Leaving Kensington that morning, the skies had been clear and blue, the winds sharp and biting. She had never expected to see her car covered in four inches of snow by the time she got out of the mall.
With the backseat of her rental filled with bags of presents, she double-checked her list while the ice and snow melted from the windshield.
Deacon was the only one without a gift, and she still wasn’t sure whether or not she was going to get him anything.
He’d barely responded to her texts since he left, and when he did, they were short one-word replies. This past week, it was like he’d fallen off the face of the planet altogether.
But she couldn’t think about that now. It was her first Christmas in Neverland and she was determined to make it memorable.
The heavier the snow became, the more she regretted her decision to drive to Connecticut. But if she wanted to call Lyle, she knew she had to do it far away from Kensington. She turned off the Christmas songs blaring through the speakers and jacked up the heating. Even the windshield wipers on full speed had trouble clearing the chunks of ice and snow splattering the glass as she drove.
Eventually, the weather got so bad, she pulled off the highway to give her bleary eyes a break from the blinding white and to refuel. Rows of Christmas trees filled half of the gas station’s parking lot, and a man wearing a snow-crusted Santa hat huddled inside a shed, waiting for someone—anyone—to buy a tree.
Even though it only took five minutes to fill the car’s tank, Vivienne felt like one of the icicles stuck to the station’s gutters by the time she got inside.
A girl wearing a wilted elf’s hat and tinsel necklace looked up from her phone and smiled.
Vivienne stomped the snow from her boots onto the spongy rug. “Do you know when the snow is supposed to stop?” If it didn’t stop soon, she was going to have to book a hotel for the night.
“Nope.” The girl looked back down at her phone.
Vivienne grabbed a bag of trail mix and two cups of hot chocolate from the machine. She brought them to the counter to pay, then found the rack of prepaid phone cards beside the register. “Do you sell phones too, or just the minute cards?”
The girl dropped her own phone onto her stool. “We have a couple of old phones in the back.”
“I’ll take the cheapest one you have.”
After retrieving the phone, the clerk rang her up. “Do you want to donate five dollars to the Children’s Cancer Research Center?”
“Can I use my card?”
“Yeah. I’ll ring it through as cash back,” she said. The amount on the register’s screen went up by five dollars.
Vivienne inserted her card into the reader and typed in her PIN. When the transaction went through, the clerk handed her a silver angel statue for the donation. The crooked halo on its shiny head reminded her of the first time she’d met Deacon.
She left the gas station with the cherub in her coat pocket and found herself missing Deacon even more.
She left her purchases in the car, then brought the second cup of hot chocolate to the man in the shed. “I can’t believe you’re out here in this.”
“Me either.” The man’s nose and cheeks were the same color as his hat.
“I bought some hot chocolate for you.” She handed him the cup. “If you don’t like it, at least your hands will be warm for a few minutes.”
Cradling the cup between his gloved fingers, he thanked her and told her, “Merry Christmas.”
Back in her car, Vivienne turned up the heat. With Christmas music playing in the background, she called her foster brother.
“Is this going to become some sort of holiday and birthday tradition, Viv?”
Vivienne grabbed a tissue from her purse and wiped the foggy windshield. “How’d you know it was me?”
“No one calls me but Mom, Nick, and Kevin.”
“And me,” she said, crumpling the tissue into a ball and throwing it on the floor.
“And you,” Lyle laughed. “But you don’t call enough. Is there any point in asking where you are?”
She narrowed her eyes at the snowy landscape and the trees for sale. “I’m Christmas shopping.”
“That doesn’t sound very exciting.”
“Why do you think I’m calling you?”
“It’s nice to know you think of me when you’re bored.”
She thought about Lyle all the time. But telling him that wouldn’t help, so she said, “You all set for Christmas?”
“I guess. You know we don’t do a whole lot to celebrate. Mom is working, and Maren is a pit of despair. You were the only saving grace in this place, but you ditched me.”
His accusation made her wince. “Don’t say it like that. I didn’t have a choice.”
“If you say so.”
“Have those guys been back since we talked last?”
“I saw them once in November, but that’s it.”
“Maybe they stopped looking for me.” She flexed her frozen hands in front of the vent.
“Does that mean you’ll come back?”
“No, but it could mean you can come where I am.”
“Which is…?”
She smiled sadly at the snow. “Christmas shopping.”
“Hold on a sec, Maren!” he shouted.
“Do you need to go?”
“Yeah. Miss Despair is yelling for me, and you know what happens if she’s kept waiting. Merry Christmas, Viv.”
“Wait a sec—” But it was too late.
Vivienne dropped the phone on the passenger seat and closed her eyes. Maybe if she met with Paul again and explained that HOOK wasn’t looking for her anymore, he’d fast-track Lyle’s nomination. She’d organize it in January, after the—
The new phone started ringing.
Lyle was calling her back.
“Why’d you hang up—?”
“Hello, Vivienne.”
It wasn’t Lyle.
She moved the phone from her ear and saw the words BLOCKED NUMBER on the screen. “Who is this?”
“Lawrence Hooke, my dear.”
Vivienne’s heart pounded against her rib cage, and she couldn’t . . . couldn’t breathe.
What had she done?
“Before you hang up, hear me out,” he went on. “Despite what you’ve been told about us, we aren’t villains in some fantasy tale.”
Her arms were so itchy, but she couldn’t scratch them beneath all the layers, and oh god . . . What had she done? “I don’t know anything about you.”
“I find that hard to believe since you ran away from home as soon as we showed up.”
“How’d you get this number?” She scanned the parking lot for a place to ditch the phone.
“You’re not the only ones who can tap phones.”
What did that mean? Surely he wasn’t suggesting the PAN tapped phones.
“What do you want?”
“Your parents volunteered to assist us with our research, and I was hoping you’d consider doing the same. We’d prefer you as a willing participant instead of the alternative. All you have to do is come to our office in Virginia for some painless tests and—”
She stabbed the END button, stumbled out of the car, and threw the phone in the trash can outside the gas station’s bathroom.