The Brothers Hawthorne (The Inheritance Games, #4)(77)

The possibilities and combinations twisted and turned in Jameson’s mind.

The gate to the stone garden was still open. The moment Jameson stepped through, the moment he looked out upon the thousands and thousands of stones that paved the ground, he saw it.

“Leave no…” he started to say.

“… stone unturned,” Avery finished. For a moment, they just stood there, staring out at this massive haystack, contemplating the possibility of one very small needle.

“There are probably a ton of stones in the manor, too,” Avery commented. “The walls of the room we started in were stone.”

Jameson’s hand came to rest on the cast-iron lock. It had been unlocked when they’d gotten here. He turned it around, and there, on the back, he found a message.

HINT: GO BACK TO THE START.





CHAPTER 63





GRAYSON


A single call to Zabrowski was all it took to obtain Kimberly Wright’s address, two towns away.

“Xan and I will wait outside,” Nash told Grayson once they arrived. “I wager we can find a way of entertaining ourselves.”

This was something for Grayson and his sisters to do alone. Now that the truth was out there, the last remains of the barriers he’d erected against thinking of them that way crumbled. The twins were his sisters, regardless of whether or not he was anything to them.

“It’s been a while since we’ve heard from Jamie,” Xander added amiably. “He’s due for some yodeling. Take all the time you need, Gray.”

Grayson exited the SUV, waited for Savannah and Gigi to do the same, and then the three of them made their way up to Kimberly Wright’s front door. A three-foot-tall chain-link fence surrounded the front yard, which was all dirt and weeds, no grass. The house was painted a cheerful yellow that contrasted with the dark metal bars across the windows.

There was a No Solicitors sign on the front door.

Gigi knocked. Two seconds later, Grayson heard a dog barking, and two seconds after that, the door opened, revealing a woman in a ratty floral bathrobe. She used one foot to hold back a dachshund that looked remarkably rotund for the breed.

“That is a very fat dachshund,” Gigi said, her eyes round.

“It’s mostly hair,” the woman in the bathrobe said. “Isn’t that right, Cinnamon?” The dog growled at Grayson and attempted to get its front paws up on the foot that was holding her back.

It failed.

“I’d tell you I don’t want whatever you’re selling,” Kimberly Wright continued, “but you’ve got his eyes.” She was looking at Savannah when she said that, but then she shifted her gaze to Grayson. “You too.”

Gigi offered up a friendly smile. “I’m Gigi. That’s Savannah.”

“I know who you are,” Kim replied gruffly. “Down, Cinnamon.”

Cinnamon, Grayson could not help but notice, was already down.

“And that’s Grayson,” Gigi continued. “Our brother.”

Grayson waited for Savannah to correct her twin, but she didn’t. Our brother.

“Well, don’t just stand there,” Kim said, bending down to pick up Cinnamon—no easy task. “Come in.”





The house was compact: a den to the right of the front door, a kitchen straight ahead, and a short hall to the left, which presumably led to the bedrooms. Kim ushered them into the den.

“I like your recliners,” Gigi said earnestly. There were four of them in a room that wasn’t big enough for much else. On the back of each recliner, there was a crocheted blanket. The blankets matched; the recliners didn’t.

“You’re a smiley one, aren’t you?” Kim asked Gigi.

“I try,” Gigi replied, but the words didn’t come out quite as cheerful as Grayson would have expected. It occurred to him for the first time that maybe Gigi wasn’t just naturally sunny.

Maybe that was a choice.

Their aunt stared at Gigi for a moment. “You look like him, you know. My boy.”

“I know,” Gigi said softly.

Grayson thought about Acacia telling him that the resemblance had endeared Gigi to their father when she was very young, and for reasons he could neither pinpoint nor understand, his heart ached.

This woman was his aunt. Their aunt, and she’d never met a single one of them.

“Are you here to tell me why your father won’t return my calls?” Kim asked bluntly.

Savannah was the first one to summon up a reply to that question. “Dad’s gone.”

Kim’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

“He left on a business trip a year and a half ago and never came back.” Savannah’s voice didn’t waver.

“Did you call the police?” Kim dumped her dachshund on one of the recliners. Cinnamon hopped to the floor with a thud.

“Mom did, back then. But he’s not missing,” Gigi told her aunt. “He left.”

Grayson could hear how saying those words hurt her. Now you believe he left. That should have made Grayson happy. That had been his goal, after all. To keep her—to keep both of them—from questioning that explanation, from getting at the truth.

All I have to do is make sure it stays that way.