Page 59 of Darling

“I’m sorry. I think you just needed to; it’s been a long time for you, hasn’t it?” Wendy asked softly. “I’m sorry for trivializing what you do. I didn’t understand why you did it, I didn’t know…”

Tinkerbelle allowed Peter to rest his head on her shoulder. She curled an arm around his back and held him tight as he sniffled into the side of her neck. She rocked him back and forth and made soft hushing noises. Peter let her move him gently until she had rocked him almost ninety degrees in a semicircle, until Peter’s wet, accusatory eyes were no longer facing Wendy.

Tinkerbelle hushed gently at him for a second more, then looked directly at Wendy over Peter’s head and nodded. Wendy nodded back and gave Tinkerbelle a quick thumbs up. Tinkerbelle nuzzled into the side of Peter’s head in faux reassurance and rolled her eyes.

“It’s different for Wendy,” Tinkerbelle explained, gentle like she was talking to a child. “You have to put yourself in her shoes, Peter. She’s waited so long to see you—you’re practically a celebrity to her. There was no way she could have had the right context for our lives and there’s no way she would have known how much this means to you. It’s not fair to stay angry at her if she didn’t do any of it on purpose. Right?”

Peter nodded into the curve of Tinkerbelle’s neck, but didn’t lift his head.

“I’m sure a smart, kind girl like Wendy would be willing to try, though?” Tinkerbelle asked. “You remember how happy Slightly was that she liked his soup and Curly was when she loved his bread?”

“I remember,” Peter said, his words muffled by Tinkerbelle’s skin.

“The boys like her so much. If anyone would understand, it’s Wendy, but you have to give her a chance to try.”

Peter sobbed into Tinkerbelle’s shoulder and said something hysterically that Wendy couldn’t make out.

Tinkerbelle hushed him again sweetly and held him tighter. “I know, Peter, I know. But sometimes people don’t mean to hurt people. Wendy already apologized to me, and I accepted her apology. It was a mistake. You make mistakes sometimes, too. How would you feel if someone didn’t accept your apology?”

Wendy watched with no small amount of horror and amazement as Tinkerbelle masterfully manipulated Peter in his regressive state.

“We could have a home together with her,” Tinkerbelle said tenderly, stroking the side of Peter’s cheek. “She came to you all on her own, just like Curly, and she wants to stay with you—she said so herself. You are so lucky, Peter. Don’t waste this opportunity; it’s like she was practically made for you.”

Tinkerbelle locked eyes with Wendy again and gave a small, helpless shrug. Wendy waved her hand in forgiveness. It was a creepy thing to say, but none of this conversation could possibly be taken seriously between them. Wendy vaguely wondered where the police were and if Curly and Nibs were perched nearby and able to see them.

Peter seemed to be calming down. He nodded one last time into Tinkerbelle’s neck and pulled his face up, then he turned and reached out a hand for Wendy to take.

“I will take you to see James, but you have to promise you won’t leave like he did. If you make Slightly, Curly, Nibs, and the rest like you and then you leave us, it wouldn’t be fair,” Peter said, his voice rough.

Wendy noticed that he didn’t say that he would kill her for it, but that was hardly a relief.

“I know,” Wendy said carefully. “I won’t.”

Peter stepped out of the alley and began to lead Tinkerbelle and Wendy toward the train station. “You don’t have to live with us if you don’t want,” Peter said gingerly. “Your parents clearly love you. But I know the littler ones would like to see you again, and you can’t go in and out of their lives recklessly. It hurts them.”

The cognitive dissonance between watching Peter desperately weeping and needing to be comforted like a child and having him dropping childhood developmental psychology tips like he was an authority on what children need was dizzying. Something inside this man was incredibly broken. He was just thousands of shards of what he may have been in his past, taped haphazardly together, all his sharp edges rubbing and grinding against each other. It would be sad if it wasn’t simultaneously activating her fight-or-flight instinct.

The night was still dark, but Wendy could tell that it was getting late enough for the sky to start shifting. The wind had picked up, like it was getting ready to rain, and the dress Wendy borrowed from Tinkerbelle was no longer enough to keep her warm. She tried to suppress a shiver, but Peter noticed immediately.

He let go of her hand, took his gray jacket off, and draped it over her shoulders. “Be careful with it. Don’t let anything fall out of the pockets,” Peter said quietly.

Tinkerbelle looked shocked behind him, but quickly fixed her face when he grabbed both of their hands and started walking again.

It would have been too conspicuous to dig around inside the jacket, but Wendy could feel things inside it that she hadn’t been aware of back when she was angrily sewing his sleeve back on, objects sewn into the linings of the cuffs and the bottom of the jacket that scraped against her as she moved. It was heavier than it looked, concentrated mostly on the left front, where it would be quick to slip a hand inside. A magic jacket, indeed. Wendy was warm, but at what cost?

Peter turned them down a residential street, and they traded the comfort of the main road for darkness. They crept along the side of the elevated train tracks, shadowed by trees and the high wall that separated the train from the grass.

“I don’t bury anyone. It doesn’t feel right to hide them, to keep them from the sunshine,” Peter admitted. “It helps with forensics, as well. You can never make a scene clean enough, but if you leave it messy, things get muddled, so there’ll be questions.”

“How ma—” Wendy started, but Tinkerbelle shook her head hard, so Wendy shifted direction. “How close are we going to get to him?”

Peter hummed and considered it. “Close enough to see, and that’s it. I don’t disturb the bodies; it feels disrespectful.”

It! Feels! Disrespectful?! Wendy wanted to scream. This line, specifically, would be going right into the mental box where she was planning to keep her trauma regarding this forever.

They were getting farther from the main road, and Wendy was beginning to worry about whether the police would be able to swarm down on him like she’d been hoping. She hadn’t heard any helicopters, and there weren’t a lot of places to park. If they were coming for him, they’d have to drive into the grass. At the very least, what Peter had said was pretty close to a confession, so if they couldn’t arrest him tonight, maybe they could take him in for questioning tomorrow.

Peter stopped walking. He held out an arm to block Wendy from getting too close.