I thought of the letter that Tobias Hawthorne had left me—two words, no explanation.
“Your grandfather was a piece of work,” I told Xander.
He picked up a fourth scone. “I agree. In his honor, I eat this scone.” He did just that. “Want me to show you to your rooms now?”
There’s got to be a catch here.Xander Hawthorne had to be more than he appeared. “Just point me in the right direction,” I told him.
“About that…” The youngest Hawthorne brother made a face. “There’s a chance that Hawthorne House is just a tiny bit hard to navigate. Imagine, if you will, that a labyrinth had a baby with Where’s Waldo?, only Waldo is your rooms.”
I attempted to translate that ridiculous sentence. “Hawthorne House has an unconventional layout.”
Xander did away with a fifth and final scone. “Has anyone ever told you that you have a way with words?”
“Hawthorne House is the largest privately owned residential home in the state of Texas.” Xander led me up a staircase. “I could give you a number for square footage, but it would only be an estimate. The thing that truly separates Hawthorne House from other obscenely large, castle-like structures isn’t so much its size as its nature. My grandfather added at least one new room or wing every year. Imagine, if you will, that an M. C. Escher drawing conceived a child with Leonardo da Vinci’s most masterful designs.…”
“Stop,” I ordered. “New rule: You’re no longer allowed to use any terminology for baby-making when describing this house or its occupants—including yourself.”
Xander brought a hand melodramatically to his chest. “Harsh.”
I shrugged. “My house, my rules.”
He gawked at me. I couldn’t believe I’d said it, either, but there was something about Xander Hawthorne that made me feel like I didn’t have to apologize for my own existence.
“Too soon?” I asked.
“I’m a Hawthorne.” Xander gave me his most dignified look. “It’s never too soon to start trash-talking.” He resumed playing the tour guide. “Now, as I was saying, the East Wing is actually the Northeast Wing, located on the second floor. If you get lost, just look for the old man.” Xander nodded toward a portrait on the wall. “This was his wing, these last few months.”
I’d seen pictures of Tobias Hawthorne online, but once I looked at the portrait, I couldn’t look away. He had silver-gray hair and a face more weather-worn than I’d realized. His eyes were Grayson’s, almost exactly, his build Jameson’s, his chin Nash’s. If I hadn’t seen Xander in motion, I might not have recognized a resemblance between him and the old man at all, but it was there in the way Tobias Hawthorne’s features pulled together—not the eyes or nose or mouth, but something about the shape in between.
“I never even met him.” I tore my eyes from the portrait and looked at Xander. “I’d remember if I had.”
“Are you sure?” Xander asked me.
I found myself looking back at the portrait.HadI ever met the billionaire? Had our paths crossed, even for a moment? My mind was blank, except for one phrase, looping through over and over again.I’m sorry.
CHAPTER 18
Xander left me to explore my wing.
My wing.I felt ridiculous even thinking the words.In my mansion.The first four doors led to suites, each of them sized to make a king bed look tiny. The closets could have doubled as bedrooms. And thebathrooms! Showers with built-in seats and aminimumof three different showerheads apiece. Gargantuan bathtubs that came with control panels. Televisions inlaid in every mirror.
Dazed, I made my way to the fifth and final door on my hall.Not a bedroom, I realized when I opened it.An office.Enormous leather chairs—six of them—sat in a horseshoe shape, facing a balcony. Glass display shelves lined the walls. Evenly spaced on the shelves were items that looked like they belonged in a museum—geodes, antique weaponry, statues of onyx and stone. Opposite the balcony, at the back of the room, was a desk. As I got closer, I saw a large bronze compass built into its surface. I trailed my fingers over the compass. It turned—northwest—and a compartment in the desk popped open.
This wing was where Tobias Hawthorne spent his last few months, I thought. Suddenly, I didn’t just want to look in the open compartment—I wanted to rifle through every drawer in Tobias Hawthorne’s desk. There had to be something, somewhere, that could tell me what he was thinking—why I was here, why he’d pushed his family aside for me. Had I done something to impress him? Did he see something in me?
Or Mom?
I got a closer look at the opened compartment. Inside, there were deep grooves, carved in the shape of the letterT. I ran my fingers across the grooves. Nothing happened. I tested the rest of the drawers. Locked.
Behind the desk, there were shelves filled with plaques and trophies. I walked toward them. The first plaque had the wordsUnited States of Americaengraved on a gold background; underneath them, there was a seal. It took a little more reading of the smaller print for me to realize that it was a patent—and not one issued to Tobias Hawthorne.
This patent was held by Xander.
There were at least a half dozen other patents on the wall, several world records, and trophies in every shape imaginable. A bronze bull rider. A surfboard. A sword. There were medals. Multiple black belts. Championship cups—some of themnationalchampionships—for everything from motocross to swimming to pinball. There was a series of four framed comic books—superheroes I recognized, the kind they made movies about—authored by the four Hawthorne grandsons. A coffee table book of photographs bore Grayson’s name on the spine.
This wasn’t just a display. It was practically ashrine—Tobias Hawthorne’s ode to his four extraordinary grandsons. This made no sense. It didn’t make sense that any four people—three of them teenagers—could have achieved this much, and it definitely didn’t make sense that the man who’d kept this display in his office had decided thatnoneof them deserved to inherit his fortune.
Even if youthoughtthat you’d manipulated our grandfather into this, I could hear Xander saying,I guarantee that he’d be the one manipulating you.
