The Hawthorne Legacy (The Inheritance Games #2)(59)

Mrs. Laughlin went pale. “Hush,” she ordered, her voice shaking even more than mine had. “You can’t walk around here saying things like that.”

“Toby was your grandson,” I repeated. My throat felt like it was swelling, and my eyes were starting to sting. “And I think he’s my father.”

Mrs. Laughlin’s mouth opened, then twisted, like she’d been on the verge of yelling at me, then run out of air. Both of her hands went to the flour-covered countertop, and she held on to it like what I’d just said was threatening to bring her to her knees.

I took a step toward her. I wanted to reach out, but I didn’t press my luck. Instead, I held out the file I had retrieved from Tobias Hawthorne’s study. Mrs. Laughlin didn’t take it. I wasn’t sure she could.

“Here,” I said.

“No.” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “No, I’m not going to—”

I took a single sheet of paper out of the file. “This is my birth certificate,” I said quietly. “Look at the signature.”

And bless her, she did. I heard a sharp intake of air, and then finally she looked back at me.

My eyes were stinging worse now, but I kept going. I didn’t want to stop, because part of me was terrified about what she might say. “Here are some pictures Tobias Hawthorne had a private detective take of me, shortly before he died.” I laid three photographs out on the counter. Two of me playing chess with Harry, one of the two of us in line for a breakfast sandwich. Toby wasn’t facing the camera in any of them, but I willed Mrs. Laughlin to look at what she could see—his hair, his body, the way he stood. Recognize him.

“That man,” I said, nodding to the pictures. “He showed up right after my mother died. I thought he was homeless. Maybe he was. We played chess in the park every week, sometimes every morning.” I could hear the raw emotion in my own voice. “He and I had this ongoing bet that if I won, he had to let me buy him breakfast, but if he won, I couldn’t even offer. I’m competitive, and I’m good at chess, so I won a lot—but he won more.”

Mrs. Laughlin closed her eyes, but they didn’t stay closed for long, and when she opened them, she stared right at the photographs “That could be anyone,” she said roughly.

I swallowed. “Why do you think Tobias Hawthorne left me his fortune?” I asked quietly.

Mrs. Laughlin’s breath grew ragged. She turned to look at me, and when she did, I saw every emotion I felt mirrored in her eyes—and then some.

“Oh, Tobias,” she whispered. It was the first time I’d ever heard her call her former employer anything but Mr. Hawthorne. “What did you do?”

“We’re still trying to figure it out,” I said, a ball of emotion rising in my throat. “But—”

I never got the chance to finish that sentence, because the next thing I knew, Mrs. Laughlin was hugging me, holding on to me for dear life.





CHAPTER 59


The downside of modular scheduling was that some days, my classes were scheduled so tightly that I barely even had time for lunch. Today was one of those days. I had exactly one mod—twenty-two minutes—to make it to the refectory, buy food, eat it, and haul myself back to the physics lab, across campus.

While I was waiting in line, I got a text from Libby: a photograph, taken out the window of a plane. The ocean below was a brilliant green-blue. The land in the distance was tree-covered. And coming into view amid those trees was what I recognized as the very top of an architectural marvel. The Basílica de Nuestra Se?ora de los ángeles—in Cartago.

I made it to the front of the line and paid. As I sat down to eat, all I could think was that Libby and Nash were landing in Cartago. They would make their way to the house. They would find something. And somehow, the puzzle that Tobias Hawthorne had left first for his daughters—and then for Xander—would start to make sense.

“May I sit?”

I looked up to see Rebecca, and for a moment, I just stared at her. She’d cut her long, dark red hair off at the chin. The ends were uneven, but something about the way it flared out around her face made her look almost otherworldly.

“Sure,” I said. “Knock yourself out.”

Rebecca sat. Without her long hair to hide behind, her eyes looked impossibly large. Her chest rose and fell—a deep breath. “Xander told you,” she said.

“He did,” I replied, and then my sense of empathy got the better of me, because as much of a mind warp as this revelation had been for me, it might have actually been worse for her. “Don’t expect me to start calling you Aunt Rebecca.”

That surprised a laugh out of her. “You sounded like her just then,” she told me after a moment. “Emily.”

That was the exact instant that I realized that if Rebecca was my aunt, then Emily had been, too. I thought about Thea, dressing me up like Emily. I’d never thought we looked anything alike, but when Grayson had seen me coming down the stairs at the charity gala, he’d looked like he’d seen a ghost.

Do I have some Emily in me?

“Was your dad…,” I started to ask Rebecca, but I wasn’t sure how to phrase my question. “How long have your parents been together?”

“Since high school,” Rebecca said.