2. Reacquainted

Wendy sets up shop at her grandmother's house and has an accident which leads to an encounter with the boy from her dreams.

At 7:30 AM two days later, the Darling family piled into their SUV and headed onto the expressway for a long drive. Wendy put in her earbuds and listened to music while she stared out the window at the swiftly passing billboards and forests and quarries. Mike and John watched a few DVDs on one of their laptops. They stopped at rest stops to pee and get candy bars and chips from the vending machines and to stretch their legs. 

When it began to get late and Mr. Darling got too tired, they stopped at a motel for the night. 

Wendy and her mom stayed in one room and the boys and her dad stayed in the one adjoining to it. The blankets were scratchy and the air conditioning too cold, but they all slept well. Everyone but Wendy, who stayed up for hours watching meaningless television with the volume turned down very low. 

The next day they made it to Grandma Rose’s estate around 1 in the afternoon. It was a huge, vine-covered house with balconies and big windows and a great glass atrium on the side. The road leading up to it was densely forested, so much so that the light seemed green and unearthly. The whole place had the air of a grand house where expensive people had once lived, but that had somehow gone a bit wrong. The forests that surrounded it were huge, and the brick seemed to crumble in places. 

The gardens were kept, but a tad overgrown, with no particular order or regard for what was planted where. 

The gate was open, and they drove through right up to the front of the house on the circle drive. Grandma Rose was sitting on the porch in a flowery dress with a lacy collar. Tybalt luxuriated on her lap with his eyes slitted open warily. She waved and started to get up. Tybalt leapt across the porch and landed gracefully on the third porch step. He licked one snow-white paw thoughtfully. 

Mr. Darling exited the vehicle first, slamming the door with vigor.

“Mom! You look great!” he shouted. “Kids, go say hello to your grandma.”

Mike and Johnny took ages getting out of the van, messing with their duffel bags and shoving each other. Wendy and her mother approached Grandma Rose as you would approach a sleeping tiger. 

Rose Darling had never truly approved of Mary; She had said she was stifling her children's creativity by moving to such a suburban neighborhood. Mary had been the one to suggest majoring in business to George, George who had originally dreamed of being a painter. Mary was just trying to be practical. You couldn’t raise a family in a studio apartment. You couldn’t feed them on the pathetic checks an artist would receive for selling a piece. 

Rose Darling had lost her husband when her son was just three years old. She had been left with a great deal of money and an enormous house, and so she intended to make good use of them. She filled the shelves with books, encouraged her son to explore the arts, explore the world. Most of all, she wanted him to make beautiful things. She wanted him not to have to die in an office with a stiff suit and tie and a stack of papers in front of him like his father had. 

But along came pretty little housewife-in-training Mary McQueen and changed his course forever. 

Rose had too many good manners to ever say anything to Mary’s face, but her expression and cold demeanor said it all. 

She loved her grandchildren, though she saw them only once or twice a year. Wendy had blossomed since the last time she’d visited, her hair down almost to her waist and her body bearing the proud little curves of a young woman. She was more Darling than McQueen, a fact which pleased Rose. Her delicate heart-shaped face and temperamental mouth hiding slightly overlarge teeth, the ivory skin, the small pointed nose with the almost imperceptible bump in the bridge. All these things were traits from her father’s genes. She was taller and bonier than her mother, with fair hair and long fingers. The only thing that bothered Rose was the shade of Wendy’s eyes. Not green like her mother, not blue-green like the Darling boys, Wendy’s eyes were heavy-lidded and unmistakably violet. 

Rose Darling had only ever seen violet eyes once before, on a little girl whom George had played with who disappeared one summer never to be seen again. 

“Come in, come in! Give your old grandma a hug!” Grandma Rose gave them each a bone-crushing hug, surprisingly strong for a woman in her twilight years. She nodded curtly at Mrs. Darling, who smiled a little uncomfortably. Rose was a slight woman, willowy and graceful the way the Darlings all were, but there was something mischievous about her elfin face, still beautiful at 70. She wore her winter white hair in a long, wild braid down her back and tied with a bit of twine or ribbon or whatever she found laying around. 

Wendy had always thought she’d like to be like Grandma Rose when she was old; self-sufficient, artistic, magical. She was always so much more interesting than Grandma Louise McQueen of the prim sweater sets and graduated pearls. Grandma Louise seemed to be afraid of dirt. And fun. 

Johnny and Mike went barreling through the front door with their bags, guffawing loudly at some joke Mike had told. Instead of wincing at the dirt they had tracked onto the oriental rug in the foyer, Grandma Rose chuckled and said “Boys will be boys, won’t they? Come on, let’s get you all set up in your rooms.” 

