The Inheritance Games

Xander takes Avery to the Great Room, where there is a stained-glass window. It includes pieces of stained glass in the same shape as the one Avery found with the riddle. By pressing on one of the octagonal pieces of glass, Avery can make it move. When the light shines through at high noon (“Top of the clock / Meet me at high / Tell the late day hello / Wish the morning good-bye”) the glass will shine a light on a particular floorboard. Avery and Xander locate the floorboard and push on it. The floor sinks, and Avery and Xander are below the Great Room, in one of Hawthorne House’s many tunnels. They are facing a staircase, which also fits with the riddle (“Take them two at a time / And come find me”).

Following the stairs, Avery and Xander find a room. One wall has Avery’s initials carved into the cement wall. When Avery walks toward the initials, a laser-like light passes over her face, there’s a beep, and the wall splits in two like an elevator door opening. Xander explains: “Facial recognition. It didn’t matter which one of us found this place. Without you, we wouldn’t have been able to get past the wall” (336). In the next room, there’s a door with four touchpads, each one with one of the Hawthorne boys’ initials. To open the door, each boy needs to place his hand on the touchpad, using fingerprint identification to unlock it.

Xander leaves Avery in the room while he goes to get his brothers. Waiting, Avery hears footsteps. She remembers the fact that the person who tried to shoot her gained access to the estate via these tunnels. A figure approaches her. She realizes it’s Rebecca—someone who Avery has suspected may have been involved in the shooting.

Rebecca is clearly unwell. She’s been crying and seems distraught: “Rebecca Laughlin was beautiful. But right now she didn’t look quite right” (341). Avery asks Rebecca where she was the night of the shooting, but Rebecca doesn’t answer and instead talks about Emily and the night Emily died. She reveals that Emily found out about her and Thea that afternoon. Emily was angry, viewing the relationship as a betrayal. To make up for it, Thea agreed to cover for Emily while she snuck out to go cliff diving with Grayson. Rebecca then told Jameson about Emily and Grayson’s plans. Rebecca changes topics, apologizing to Avery. She reveals that she saw Skye meeting Drake at the tunnels on the day that Avery was shot. She apologizes to Avery for keeping silent, explaining: “Emily wouldn’t have wanted me to” (343).

Grayson enters, interrupting Rebecca and Avery. Avery tells him that Skye was the person helping Drake, and Rebecca confirms this fact before leaving. When they’re alone, Grayson asks Avery to let him handle Skye instead of calling the police. They play a game for it, Avery thinking of a number and Grayson guessing it correctly. Grayson assures Avery he’ll handle Skye and protect Avery.

Nash and Xander enter. They wait on Jameson. When Jameson arrives, he reveals that he followed Grayson and Emily the night they went cliff jumping. He was watching Emily on the shore while Grayson had gone to get towels. Emily saw Jameson watching her and called to him. Then, she started gasping for air and making strangling sounds. Jameson assumed she was just trying to get his attention, toying with him, and he walked away, ignoring her. By the time Grayson returned with the towels, Jameson was gone—and Emily was dead. Tobias somehow knew about the incident and cornered Jameson a few days later: “He told me that he knew I’d been there and asked whether I felt culpable. He wanted me to tell you, Gray, and I wouldn’t” (351).

Jameson remains convinced that the game is a lesson from Tobias. However, Xander knows better: “That’s not what this is […] He wasn’t making a point. He wanted us—all four of us—together. Here” (351). He reveals that Tobias gave him the task of making sure Grayson and Jameson played the game to the end: “It was my job to make sure you saw this to the end. Both of you. If either of you stopped playing, my job was to draw you back” (352). Avery realizes that the times Xander helped her—for example, by telling her Tobias didn’t have a middle name—he was manipulating her, using her to draw his brothers into the game.

The boys use their handprints to open the door. Behind it, there’s a box with Avery’s full name on it: Avery Kylie Grambs. The group realizes it’s an anagram—they need to rearrange the letters in Avery’s name to spell out something else. That’s how they can unlock the box. They rearrange the letters to spell out “A very risky gamble” (356). They open the box. Inside are five envelopes with five names—one for each of them. Inside Avery’s envelope is a single sugar packet.

The sugar packet prompts Avery to recall a memory: She’s six years old, hanging out at the diner where her mom works, constructing castles out of sugar packets. One of her mom’s customers—Tobias Hawthorne—overhears Avery’s mom using her full name. He asks Avery to confirm it. He also reveals that he has grandsons her age.

Avery relays the memory to the boys. They surmise that Tobias probably kept track of her after that, figured out her date of birth, and then thought of her after Emily’s death—and used her to teach his grandsons a lesson: “If Emily’s death had torn them apart, I could bring them back together” (359).

Alone, Avery goes into Tobias’s study and sits at his desk. Looking at the desk, she notices a secret compartment. Here, she finds a folder. It contains her birth certificate: “The date made sense. But the signature? I have a secret, I could hear my mom saying. About the day you were born” (362). The envelope also contains photos of Avery, taken from six years old onward. The number of pictures increases after her 16th birthday, after Emily’s death. Avery realizes, “Tobias Hawthorne hadn’t known me—but he’d known about me” (363).

The next morning, Avery learns that Grayson has ensured Skye has left Hawthorne House. She realizes that he’s put her ahead of his own family: “And at the end of the day, he’d chosen me. Over family. Over his mother” (365). Avery is touched and seems like she’s going to kiss Grayson, but he stops her: “I will always protect you. You deserve to feel safe in your own house. And I’ll help you with the foundation […] But this…us… It can’t happen, Avery. I’ve seen the way Jameson looks at you” (365). Grayson does not want to repeat the Emily situation and let a girl come between him and his brother.

Talking to Nan, Avery tells her that Tobias (Nan’s son-in-law) changed his will after Toby’s death. Nan starts talking about Toby and shows Avery a photo of him. Avery is shocked to recognize the man in the photo—it’s Harry, the homeless man who she used to play chess with. Grayson and Jameson enter the room as Avery is making this realization. She tells them and Nan what she knows, leaving everyone in shock at the fact that Toby is alive—and Avery knows him.

Xander is looking at his final letter from Tobias: “Alexander, Well done. Tobias Hawthorne” (370). He’s convinced there is more to the letter. He has Thea and Rebecca by his side as witnesses as he pursues his theory. He puts the letter in water to see if a message written in invisible ink will appear. A message appears: “Find Tobias Hawthorne II” (372).