He didn’t get to hurt. He didn’t get to take risks or ignore potential consequences or dwell on the fact that the father he’d been certain despised him had collected pictures of him, saving them all these years.
What does it matter? He’s dead now.
Grayson switched lanes, then switched again, and the next thing he knew, he’d pulled the car onto the shoulder of the road. He managed to turn off the engine, but his other hand was still gripping the wheel.
Grayson leaned over it, breaths wracking his body like brutal, rib-breaking punches.
And then his phone rang, and somehow, he managed to drop the wheel. He answered with his eyes closed. “Hello.”
“What’s wrong?” Nan. Grayson could practically feel his great-grandmother jabbing him with her cane as she issued that question like a demand.
“Nothing is wrong.” Say it. Believe it. Make it so.
“Young man, have you developed the notion that lying to me is a good idea?” Nan retorted. “Of course something is wrong! You said hello.”
Grayson scowled. “I say hello!”
“And now you’re yelling,” Nan grunted, and Grayson could hear her canny eyes narrowing. “Xander was right.”
Grayson’s own eyes narrowed in response. “What exactly did Xander tell you?”
“Hmmmph,” Nan replied. Grayson knew her well enough to know that was her response—and all the answer he was going to get.
Note to self, Grayson thought, kill Xander. The thought, like Nan’s harrumphing, was familiar, and that familiarity let him breathe. Breathing let him focus. “Is everything okay?”
Nan wasn’t exactly in the habit of calling up to chat.
“Did I give you permission to worry about me?” Nan harrumphed again. “I’m not the one who answered the phone sounding like that. What happened to you, boy?”
Grayson thought about the briefcase, the photographs, what-if, Gigi, Savannah. He thought about Acacia, about Skye, about Sheffield Grayson. “Nothing.”
Nan made it very clear what she thought of that response: “Bah.”
Grayson felt his eyes close again. “Did Skye ever take pictures of us when we were young?” The question came out hoarse. “Of me?”
“When it suited her.” Nan’s tone made it clear what she thought of that. Skye had flitted in and out of her sons’ lives. Anything she did was because it suited her.
“Would she have sent any of those pictures to my biological father?” Grayson wasn’t sure why he was even asking. Skye hadn’t been present for most of the photos he’d seen. Why would it even matter if she’d sent Sheffield Grayson a picture or two?
“I don’t believe so.” Nan’s tone gentled. “Come home, boy.”
Home. Grayson thought about Hawthorne House. About his brothers. He tilted his head back into the headrest, his Adam’s apple and trachea pulling tight against the skin of his throat. He gave himself a moment—just one—and then tilted his head back down. “Nash gave me the ring you gave him.” Grayson wasn’t sure why he was even saying the words. “For safe-keeping.”
“Hmmmm.” In Nan-talk, that was a decidedly different response than hmmmph. “Ask me how my day’s going,” she ordered abruptly.
Grayson’s instincts flared. She’d definitely called for a reason. “How is your day going, Nan?”
“Abominably! I’ve spent far too much time with those files of your grandfather’s.”
The List, Grayson thought. The files that the old man had kept on the people he’d wronged. Suddenly, Xander’s assertion that he had “connections” at Hawthorne House was a lot clearer. “Xander asked you to go through the List.”
“He told me what you’re looking for.”
My father shot and killed himself when I was four years old, a girl’s voice said in Grayson’s memory. “You found it?” he asked Nan. “Found him?”
“What do you take me for, boy? Of course I found him.”
A Hawthorne did this. “What did the old man do?” Grayson asked, his voice low.
“Bought a minority stake in this individual’s only patent.”
“What was the patent for?” Grayson pressed.
“File didn’t say. Didn’t list a number, either.”
Grayson took that in. “Was there anything else?”
“A receipt. Your grandfather had flowers sent to the man’s funeral. Bit sentimental for Tobias, if you ask me.”