I waited for Libby and Nash in Tobias Hawthorne’s study and requested that security allow Grayson, Jameson, and Xander to come back. I texted the boys to meet me, then waited, alone but for Oren, who stood no more than six feet away. I was jittery and on edge. Why did it take Libby so long to text me back? What did they find in Cartago?
“Avery, get behind me.” Oren stepped forward, drawing his gun. I had no idea why until I followed his line of vision to the display case on the back wall, the one that housed shelves and shelves of Hawthorne trophies. The wall was moving, rotating toward us.
I moved behind Oren. He took a step forward and called out to the person behind the wall. “Identify yourself. I have a gun.”
“So do I.” Zara Hawthorne-Calligaris stepped into the room, looking like she was headed to some kind of country club brunch. She was wearing a sweater-set, slacks, and classic, neutral flats.
She was holding a gun.
“Put it down.” Oren trained his gun on Zara.
Her own weapon held steady, Zara gave Oren her most unimpressed look. “I think we all know that I’m the least murderous Hawthorne of my generation,” she said, her voice high and clear, “so I will happily lower my weapon once you lower yours, John.”
I forgot, most of the time, that Oren had a first name.
“Don’t do this,” Oren told her. “I don’t want to shoot you, Zara, but make no mistake that I will. Put your gun down, and we can talk.”
Zara didn’t waffle. “You know me, John. Intimately.” Her tone never changed, but there was no mistaking what she meant by that. “Do you really believe that I’m capable of harming a child?”
The “child” in question was clearly me, but that barely even registered. My heart was pounding so hard that I felt like it might bruise my rib cage, but I still managed to speak. “Intimately?” I asked Oren.
“Not since my father’s death, I assure you,” Zara told me. “John has always been quite clear on where his priorities lie. First with my father, and then with you.”
Twenty years ago, when Tobias Hawthorne had left Zara his wedding ring, he’d been making a point about her infidelity. Now she was married to a different man, but the text in Tobias Hawthorne’s will had remained the same.
She was having another affair. With Oren.
“You shouldn’t be here, Zara,” Oren said, his gun’s aim never wavering.
“Shouldn’t I?” she asked. After a moment longer, she lowered the gun, placing it on the desk. “Had your men allowed me entrance in a more traditional fashion, I would not have had to sneak in like a thief, and were I certain you would not have me escorted out, I would have no need of a firearm now. But here are. However, as a show of good will that none of you deserve, so long as no one attempts to remove me, my gun will stay right where it is, on that desk.”
After a long moment, Oren lowered his own weapon and Zara turned toward me. “Young lady, you will tell me what that nonsense on the news last night was. Now.” Toby was her brother. I could only begin to imagine what her reaction had been to what she had heard.
“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.
“I have the note from True North,” Xander said. “I think we all know what we’re supposed to do with that powder.”
“You Hawthornes and your invisible ink,” I said, shaking my head. “Will we need anything except the powder?”
“A makeup brush,” Zara answered immediately. Then the boys chimed in, all four of them in unison: “And a heat source.”