The house was just as Wendy had remembered it. The last time she’d come for a visit there she’d been 12, just before they’d moved to Michigan. Three functional floors and a tower study, sprawling porch, many windows letting in the strange greenish light. The original floor and wood detailing were still there, some of the wallpaper the house had been built with too. Supposedly in the 1800s it had belonged to some Irish poet with wild hair and fine features who had had it built so he could write and live in solitude. He and his lover lived there to escape the judging eyes of the nearby town of Sweetwater. His lover, only 16 when they fell in love, died of uncertain circumstances in the house. The poet went mad with grief and became addicted to opium and laudanum and eventually wandered out into the wood and drowned in the lake. 

Wendy always wondered if the poet’s lover’s ghost still lived in the house. Wendy thought that she must; who could leave such a strange, beautiful place? 

It was full of old things, crystal chandeliers and dusty first edition volumes, Hummel figurines and genuine Tiffany windows in the master bedroom. 

“Wendy, you stay in the room at the end of the hall on the second floor, the one with the adjoining bathroom.” Grandma Rose’s smooth voice snapped Wendy out of the daydream she’d been having about the poet and his love. 

Mr. and Mrs. Darling would take the 2nd floor master bedroom, while the boys would use Mr. Darling’s old room since it had bunk beds (which they complained about but loved anyway). The actual master bedroom took up almost all of the 3rd floor and was filled with all sorts of interesting things. The bed was huge but was barely made a dent in the space of the room. Wendy wondered how her grandmother managed to sleep in there all by herself. It seemed vast and lonely. 

Grandma Rose left them all to unpack and get comfortable, singsonging that a late lunch would be served around 4:30. 

A light breeze swept in through the open windows, stirring the curtains and bringing the earthy scent of the wood in with it, and Wendy looked around the room that was to be hers for the next three months. 

After putting her clothes in the dresser and her makeup and toiletries in the bathroom, Wendy plugged her phone charger into the nearly-outdated wall socket and accidentally shocked herself. Swearing, she put the wounded finger in her mouth and sucked gently. There would be a little burn there soon, and the skin had split. 

“Figures,” she sighed before going over to the glass doors to the balcony. From her balcony Wendy could see the backyard and the garden with all the statues. Her grandmother had always called it Medusa’s Garden, knowing that Wendy would ask to hear the story of Medusa. All the statues had seemed so much more special when she thought they were once alive and had been turned to stone. 

From one corner of the garden Wendy saw a figure moving towards the wood. At first she thought it was one of her brothers, but when she really looked she saw that it couldn’t be. This person had dark hair and wore an old green flannel. He moved like an animal, aware of his surroundings and completely sure of himself. 

Wendy felt frozen, as if he would realize she was watching. He was almost ready to disappear into the forest when she heard herself call out. 

“Hey! What are you doing down there?”

Her voice seemed to carry across the whole yard, and the stranger stopped and turned around, looking up and directly at her. 

His dark hair was rumpled and fell almost to his shoulders, and Wendy could see his dark eyes flashing. She knew, even though she couldn’t see, that his mouth was curling up at the ends. Wendy’s breath caught in her throat. She wished she hadn’t opened her big mouth. 

The stranger replied, his voice felt like it was in her ear, intimate though he was far across the yard. 

“You came back, so I came back.” 

And he grinned, flashing white teeth briefly before disappearing into the woods. Wendy found herself leaning over the balcony’s guard rail, trying to see where he had gone. 

“Wait! Who are you?” she cried, feeling desperate. It was too late, though; he had already vanished. 

Wendy went back into her room and sat on the edge of the bed feeling a strange fluttering in her stomach. 

“Great,” she said aloud. “Now I’m hallucinating him too.” 

The first week was rather uneventful; the boys went down to the pond and came back dripping and muddy and grinning, Mr. and Mrs. Darling relaxed and read magazines and worked in the garden with Grandma Rose. Wendy wandered around the house like a ghost, started reading a novel, took two-hour-long baths in the huge clawfoot tub, and tried not to think about the fact that she was losing it. 

One sticky afternoon she felt a little stir-crazy, so she asked her grandmother how far it was into town. 

“Oh, you don’t want to go there. Why don’t you go for a walk in the woods? Take Tybalt with you.” 

She handed Wendy the wriggling cat who had been making a nuisance of himself while Grandma Rose was trying to finish a watercolor, and shooed her out the door. 

Outside it felt less humid, and the sun was hiding behind some clouds and looking like a melted blob of butter. 

Tybalt leapt out of Wendy’s arms and sprinted towards the forest. 

“Hey, come back! S**t--” she cursed as she followed the white cat through ferns and kudzu and closely spaced trees. 

Tybalt managed to stay just out of her reach, close enough so she could follow him but not scoop him back up. 

Suddenly the ground seemed to slip out from under her feet and she lost her balance. 

Wendy landed in a heap on a hard patch of gnarled roots, cracking her shin as she fell. It hurt, white-hot and almost unreal. The blood had rushed so quickly to the spot that she felt that pressure under the skin and the strange sick nausea you feel when you really hurt yourself. 

“S**t.” she hissed, brushing dirt off of her elbows. Looking at her leg, she realized she’d really messed up. It looked slightly warped, the shape was wrong. 

