“Are you feeling okay?” Wendy asked, a small laugh escaping her.
“I feel fine,” Mrs. Darling said. She gave Wendy another smile at she stirred the eggs again. “I feel really good, actually. I slept so well last night. I hardly remember what a good night’s sleep feels like.”
Peter.
Wendy snatched a piece of toast and took a huge bite. With a big yawn, Wendy slumped into a chair at the small dining table and watched her mother as she cooked. How strange it was to see her like this, so conventional and domestic. It was unsettling, but more … surprising, even a bit nice. There was a weird buzz in Wendy’s head that she couldn’t quite define, something like a rush of excitement and a soothing warmth.
Wendy shook her head and took another large bite of toast. Her mother cooking breakfast really shouldn’t make her feel so sentimental, but here she was, looking away to ease the squeezing feeling in her chest.
Unfortunately, the television was the closest point of distraction. And, again, the news was on. The same pictures of Benjamin Lane, Ashley Ford, Alex Forestay, and now Joel and Matthew Davies were grouped together over footage of volunteers and officers trekking through the woods.
The large bite of toast in her mouth was dry and stuck in Wendy’s throat as she tried to swallow. She stared at the images, letting them wash her with guilt. She needed to do something. She needed to get them back. It wasn’t just her brothers who were relying on her. If Wendy failed, there were dozens of people whose lives would be destroyed. Not just the missing kids, but their friends and especially their families. Wendy would not have wished the unrelenting suffering and gradual destruction of losing a loved one—of not knowing what became of them, helpless to get them back—on her worst enemy.
She didn’t want others to go through what had been done to her family. It was because of Wendy that her family had been pulled apart, that her parents had lost their sons and been haunted by it for the past several years. She wouldn’t be the reason that loss and suffering spread to others. She would fix what had happened. She would find her brothers, and the other missing children, and she would bring them back. Failure was not an option.
The television screen went black. Wendy blinked up at her mother as she set the remote on the table, and then a plate of burned eggs in front of Wendy. Her eyes stung as she watched her mother sit in the chair beside her. The small, sad smile had returned.
With effort, she swallowed down the toast, but it did little to relieve the tightness in her throat. “I just wish I could help—I wish I could remember.” The words were strained, toppling from Wendy’s mouth before she could think better of it.
The smallest flinch crossed her mother’s delicate features.
Wendy swallowed hard again. “If I could remember what happened, I could help, we could find John and Michael—” Her voice wouldn’t let her continue as the tremor in her chest stirred.
Wendy’s mother let out a gentle sigh, a soft melodic sound, like the start of a lullaby. “Oh, darling,” she said, her eyebrows tipped with worry.
Wendy sucked in her lips between her teeth. How ridiculous was she? To be ruining a good morning with an outburst like that? Heat flared in her cheeks. She was embarrassed to be acting like this in front of her mother, who probably thought Wendy was on the verge of another mental breakdown. It wasn’t fair of her to be even more of a burden with everything else that was going on.
“The mind is a complicated thing,” Mrs. Darling said, considering her words as she spoke. “Sometimes it acts on its own, and quite often it controls us against our will. And I think, sometimes…” she said as she reached out and tucked a bit of Wendy’s short hair behind her ear. The light brush of her cold fingertips against Wendy’s cheek was fleeting but electric. “It takes us away, maybe not when we want it, but when we need it.”
Wendy thought of her mother sleeping, of the dreams and nightmares her mind used to pull her through at night. Of what happened in her subconscious that made her talk in her sleep, and then of Peter, coaxing her through the worst of it. How her mother’s pained expression had relaxed into one of peace.
Wendy sniffled noisily as she dragged the back of her hand across her nose.
Her mother’s hands had retreated back to her lap. “You should eat before it gets cold,” she told Wendy after a long pause.
Taking a large bite of burned eggs was the only response Wendy could come up with. It was bitter, but not terrible. She wouldn’t mind eating a bit of charred food every meal if her mother made it.