SWNOVELS The Brothers Hawthorne: Chapter 53
Grayson stared at the photograph. He looked about sixteen in it. He was on a public street, alone. Based on the angle of the photo, it had been taking by an observer at least one story up.
A PI? Or Sheffield Grayson himself?
“This is you,” Gigi said, picking up the picture. She cradled it in her hand for a minute, then turned her attention back to the box. “And you,” she continued, lifting another photo out. “And you.”
Each photo was another slice of the knife. Suddenly, all he could hear was Acacia asking him, Do you ever play what-if, Grayson?
No, he didn’t. He wouldn’t. Assess the situation. Grayson fell back on familiar thought patterns and took a step closer to the box. It was full of photographs. Dozens of them.
“And you?” Gigi asked him, picking up a picture of him at eight.
Martial arts competition. Photographer was somewhere in the crowd. Grayson continued his assessment and parted with one and only one word in response to Gigi’s question. “Yes.”
No amount of assessing this situation could make it make sense. Sheffield Grayson had a safe-deposit box full of pictures of me. His throat tightened.
“I think we’ve seen enough.” Savannah went to flip the lid to the box closed, but Gigi was faster and held it open.
“No.” With her free hand, Gigi rifled through the box, down to the photos near the bottom. “You look about four in this one,” she told Grayson. Her voice cracked, but she didn’t stop. “Maybe two here?”
It was all Grayson could do to focus on her, not the pictures.
“That must be one of your brothers with you in this one,” Gigi continued, and then she pulled out one final picture and sucked in a sharp, audible breath. “Why does my dad have a picture of you as a newborn?” She shook her head, her lip trembling. “Why does he have all these pictures?”
Grayson didn’t let himself think too hard on either question, and he answered only the first, forcing his tone to stay even. “He must have bribed one of the nurses.”
In the newborn photo, his infant self was asleep in a hospital bassinet. His baby arms were swaddled to his sides. A hat had been pulled down over his forehead, obscuring part of his tiny, squished face.
“I thought you worked for my dad.” Gigi’s words managed to break through the wall of silence in his mind. “Or maybe even that you had it out for him,” she continued. “You gave me that warning and everything, but…”
Grayson had spent a lifetime practicing rigid control over his own emotions. Other people could afford to make mistakes. He couldn’t. Assess the situation and proceed accordingly.
“Why does my dad have a safe-deposit box full of pictures of you, Grayson?” Gigi pressed. “A box that isn’t even in his real name. It doesn’t make sense.”
It wouldn’t make sense to her—until it did. She would get there on her own eventually.
Grayson steeled himself. “Davenport is my middle name,” he told Gigi evenly. “My grandfather’s name was—”
“Tobias Hawthorne,” Gigi finished. “And the box was under the name Tobias Davenport. I don’t understand.”
Grayson’s heart twisted.
“Gigi, honey…” Acacia started to say, but Savannah didn’t let her get any further.
“Dad had an affair.” The older, taller, and more self-contained of the twins kept her voice as even as Grayson’s. “Before we were born. Right after Colin died. With Skye Hawthorne.”
Gigi went very still. Grayson had stopped noticing her tendency toward constant motion until suddenly, there was none. He saw the exact moment Gigi realized what Savannah was saying, the exact moment that every last piece fell into place for her.
“That’s a pretty name,” his normally bright-eyed sister said hoarsely. “Skye.”
Grayson swallowed. “Gigi…”
She whirled on him, stepping back from the table, back from the safe-deposit box. “You lied to me.” She shook her head, sending her curls flying. “Or maybe you didn’t, maybe you just avoided the truth like avoidance is your middle name—or your second middle name, I guess? Grayson Davenport Avoidance Hawthorne. It has a ring to it.”
“Breathe, Geeg,” Savannah said quietly.
Gigi took another step back, gave another shake of her head. She pushed her hair roughly out of her face with the heels of her hands. “You knew,” she told Savannah, and then she looked to Grayson, to Acacia. “You all knew. Everyone but me, and—oh dear lord, your name is Grayson.” She was talking far too fast for anyone to make a real attempt at interrupting her now. “Grayson Hawthorne.” She looked from him to Savannah. “And the two of you… No wonder you freaked out when I pretended we were hooking up! Ewwww. And I thought maybe you two…” She gestured between them. “Also ew.”
“I know this is a lot to take in,” Acacia told her daughter quietly.
Gigi held up a hand. “I just threw up a little. Right there in my mouth. Did Dad, like, have a secret family this whole time? Like, when we thought he was on business trips was he with his son?” Gigi scrunched her face. “And does anyone have a mint?”
Grayson bent his head down, capturing her gaze. “No,” he told her, his voice just as quiet as Acacia’s had been a moment before.
