The game room at Hawthorne House sent Max into a state of nearly apoplectic joy. The room was lines with shelves, the shelves filled with hundreds—maybe even thousands—of board games from around the world. We started with Settlers of Catan. Grayson decimated us. We worked our way through four other games, none of which I’d even heard of before. As
we were debating our next selection, Jameson strolled into the room.
“How about an old Hawthorne standard?” he suggested wickedly. “Strip bowling.”
“What the shelf is strip bowling?” Max demanded, then she looked at me, eyes sparkling.
Don’t you dare, I told her silently.
“Never mind!” Max grinned. “Avery and I are in.”
 |
Strip bowling was exactly what it sounded like, in that it involved both bowling and, if you were unsuccessful, stripping.
“The goal is to knock over the least pins,” Jameson explained. “But you have to be careful, because any time your ball ends up in the gutter, you lose an article of clothing.”
I could feel heat rising in my cheeks. My entire body felt warm—too warm. This was a horrible idea.
“This is a horrible idea,” Grayson said. For a second or two, he and Jameson engaged in a silent standoff.
“Then why are you here?” Jameson volleyed back, waltzing over to pick out a dark green bowling ball with the Hawthorne crest on it. “No one is forcing you to play.”
Grayson didn’t move, and neither did I.
“So theoretically,” Max said, “I want to knock over either zero pins or only one—whichever I can manage without putting the ball in the gutter?”
When Jameson answered, his green eyes locked on to mine. “Theoretically.”
|
It became quickly apparent that excelling at strip bowling required precision and a high tolerance for risk. The first time Jameson cut things too close and his ball landed in the gutter, he took off a shoe.
Then another shoe.
A sock.
Another sock.
His shirt.
I tried not to look at the scar that ran the length of his torso, tried not to picture myself touching his chest. Instead, I focused on taking my turn. I was losing—badly. I’d even bowled a strike once, so determined was I to stay out of the gutter.
This time I cut things a little closer. When I knocked a single pin down, a breath left my chest. Grayson went next and lost his suit jacket. Max made it all the way down to her polka-dotted bra. Then it was Jameson’s turn again, and the ball hung to the edge of the lane until the very end— then toppled into the gutter.
I tried—and failed—to look away as Jameson’s fingers reached for the waistband of his jeans.
“Help me, Cheez-Its,” Max murmured beside me.
Without warning, the door to the room burst inward, and Xander barreled into the bowling alley, then skidded to a halt. He was breathing hard enough to make me wonder how long he’d been running.
“Seriously?” Xander wheezed. “You’re playing strip bowling without me? Never mind. Focus! This is me focusing.”
“Focusing on what?” I asked.
“I have news,” Xander blurted out.
“What kind of news?” Max asked. Xander glanced toward her. He
definitely noticed the polka-dotted bra.
“Focus,” Max reminded him. “What kind of news?”
“Is Rebecca okay?” Jameson asked, and I remembered Xander’s conversation with Thea.
“For some values of okay,” Xander said. That sentence made sense to no one except Xander, but he plowed on. “Thea was right. Rebecca’s mom is having a rough day. There was vodka involved. She told Rebecca something.”
“What kind of something?” Jameson took his turn trying to prompt Xander into spilling. Jameson’s pants were still in place, but the top button had been undone.
Okay, now I need to focus.
“Avery, do you remember what Rebecca’s mom said at the fundraiser, about all of her babies dying?”
“Nash said there were miscarriages,” I said quietly. “Before Rebecca.” “That’s what Bex thought she meant, too,” Xander said quietly.
“But it wasn’t?” I stared at him, having no idea whatsoever where this was going.
“She was talking about Emily,” Grayson said, his voice pained. “Emily,” Xander confirmed. “And Toby.”
I felt the world slow down around me. “What are you talking about?” “Toby was a Laughlin.” Xander swallowed. “Rebecca didn’t know. No
one did. Her parents were forty when they had Emily, but twenty-five years earlier—for the math-minded among us, that would be forty-two years ago
—when Rebecca’s mom was a teenager living in Wayback Cottage…” “She got pregnant.” Jameson stated the obvious.
“And Mr. and Mrs. Laughlin covered it up?” Grayson was intent on getting answers. “Why?”
Xander raised his shoulders up as high as they would go, then let them fall in the world’s most elaborate shrug. “Rebecca’s mom wouldn’t explain
—but she did rant to Bex, at length, about the fact that when one of the Hawthorne daughters got pregnant years later, she didn’t have to hide her pregnancy. She got to keep her baby.”
Skye hadn’t been forced to put Nash up for adoption. I remembered what Rebecca’s mother had said to Libby at the fundraiser. Never trust a Hawthorne. They take everything.
“Did Rebecca’s mom want to keep her baby?” I asked, horrified. “Did they make her give him away? And why would they force her to hide the pregnancy?”
“I don’t know the details,” Xander said, “but according to Rebecca, her mother wasn’t even told that the Hawthornes were the ones adopting the baby. She thought that our grandmother really was pregnant with a little boy, and that her own baby was adopted by a stranger.”
That was horrifying. That’s why they kept Toby’s adoption a secret? So she wouldn’t know her baby was right there?
“But as Toby grew up…” Xander shrugged again, the motion understated this time.
“She figured it out?” I imagined giving up a baby and then realizing that a child you’d seen grow up was yours.
I imagined being Toby and discovering this secret.
“Rebecca’s been forbidden from seeing any of us.” Xander grimaced. “Her mom said that the Hawthorne family takes and takes. She said that we don’t play by any rules and don’t care who we hurt. She blames our family for Toby’s death.”
“And Emily’s,” Grayson added roughly.
“For all of it.” Xander sat down, right where he was standing. The room went quiet. Max and Jameson weren’t wearing shirts, I was down one shoe, I knew instinctively that our game of strip bowling was over, and none of it mattered, because all I could think was that Rebecca’s mom thought Toby was dead.
And so did Mr. and Mrs. Laughlin.
