“We just have a few questions for you and then we’ll be out of your hair.” He smiled at her, but it was the fake kind that didn’t wrinkle the skin around his eyes. His hair was dark and he had stubble and a scar running through his left eyebrow. Wendy wondered how he’d gotten it.

“Right.” She knew it was never as simple as that.

“We already got the paramedic and police report,” he said, flipping through at least five pages of notes. “So we don’t need to go over that again. However, what we do need to know is if you knew the boy, Peter?”

So much for no repetitive questions.

“No, I don’t know him.” Or didn’t know him? Should she talk about him in past or present tense?

“Are you sure?” he pressed, pen poised, waiting.

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“Did he seem at all familiar to you?” Detective Rowan was the one to talk this time.

Wendy blinked. No one had asked it that way before.

“No,” Wendy said, a little too late. Was the boy familiar? Yes, but she couldn’t explain to them why. No one would believe her. It sounded impossible—it was impossible.

“You don’t have any memory of him? He didn’t look like someone you’ve met before?” Detective Rowan continued, slowly and even-toned. Wendy felt trapped under her stare.

“No.” That time she said it too fast. “I—” She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. “No, I don’t know who he is.”

Detective James looked over at Detective Rowan. Wendy couldn’t read what they were thinking, but this sort of nonverbal communication was the result of years of closeness. Wendy understood, because she and Jordan could exchange looks across a classroom and she’d know exactly what her best friend was thinking.

Detective James turned back to Wendy and her mother. He clasped his hands in front of him, holding the small notepad and pen. Now the two detectives were mirrors of each other. Towering sentinels staring down at her.

“It was about five years ago that you and your brothers went missing, is that correct, Wendy?” Detective James asked.

Mrs. Darling inhaled a sharp breath.

The hairs on Wendy’s arms prickled.

He said it so nonchalantly, as if Wendy didn’t go through life carrying the burden of what had happened each and every day. As if it weren’t a stain on her childhood, a family curse that they never spoke a word of.

As if it were nothing.

“Y-yes,” Wendy croaked.