The Hawthorne Legacy (The Inheritance Games #2)(21)

“Your what?” Xander said immediately.

Grayson stared at me. He was just as capable as any Hawthorne of reading between the lines. Toby was adopted. I’d mentioned my birth certificate. Everyone in this room knew why this search mattered to me now.

“Here’s a picture I took.” I held my phone out to Grayson. “Those are the charities listed in the will your grandfather wrote shortly after Toby’s disappearance.”

Grayson managed to take the phone from me without our fingers so much as brushing. Beside me, I could feel Jameson’s stare, just as palpable as his brother’s.

“There are very few surprises on this list.” Grayson looked up from the phone just in time to catch me watching him read. “Most of these organizations have received regular support—or, at the very least, a sizable onetime donation—from the Hawthorne Foundation.”

I forced myself to pay attention to what Grayson was saying, not the way his silvery eyes settled on mine as he talked. “You said ‘few surprises,’” I pointed out. “Not none.”

“Off the top of my head, I see four organizations that I don’t recognize. That doesn’t mean we haven’t given to them before.…”

“But it’s a start.” Jameson’s voice buzzed with a familiar energy—familiar to me, almost certainly familiar to his brothers.

“The Allport Institute,” Grayson rattled off. “Camden House. Colin’s Way. And the Rockaway Watch Society. Those are the only four organizations on this list that I haven’t seen in the foundation’s records.”

Immediately, my brain started cataloging what Grayson had said, playing with the words and the letters, looking for a pattern. “Institute, house, way, watch,” I tried out loud.

“Watch, house, institute, way.” Jameson scrambled the order.

“Four words,” Xander offered. “And four names. Allport, Camden, Colin, Rockaway.”

Grayson stepped between the two of us and past Jameson—and kept on walking. “I’ll leave you three to it,” he said. Near the doorway, he paused. “But, Jamie? You’re wrong.” And then Grayson said something in a language I deeply suspected was Latin.

Jameson’s eyes flashed, and he responded in the same language.

I glanced at Xander. The youngest Hawthorne’s eyebrows—well, eyebrow, really, since he’d burned the other one off—skyrocketed. He clearly understood what had just been said but volunteered no translation.

Instead, he tugged me toward the doorway—and the SUV parked outside. “Come on.”





CHAPTER 19


On the drive back to Hawthorne House, Jameson, Xander, and I buried ourselves in our phones. I assumed that their missions were the same as mine: to research the four charities that Grayson had identified.

My intuition was that they might not actually be charities, that Tobias Hawthorne might have made them up as part of the puzzle, but a series of internet searches quickly dispelled that theory. The Allport Institute, Camden House, Colin’s Way, and the Rockaway Watch Society were all registered nonprofits. Sorting out the details of each one took longer.

The Allport Institute was a research facility based in Switzerland, dedicated to studying the neuroscience of memory and dementia. I scrolled through the staff page, reading each of the scientists’ bios. Then I clicked on some news coverage about the institute’s latest clinical trials. Short-term memory loss. Dementia. Alzheimer’s. Amnesia.

I sat with that for a moment. Is this a clue? To what? I glanced out the window and caught sight of Jameson’s reflection in the glass. His hair could never quite decide which way to lie, and even caught up in thought, his face was always in motion.

When I finally managed to turn my attention back to my phone, the next search term I typed in wasn’t one of the charities. It was my best approximation of the words that Grayson had said to Jameson back at the foundation.

Est unus ex nobis. Nos defendat eius. As I’d suspected, it was Latin. An online translator told me that it meant It is one of us. We protect it. Jameson’s response, Scio, meant I know. It only took me one more search to realize that the same translation would hold if it was replaced with she. She is one of us. We protect her.

Maybe I should have bristled at that. Three weeks ago, I probably would have, but three weeks ago, I never would have dreamed that they would come to see me as one of them.

That I could be one of them, not just an outsider looking in.

Trying not to let that thought consume me, I forced myself to move on to the next charity on my list. Camden House was an in-patient rehabilitation center for substance abuse and addiction, focused on the “whole person.” The website was full of testimonials. The staff was full of doctors, therapists, and other professionals. The grounds were beautiful.

But the website didn’t provide any answers.

An institute for memory research in Switzerland. An addiction treatment facility in Maine. I thought about the pills and powder that we’d found in Toby’s room. What if Tobias Hawthorne had used his will—and these four charities—to tell a story? Maybe Toby was an addict. Maybe he was a patient at Camden House. As for the Allport Institute…

I didn’t get the chance to finish that thought before we pulled through the gates of the estate. As we wound our way up the long drive, I snuck a look at the boys. Xander was still fixated on his phone, but Jameson was staring straight ahead. The moment we stepped out of the car, he took off.