These Games We Play

chapter forty four: sledgehammer

At some point after his son’s disappearance and supposed death, Tobias Hawthorne had walled off Toby’s wing. I’d seen it once: solid bricks laid over what I had assumed to be a door.

“Sorry,” I told Grayson, “I have to go. We will talk later okay.”

Then I blotted. I understood why Grayson may have wanted me to leave the Toby situation alone. He probably wasn’t wrong. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to try to solve it. No one followed me though. The threats on the List —they were external. And that meant that I could make my way to Toby’s wing without a shadow.

I arrived to see Xander hoisting the sledgehammer over his shoulder. He caught sight of me out of the corner of his eye.

“Pay no attention to this sledgehammer!”

“I know what you’re doing,” I told him.

“What sledgehammers were put on God’s green earth to do,” Xander replied solemnly.

“I know,” I said again, waiting for those words to sink in. Xander lowered the business end of the sledgehammer to the ground. Brown eyes studied me intently.

“What is it you think you know?” I took my time with my reply.

“I know that you didn’t want to answer my question about Toby. I know that you and Rebecca and Thea were up to something at lunch today.” I was building my way up to the true gambit here. “I know your uncle’s alive.”

Xander blinked, his incredible brain moving at what I could only assume was warp speed. “Did the old man say something in your letter?”

“No,” I said. Tobias Hawthorne had left us each a letter at the end of the last puzzle. Except for me when he left me a sugar packet. Because Tobias Hawthrone had never been a fan of straight forward answers apparently.

 “Did he say something in yours?” Before Xander could answer, Jameson strolled up to join us.

“Looks like a party.” He reached for the sledgehammer. “Shall we?”

Xander pulled it back. “Mine.”

“The sledgehammer,” Jameson replied loftily, “or what’s behind that wall?”

“Both,” Xander gritted out, and there was a note of intensity in his voice that I’d never heard from him before. Xander was the youngest Hawthorne brother. The least competitive. The one who’d been in on their grandfather’s last game.

“Is that the way it is?” Jameson's eyes narrowed. “Want to wrestle for it?” I knew the Hawthrone brothers and I knew Jameson was very serious about wrestling.

“Xander, your uncle and I know each other.” I cut in before any actual wrestling could take place. “I met Toby right after my mother died.” It took me a minute, maybe less, to lay out the rest of it, and when I’d finished, Xander stared at me, a little bit in awe.

“I should have seen it.”

“Seen what?” I asked him.

“You weren’t just a part of their game,” Xander replied. “Of course you weren’t. The old man’s mind didn’t operate that way. He didn’t just choose you for them.” Them being Grayson and Jameson. Their game being the one we’d already solved.

“He left you a game, too,” I said slowly. It was the only thing that made sense. Nash had warned me once that their grandfather had, likely, never intended me to be a player. I was the glass ballerina or the knife. A part of the puzzle. A tool. So of course I was a tool in Xanders. Like I said the old man wasn’t a fan of straight answers.