The Similars (The Similars #1)(73)

“After some sleuthing, I discovered that Seymour lived in Cambridge by his old stomping grounds at Harvard. So, I found a summer film conservatory I could attend in Boston for three weeks. It took some real work to find a program that had a last-minute open slot, but when I did, it was the perfect cover, and it even included housing. My parents were thrilled for me to go.

“Seymour was an odd fellow—reserved, brilliant, socially awkward. He was surprised when I arrived on his doorstep, but he didn’t turn me away. We quickly formed a bond. Seymour liked me. Or maybe just felt guilty about the many years we’d lost. I suppose I was using my uncle, forging a friendship, taking advantage of our familial ties to gather information. I did attend the film program, but during my breaks, my uncle and I met for lunches. I got to ask many questions, but never let on that I thought my father might still be alive.

“I began to feel the pressure of time as my film program was supposed to end, and I was due back home. I arrived early for one of our lunches, which was when I overheard a phone conversation that stopped me in my tracks. I was waiting in my uncle’s living room, studying the stacks of scientific tomes, the strange objects on his shelves. He had various skeletons, glass jars with small preserved creatures inside, and other pickled, unidentified remains. Seymour was in the other room getting his keys and wallet when the phone rang. Among his artifacts, he had a landline. He must have assumed I couldn’t hear him.

“‘I’ve tried to send him home. He isn’t taking my hints,’ Seymour whispered urgently. He went on to tell this person on the other end that I was ‘tough to get rid of.’ That’s how he put it. He wanted me gone, which made me more determined to find out everything he was hiding. I was done not knowing.

“I watched Seymour carefully, how he locked his brownstone by key code. How he enabled and disabled the alarm. I sneaked into his house two days later. I was used to exploring, when you look for things you don’t know you’re trying to find.

“I poked around and discovered a locked box, which used the same code as the alarm, and in it, a binder of documents that held every answer I could have ever needed. It was simple, really, once I saw the fake death certificate. There was even a handwritten receipt tallying what cash had been paid for the forgery, the notary to sign it. I have no idea why my uncle saved all this—maybe to use as blackmail against his brother? Who knows. But whatever the reason, it was clear that John Underwood—my father—had faked his own death and reinvented himself as a new man. Augustus Gravelle.”

Oliver’s hologram pauses. His words linger in the air—that name lingers in the air. Augustus Gravelle. The Similars’ guardian. The man who raised them on Castor Island.

“It was all in that locked box. I had no doubts about the truth of it. It all made perfect sense. Gravelle’s wards—the six Similars he’d been raising from birth—were created using Seymour’s technology. After all, Underwood, I mean, Gravelle, and Seymour are brothers.

“I left town without saying goodbye. I had to go home so my mom wouldn’t get suspicious, but then I knew what I had to do. Travel to my father’s private island. Talk to him. Learn the truth about him, and, ultimately, about me. The rest, as they say, is history.”

The hologram flickers and disappears.

“Come back,” I protest feebly, but I know there’s no point. That’s all Ollie recorded.

I think I’m in shock. I turn to Maude, who must be as stunned as I am. Her guardian is Oliver’s father?

“He died only a few weeks after he recorded this,” I tell her, my voice sounding disconnected, cold. “Oliver, I mean.”

“I know,” Maude says.

“Do you think—”

“He went to see him? To confront Gravelle? Like he said he was planning to?”

I nod.

“Maybe.”

“What did Gravelle do to him?” I whisper. “Hurt him? Threaten him or his family? What?”

“I don’t know, Emma,” Maude says. “We can’t know…”

“Tell me,” I say resolutely. “Is your guardian a good man? Is he evil?”

“I don’t know. Emma, you have to understand—he never let us in. Never let us know him. He is distant. Aloof. He’s intimidating. He has burns across his face…”

My stomach drops. “Burns? What kind of burns?”

“There was a car crash when he was younger. It ended in a blaze. He said as much. That’s probably how he faked his death. Everyone must have assumed he burned along with the car.”

“Did you know who he was? Or suspect?”

“That he and Underwood were one and the same? Of course not. I had no idea before tonight.”

I’m flooded with conflicting thoughts and emotions; I can barely get ahold of them. Oliver, his suicide, his note, the hologram. The fact that he knew Gravelle was his biological father.

“He must have killed himself after he met Gravelle. Which means something that man said or did to him must have been so traumatic, it messed with his head.” I look at my hands. They’re trembling. I feel sick. And yet, I’m so relieved there is some clue to help make sense of Oliver’s death.

“We don’t know that, Emma,” Maude says, fixing her plum around her wrist. “I wish we did, but…”