Even as the ache grows in her like a bruise, she knows Neverland is a lie. This is the ideal of a beach, the tide wild enough for adventure but never so rough as to be a threat; the water never too warm nor too cold. Every tree in Neverland is perfect for climbing, and the stars always make fantastic pictures in the night sky. It’s a world built by a boy to satisfy his every whim. It isn’t real.

Ned and Jane are her true home. She belonged here once upon a time, but they are the life she chose. Every day since leaving St. Bernadette’s, she has chosen them, and she will choose them again now. As much as that long-lost part of her wants to run, to fly, to be utterly free of responsibility, the star she navigates by now is Jane.

Wendy tucks her rolled stockings into the toes of her boots. If she’d told Ned the truth long ago, they might have protected Jane together. Their lives may not be perfect under the ever-present shadow of her father-in-law, but it is a better life than Wendy ever could have hoped for on the day she first heard Ned’s name.

There are husbands and wives, she knows, who barely speak, inhabiting separate realms in their households. She and Ned have learned to be partners. Friends. Her father-in-law would be scandalized to know that some of the ideas his son brings to him for their business originate with Wendy. He might drop dead on the spot if he knew Ned takes Mary’s advice as well. If he could see them sitting down to meals all together, or the private jokes Ned and Mary share that even Wendy has no part of…

The thought makes Wendy’s eyes sting, and she blinks rapidly. More secrets. It’s emblematic of her life, it seems. Truths kept from her father-in-law—working side by side with Mary in the privacy of their home, calling her Cook and treating her as a servant under the eyes of anyone else. Teaching Jane to call her Cook as well lest she slip up, no matter how much it hurts Wendy to do so.

And what of Michael and John? Is her reconciliation with them as much of a half-truth as her life with Ned? The breeze blowing from the cream-colored ocean carries a chill suddenly, nipping at her, and Wendy pulls her shawl closer. If John and Michael could return here, would they be happy? Would things be different between the three of them, all the weight of the intervening years melting from their shoulders? Could Michael laugh again, the ghosts slipping from his eyes? Might his shattered leg even heal, letting him run again the way he had as a boy? Might John finally smile without lines of worry crinkling at the corner of his mouth and across his brow?