The Inheritance Games, #4
The Brothers Hawthorne
by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
Contents
SIX YEARS, TEN MONTHS, AND THREE WEEKS AGO
Overview
A flashback shows Tobias Hawthorne warning Jameson and Grayson that Hawthorne men love only once, completely and destructively. His devotion to Alice defines love as both inheritance and danger, while his comment that the boys are unfinished casts their futures as tests of who they will become.
Summary
In a flashback set nearly seven years earlier, Tobias Hawthorne speaks to Jameson and Grayson about the way Hawthorne men love. Tobias frames love as something serious, singular, and consuming rather than frivolous.
Tobias recalls his dead wife, Alice, and says there has never been anyone else for him because Hawthorne love allows no going back. His words sound like both a warning and a legacy: anything less than total love can destroy the beloved, while the right person may destroy the Hawthorne man himself.
Jameson, moved by the mention of the grandmother he never met, asks what Alice would have thought of him and Grayson. Tobias answers that the boys are still works in progress and says Alice’s judgment should wait until they are finished becoming who they will be.
Who Appears
- Jameson HawthorneYoung Hawthorne grandson who asks what his unknown grandmother would have thought of him.
- Tobias HawthorneGrandfather who warns Jameson and Grayson about the consuming nature of Hawthorne love.
- Grayson HawthorneYoung Hawthorne grandson present for Tobias’s lesson about love and legacy.
- Alice HawthorneTobias’s late wife, remembered as his only love and imagined judge of the boys.