The Inheritance Games, #4
The Brothers Hawthorne
by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
Contents
NINE YEARS AND THREE MONTHS AGO
Overview
In a flashback, Tobias Hawthorne confronts young Jameson after a motorbike crash and delivers a brutal assessment: Jameson is intelligent but not as naturally gifted as Grayson or Xander. The exchange wounds Jameson deeply but also shapes his lifelong hunger to prove himself by wanting, seeing, and risking more than anyone else.
The chapter reveals how Tobias deliberately forged Jameson’s ambition through comparison, pain, and challenge, helping explain Jameson’s later recklessness and obsession with winning.
Summary
Nine years and three months earlier, ten-year-old Jameson stands below the Hawthorne tree house with a cast on his arm after crashing his motorbike during a competition. Jameson expects to meet Grayson and Xander, but Tobias Hawthorne appears instead, having arranged to get Jameson alone while Grayson plays violin in the distance.
Tobias questions whether Jameson is smart and presses him about what Jameson thought during the crash. When Jameson says he thought nothing, Tobias identifies that as the real problem: Jameson had failed to look, observe, and see possibilities in a moment of danger.
Tobias then tells Jameson that although Jameson is intelligent, Jameson's mind is more ordinary than those of his brothers. Tobias praises Grayson’s efficiency and Xander’s brilliance, wounding Jameson while also making Jameson desperate to prove himself.
Tobias reframes Jameson’s weakness as something that can be trained. Tobias suggests that Jameson can learn to see the world and its possibilities without being limited by fear, pain, or convention. Jameson hears the challenge as a promise that Jameson does not have to remain ordinary and answers that Jameson will do whatever Jameson has to do.
Tobias tells Jameson that when someone has weaknesses, that person must want everything more. Tobias climbs the stairs to the tree house and says he will see Jameson at the top. Rather than taking an easy route, Jameson ignores his broken arm and begins climbing the hard way, determined to become the best.
Who Appears
- Jameson HawthorneAs a ten-year-old, absorbs Tobias’s criticism and turns pain into fierce ambition.
- Tobias HawthorneJameson’s grandfather; isolates and challenges Jameson to overcome perceived ordinariness through relentless desire.
- Grayson HawthorneOffstage presence whose violin and praised intellect intensify Jameson’s sense of comparison.
- Xander HawthorneMentioned as the brightest brother, sharpening Jameson’s insecurity about his own abilities.