Page 72 of Losing Wendy
He shakes his head, his blond hair rustling as he does. I suppose I now know why he’s stopped bothering to comb it like he’s an aristocrat. “No. I’m glad you didn’t. It was nice getting to believe something spectacular. That I have a family out there missing me. Thanks for letting me hold onto that just a little bit longer.”
Tears well at my eyes, and he offers me a sad smile.
“Does this mean you can eat onions again?” I tease.
He lets out a startled laugh. “Not a chance,” he says. “Aristocrat or not, it doesn’t change the way they taste.”
Nettle sits with me by the fire for a while. By the time he leaves, I feel as if I’ve given him the last bits of my dwindling energy reserves, he at least leaves smiling.
I’m about to return to my room, when someone speaks.
“Get your coat.”
I spin around, stunned a little by the enthusiasm in the voice. It’s almost as if I expect it to be Simon, though I know better. My eyescheck for me, but there he is, propped against the doorway, his entire body giving off an aura that hums with adventure.
“Pardon me?” I ask, not at all attempting to hide the disinterest in my tone.
“Come on, Wendy Darling,” Peter says, offering me a smirk. “Get your coat.”
My mind buzzes, whiplash overtaking me at the sudden shift in Peter’s mood. Though, I suppose I haven’t seen him since this morning, so it might not be as sudden as it seems. “What for?”
His eyes twinkle with amusement. “It’s a surprise.”
I quietly fold the sketch and tuck it in my pocket. “I’m not sure you and I like the same kinds of surprises.”
I expect hurt to flash in his eyes, but he’s undeterred. “I apologize for being cruel yesterday, Wendy Darling,” he says. “I’m not often challenged in my way of thinking.”
I bite my lip. It’s nice that he’s at least acknowledging what a scoundrel he was yesterday. How unnecessarily cruel.
“I’d rather you not be angry with me forever. We are, after all, doomed to inhabit this same island.”
When I say nothing, Peter shrugs, though not dismissively. “I’ll be at the mouth of the tree,” he says.
I wait for the pounding of his feet to echo into silence down the hallway, my heart racing as I listen for him. I shouldn’t go. Shouldn’t trust the fae, in general. Isn’t that lesson number one in being human? And I especially shouldn’t trust the Shadow Keeper, especially not after how he treated me yesterday.
Then again.
I suppose I dredged up the pain he’d been suppressing. Obviously I could have done nothing about his loss of Freckles, but it’s clear how much he cared about Thomas, how much it pained him to lose both boys. People deal with pain in different ways. Some embrace it, wallowing in it. Others shut it out completely.
Who am I to judge the way Peter handles his grief?
Sure, he could have been kinder about it, but as much as it stings,he wasn’t entirely wrong about my intentions—my insistence that he was grieving incorrectly. Now that I think of it, sitting in the spot where he once shared wonderful memories doesn’t seem like an inappropriate way to treat the boy’s memory.
In a warped way, it makes sense he’d clung to an older pain, the loss of the first boy. I’d learned from the alienist that grief is felt first as denial.
Again, not an excuse for cruelty, but a reason.
And it’s nice to be apologized to.
That’s something my father never quite got down. He was a kind and cheerful man, most always, but on the rare occasion he did treat us unfairly, he never acknowledged as much.
As much as my heart still stings when I think of Peter’s words,I never wanted you, it’s not as if the words are untrue. Not as if I’ve earned his wanting of me or am entitled to it. The simple apology does wonders to soothe the aching.
And besides.
My other option is curling up on my cot and facing nightmares where the devastatingly beautiful captain steals my heart, then makes me slit my parents’ throats.
So I dash down the hall to get my coat before I can convince myself otherwise. I’m grabbing it from where I left it folded on my cot when John speaks up from where he’s sitting in the corner.