Page 104 of The Hawthorne Legacy
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?”
He didn’t answer.
“You have a daughter now,” I told him, my voice low.
He looked at me, his expression never wavering. “I have two.”
In the span of a heartbeat, fury gave way to devastation. Tobias Hawthorne the Second wasn’t my father. He hadn’t raised me. I didn’t carry a single drop of his blood.
But he’d just called me his daughter.
“I want you to go outside, princess. Get in the car and drive north.”
“I can’t do that,” I said. “Sheffield Grayson is dead! There’s a body. The police are going to want to know what happened. And as screwed up as what Mellie did is, she doesn’t deserve to go down for murder. If we tell the police what really happened—”
“I know men like Sheffield Grayson.” Toby’s expression shifted, until it was utterly impossible to read. “He’s covered his tracks. No one knows where he is or who he was after. There will be nothing to tie him to this warehouse—nothing to even suggest he was in the state.”
“So?” I said.
Toby looked past me, just for a moment. “I know more than I wish I did about what it takes to make something—or someone—disappear.”
“What about his family?” I asked. Grayson’s family. “I can’t let you—”
“You’re not letting me do anything.” Toby reached out to touch my face. “Horrible girl,” he whispered. “Don’t you know by now? No one lets a Hawthorne do anything.”
That was the truth.
“This is wrong,” I said again. He couldn’t just make that body disappear.
“I have to, Avery.” Toby was implacable. “For Eve. The spotlight, the media circus, the rumors, the stalkers, the threats—I can’t save you from that, Avery Kylie Grambs. I would if I could, but it’s too late. The old man did what he did. He pulled you onto the board. But if I stay in shadows, if I make this disappear, if I disappear—then we can save Eve.”
It had never been clearer: To Toby, the Hawthorne name, the money—it was a curse. The tree is poison, don’t you see? It poisoned S and Z and me.
“It’s not all bad,” I said. “Kidnapping and murder attempts aside, I’m doing fine.”
That was a ridiculous statement, but Toby didn’t even laugh. “And you will stay fine, as long as I stay dead.” He sounded so certain of that. “Go. Get in the car. Drive. If anyone asks you what happened, claim amnesia. I’ll take care of the rest.”
