It really was a bowling alley. In my house. There was a bowling alley in my house. As promised, there were “only” four lanes, but otherwise, it had everything you’d expect a bowling alley to have. There was a ball return. Pin-setters on each lane. A touch screen to set up the games, and fifty-five-inch monitors overhead to keep track of the score. Emblazoned on all of it—the balls, the lanes, the touch screen, the monitors—was an elaborate letter H.
I tried not to take that as a reminder that none of this was supposed to be mine.
Instead, I focused on choosing the right ball. The right shoes—because there were at least forty pairs of bowling shoes on a rack to the side. Who needs forty pairs of bowling shoes?
Tapping my finger against the touch screen, I entered my initials. AKG. An instant later, a welcome flashed across the monitor.
WELCOME TO HAWTHORNE HOUSE, AVERY KYLIE GRAMBS!
The hairs on my arms stood up. I doubted programming my name into this unit had been a top priority for anyone the last couple of days. And that means…
“Was it you?” I asked out loud, addressing the words to Tobias Hawthorne. Had one of his last acts on earth been to program this welcome?
I pushed down the urge to shiver. At the end of the second lane, pins were waiting for me. I picked up my ball—ten pounds, with a silver H on a dark green background. Back home, the bowling alley had offered ninety-nine-cent bowling once a month. My mom and I had gone, every time.
I wished that she were here, and then I wondered: If she were alive, would I even be here? I wasn’t a Hawthorne. Unless the old man had chosen me randomly, unless I had somehow done something to catch his attention, his decision to leave everything to me had to have something to do with her.
If she’d been alive, would you have left the money to her? At least this time, I wasn’t addressing Tobias Hawthorne out loud. What were you sorry for? Did you do something to her? Not do something to her—or for her?
I have a secret.… I heard my mom saying. I threw the ball harder than I should have and hit only two pins. If my mom had been here, she would have mocked me. I concentrated then and bowled. Five games later, I was covered in sweat, and my arms were aching. I felt good—good enough to venture back out into the House and go hunting for the gym.
Athletic complex might have been a more accurate term. I stepped out onto the basketball court. The room jutted out in an L shape, with two weight benches and a half dozen workout machines in the smaller part of the L. There was a door on the back wall.
As long as I’m playing Dorothy in Oz…
I opened it and found myself looking up. A rock climbing wall stretched out two stories overhead. A figure grappled with a near-vertical section on the wall, at least twenty feet up, with no harness. Jameson.
He must have sensed me somehow. “Ever climbed one of these before?” he called down.
Again, I thought of Grayson’s warning, but this time, I told myself that I didn’t give a damn about what Grayson Hawthorne had to say to me. I walked over to the climbing wall, planted my feet at the base, and did a quick survey of the available hand- and footholds.
“First time,” I called back to Jameson, reaching for one of them. “But I’m a quick learner.”
I made it until my feet were about six feet off the ground before the wall jutted out at an angle designed to make things difficult. I braced one leg against a foothold and the other against the wall and stretched my right arm for a handhold a fraction of an inch too far away.
I missed.
From the ledge above me, a hand snaked down and grabbed mine. Jameson smirked as I dangled midair. “You can drop,” he told me, “or I can try to swing you up.”
Do it. I bit back the words. Oren was nowhere to be seen, and the last thing I needed to do, alone with a Hawthorne, was go higher. Instead, I let go of his arm and braced for impact.
After I landed, I stood, watching Jameson work his way back up the wall, muscles tensing against his thin white T-shirt. This is a bad idea, I told myself, my heart thumping. Jameson Winchester Hawthorne is a very bad idea. I hadn’t even realized I remembered his middle name until it popped into my head, a last name, just like his first. Stop looking at him. Stop thinking about him. The next year is going to be complicated enough without… complications.
Feeling suddenly like I was being watched, I turned to the door—and found Grayson staring straight at me. His light eyes were narrowed and focused.
You don’t scare me, Grayson Hawthorne. I forced myself to turn away from him, swallowed, and called up to Jameson. “I’ll see you in the library.”
