“Okay.”
“I’ll talk to you in the morning.”
“Okay.” Wendy hesitated. Something like curiosity, or maybe just guilt, kept her in the car. “Mom, are you okay?”
Mrs. Darling sighed. Wendy tried to catch her mother’s eye in the rearview mirror, but she continued to stare at the steering wheel. “I’m fine. Everything is fine.”
Wendy couldn’t tell who she was trying to convince.
Her mom drove away before Wendy could pull out her keys. Her father had forgotten to turn on the porch light again. She fumbled for a moment before she could get the front door unlocked.
The living room was dark except for the strip of light visible under the door of her father’s study. She walked over, pressed her ear to the doorjamb, and listened. Everything was silent except for the sound of her father’s deep, heavy snores.
Good. At least she wouldn’t have to deal with getting questioned by him. For now, anyway.
Wendy’s mind and body buzzed with anxious energy. She needed to distract herself with something, to put her restless hands to work, so she straightened up the kitchen. She emptied the dishwasher, which she had filled the night before. She broke down the small pile of beer cases and stacked them with the rest of the recycling. At the sink, she scrubbed at her hands again, the skin red and cracked from the compulsive habit.
The busywork kept her distracted for the most part until she sat down to write a grocery list. She stared at the small notepad, the tip of the blue pen poised, but she couldn’t concentrate on what she needed to buy for groceries that week, one of the many chores she took up around the house. Now that she was sitting still, her mind raced. She contemplated turning on the TV to drown out her thoughts, but she didn’t want to see the faces of Benjamin Lane and Ashley Ford staring back at her.
And she didn’t want to wake up her dad.
Wendy closed her eyes and forced herself to take a deep breath. Her temples throbbed. She was not looking forward to him finding out about what happened tonight. Hell, she wasn’t even sure what had happened herself, so how was she supposed to explain it to anyone else? The only things she knew for sure were that something had landed on the hood of her car and she found a boy lying in the middle of the road. And his name was Peter.
But that still didn’t mean he was her Peter.
Wendy gave her head a small shake.
She needed to focus.
Groceries. She could make baked ziti. It was quick and easy to pack up for her mom and dad.
Wendy looked down at the notepad, about to write down marinara, but stopped short. She sucked in a sharp breath. Goosebumps raced down her arms.
She’d done it again.
The notepad was covered in blue ink. Scratchy lines etched out the gnarled tree. The trunk was thick, jagged. The roots twisted and curled at its base. The drawing had gone off the paper, leaving branches that hooked at sharp angles across the wooden table.
“Shit.” Wendy grabbed cleaner from under the sink and a handful of paper towels. She scrubbed vigorously at the table, but even though the blue ink vanished, she’d pressed the pen so hard that it’d left gashes in the soft wood. She cursed again and scrubbed harder.
Still, the ghostly outlines of the branches remained. Wendy yanked open the drawer where they kept the nice linens for holidays and pulled out the set of green placemats. She arranged them on the table to cover up the lines.
Wendy dug the heels of her hands into her eyes. What was happening to her? Was she totally losing it? She needed to get a grip on reality. The boy she’d found was not Peter Pan. The missing kids had nothing to do with her or her brothers. She was exhausted and just needed a good night’s rest.
Wendy went upstairs, pausing for a moment at the top. To the right was a door. It led into the room she used to share with her two brothers, John and Michael. Now, it was just a door that had remained closed for the last five years. After what happened, Wendy refused to go back inside, so her parents had immediately moved her into the playroom.
They had bought her all new clothes and furniture. A shopping trip like that should have been a fun mother-daughter adventure, but Wendy had spent most of the first few weeks in the hospital, seeing various doctors and not doing much talking. So her mom had done most of the shopping herself—and by the mix of styles and colors of wood, Wendy assumed that she had just pointed to the first things she saw and had them delivered to the house.
Turning her back to the door, Wendy ran her fingers through her short hair and walked into her room to the left. Just seeing her bed with piled-up pillows and a plush down comforter covered in a smooth, light blue duvet made her feel exhausted.
The bed was centered in front of the window at the far wall. There was a small trash can tucked under the end table next to it, overflowing with more crumpled-up drawings of Peter and the crooked tree.
In her small bathroom, Wendy splashed water on her face and the back of her neck. She held on to the edge of the sink and stared at her reflection in the medicine cabinet. Other than being a bit pale, she looked the same as usual. Eyes that were too big, hair that was too ashy to hold any luster, and shoulders that were too broad thanks to swimming. Plain and uninspiring, which suited her just fine.
Wendy changed into a white sleep shirt. The air hitting her damp skin gave her a small reprieve from the heat.
The top of her dresser was the only thing about Wendy’s room someone could say was untidy. It was scattered with little treasures she had collected through the years. There was a line of her favorite books, a stuffed seal her grandmother had gotten her from San Francisco, a royal purple swim cap with her school’s mascot—the Fighting Fisherman—on the side, and her silver and bronze swimming medals placed at the corner.
Wendy picked up the swim cap to toss it into her duffel, only to reveal the small wooden jewelry box that had been hidden under it. She paused.
It was a simple box made of old wood. She had found it at one of the little shops on the coast several summers before her brothers were lost. She mostly used it to keep her books propped up, but there were a few little trinkets inside.
Wendy reached down and carefully opened the lid. There was an old necklace made out of cheap metal that had become tarnished and smelled like copper. There were a couple of coins, a small piece of purple quartz, and, tucked in the corner, an acorn.
She pulled it out and let the lid fall shut with a quiet snap. She held it carefully, turning it in her fingertips. The acorn was dark with age and had a polished sheen to it from all the times she had run her fingers over its surface. The cup of the acorn—or its little hat, as she used to think of it—was dried out and had pieces missing.
The acorn had been in her hand when the park ranger found her in the woods five years ago. According to the police report, she had been gripping it so tightly that the small point had bruised her palm.
She hadn’t taken it out of its hiding spot in a long time. Wendy used to turn it over in her hand every night before bed, looking for a secret message or maybe an invisible latch that would open it up, reveal some secret, tell her something about those six months. It was the only thing from that day she had kept. Everything else—her long blond hair, her clothes—had been thrown out for good, but she’d held on to the acorn.
Carefully cupping it in her hands, Wendy walked over to her bed and collapsed onto her back. She sank into the comforter, which gently enveloped her like a cloud. Wendy reached back and turned on the strand of fairy lights that framed the window above the head of her bed, casting a warm glow over her and her shiny acorn.