“So?”
“You hadn’t been able to run—hadn’t even been able to walk, not really—since the car crash.”
He looks at her uncomprehendingly.
“When Eden fell, she hit her head—that’s why she couldn’t wake up. There was a lot of blood. And somehow it got on you, on your injuries, and it . . . healed you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“There’s something special about Eden’s blood,” she says. She leaves out any mention of magic, of Peter Pan. Jack is a child of New York, not London. He has no interest in fairy tales, and Holly’s always insisted this particular story wasn’t true. “But the help it gives wears off. It doesn’t last forever—only a month or so. You need another infusion of it or you start to fade.”
With a teenager’s self-absorption, he skips over the question of why Eden is different. “What happens if I stop taking it?”
“I don’t know. I swear.” There’s a long pause while Holly weighs what to say. She decides that in this case the truth can only help. “Worst case? There’s a chance you could die. You were injured so badly, the doctors were never certain you would recover.”
She sees it on his face, the knowledge that what she’s been doing has been keeping him alive all these years. And then she sees it harden into something she doesn’t recognize.
“There has to be another choice,” he says. “Something else that would work. A drug. Or therapy. Or maybe I’m really healed after all this time. You don’t know for sure.”
“I don’t think so,” she says gently. “Not the way you’ve been feeling. This is the longest you’ve gone without an injection, and every time you exert yourself, or do something like drink, you get worse. I don’t know what’s going on—maybe, because you’re hitting puberty, your body and how it responds is changing. But the injections aren’t working the way they used to.”
“But I’m fine right now!” And then it’s his turn to pause, and she sees him remember something. He looks at his wrist, rubs it. She follows his glance. There’s nothing there.
“What is it?”
“Nothing.” He shakes his head. “I don’t care. I won’t take it again.”
“Jack . . .”
“You can’t make me. You’ll have to tie me down, keep me in a coma. Then I’d be the way you want. I can’t talk back, I can’t get into trouble.” He looks her right in the eye. “I can’t get hurt. I can’t grow up.”
“Jack!” she says, horrified. “That’s not what I want.”
“Isn’t it?” he says. He lies back down on the bed, turns to face the wall. “Go away. Just go away.” She can’t be sure, but it sounds like he’s crying.
She reaches out a tentative hand. “Jack?”
“LEAVE!”
So she does. She’s barely to the steps when she hears the snick of the lock behind her.
At least she knows where he is, she thinks.
And then it occurs to her—thanks to Jack, she may finally know where her daughter is too.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Holly stands in a dim corner of the open atrium, beneath the soaring glass ceiling. A cool breeze blows off the river, carrying with it the slightest scent of decay. On either side of her are immense sand-colored buildings; in the center is an enormous statue. Holly stares at it and tries to block out all the afternoons she spent here. But as with all of her recent attempts to suppress the past, the task is proving impossible.
Eden told Jack about riding a boat. A pirate ship. Another Neverland echo, like Christopher’s lost boys and pixie dust, but this one might help her find her daughter.
Sheltered enough to be comfortable for Jack, large enough to keep Eden entertained, Holly often brought the children to Hay’s Galleria. As far as a young Eden was concerned, the highlight was always a trip to see The Navigators, the grotesque statue with blank staring eyes. Steampunk sailor, fish, and boat captured in one metal form, stranded in a pool of dark water, dreaming of other voyages as its gears and oars slowly churn. Eden even developed a very American habit of bringing coins to toss into the pool that surrounded it, wishing for something she refused to share.
Holly remembers one trip in particular. She’d parked Jack’s wheelchair in the shade and turned away from Eden for a moment to fuss over him. When she’d turned round, Eden had hopped over the rail and was standing on the statue’s long broad skull, trying to clamber upward, giving Holly and several other bystanders a heart attack.