She watches the leaves shiver, flipping to show silver undersides to the wind. There is a storm coming. She wants to trust Ned, trust that if she gives him this secret he’ll be strong enough, kind enough, to forgive her. But what if it’s a bridge too far? What if it’s too much to ask after he gave her his heart, placed his letters from Henry into her hands and with them all of himself, while she refused to do the same.

Wendy thinks back on that first night with Ned, their wedding. It seems a lifetime ago. They’d been strangers, but Ned had reached across the gap, taken a chance on her. She’s never given anyone his secret, but is withholding her own worse?

After reading the letters, Wendy had asked Ned whether there had ever been anyone besides Henry, and he’d told her no. Awkward and blushing to even think of it, she’d told him she wouldn’t mind if there was. He’d told her the same, and they’d laughed together at their nervousness, their embarrassment. That was the moment, Wendy thinks, that she’d begun to love him. Not as a husband, but as a friend. One of her best friends.

Those early days of their relationship had been a careful negotiation, but never had things turned bitter between them. There had been no jealousy. They rarely fought. Tension only ever came with his father’s presence in their home, and then he was a shadow over them both.

They’d even entered into parenthood the way they had entered into their marriage, as partners. When Jane had arrived, she’d increased the love between them. Mary had taken to Jane immediately, too, just as she’d taken to Ned. She became something like a sister to Ned, something between a sister and an aunt to Jane.

When she was young, Wendy and Ned had carefully instructed Jane to call Mary by the title Cook rather than her name, lest she slip up when Ned’s father was around. It hurt Wendy’s heart to do it, but Mary, for her part, had seemed amused. Alone in their home, Mary had them all in gales of side-splitting laughter with her spot-on impression of Ned’s father. Together, they were happy. A family by choice.

And even so, through all the years, Wendy held Neverland close and never let a bit of it go. Not to her daughter. Not to her husband. Even now she isn’t certain why. A childish thing, a desire to hold some part of herself in reserve, to control her truth after so many years of lies? Or were her motives worse? Had a tiny part of her left her daughter unguarded, bait, in hopes that Peter would return?