Page 47 of Peak’s Code

“Eight months from diagnosis to the end.” She hated how broken Peak looked just talking about his grandfather.

“That’s fast,” she said.

“Too fast.” Peak stared toward the closed curtains. “He spent his whole life telling me I was wasting mine. Then, when he got sick, he started telling me he was proud of me.”

“Did you believe him?” she asked.

“No,” he breathed.

“Why not?”

“I thought he was saying it because he knew he was dying.” Maeve understood that too well. Fear made people say things they should have said years earlier.

“Maybe dying made him brave enough to tell the truth,” she said.

Peak looked at her, and for a moment, the sharp edges of his expression softened. “My grandmother said the same thing.”

“She sounds like a smart woman,” she said.

“She was terrifying,” he said.

Maeve laughed softly. “Were you close?” she asked.

“She practically raised me. My mother left when I was young, and Dad worked all the time.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“Don’t be. My grandmother was enough for ten mothers.” The affection in his voice made Maeve ache. Wren had once spoken about her that way. It was as though Maeve had been enough to fill every space in their family. She wondered whether Wren still felt that way or if eighteen months in captivity had changed the love between them. She wondered if her sister blamed her for everything that had happened to her.

Peak’s fingers tightened gently around hers. “Where’d you go?”

Maeve blinked. “What?”

“You disappeared for a second.”

“I was thinking about Wren,” she admitted.

“Good memory or bad one?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” She took a shaky breath. “What if she hates me?”

Peak frowned. “Why would she?”

“Because they took her to punish me.”

“That wasn’t your choice,” he assured.

“I started digging and looking into things that I shouldn’t have,” she said.

“So did she,” he reminded.

“I was older. I should have stopped her.”

“You think she would’ve listened?”

Maeve almost smiled. “No.”

“Then there you go, he said.