She pushes it away. Now isn’t the time to think about what she’s lost. She needs to focus on what she has, how she will rescue Jane. Peter stole from her; she will steal from him in turn. She’s learned a great many things since he last saw her, and she will use every one of them against him to bring her daughter home.

Peter told her once that girls couldn’t go to war. Back then, she’d thought it terribly unfair, but he was right in a way. Wendy isn’t a soldier. She stayed home while her little brother went off to face guns and trenches, gas and grenades—but that doesn’t mean she isn’t a fighter. More than a fighter, she’s a survivor as well.

She survived St. Bernadette’s using the first skill that ever made her useful to Peter. That must count for something. As a child, her sewing was clumsy, but thanks to Mary’s patient instruction, she’s so much better now. Three years under Mary’s guidance with nothing else to do in that white-walled prison except practice making her stitches neat and tight.

Here, in the outside world, pockets are a convenience, a luxury; in the asylum, they were a necessity. Mary taught her to sew small, secret compartments into the hems and sleeves of her shapeless uniform, quick stitches strong enough to hold but easy enough to unpick so they wouldn’t be discovered in the laundry; invisible from the outside, tucked close against her skin. Sometimes merely touching them, even if they were empty, just knowing they were there, was enough to keep Wendy steady, anchoring her.

John had believed a private institution would mean better care. But Dr. Harrington had been the only full-time doctor in residence, and with less oversight, it was easy for the attendants to practice casual cruelty. Jamieson especially.

If Dr. Harrington’s attention was elsewhere, Jamieson would rally his fellow attendants against Wendy. They would trip her walking through the hallways, trying to loosen her temper, make her “hysterical,” so Dr. Harrington would prescribe bromides or have her locked in her room. There, they might “forget” to feed her, or her food would arrive with splinters or bits of broken glass tucked inside. And there were other things, too. Punishments she didn’t deserve. Torture.

But for every cruelty dealt to her, Wendy had retaliated. She stole unimportant things. Buttons. Shoelaces. Half a tin of loose tobacco leaf, a whole stack of rolling papers. Everything went into her secret pockets while she hid her smiles, watching the attendants grumble and search fruitlessly. Then she would return the stolen item days later, in a different place, making the attendants doubt their sanity the way they tried to make her doubt her own.