“Gray, darling!” A woman swept up to us in a swirl of fabric and motion. Once her flowy shirt had settled around her, I tried to peg her age. Older than thirty, younger than fifty. Beyond that, I couldn’t tell. “They’re ready for us in the Great Room,” she told Grayson. “Or they will be shortly. Where’s your brother?”
“Specificity, Mother.”
The woman rolled her eyes. “Don’t you ‘Mother’ me, Grayson Hawthorne.” She turned to me. “You’d think he was born wearing that suit,” she said with the air of someone confiding a great secret, “but Gray was my little streaker. A real free spirit. We couldn’t keep clothes on him at all, really, until he was four. Frankly, I didn’t even try.” She paused and assessed me without bothering to hide what she was doing. “You must be Ava.”
“Avery,” Grayson corrected. If he felt any embarrassment about his purported past as a toddler nudist, he didn’t show it. “Her name is Avery, Mother.”
The woman sighed but also smiled, like it was impossible for her to look at her son and not find herself utterly delighted in his presence. “I always swore my children would call me by my first name,” she told me. “I’d raise them as my equals, you know? But then, I always imagined having girls. Four boys later…” She gave the world’s most elegant shrug.
Objectively, Grayson’s mother was over the top. But subjectively? She was infectious.
“Do you mind if I ask, dear, when is your birthday?”
The question took me by surprise. I had a mouth. It was fully functioning. But I couldn’t keep up with her enough to reply. She put a hand on my cheek. “Scorpio? Or Capricorn? Not a Pisces, clearly—”
“Mother,” Grayson said, and then he corrected himself. “Skye.”
It took me a moment to realize that must be her first name, and that he’d used it to humor her in an attempt to get her to stop astrologically cross-examining me.
“Grayson’s a good boy,” Skye told me. “Too good.” Then she winked at me. “We’ll talk.”
“I doubt Ms. Grambs plans to stay long enough for a fireside chat—or a tarot reading.” A second woman, Skye’s age or a little older, inserted herself into our conversation. If Skye was flowy fabric and oversharing, this woman was pencil-skirts and pearls.
“I’m Zara Hawthorne-Calligaris.” She eyed me, the expression on her face as austere as her name. “Do you mind if I ask—how did you know my father?”
Silence descended on the cavernous foyer. I swallowed. “I didn’t.”
Beside me, I could feel Grayson staring again. After a small eternity, Zara offered me a tight smile. “Well, we appreciate your presence. It’s been a trying time these past few weeks, as I’m sure you can imagine.”
These past few weeks, I filled in, when no one could get ahold of me.
“Zara?” A man with slicked-back hair interrupted us, slipping an arm around her waist. “Mr. Ortega would like a word.” The man, who I took to be Zara’s husband, didn’t spare so much as a glance for me.
Skye made up for it—and then some. “My sister ‘has words’ with people,” she commented. “I have conversations. Lovely conversations. Quite frankly, that’s how I ended up with four sons. Wonderful, intimate conversations with four fascinating men…”
“I will pay you to stop right there,” Grayson said, a pained expression on his face.
Skye patted her son’s cheek. “Bribe. Threaten. Buy out. You couldn’t be more Hawthorne, darling, if you tried.” She gave me a knowing smile. “That’s why we call him the heir apparent.”
There was something in Skye’s voice, something about Grayson’s expression when his mother said the phrase heir apparent, that made me think I had greatly underestimated just how much the Hawthorne family wanted that will read.
They don’t know what’s in the will, either. I suddenly felt like I’d stepped into an arena, utterly unaware of the rules of the game.
“Now,” Skye said, looping one arm around me and one around Grayson, “why don’t we make our way to the Great Room?”
CHAPTER 8
The Great Room was two-thirds the size of the foyer. An enormous stone fireplace stood at the front. There were gargoyles carved into the sides of the fireplace. Literal gargoyles.
Grayson deposited Libby and me into wingback chairs and then excused himself to the front of the room, where three older gentlemen in suits stood, talking to Zara and her husband.
The lawyers, I realized. After another few minutes, Alisa joined them, and I took stock of the other occupants of the room. A White couple, older, in their sixties at least. A Black man, forties, with a military bearing, who stood with his back to a wall and maintained a clear line of sight to both exits. Xander, with what was clearly another Hawthorne brother by his side. This one was older—midtwenties. He needed a haircut and had paired his suit with cowboy boots that, like the motorcycle outside, had seen better days.
Nash, I thought, recalling the name that Alisa had provided.
Finally, an ancient woman joined the fray. Nash offered her an arm, but she took Xander’s instead. He led her straight to Libby and me. “This is Nan,” he told us. “The woman. The legend.”
“Get on with you.” She swatted his arm. “I’m this rascal’s great-grandmother.” Nan settled, with no small difficulty, into the open seat beside me. “Older than dirt and twice as mean.”
“She’s a softy,” Xander assured me cheerfully. “And I’m her favorite.”
“You are not my favorite,” Nan grumbled.
“I’m everyone’s favorite!” Xander grinned.
“Far too much like that incorrigible grandfather of yours,” Nan grunted. She closed her eyes, and I saw her hands shake slightly. “Awful man.” There was a tenderness there.
“Was Mr. Hawthorne your son?” Libby asked gently. She worked with the elderly, and she was a good listener.
Nan welcomed the opportunity to snort again. “Son-in-law.”
“He was also her favorite,” Xander clarified. There was something poignant in the way he said it. This wasn’t a funeral. They must have laid the man to rest weeks earlier, but I knew grief, could feel it—could practically smell it.
“Are you all right, Ave?” Libby asked beside me. I thought back to Grayson telling me how expressive my face was.
Better to think about Grayson Hawthorne than funerals and grieving.
“I’m fine,” I told Libby. But I wasn’t. Even after two years, missing my mom could hit me like a tsunami. “I’m going to step outside,” I said, forcing a smile. “I just need some air.”
Zara’s husband stopped me on my way out. “Where are you going? We’re about to start.” He locked a hand over my elbow.
I wrenched my arm out of his grasp. I didn’t care who these people were. No one got to lay hands on me. “I was told there are four Hawthorne grandsons,” I said, my voice steely. “By my count, you’re still down by one. I’ll be back in a minute. You won’t even notice I’m gone.”