“She was pregnant. Forecasts were calling for a hurricane. And she was alone. I was going to stay away. She was never supposed to know that I was there, but then the power went out—and she went into labor.”
With me. I couldn’t say that out loud, couldn’t say anything, couldn’t even tell him that my mother had been capable of making decisions for herself.
“The ambulance didn’t make it in time,” Toby said, his voice growing hoarse. “She needed someone.”
“You.” I managed one word this time—just one.
“I brought you into this world, Avery Kylie Grambs.”
There it was. My mother’s secret. Toby was there the night I was born. He’d delivered me. I wondered what my mom had felt, seeing him again after years. I wondered if he’d called her Hannah, O Hannah, and if she’d tried to make him stay.
“Avery Kylie Grambs.” I repeated the last words Toby had said to me. There was something about the way he’d said my full name. “It’s an anagram.” I swallowed again, and for some reason, whatever force had been holding back my tears gave way. “But you knew that.”
Toby didn’t deny it. “Your mom had a middle name all picked out. Kylie—like Kaylie but minus a letter.”
That hit me hard. I’d never known that I was named after my mother’s sister. I’d never known about Kaylie at all.
“Hannah was set on giving you Ricky’s last name,” Toby continued. “But she didn’t like the first name he’d picked out.”
Natasha. “Ricky wasn’t there.” I blinked back tears and stared at Toby. “You were.”
“Something Kylie Grambs.” Toby smiled and gave a little shrug. “I couldn’t resist.”
He was a Hawthorne. He loved puzzles and riddles and codes. “You chose my name.” I didn’t phrase it as a question. “You suggested Avery.”
“A Very Risky Gamble.” Toby looked down. “What I took that night. What Hannah took when she nursed me back to life, knowing what her family would do to her if they found out.”
A Very Risky Gamble—the reason Tobias Hawthorne had left me his fortune. Had he recognized his son’s fingerprints all over that name? Had he suspected, from the moment he heard it, that I was a link to Toby?
“When the ambulance got there, I disappeared,” Toby continued. “I snuck into the hospital one last time to see you both.”
“You signed the birth certificate,” I said.
“With your father’s name, not mine. It was the least he owed her.”
“And then you left.” I stared at him, trying not to hate him for that.
“I had to.”
Something like fury rose up inside me. “No, you didn’t.” My mom had loved him. She’d spent her entire life loving him, and I’d never even known.
“You have to understand. My father’s resources were unlimited. He never stopped looking for me. I had to stay on the move if I wanted to stay dead.”
I thought about Tobias Hawthorne, eating at a hole-in-the-wall diner in New Castle, Connecticut. Had it taken him six years to track Toby there?
Had he thought his son would come back?
Had he realized who my mother was?
Had he thought, even for a moment, that I was Toby’s?
“What are you going to do now?” I asked, my voice like sandpaper in my throat. “The world knows you’re alive. Your father is dead. As far as we know, Sheffield Grayson was the only person who realized the old man had buried the police report about Hawthorne Island. He’s the only one who knew—”
“I know what you’re thinking, Avery.” Toby’s eyes hardened. “But I can’t come back. I promised myself a long time ago that I would never forget what I did, that I would never move on. Hannah wouldn’t let me turn myself in, but exile is what I deserved.”
“What about what other people deserve?” I asked vehemently. “Did my mother deserve to die without you there? Did she deserve to spend my entire life in love with a ghost?”
“Hannah deserved the world.”
“So why didn’t you give it to her?” I asked. “Why was punishing yourself more important than what she wanted?”
Why was it more important than what I wanted now?
“I don’t expect you to understand,” Toby told me gently—more gently than he’d ever spoken to me as Harry.
“I do understand,” I said. “You’re not staying gone because you have to. You’re making a choice, and it’s selfish.” I thought about Mr. and Mrs. Laughlin, about Rebecca’s mother. “What gives you the right to deceive the people who love you? To make that kind of decision for everyone else?”