How did he know her? Why had he been looking for her? And who was he? He couldn’t be Peter Pan, her Peter. He wasn’t real, he was just a made-up story. Wasn’t he?

You forgot about me?

There was so much that she had forgotten—huge gaps of time just missing from her memory. What if he was one of them? What if he knew what happened?

Suddenly, the thought of him waking up terrified her.

All of the bodies around her backed away and she felt the light pressure of what could only be her mother’s touch on the crown of her head. Wendy looked up at her mom from between her arms.

“I’m going to take you home, okay?” The nurses behind Mrs. Darling were still staring, but Mrs. Darling was looking at Wendy’s hair, looping a finger around a lock of it and gently pulling it through.

Wendy nodded.

“Mrs. Darling.” Smith was still there. “We have more questions we need to ask your daughter.” The suspicion he had shown earlier was now replaced with a look of wary apprehension as he peered down at Wendy.

Mrs. Darling crossed her arms. “None of that will be happening tonight. My daughter has been through quite enough already, but we’ll be happy to speak with you tomorrow.”

Officer Cecco stood back and spoke quickly into his radio.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but—”

Wendy stopped listening.

She leaned her cheek against her knee and looked back at Peter’s bed.

The spilled tray had been picked up, and she could just make out one of his hands, the wrist bound in a padded leather cuff. They’d shackled him to the bed.

She remembered what those cuffs had felt like around her own wrists after they found her in the woods on her thirteenth birthday.

At first, she was just at the hospital to get her minor injuries checked out, but when the crying wouldn’t stop and Wendy kept waking up in the middle of the night screaming and thrashing, they started buckling down her wrists and ankles. To protect her, they’d said. She couldn’t remember much after that except for the steady ebb and flow of doctors, social workers, and psychologists.

Her brothers were still missing, and it was all her fault.

A nurse stood next to Peter, reading his vitals. Her mother and Officer Smith were deep in conversation. His face had turned a plum red, and her mother’s chin was tilted stubbornly. The other officer was now talking into a cell phone, his back toward them all.

When the nurse left, Wendy slipped out of her seat.