The middle name?I typed back.
No.I waited, and a second text came through a full minute later.The sign-off.
My gaze went to the end of Jameson’s letter. Right before the signature, there were two words:Don’t judge.
Don’t judge the Hawthorne patriarch for dying without ever telling his family he was sick? Don’t judge the games he was playing from beyond the grave? Don’t judge the way he had pulled the rug out from underneath his daughters and grandsons?
I looked back at Jameson’s text, then to the letter, and read it again from the beginning.Better the devil you know than the one you don’t—or is it? Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. All that glitters is not gold. Nothing is certain but death and taxes. There but for the grace of God go I.
I imagined being Jameson, getting this letter—wanting answers and being given platitudes instead.Proverbs.My brain supplied the alternate term, and my eyes darted back down to the sign-off. Jameson had thought we were looking for a wordplay or a code. Every line in this letter, barring the proper names, was a proverb or a slight variation thereon.
Every line except one.
Don’t judge.I’d missed most of my old English teacher’s lecture on proverbs, but there was only one I could think of that started with those two words.
Does “Don’t judge a book by its cover” mean anything to you?I asked Jameson.
His reply was immediate.Very good, Heiress.Then, a moment later:It sure as hell does.
CHAPTER 27
We could be making something out of nothing,” I said hours later. Jameson and I stood in the Hawthorne House library, looking up at the shelves circling the room, filled with books from eighteen-foot ceiling to floor.
“Hawthorne-born or Hawthorne-made, there’s always something to be played.” Jameson spoke with a singsong rhythm, like a child skipping rope. But when he brought his gaze down from the shelves to me, there was nothing childlike in his expression. “Everything is something in Hawthorne House.”
Everything,I thought.And everyone.
“Do you know how many times in my life one of my grandfather’s puzzles has sent me to this room?” Jameson turned slowly in a circle. “He’s probably rolling in his grave that it took me this long to see it.”
“What do you think we’re looking for?” I asked.
“What doyouthink we’re looking for, Heiress?” Jameson had a way of making everything sound like it was either a challenge or an invitation.
Or both.
Focus, I told myself. I was here because I wanted answers at least as much as the boy beside me did. “If the clue isa book by its cover,” I said, turning the riddle over in my mind “then I’d guess that we’re looking for either a book or a cover—or maybe a mismatch between the two?”
“A book that doesn’t match its cover?” Jameson’s expression gave no hint of what he thought of that suggestion.
“I could be wrong.”
Jameson’s lips twisted—not quite a smile, not quite a smirk. “Everyone is a little wrong sometimes, Heiress.”
An invitation—and a challenge. I had no intention of beinga little wrong—not with him. The sooner my body remembered that, the better. I physically turned away from Jameson to do a three-sixty, slowly taking in the scope of the room. Just looking up at the shelves felt like standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon. We were completely encircled by books, going up two stories. “There must be thousands of books in here.” Given how big the library was, given how high the shelves went up, if wewerelooking for a book mismatched to its cover sleeve…
“This could take hours,” I said.
Jameson smiled—with teeth this time. “Don’t be ridiculous, Heiress. It could take days.”
We worked in silence. Neither one of us left for dinner. A thrill ran through my body each time I realized that I was holding a first edition. Every once in a while, I’d flip a book open to find it signed. Stephen King. J. K. Rowling. Toni Morrison. Eventually, I managed to stop pausing in awe at what I held in my hands. I lost track of time, lost track of everything except the rhythm of pulling books off shelves and covers off books, replacing the cover, replacing the book. I could hear Jameson working. I could feel him in the room, as we moved through our respective shelves, closer and closer to each other. He’d taken the upper level. I was working down below. Finally, I glanced up to see him right on top of me.
“What if we’re wasting our time?” I asked. My question echoed through the room.
“Time is money, Heiress. You have plenty to waste.”
“Stop calling me that.”
“I have to call you something, and you didn’t seem to appreciate Mystery Girl or the abbreviation thereof.”
