The Hawthorne Legacy (The Inheritance Games #2)(58)

“Seriously?” Xander wheezed. “You’re playing strip bowling without me? Never mind. Focus! This is me focusing.”

“Focusing on what?” I asked.

“I have news,” Xander blurted out.

“What kind of news?” Max asked. Xander glanced toward her. He definitely noticed the polka-dotted bra.

“Focus,” Max reminded him. “What kind of news?”

“Is Rebecca okay?” Jameson asked, and I remembered Xander’s conversation with Thea.

“For some values of okay,” Xander said. That sentence made sense to no one except Xander, but he plowed on. “Thea was right. Rebecca’s mom is having a rough day. There was vodka involved. She told Rebecca something.”

“What kind of something?” Jameson took his turn trying to prompt Xander into spilling. Jameson’s pants were still in place, but the top button had been undone.

Okay, now I need to focus.

“Avery, do you remember what Rebecca’s mom said at the fundraiser, about all of her babies dying?”

“Nash said there were miscarriages,” I said quietly. “Before Rebecca.”

“That’s what Bex thought she meant, too,” Xander said quietly.

“But it wasn’t?” I stared at him, having no idea whatsoever where this was going.

“She was talking about Emily,” Grayson said, his voice pained.

“Emily,” Xander confirmed. “And Toby.”

I felt the world slow down around me. “What are you talking about?”

“Toby was a Laughlin.” Xander swallowed. “Rebecca didn’t know. No one did. Her parents were forty when they had Emily, but twenty-five years earlier—for the math-minded among us, that would be forty-two years ago—when Rebecca’s mom was a teenager living in Wayback Cottage…”

“She got pregnant.” Jameson stated the obvious.

“And Mr. and Mrs. Laughlin covered it up?” Grayson was intent on getting answers. “Why?”

Xander raised his shoulders up as high as they would go, then let them fall in the world’s most elaborate shrug. “Rebecca’s mom wouldn’t explain—but she did rant to Bex, at length, about the fact that when one of the Hawthorne daughters got pregnant years later, she didn’t have to hide her pregnancy. She got to keep her baby.”

Skye hadn’t been forced to put Nash up for adoption. I remembered what Rebecca’s mother had said to Libby at the fundraiser. Never trust a Hawthorne. They take everything.

“Did Rebecca’s mom want to keep her baby?” I asked, horrified. “Did they make her give him away? And why would they force her to hide the pregnancy?”

“I don’t know the details,” Xander said, “but according to Rebecca, her mother wasn’t even told that the Hawthornes were the ones adopting the baby. She thought that our grandmother really was pregnant with a little boy, and that her own baby was adopted by a stranger.”

That was horrifying. That’s why they kept Toby’s adoption a secret? So she wouldn’t know her baby was right there?

“But as Toby grew up…” Xander shrugged again, the motion understated this time.

“She figured it out?” I imagined giving up a baby and then realizing that a child you’d seen grow up was yours.

I imagined being Toby and discovering this secret.

“Rebecca’s been forbidden from seeing any of us.” Xander grimaced. “Her mom said that the Hawthorne family takes and takes. She said that we don’t play by any rules and don’t care who we hurt. She blames our family for Toby’s death.”

“And Emily’s,” Grayson added roughly.

“For all of it.” Xander sat down, right where he was standing. The room went quiet. Max and Jameson weren’t wearing shirts, I was down one shoe, I knew instinctively that our game of strip bowling was over, and none of it mattered, because all I could think was that Rebecca’s mom thought Toby was dead.

And so did Mr. and Mrs. Laughlin.





CHAPTER 58


The next day, before school, I went to find Mrs. Laughlin. I located her in the kitchen and asked Eli to give us a moment. The most he would give me was six or seven extra feet.

Mrs. Laughlin was kneading dough. She saw me out of the corner of her eye and kneaded harder. “What can I do for you?” she asked tersely.

I braced myself because I was almost certain this wasn’t going to go well. I probably should have just kept my mouth shut, but I’d spent most of the night thinking that if Rebecca’s mom was Toby’s mom, then the Laughlins hadn’t just watched Toby grow up. They hadn’t just loved him because he was lovable.

He was their grandson. And that makes me…

I pressed my lips together, then decided that the best way to rip a bandage off was quickly. “I need to talk to you about Toby.” I kept my voice low.

Wham. Mrs. Laughlin picked the dough up and expertly slammed it back down, then wiped her hands on her apron and whipped her head to look directly at me. “Listen to me, little miss. You may own this House. You may be richer than sin. You could own the sun for all I care, but I will not let you hurt everyone who loved that boy by dredging this up and—”

“He was your grandson.” My voice shook. “Your daughter got pregnant. You hid it, and the Hawthornes adopted the baby.”