Straight On Till Morning (Disney Twisted Tales) - Liz Braswell Page 0,91

door, sat down pointedly, looked out the window, and barked once.

“She’s gone out,” Michael hazarded.

Nana sighed a moist pant of relief.

“Wendy? Gone out at teatime? Most suspicious. That’s not like her at all.”

“Maybe she has gone out to buy us special treats and got caught in the rain,” Michael said hopefully.

“It’s London, Michael. No one ever ‘gets caught in the rain.’ It rains all the bloody time here.” John started off saying it amusingly, like his father would, but trailed off into something somewhere between wistful and bitter. For the slightest moment, a world had flashed in front of his eyes, a memory of bright sun and blue sea that wasn’t a real memory at all, but a memory of imagination. There was a palm tree and the smell of coconuts.

Without being able to read his brother’s mind and yet somehow sensing the mood behind it, Michael took the sort of cerebral right turn that babes sometimes manage when their too-learned betters cannot.

“We should get treats for Wendy sometime,” he ventured, not coming to quite the right conclusion (but not the wrong one, either).

“Yes, we should,” John said uncertainly. The two sat down at the un-set table, and the older boy’s mind went the way the younger one’s couldn’t, wondering, perhaps, if it was too late for something like treats to rectify a situation they had been stupidly unaware of—despite how traces of it were pressed into every dark corner of the house, making itself widely known, and permanent, and sad.

When Mr. Darling returned home for a light supper before going to his study to get even more work done and Mrs. Darling finished her book club/charity drive/sherry session with the Tevvervilles and Miss Pontescue, the two entered to a half-lit house and an uninspired supper. Wendy rarely cooked unless it was a special occasion, but every occasion had her mark upon it. An extra garnish, a pretty bouquet, a little menu she had written out.

But this night the table was set minimally, napkins thrown down on chairs. The lamps weren’t trimmed. The leftover roast, plopped in the middle of the table for anyone to steal or any mouse to nibble, was mostly cold. John and Michael sat glumly in their seats, politely waiting for their parents, not even bothering to sneak an early morsel. John had a book he wasn’t reading.

“Boys.” Mrs. Darling kissed them each on the head. “Where is Wendy?”

“No idea, Mother,” Michael said. “She hasn’t been here for hours.”

“Oh.” Mrs. Darling looked at Mr. Darling.

“Oh.” Mr. Darling looked flummoxed. Wendy was never not where she was supposed to be when she was supposed to be there. “Has there…has there been a break-in?”

“Has someone stolen Wendy?” John asked, with a sneer and the touch of irony that often bloomed in an overbright boy with two mediocre parents. “Is that what you’re asking?”

Mr. Darling frowned. His eldest son had reined in his tone at the last minute, couching it in what sounded like genuine surprise. Darling fruffled for a moment, feeling like he was being made fun of somehow, but couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He wanted to be angry.

But Wendy…

Mrs. Darling, ever practical, was looking around the foyer. “Her umbrella is here, though her jacket is gone. She couldn’t have gone out, or at least not far.”

“I go outside without an umbrella all the time,” Michael said.

“If there was fun to be had, you would go out without your own shadow,” John said waspishly, rolling his eyes.

The two boys looked at each other, realizing the same thing at the same time.

“The shadow,” Michael whispered.

“It’s not real,” John reminded him, also whispering.

“We should check.”

“We’ll go look upstairs one more time, Mother,” John said loudly as the two boys hurried away from the table. “I…pray she doesn’t have a fever and lie collapsed, insensate, somewhere.”

“That’s a bit much,” Michael muttered, realizing with a wisdom beyond his years that he would be saying very similar things to his older brother for the rest of their lives. Nevertheless, united in this mission they raced upstairs together into the old nursery, which was now John and Michael’s room. It had been repainted, of course, and had a new chair and extra wardrobe, and a neat line drawn down the middle in chalk past which Michael’s lead soldiers were not allowed to march.

The old bureau was still there and still had some of Wendy’s old things in it: once-favorite toys, bits and bobs, sewing notions. The top drawer was stuck, as