Maybe it’s the warm food and tea, but she believes her own words. Surely if anyone is a match for Peter, it’s Christopher.
So when her phone rings and it’s Christopher’s number, a wave of optimism surges through her.
It’s short-lived.
“Are you home?” he asks, his voice grim.
“Yes. Did you find them?”
He hesitates. “I need to talk to you. In person. I’m already on my way.”
Jane takes one look at her face and crosses to her side. “It’s bad,” Holly says, her voice so low she has to repeat herself. “He’s coming here.”
Beside her, Nan clutches her hand. “What did he say?”
“Nothing,” Holly finally manages. “He’s on his way.”
When the doorbell rings, Jane collects herself first and hurries to answer it. Holly tries to follow, but her heart is pounding and her legs have gone boneless again and all she can think is, Please, please, please. She leans against the library wall for support.
And then he’s in the room, and she looks at his face, and her voice deserts her. It’s Nan who speaks.
“Tell us,” she demands, her voice high-pitched. “Did you find them? Please, tell us.”
Christopher shakes his head. “I’m sorry,” he says simply. “I went back to the school. To the caretaker’s cottage. There was a body in the back bedroom. A boy. It wasn’t Jack.” He turns to Nan. “He has pale skin, curly hair. Facial features similar to yours. I think it was your brother.”
Nan lets out a wail and falls to the floor. Holly wants to comfort her, but she can’t move, can’t breathe. “I took a picture,” Christopher says, holding out his phone. “Is it him?”
Holly doesn’t want to look, but she can’t look away, either. It’s a photo of a handsome boy, dressed in a gray sweatshirt. In the picture, it looks as if he’s smiling. He’s curled on the bed. He could be asleep.
It’s unmistakably Ed. And a small red feather has drifted onto his cheek.
Chapter Forty
Help me get her into a guest room,” Jane instructs Christopher. He scoops Nan up easily, and they move toward the staircase. Holly wants to follow, but her legs still aren’t cooperating. It’s not relief or terror or even a combination of those two feelings that keeps her locked in place. It’s guilt.
This is her fault. Hers, and no one else’s. If she’d told Christopher the truth right from the start, if she’d gone to the police, if she’d done something—done anything—Ed might be alive right now. She can’t fathom the world without him, without the space he takes up in it. The brown eyes and the long legs and the laugh and energy—all of those things that say Ed, that hold an Ed-shape in this universe—gone. Leaving a hole that for the rest of her life Nan will have to try not to fall into.
She staggers into the hall. She can hear Nan’s sobs, then her mother’s voice overhead. “Here,” Jane’s saying soothingly. “Let me help you.” But there is no help. Holly knows that, even if Nan has not yet discovered it. She will.
And then Christopher is coming down the staircase, walking down the hallway toward her. Graceful and sleek and dangerous. Oh, panther, she thinks irrationally. How very, very sharp your teeth are.
He leads her back into the library, shuts the door. “I’ll keep searching,” he says. “He has to have held the boys somewhere close. You said he let you look through the house?”
Holly nods. “No one else was there. I’m certain.”
“Do you know if Ed used drugs? The kid’s arms were a mess. Covered in bandages and track marks.”
Holly thinks of Ed’s clear gaze, his beautiful skin. The health he radiated on and off the field. “No,” she says. “Not a chance.”
“Then somebody was using him. Like some kind of science experiment.” He hesitates.
“What?”
“I have to report this,” he says. “There could be consequences for you, for your family.”
“Consequences?” Holly says bitterly. “There’s a woman upstairs who lost her brother, a boy she loved so much he was like a son. She’ll never see him again. Those are consequences. If I’d come to you earlier, or if I’d gone to the police, he might still be alive.”
“You don’t know that. Peter might have panicked, killed him sooner.” He lowers his voice. “He might have killed Jack too. At least right now there’s still hope.”
“Hope?” she says dully. “What’s that?”
“It’s what carries us.” He nudges her side with his hook, and she realizes she’s forgotten about it. It’s become normal to her. And then she stops thinking about what that means, thinking about anything, because he’s leaning forward. He kisses her, a quick, gentle kiss that breaks through the fog and pain around her like an electric shock. That drags her back into this world.
“I’m not saying it will be okay,” he says, pulling back. “I’m saying you’ll get through it.”
And then he’s gone, before she can ask him what the hell he was doing.
Or ask him to do it again.
* * *
When Jane comes downstairs, she looks exhausted, every bit of her seven decades, as if she’s aged twenty years in this one day.
“She’s sleeping,” she tells Holly, crossing to the decanter and pouring herself a drink. “I put her in the room next to mine and gave her two sleeping pills.”
“You can’t hand out those pills like candy,” Holly protests.
Jane sniffs. “The child has no family, nowhere to go. Sleep is the best thing for her, and she won’t get that on her own.” She takes a long look at Holly. “How are you?”
Holly shakes her head. “Numb.”
“It’s not your fault,” Jane says in a gentler tone. “Wendy, myself, you . . . we all did the best we could.”
“Right,” Holly says. She can’t talk about this. She leaves the library and climbs the stairs, stopping outside Nan’s room to listen for her breathing before continuing on.
In the nursery, she sits on the bed and looks at the sky, searching for the evening star through the clouds. She thinks of Ed, how he’ll never grow up, never get married, never dance at his sister’s wedding or give her away. She thinks of all those other boys, the ones Christopher told her about, pictures their gray faces in a twilight room somewhere, sleeping away their youth. Or scurrying down dark alleys, willing to trade everything for one more taste of Peter’s drug.
She thinks of Jack. Of that night in the nursery so long ago, when he was in the hospital. Her despair now is a perfect echo. What else, really, does she have to lose? Nothing. Except herself.
And then she thinks of Peter. Of the boy he once was. What was he searching for, that first night he came to the Darling window? What would a boy, tired and lost, facing dangers she can’t even imagine, be looking for? Safety. Security. A haven. Somewhere he could get help. Whatever he found in the nursery room that night, whatever happened between Wendy and her father, it wasn’t that.
Slowly, as if she’s in a trance, she takes off her clothes. Slips into the white, lavender-scented nightgown. Plaits her hair. Lights a candle. Pulls down the bedsheets and fluffs the pillows. Makes the room as warm and inviting as she can. The type of room a lost child would be drawn to.
And then she opens the window.
It doesn’t happen for a long time. Her skin senses the change in the air patterns before her mind does. The hair on the nape of her neck prickles as the candle flickers. She can’t bear to turn around, keeps her face turned toward the wall, but she knows he’s there. She bows her head and stares at the floor.
“You win,” she whispers. “I choose you.”
And then someone sits on the bed beside her. Someone leans their head against her shoulder. Someone who smells of springtime and cut grass, of fresh air, who carries the scent of an effervescent joy that is impossible to explain.
“Eden?” She can’t believe it. But it’s true.
* * *
“I don’t have much time,” Eden says softly. “Bell is keeping watch for me. But I can save him. I can save Jack.” She lifts her head up, and Holly can no longer pretend she’s a child.