The Brothers Hawthorne

Avery meets Grayson during his night swim, and she confronts him about his sisters and the way he has pushed people away. Avery offers that he could tell the girls about the bombing, but not about Sheffield’s death—either way, Avery wants Grayson to repair his relationship with his sisters and regrets that she and his brothers covered up Sheffield’s death. Avery also brings up Eve and tells Grayson that Toby knows Eve didn’t send the FBI after Grayson’s sisters. With the possibility that someone else is targeting his family, Grayson decides to return to Phoenix.

The four Hawthorne brothers all put on suits in solidarity with Grayson, and Avery wears all black. They are all going to Phoenix to help Grayson solve the puzzle and save his sisters and Acacia. Grayson did not find any evidence that Sheffield drained Acacia’s trust; he believes Kent Trowbridge did it and is blaming Sheffield. Grayson needs Zabrowski to get him the trust paperwork so he can understand Kent Trowbridge’s final play.

Grayson secures the paperwork and learns that “the money is under the control of the trustee until the beneficiary is thirty years old [...] or married” (443). Grayson concludes that Kent Trowbridge is using his son’s relationship with Savannah to box Acacia into a corner: Either she marries Kent, or Savannah marries Duncan; otherwise, their family has no more money. Grayson gives his brothers and Avery the details about Trowbridge’s office and his passwords and together they plan to trap him.

Two days later, Grayson confronts Kent Trowbridge at his weekly racquetball game with, coincidentally, the judge who signed the FBI warrant for Acacia’s house. The judge leaves Grayson and Kent alone, and Grayson insinuates that he has found a way to move the money that Kent drained from Acacia’s trust back into her accounts. The FBI, who are tracking the accounts, will be suspicious and able to trace the newly discovered money back to Kent. Kent tries to threaten Grayson, but Grayson and his brothers have an airtight case against him.

Later that night, back at Hawthorne House, Grayson is awake and receives a text from Gigi saying that she’s outside the gates of Hawthorne House. Grayson invites her inside, and Gigi accuses him of helping get Acacia’s money back. Grayson confesses and explains Kent’s plan to marry Acacia through financial manipulation. Grayson alludes to some crimes Sheffield committed, and Gigi puts the clues together and guesses that Sheffield was responsible for the bomb and Avery’s kidnapping. Gigi wants to know if Sheffield is still alive, and Grayson’s silence communicates to her that he is not. Gigi decides that she will bring the tampered puzzle box back to Savannah and that she and Grayson will protect Savannah by keeping Sheffield’s true crimes and fate secret. Gigi forgives Grayson for lying, and their relationship is restored.

The next day, Grayson takes the photographs from the safe-deposit box and brings them to his secret Davenport desk to hide them with the journal. Grayson notices for the second time that the months on the backs of the photographs are wrong, and he remembers that only the countries where Sheffield deposited his embezzled funds were coded into the journal, not the account numbers. Grayson takes three days to decode the account numbers from the photographs, then tells Acacia what he’s found. He decides to anonymously share the information with the FBI so that they stop looking for Sheffield. Grayson finally unpacks his suitcases, lingering on his grandmother’s ring, and considers that he might be able to have a romantic relationship that doesn’t end in disaster after all.

Jameson and his brothers rebuild the tree house, and Grayson shares his mystery caller’s riddle: “What begins a bet? Not that” (460). He doesn’t tell them about the girl. Once the tree house is rebuilt, Jameson and Avery sit in it, and she tells him that she’s had an idea: a game, full of puzzles, that anyone can be part of, regardless of status, with a big cash prize at the end. She wants Jameson to design and run it. He agrees and then decides to reveal his secret from Prague: “ALICE HAWTHORNE IS ALIVE” (463).

Jameson, Grayson, and Tobias Hawthorne are in the tree house after the boys’ first kisses with Emily. Their grandfather tells them, “Men like us love only once [...] All these years your grandmother has been gone [...] there hasn’t been anyone else” (464). When Jameson asks what Alice Hawthorne would’ve thought of him and his brothers, Tobias Hawthorne tells him, “You’re still works in progress [...] Let’s save my Alice’s judgment for when you’re done” (465).

Five months later, Vincent Blake has died from another heart attack, and Eve watches Avery announce The Grandest Game, the Hawthorne-style puzzle with a cash prize that she and the Hawthorne brothers will run. In response to seeing Avery happy, surrounded by the people Eve believes should have been her own family, Eve tells Mattias to get her in touch with Savannah so that she can reveal how Sheffield Grayson died.