Darling Girl

by Liz Michalski

How will Jack survive if his sister is gone?

Once the forbidden fruit has been tasted, there’s no going back to paradise. For anyone. Even Peter Pan, it seems. Innocence, once lost, is impossible to regain. All the stories say so.

Maybe the line between the real world and the magical one isn’t quite as solid as she thinks.

“You know,” she finally says, looking down at her hands, “in the stories, it’s always the children who fly off and have adventures. The mothers have to stay home and wait for them to return.” She looks up. “I’m tired of waiting.”

Robert is stored so tightly in her heart that if she mentions him, it will split and crack her in half. She’ll never be able to go on.

Holly doesn’t mention that Peter must have another source besides Eden for the protein. She’s sure Christopher has thought of that.

Other kids .ed

The way I see it, the ones who feel sorry for themselves don’t survive. Not with any kind of life to speak of.

Children always go back to their mothers. They choose them over Peter every single time. And mothers always choose their children.”

I learned long ago that if you wish to keep your loved ones close, you need to let them leave.”

“I’m not saying it will be okay,” he says, pulling back. “I’m saying you’ll get through it.”

“He was always the one, the guardian all along. But you know that now, don’t you?”

But no one in Neverland ever really dies, not really. They just turn up in a different place, she says.”

“Sometimes it’s easier to remember sorrow than joy,” Holly says. “Sorrow doesn’t hurt as much.”

“To the Darling women. The stars are not only above us, they are in us. May we shine brightly, dream deeply, and fly high all on our own. I am terribly proud to know you both, my darlings,”

The only gift she can give her daughter is the hardest one of all—that of letting go.

But then she thinks of Jane, always chasing the next wonderful thing, when so many wonderful things were right in front of her.

“Bell said to tell you, do you know that place between sleep and awake? The place where you can still remember dreaming?” Eden says. She’s clutching the photo of herself tightly in her hand. “That’s where I’ll be every night.”