Cocking my head to the side, I follow suit and bow back to her in return. “Hello,” I smile as my head lifts to meet her stare. “Was that a song you were singing?”

“No,” she shrugs as she rises and takes a step closer. “Well, maybe. I don’t know.” She laughs and I swear the world stops spinning. “I just made it up.”

“Do you always make things up?”

“When it pleases me, and when I need to escape.” She frowns, her eyes grow sad, and something about what she says pulls on my heart, makes me think we might understand each other more than either of us know. After a moment her eyes grow wide with excitement, and she asks, “Do you?”

In this moment, I think I could stay with her and make things up forever. Leave the rest of the world behind. Make-believe a new world to escape the sadness I see in her eyes. The heartbreak I feel in my chest.

“Sometimes…” I hear myself confess.

“What do you pretend?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” I shrug. “If I had to think, maybe I’d live on an island, far away from here.”

“With mermaids?” she smiles as her eyes widen.

I nod my head and take a step forward. “And Indians, and pirates.”

“And fairies,” she sighs, just as a tinkling of bells starts to ring softly through the garden. We glance around us as the darkness grows and night sets in.

“Do you have to go home?” I whisper, turning back and staring sadly into her eyes.

“No,” she blushes. “I can stay a little longer.”

“What’s your name?” I blurt out without thinking.

“Wendy,” she grins. “What’s yours?”

“Peter. Peter Pan. It’s nice to meet you, Wendy.” I bow to her once again, starting a game I hope never ends.

She giggles, hiding her face in her hands and turning an adorable shade of red. When she tears her hands from her face and notices I still haven’t broken stance, she bows just the same and says, “It's nice to meet you too, Peter Pan. I want to play a new kind of game. Are you in?”

With a nod, she takes off through the garden and I chase her quickly, running after a girl I never expected. One I’ll never forget. One who will always have my heart, for as long as I live.

Chapter 16

Wendy

“Mr. Darling used to boast to Wendy that her mother not only loved him but respected him. He was one of those deep ones… in a way that would have made any woman respect him.”

Peter & Wendy

- J. M. Barrie

TWENTY-SIX YEARS AGO

“What’s it like, Nana?” I sigh on a daydream, as I glance out the Victorian window across the room. The sky is full of so many stars tonight, and I smile as I watch them twinkle in the moonlight. “Love?”