“No mint?” Gigi said.
“Your father didn’t have a secret family,” Grayson said. Your father, Gigi, not mine. “He and I met exactly once. I was nineteen, and he made it very clear that I was not his son.”
So. Very. Clear.
“Not clear enough, apparently,” Savannah tossed out.
“Savannah,” Acacia said sharply.
Gigi ignored both her mother and her twin. Her beseeching, teary eyes focused only on Grayson. “Then why did my dad have all these pictures?”
That was the question, the unavoidable black hole of a question threatening to suck him in when the answer didn’t even matter. Couldn’t matter.
“Why are you even here, Grayson? Why are you helping me look for him?” Gigi’s breath hitched. “You must hate him. And us.”
“No.” Grayson spoke with the full force of the authority he’d been raised to assume in every interaction. The authority that had never worked on her. “Juliet, no.”
I don’t hate you. I could never hate you. Grayson remembered too late that Gigi had said their father was the only one who ever used her full first name.
“Why?” Gigi repeated brokenly.
“I’m here,” Grayson said, “because he isn’t. My grandfather had a saying: family first.”
“We are not family,” Savannah replied, her voice low and almost guttural. For the first time, Grayson registered that she hadn’t looked away from the photographs. Not once.
“He’s our brother,” Gigi replied.
The word brother meant something to Grayson. It had always meant something to him, always been a foundational part of who he was.
“No.” Savannah finally ripped her gaze away from the box. “He’s not. Dad didn’t want him to be.”
He didn’t want me. He despised me. Grayson should have been able to cut the thought off there. He should have had the discipline to leave it there. But the pictures. My whole life, he…
“I thought he was a good dad.” Gigi looked up at the ceiling, then squeezed her eyes closed. “Not perfect, but…” She trailed off and pressed her lips together. “I thought he was a good husband.” Her voice was gaining steam again. “That’s why I’ve been looking for him! Because I didn’t believe he would cheat on Mom and abandon us, but I guess the whole cheating and abandoning thing is just par for the course for him.”
Gigi was practically vibrating with intensity now. Grayson wanted to reach for her, but something in him wouldn’t let him.
“You should have told me.” Gigi took a step back, then another and another. “You all should have told me.” Hitting the wall, she shot each of them a final, furious look, then bolted from the room.
“Gigi!” Savannah started to go after her, but Acacia reached out a gentle hand to stop her.
“Let her go.” Acacia closed her eyes for a long moment, then opened them again. “Is there anything else?” she said. “In the box?”
Grayson removed and stacked the photographs, refusing to look too closely at any of them. My whole life, Sheffield Grayson knew about me. My whole life, he kept an eye on me.
At the bottom of the box, near the back, Grayson found a bank envelope. It was thick. Full. He pulled it out and opened it, expecting to find a fortune in large bills, but all he saw was slips of paper. Dozens of them.
“Deposit slips?” Acacia asked, and Grayson knew what she was thinking. The investigation. The embezzling. Her drained accounts.
He examined the papers. “Withdrawal slips, actually,” Grayson said, removing a handful of them, skimming each one with brutal efficiency. “Petty cash. This one’s for two hundred and seventeen dollars. Another for five hundred and six dollars. Three hundred and twenty-one dollars.” He turned one of the slips over. “There’s a notation on the back. KM.” He glanced up toward his father’s wife. “Do you know anyone with those initials?”
Savannah blew out a long, controlled breath. “Probably another side piece.”
“Savannah, I do not appreciate you talking about another woman that way.”
“I think you mean the other woman.” Savannah went for the jugular, like she’d utterly lost the ability to do anything else. “Or other women, plural, I guess,” she continued icily. “Not that you care.”
“Enough.” Grayson hadn’t meant to use that tone, but he didn’t regret it, either. He thought about Acacia telling him that she couldn’t even think about a life without her daughters. He thought about children’s paintings displayed like fine art and handprints captured in cement.
Grayson fixed Savannah with a look and spoke with an emphasis capable of sending chills down spines. “Your mother doesn’t deserve that from you.”
“My mother,” Savannah shot back. Her expression was a study in ice-cold fury, ruined only by the tears on her white-blonde lashes. “And as for my dad…” She titled her chin up. “I always knew he wanted a boy.”
That statement affected Acacia more than Savannah’s earlier barbs. She folded her daughter into her arms. To Grayson’s surprise, Savannah didn’t fight it. They both stood there for the longest time, their arms around each other, holding on for dear life and leaving Grayson with a feeling he barely recognized.
Hawthornes weren’t supposed to long for things they could not have.
Eventually, Savannah pulled back, and Acacia turned to Grayson. “We’re going to go,” she told him. “Everything in this box—it’s yours.”