This John simply appeared before her one day, not a boy but a man, full of demands about her behavior. It strikes Wendy—even though he’s her brother, she barely knows anything about him. There’s nothing she can ask him about without looking like a fool. Who are his friends? Does he have a sweetheart? Does he hope to marry one day?

He has mentioned important meetings in the past, usually as his excuse for not staying long. The first time he visited her, months after leaving her here, he mentioned a business opportunity, something to do with importing goods from all around the world to sell in England, but he’d never mentioned it again. When she’d asked, his face had grown pinched, drawn with shadows, and in a clipped tone he’d told her that matters of business were not a woman’s concern. She wonders now, did the investment he made go badly for him? Is it money that troubles him, worrying about paying for her care here, and keeping the house they grew up in?

Guilt and fear needle her. Lost for what to say, Wendy chooses silence. She folds her hands in her lap and watches John pour tea, add sugar, stir, and precisely set the spoon aside. His movements are careful, as though the entire world around him is breakable, not just her. There’s a touch of gray in his hair, just above his ears to go with the lines at the corner of his eyes. She thinks of his arms around her, holding her back as she screamed, clawing and trying to get her hands on another plate to smash. There’d been no gray in his hair then, but she can’t miss it now that she’s seen it, even though he’s younger than her.

All at once she sees it, how he aged so quickly and she never noticed. Her heart turns over in her chest. She hasn’t been a big sister to him since they came home from Neverland, not the way she should have been. The weight of their parents’ deaths fell upon him more squarely than it did on her. The weight of her, resting on John’s shoulders on top of it. He had to grow up and put Neverland aside. He had no choice.