The blank page was unfolded and laid out. The powder was poured onto the page; the brush dusted it over the surface of the letter. And it was a letter. That much became clear the moment the heat source—a nearby lamp bulb—was applied.
Words appeared on the page in tiny, even scrawl—Tobias Hawthorne’s.
All I saw before Zara snatched the letter up was the salutation: Dearest Zara, Dearest Skye. Zara stalked to the corner of the room. As she read, her chest rose and fell with heavy breaths. At some point, tears overflowed and began carving paths down her face. Finally, she let the letter go. It dropped from her hand, floating gently toward the ground.
The boys were all frozen in place, like they’d never seen their aunt shed a single tear before now. Slowly, I walked forward. Zara didn’t tell me to stop, so I stooped to pick up the letter, and I read.
Dearest Zara, Dearest Skye,
If you are reading this, then I am dead. I cannot express how sorry I am to leave you in this way—or how necessary I believe what I have done for you truly is. Yes, for you, not to you.
If you are reading this, my daughters, then you have set aside your differences long enough to follow the trail I left you. If this has happened, then everything I have done has served at least one purpose. And perhaps, my dears, you are now ready for the other.
As you might have gathered, depending on how closely you examined the charities to which I left my fortune, your brother did not perish on Hawthorne Island. Of that I am certain. He was, as far as I have been able to piece together, pulled from the ocean, severely burned, by a local fisherman. It has taken me years to piece together even this much. I have written and rewritten this letter to you countless times as my investigation into your brother’s disappearance has evolved.
I have never found him. I came close once but found something else instead. I can only conclude that Toby does not want to be found. Whatever happened on the island, he has been running from it for half his life.
Or perhaps, he has been running from me.
I have made mistakes with all of you. Zara, I asked too much of you at times and gave you too little of my approval at others; Skye, of you I never asked enough. I treated both of you differently because you were female.
I hurt Toby worst of all.
I won’t make the same mistakes with the next generation. I will push them, all in equal measure. They’ll learn to put each other first. I will do for them everything I should have done for you, including this: Not one of you will see my fortune. There are things I have done that I am not proud of, legacies that you should not have to bear.
Know that I love you, both of you. Find your brother. Perhaps, once I am gone, he will finally stop running. Below, you will find a list of locations to which I have traced his whereabouts these past twelve years. In a safe-deposit box at Montgomery National Bank, number 21666, you will find a police report about the incident on Hawthorne Island, as well as extensive files put together by my investigators over the years.
You’ll find the key to the safe-deposit box in my toolbox. There is a false bottom. Be brave, my dears. Be strong. Be true.
Yours sincerely,
Father
I looked up from the letter, and the boys came to me—Grayson, Jameson, and Xander. Nash, Libby, and Oren stayed where they stood. Zara sank to her knees behind me.
As the boys read the letter, I processed its contents. We had confirmation now that Tobias Hawthorne had known that his son was alive, that he had been searching for him, and that, just as Sheffield Grayson had claimed, the old man had buried a police report about what had happened on the island.
There might be more details in the safe-deposit box, once we found the key.
“The toolbox,” I said suddenly. I turned toward Oren. “Tobias Hawthorne left you his toolbox.”
That had been a part of the updated will. Had the old man realized that Oren was sleeping with Zara? Was that why he’d made him a part of this?
Tobias Hawthorne had written the phrase these past twelve years in the letter, suggesting that it hadn’t been updated recently. Eight years. He wrote this eight years ago.
When Tobias Hawthorne had updated his will the year before, leaving me everything, he’d laid a new trail to follow. A new game. A new attempt at mending family bonds that had been torn asunder. But he’d included the same words to Zara and Skye—the same clues.
Had he continued to add information to the safe-deposit box over the last eight years?
“What do you think he meant,” Grayson said slowly, “about legacies we shouldn’t have to bear?”
“I care less about that,” Jameson replied, “than about the list at the bottom. What do you make of it, Heiress?”
Coming to stand between Jameson and Grayson should have been awkward. It should have been unbearable—but in this moment, it wasn’t.
Slowly, I looked back down at the letter, at the list. There were dozens of locations listed, scattered all over the world, like Toby had never stayed in one place for long. But one by one, certain locations jumped out at me.
Waialua, Oahu. Waitomo, New Zealand. Cuzco, Peru. Tokyo, Japan. Bali, Indonesia.
I literally stopped breathing.
“Heiress?” Jameson said.
Grayson stepped toward me. “Avery?”
Oahu was one of the islands of Hawaii. Cuzco, Peru, was the nearest city to Machu Picchu. My eyes roved back over the list. Hawaii. New Zealand. Machu Picchu. Tokyo. Bali. I stared at the page.
“Hawaii,” I said out loud, my voice shaking. “New Zealand. Machu Picchu. Tokyo. Bali.”
“For a guy on the run,” Xander commented, “he sure made his way around.”
I shook my head. Xander didn’t see what I was seeing. He couldn’t.
“Hawaii, New Zealand, Machu Picchu, Tokyo, Bali—I know this list.”
There were more. At least five or six that I recognized. Five or six places that I had imagined going. Places that I had held in my hand.
“My mother’s postcards,” I whispered, and took off running. Oren bolted after me, and the others weren’t far behind.
I made it to my room in a matter of seconds, to my closet in less than that, and soon I was holding the postcards in my hand. There was nothing written on the back, no postage. I’d never questioned where my mother had gotten them.
Or from whom.
I looked up at Jameson and Grayson, Xander and Nash.
“You Hawthornes,” I whispered hoarsely, “and your invisible ink.”
