the tree line of the forest, then toward the beach in the distance, the rolling waves. “Not in Neverland. Our pasts can’t find us here.”
Oh, how very wrong you are, my love.
“What if they already have?”
Peter’s pointed ears twitch. “What are you talking about?”
Realizing I’ve said too much, that I’m still not ready to hand the captain over to Peter, lest he destroy the vessel holding the secrets ofmypast, I pivot.
“Thomas? Freckles? Joel? Were their pasts irrelevant? Did they manage to escape?”
Peter takes a step back. “You’re upset.”
“Of course I’m upset!” I cry, tugging the hair at the base of my skull. “We’re going to be married, and there’s so much about you, about this place, that I don’t understand.”
Peter’s silence threatens to gag me as well, but when he speaks, his voice isn’t spiked with anger as I expect, but gentleness. “Do you tell me everything, Wendy Darling?”
My jaw works as I struggle for a response. “Peter, I—”
My fiancé shakes his head, cupping my cheeks in his strong hands. “It’s alright, my Darling little thing. You know why? Because I have a lifetime to figure you out. All I’m asking is that you offer me the same patience.”
Salt stings at my eyes, and I can’t tell if it’s the wind or tears, and I nod. “There’s only one problem with that.”
“Tell me so I can fix it.”
I trail my thumb across the back of his hand, still cradling my cheek. “A lifetime with you doesn’t seem nearly long enough.”
Peter’s ears pivot, and I find myself turning to gaze down the path toward which they’ve rotated.
“Seems like we have company,” says Peter, nodding toward John, Michael, and Smalls, approaching us from the tree line. My heart falters, considering what dreadful news they might bring, but Smalls offers me a friendly wave that assuages my panic.
The relief is only momentary, because as they draw closer, I notice how John and Smalls are positioned on either side of Michael, each clutching a hand while Michael wriggles between them.
I race across the field toward them. I’m about to fall on the ground in front of Michael and scoop him into my lap when I remember I can’t.
Because my brother is still terrified of me.
I stop short, the balls of my feet scraping against the earth.
Michael lurches, protesting with squeals as he tries to free himself from the others’ grips.
“He wouldn’t stop scratching himself,” explains John. Indeed, streaks of blood line my youngest brother’s neck and cheeks. “I know he doesn’t like it when we restrain him like this, but I didn’t know what else to do. He started clawing at his eyes, and I couldn’t…”
“I know,” I whisper, aware my reassurance is hardly enough to assuage John’s guilt.
“Did something in particular upset him?” asks Peter, lowering himself to a perch. It’s a simple gesture, but the way his instinct is to avoid towering over Michael lest he overwhelm him further makes my heart balloon in my chest.
“No, we were just playing with the train set,” says Smalls. “Then he started asking for your mother. I tried to tell him she wasn’t here right now, but I don’t think he could hear me, because he wouldn’t stop asking.”
John’s shoulders slump, his eyes magnified through his thick, smudged lenses. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Give me a moment,” I say, returning to the garden and searching the area for anything Michael can hold to keep his hands busy. There are the vegetables, but I don’t want him thinking I’m trying to make him eat anything while he’s this worked up. In the end, the best I can do is scoop a handful of wet, cool clay from the earth.
When I offer it to Michael, the whimpers stop as his gaze fixates on the lump of mud in my open palm.