John’s face had deepened in its red hue, not quite embarrassment or pain but some complicated thing in-between. All at once she saw laid bare the ways he’d been trying to find his way back to her since her release from the asylum and recognized the missing pieces in herself as she’d been trying to do the same.

“I want you to approve, Wendy.” He’d said the words softly, and she’d been glad, because suddenly her heart had been close to breaking with a new weight it had never known before. “Without Mother and Father… I mean, it’s just you and me and Michael. We’re the only Darlings.”

Her name. Their name. Despite Wendy’s marriage, John had still called her Darling, giving her back to herself in a way she’d never expected. The idea had overwhelmed her, and she’d nearly missed that John had continued speaking.

“…it does matter to me what you think, Wendy.”

“Of course! Of course I approve, and of course I’m happy for you.” She’d got the words out somehow, and after a moment, she’d thrown her arms around him, holding her brother tight. She willed every terrible thing between them to fall away, to never have been, even knowing they never could have come to this moment without them.

When she drew back, she had truly looked at John—the hope in his eyes, the pink in his cheeks speaking more to his love for Elizabeth and his relief at Wendy’s approval than anything else.

“Wait here a moment.”

She’d left John, baffled, in her parlor, and run to her bedroom. There she’d rooted among the contents of her jewelry box and at last found the small, round case scarcely bigger than the ring it contained. The box’s top, blue enamel, was painted with gold roses, and all around the sides of the box were printed with the same pattern. She’d nearly tripped running down the stairs so John had caught her as she stumbled into the parlor, looking at her like she was a mad woman as she grinned up at him.

She pressed the box into his hands and he stared at her in bewilderment.

“You don’t remember it? Go on, open it.”

Wendy had bounced on her toes slightly in her eagerness. John had opened the box, gazing at the ring that had been their mother’s, a gift from their father when Wendy was born, and gifted to Wendy in turn on her tenth birthday. A plain silver band, gleaming like moonlight, and set with a single, tiny stone such a pale blue as to almost be white.