“I wish I could remember it,” she said, picking at her paper cone of fries. “Maybe, after we get your shadow back and save John and Michael, and the other kids, I’ll get my memories back?”

Peter’s smile faltered. “Probably,” he said with a small shrug as he toyed with his cherry stem.

Wendy looked down at her dry, cracked hands. Thinking about the missing kids being held hostage by that shadow made her insides twist. She couldn’t stand the thought of them being afraid and lost. Hopefully, they at least had each other, someone to lean on in a situation that seemed hopeless and terrifying.

Wendy hadn’t given up yet, and she still wouldn’t. She was determined to bring her brothers home.

When she and Peter finally rescued them, would they still look the same as when they’d disappeared? Or had they continued to age, too? The thought of John now being sixteen and Michael being thirteen was jarring. Would she even recognize them? Would they recognize her?

Wendy pressed a finger to one of the red lines on her hand and winced.

Peter’s shoulders sank and his auburn hair fell into his eyes. He squinted, a small grimace playing across his face. “Does it hurt?” Peter asked.

She shrugged. “A bit. It’s mostly sore.” Wendy sat up straighter. Her dry, cracked hands were a constant reminder. She couldn’t keep herself from scrubbing away at them. People stared at them and sometimes the kids asked how she’d gotten hurt. It was embarrassing and she felt like they outed her as being odd, but the feeling of her hands being dirty made her skin scrawl. She bit her nails down to nubs, but things still caught under them sometimes. The Burt’s Bees hand salve she kept in her bag did little to help the irritated skin.

Wendy exhaled a deep breath and splayed her fingers on the table. “It’s not a big deal.”

“Here.” Peter leaned forward, picked up the plastic cup of water, and reached out for Wendy’s arm. Gently, he pressed the side of the icy cold cup to the cracks in her knuckles. Trickles of condensation ran down her wrist, making her shiver. “Does that help?” he asked, glancing up at her with those big blue eyes. His breath smelled like chocolate.

“Yeah, actually…”

Peter rested his elbow on the table, propping up his chin in the palm of his free hand. His smile peeked around the corner of his fist, and she couldn’t help smiling back.

She hadn’t laughed or smiled this much in a long time. Her cheeks were starting to ache.

“Wendy?”