I’m not your penance, Grayson Hawthorne.I didn’t get the chance to say that out loud before he was talking again—and once he started, it would have taken an act of God to stop him.
“We’d always known her. Mr. and Mrs. Laughlin have been at Hawthorne House for decades. Their daughter and granddaughters used to live in California. The girls came to visit twice a year—once with their parents at Christmastime, and again in the summer, for three weeks, alone. We didn’t see much of them at Christmas, but in the summers, we all played together. It was a bit like summer camp, really. You have camp friends, who you see once a year, who have no place in your ordinary life. That was Emily—and Rebecca. They were so different from the four of us. Skye said it was because they were girls, but I always thought it was because there were only two of them, and Emily came first. She was a force of nature, and their parents were always so worried she’d overexert herself. She was allowed to play cards with us, and other quiet, indoor games—but she wasn’t allowed to roam outside the way we did, or to run.
“She’d get us to bring her things. It became a bit of a tradition. Emily would set us on a hunt, and whoever found what she’d requested—the more unusual and hard to find, the better—won.”
“What did you win?” I asked.
Grayson shrugged. “We’re brothers. We didn’t have to win anything in particular—justwin.”
That tracked. “And then Emily got a heart transplant,” I said. Jameson had told me that much. He’d said that afterward, she wanted tolive.
“Her parents were still protective, but Emily had lived in glass cages long enough. She and Jameson were thirteen. I was fourteen. She’d breeze in for the summers, the consummate daredevil. Rebecca was always after us to be careful, but Emily insisted that her doctors had said that her activity level was only limited by her physical stamina. If shecoulddo it, there was no reason sheshouldn’t. The family moved here permanently when Emily was sixteen. She and Rebecca didn’t live on the estate, the way they had during visits, but my grandfather paid for them to attend private school.”
I saw where this was going. “She wasn’t just a summer camp friend anymore.”
“She was everything,” Grayson said—and he didn’t exactly say it like it was a compliment. “Emily had the entire school eating out of the palm of her hand. Maybe that was our fault.”
Even just being Hawthorne-adjacent changed the way that people looked at you.Thea’s statement came back to me.
“Or maybe,” Grayson continued, “it was just because she wasEm. Too smart, too beautiful, too good at getting what she wanted. She had no fear.”
“She wanted you,” I said. “And Jameson, and she didn’t want to choose.”
“She turned it into a game.” Grayson shook his head. “And God help us, we played. I want to say that it was because we loved her—that it was because ofher, but I don’t even know how much of that was true. There’s nothing more Hawthorne thanwinning.”
Had Emily known that? Used it to her advantage? Had it ever hurt her?
“The thing was…” Grayson choked. “She didn’t just want us. She wanted what we could give her.”
“Money?”
“Experiences,” Grayson replied. “Thrills. Race cars and motorcycles and handling exotic snakes. Parties and clubs and places we weren’t supposed to be. It was a rush—for her and for us.” He paused. “For me,” he corrected. “I don’t know what it was, exactly, for Jamie.”
Jameson broke up with her the night she died.
“One night, I got a call from Emily, late. She said that she was done with Jameson, that all she wanted was me.” Grayson swallowed. “She wanted to celebrate. There’s this place called Devil’s Gate. It’s a cliff overlooking the Gulf—one of the most famous cliff-diving locations in the world.” Grayson angled his head down. “I knew it was a bad idea.”
I tried to form words—any words. “How bad?”
He was breathing heavily now. “When we got there, I headed for one of the lower cliffs. Emily headed for the top. Past the danger signs. Past the warnings. It was the middle of the night. We shouldn’t have been there at all. I didn’t know why she wouldn’t let me wait until morning—not until later, when I realized she’d lied aboutchoosingme.”
Jameson had broken up with her. She’d called Grayson, and she hadn’t been in the mood towait.
“Cliff diving killed her?” I asked.
“No,” Grayson said. “She was fine.Wewere fine. I went to grab our towels, but when I came back… Emily wasn’t even in the water anymore. She was just lying on the shoreline. Dead.” He closed his eyes. “Her heart.”
“You didn’t kill her,” I said.
“The adrenaline did. Or the altitude, the change in pressure.I don’t know.Jameson wouldn’t take her. I shouldn’t have, either.”
She made decisions. She had agency. It wasn’t your job to tell her no.I knew instinctively that no good could come of saying any of that, even if it was true.
“You know what my grandfather told me, after Emily’s funeral?Family first.He said that what happened to Emily wouldn’t have happened if I’d put my family first. If I’d refused to play along, if I’d chosen my brother over her.” Grayson’s vocal cords tensed against his throat, as if he wanted to say something else but couldn’t. Finally, it came. “That’s what this is about. One-zero-one-eight. October eighteenth. The day Emily died. Your birthday. It’s my grandfather’s way of confirming what I already knew, deep down.
“All of this—all of it—is because of me.”
CHAPTER 79