Tybalt had run off and she couldn’t see his white plume of a tail anywhere. Worse, she couldn’t move her leg without a searing pain shooting all the way up to her hip. 

How could this have happened? Only she could manage to trip over some roots and break her leg. 

She patted the pockets of her shorts and realized with a wince that she had left her phone at the house. No one would come looking for her for hours. 

She felt ridiculous, half-lying on the forest floor with damp earth soaking into the seat of her shorts and trying not to cry. 

Wendy didn’t like to cry, but sometimes she would get so frustrated and angry that her throat would tighten and the tears would come anyway. 

She sniffled and wiped at her cheek, leaving a smudge of dirt. The sound of cicadas chirping and birds calling to each other became deafening in the quiet. 

Wendy laid down on the leafy, loamy ground and let the tears slip silently out and pool under her cheek. 

After a few minutes or maybe a few hours, she fell asleep. 

“Hey. Wake up. It’ll be dark soon.” Wendy woke to someone gently shaking her by the shoulders. All of a sudden she snapped out of her dreamy haze and felt frantic, like when you take a nap in the afternoon and wake up when it’s dark and it feels like you missed everything and everyone forgot you. 

The person who was crouched down next to her had disheveled dark hair and dancing eyes the color of expensive brandy. He had high cheekbones and a noticeable jawline, his features of indeterminate ethnic origins. Wendy thought he looked vaguely Native American, or perhaps Latin, but it could have been a little Asian. He may have just been Caucasian with a tan. 

He was exactly how she remembered, though. 

Wendy sat up with a start. 

“Who are you? How did you find me?” She felt like she should be apprehensive of him, crossing her arms protectively over her chest. The thin white babydoll camisole she’d thought was cute earlier now felt too thin and she felt exposed. It was probably ruined anyway from the dirt. 

“I found Tybalt wandering around and was going to bring him back to Rose’s house, but he got away from me. While I was chasing him, I saw you lying here and so I stopped. Almost like he led me to you.” the stranger chuckled. 

He had deep dimples and dark eyebrows that angled upwards from their starting point, making him look more than slightly elfish. 

“How--How do you know my grandmother? And what were you doing in her yard last week?”

“Oh, so you are the granddaughter.” he smirked. “I help out with the garden sometimes, do odd jobs around the house, keep her company. It gets pretty lonely for her living in the middle of the woods all alone.” 

Wendy felt embarrassed for asking. Of course he wasn’t some dream figment boy. He was a townie who helped her grandma. 

She felt her face heating up, like a child who argues and is put in his place. 

“Oh. Duh. Well that makes sense. I’m. . .I’m an idiot. Sorry for. . .” she trailed off, though, remembering what he had said the week before when he was leaving the yard. 

“Wait a minute,” she said, feeling her ire rise again, “that thing you said to me, ‘You came back so I came back’, what the hell is that supposed to mean?” 

He laughed this time, really laughed. It was a sound that reminded Wendy of wind rushing through trees, and running down tall hills. 

He ran a hand through his hair, inadvertently showing off the pronounced widow’s peak of his hairline. 

“You really don’t remember me? Not at all?” he grinned. “Guess all those pirate adventures meant nothing to you, huh?” 

She had a sudden flash of a dark haired little boy and herself running around in the woods, playing at the park, wearing eye-patches and feathered headbands and warpaint. The boy she played with almost everyday since she was a toddler. Up until she---

“Pete?” 

His grin broadened and he looked pleased. 

“You do remember me! I remember when you moved away and I had to start hanging out with boys again. It’s been awhile, hasn’t it?” 

Wendy felt a smile pulling at her own mouth, a pleasant feeling settling in her stomach. No wonder she’d had dreams about him; he’d been her childhood best friend. 

“Yeah. I can’t believe I didn’t recognize you! I mean, you look so. . .you grew up so. . .you’re not a little kid anymore.” she finished lamely. 

She felt all warm and fluttery, and was suddenly very aware of the fact that they were sitting in the middle of a forest and that she had dirt all over her. Pete smiled and looked down like he was shy, even though she knew he wasn’t. 

“Neither are you. You got tall,” he said, glancing at her long legs. “That reminds me, you have a leg that’s most likely broken. Let me get you back to Rose’s. We’ll have plenty of time to catch up later. How long you here for?”

Almost as if on cue, Wendy’s leg started to ache (or maybe she just started noticing it again) and she felt like she wanted to curl up in a soft pile of blankets and never come out. 

“Pretty much the rest of the summer. Which probably won’t be very much fun now. . .” she gestured at her twisted leg. 

Pete stood and brushed the dirt and leaves off his jeans before gently helping her to her feet. 

“I can’t risk you putting pressure on your leg and hurting it more,” he said as she wobbled on her good foot. “I’m gonna have to carry you.” 

Before she could protest, she was in his arms and inexplicably falling asleep again, her cheek against his heart. 

Author's Note

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