“Talk,” Zara told me. “You owe me that much, at least.”
All things considered, I probably did, but before I could say a word, a voice spoke up from the doorway. “Wouldn’t you rather hear it from us, Aunt Z?”
All three of us turned to face Jameson. Grayson and Xander stood to his sides. Thus far, Zara had managed to keep her expression schooled into a mix of disdain and calm, but the moment she saw her nephews, that mask wavered.
It was the first time since I’d stepped through the doors of Hawthorne House that it occurred to me that she loved them.
“Please,” Zara said quietly. “Boys. Just tell me about Toby.”
And so they did, taking turns, working their way through the entire story with brutal efficiency. When Grayson told her that Toby was adopted, she drew in a sharp breath but said nothing. She didn’t react again until Xander told her what Rebecca had told him.
“The Laughlins’ daughter…，” Zara trailed off. “She left for college when I was still in elementary school, and she never came back, not until Emily was born, years later.”
I wondered if Zara was imagining, the way I had, how painful this must have been for Rebecca’s mother. I wondered if she was questioning, the way I had, what could have led the Laughlins and her own parents to be so cruel.
“It’s so easy,” Zara murmured, “for all the wrong people to have children.”
Silence hit the room like a semitruck.
Zara was the first to overcome it. “Go on,” she told the boys. “Out with the rest of it. In this family, there’s always a rest of it.”
There was only a little more. Zara already knew about the picture that her father had left for Skye at True North. That left only the fact that, along with that picture, he’d left a blank page of paper, and the fact that the numbers inside her parents’ wedding rings had pointed us to Cartago, where Libby and Nash had found something.
“And what, pray tell, did you find?” Zara asked, and I realized that Libby and Nash had arrived.
Without even meaning to, I took a step toward them. This was it. Everything had been building to this. I felt like I was free-falling at a thousand miles an hour.
“We found my father,” Nash said. “And this.” He held up a small vial filled with purple powder.
“Your father?” I repeated. “Jake Nash?” I thought about the picture of Zara, Skye, and the messy-haired guy.
Nash nodded to Zara. “He asked about you.”
Raw vulnerability flashed across Zara’s features.
“I reckon you loved him,” Nash said quietly.
Zara shook her head. “You don’t understand.”
“You loved him,” Nash repeated. “Skye went after him, and I was the result.” I saw a muscle in Nash’s throat tighten. “Even then,” he said quietly, “you didn’t hate me.”
Zara shook her head. “How could I? It was easy enough to stay away when you were a baby. I got married. I was starting a life of my own. But then you were a little boy. A wonderful little boy, and the newness of it all had worn off for Skye, and you were so lonely because she was never there.”
“But you were,” Nash replied. “For a time. Memory’s a bit hazy, but before Toby died, you used to take care of me.”
“I found Jake,” Zara said quietly. “For you.”
Slowly, the gears in my brain started turning. At the time that Tobias Hawthorne had first rewritten his will—right after Toby had “died”—Zara had been having an affair. Tobias Hawthorne had been aware of it.
“You and Nash’s father?” I said.
“I brought Jake pictures of his son,” Zara replied crisply. “I was working on convincing him to go against my father, to be a part of Nash’s life, but then he disappeared for parts unknown. Cartago, apparently, at what I can only assume was my father’s behest.”
“He’s been the caretaker at the Cartago property ever since,” Nash confirmed. “The old man gave him strict instructions that if you ever came to call, he was to give you this.” Nash nodded again to the vial in his hands. “Took a bit for Libby and me to persuade him to give it to us.”
I looked at the powder in the vial. This was what we needed to decode Skye’s message. This is it. Twenty years ago, Tobias Hawthorne had woven a puzzle to set his daughters on the trail of the truth. That trail had led to a picture from before their relationship had splintered—and to Jake Nash, over whom they’d apparently fought.