I didn’t know what I was supposed to do with the stained-glass ornament or what to make of the words written under the stair, but as Libby helped me let my hair down that night, one thing was perfectly clear.
The game wasn’t over.
The next morning, with Oren in my wake, I went in search of Jameson and Grayson. I found the former in the solarium, shirtless and standing in the sun.
“Go away,” he said when I opened the door, without even looking to see who it was.
“I found something,” I told him. “I don’t think the date is the answer—at least, not all of it.”
He didn’t reply.
“Jameson, are you listening to me? I found something.” For what little time I’d known him, he’d been driven, obsessed. What I held in my hand should have engendered at least a glimmer of curiosity, but when he turned to face me, his eyes dull, all he said was “Toss it over with the rest.”
I looked, and in a nearby trash can, I saw at least half a dozen stained-glass octagons, identical to the one that I held, right down to the ribbon.
“The numbers ten and eighteen are everywhere in this godforsaken house.” Jameson’s voice was muted, his manner contained. “I found them scratched onto a panel on my closet floor. That little purple bugger was underneath.”
He didn’t bother gesturing to the trash can or specifying which piece of stained glass he was referring to.
“And the others?” I asked.
“Once I started looking for the numbers, I couldn’t stop, and once you see it,” Jameson said, his voice low, “you can’t unsee it. The old man thought he was so smart. He must have hidden hundreds of those things, all over the house. I found a chandelier with eighteen crystals in the outer circle and ten in the middle—and a hidden compartment down below. There are eighteen stone leaves on the fountain outside, and ten finely drawn roses in its bowl. The paintings in the music room…” Jameson looked down. “Everywhere I look, everywhere I go, another reminder.”
“Don’t you see,” I told him fiercely. “Your grandfather couldn’t have done this all after Emily died. You would have noticed—”
“Workmen in the house?” Jameson said, finishing my sentence. “The great Tobias Hawthorne added a room or wing to this place every year, and in a house this size, something is always needing to be replaced or repaired. My mother was always buying new paintings, new fountains, new chandeliers. We wouldn’t have noticed a thing.”
“Ten-eighteen isn’t the answer,” I insisted, willing his eyes to mine. “You have to see that. It’s a clue—one he didn’t want us to miss.”
Us. I’d said us—and I meant it. But that didn’t matter.
“Ten-eighteen is answer enough,” Jameson said, turning his back on me. “I told you, Avery: I’m not playing anymore.”
Grayson was harder to find. Eventually, I tried the kitchen and found Nash instead.
“Have you seen Grayson?” I asked him.
Nash’s expression was guarded. “I don’t think he wants to see you, kid.”
The night before, Grayson hadn’t blamed me. He hadn’t lashed out. But after he’d told me about Emily, he’d walked away.
He’d left me alone.
“I need to see him,” I said.
“Give it some time,” Nash advised. “Sometimes, you gotta excise a wound before it can heal.”
I ended up back on the staircase to the East Wing, back in front of the portrait. Oren got a call, and he must have decided the threat to me was contained enough now that he didn’t need to watch me mope around Hawthorne House all day. He excused himself, and I went back to staring at Tobias Hawthorne.
It had seemed like fate when I’d found the clue in this portrait, but after talking to Jameson, I knew that it wasn’t a sign—or even a coincidence. The clue I’d found had been one of many. You didn’t want them to miss this, I addressed the billionaire silently. If he really had done all of this after Emily’s death, his persistence seemed cruel. Did you want to make sure that they wouldn’t forget what happened?
Is this whole twisted game just a reminder—an incessant reminder—to put family first?
Is that all I am?
Jameson had said, right from the beginning, that I was special. I hadn’t realized until now how badly I’d wanted to believe that he was right, that I wasn’t invisible, wasn’t wallpaper. I wanted to believe that Tobias Hawthorne had seen something in me that had told him I could do this, that I could handle the stares and the limelight, the responsibility, the riddles, the threats—all of it. I wanted to matter.
I didn’t want to be the glass ballerina or the knife. I wanted to prove, at least to myself, that I was something.
Jameson may have been done with the game, but I wanted to win.
