always happened in damp weather; John had to wrestle with it up and down until it finally flew open, sending him backward to land on his bum.
Michael ran forward to look in.
“It’s not there!” he said in awe, rustling around the drawer, ignoring the pin and needle pricks from the untidy pincushion. John rose up behind him without the usual complaints that should have come from such a pratfall enacted on his serious, scholarly body. He, too, poked around, albeit more hesitantly. But there were no extra shadows to be found—nor even the silken bag and wrapper she sometimes kept it in.
“Was it ever really there?” Michael finally asked, in perfect innocence.
“I don’t know,” John admitted.
On the one hand, Mr. Darling didn’t want a scandal that could jeopardize his position in society or at the firm. On the other hand, neither he nor Mrs. Darling was entirely immune to the stories of Spring-Heeled Jack and the dreary, mysterious gray fogs of a London spring. The police were quietly notified, though the Darlings were quietly notified back that young unwed girls had a tendency to show up again hale and hearty, if often wed, or at least with child. Since there were no signs of violence, no known enemies, and no bodies floating Ophelia-like down the Thames recently, the police weren’t concerned.
Mrs. Darling didn’t believe it was a boy, at least a boy they knew; whether or not she was the best mother (as John and Michael and Wendy believed), she was good enough to know her daughter. Wendy, being a strange kitten, was not interested in any boys that way, except for maybe the bookstore owner’s nephew.
“She’ll come back. It’s all probably just to avoid being sent to Ire—” Mr. Darling began.
Too late he saw Mrs. Darling’s panicked eyes and shaking head.
“Sent to—to Ireland?” John asked sharply. “You were going to send Wendy to Ireland?”
“Why? For how long?” Michael demanded.
“We just felt like your sister needed a little break,” their mother said gently.
“Rid her head of fairy stories, the nonsense she continually writes down in that notebook of hers,” Mr. Darling blustered, angry at being caught out, angry that he ever had to hide anything.
“You wanted to send her to Ireland to rid her head of fairy stories,” John said. “Let me just get this straight: the land of the daoine sídhe and the bean sídthe and the pookah?”
“Now look here, John—”
“You’re sending Wendy away because of her stories?” Michael shouted. “Did you take her notebook? Did you read it?”
“Michael, we’re her parents. We have every right to read—”
“But then you know! You know she’s ever so much better than Beatrix Potter and Robert Louis Stevenson!”
“But those are…” Mrs. Darling began. Maybe even she wasn’t sure what those were.
Something went out of Mr. Darling.
He collapsed onto a chair, head in his hands.
And so the Darling house continued on in a state of uncertainty and gloom. No one would admit a mistake or a problem, but the problem presented itself readily whenever there was a button to be mended, or Nana sighed, or meal after meal was silent and somehow unsatisfying. Despite the cook and the scullery maid the house seemed darker and dirtier. Groceries weren’t bought, objects were misplaced, clothing grew ugly. No one hugged Mr. Darling in that special way daughters did; no one fell speechless at Mrs. Darling’s dress or asked to use her perfume.
And no one wrote stories anymore.
There, you see? Everyone was perfectly miserable, and for each day that passed in the real world, a day passed in Never Land, more or less. Though you probably have guessed that already because of the business of Peter’s shadow going missing for so long. But tell me this, since you’re such a clever reader: If Wendy ever does arrive back home, changed or unchanged from her adventures, will life go on as before? Do you really think that’s possible?
The Darlings were beginning to think not.
Night slowly rolled into morning as the boat drifted down the last length of the new river. The sun was warm, the rain was gone, there were no maniacal mermaids, tyrannical pirates, unknowable gods, crystalline guards, or tricksy thysolits.…Despite their pressing quest, Wendy found herself relishing the quietude. If life back in London were as fraught and dangerous as in Never Land, she shouldn’t have minded the quiet in-between days so much. A giant house with nothing to do seemed almost inviting after such travails.
Tinker Bell did not seem to be enjoying the lull