Grounds for Impropriety (Hawthorne Hall Book 1)
1. Where There’s a Will…
Avi Hawthorne closed her eyes, turned the steering wheel, and slammed the brakes as her Toyota Yaris drifted into the last available parking spot and came to a screeching halt. Miraculously, she didn’t feel the jostle of a collision. She didn’t even hear her mirror grinding against the paint of either of the adjacent minivans. Under any other circumstances, Avi would have taken a moment to admire the exactness of her uncharacteristic vehicular maneuver, but she was late; very late.
She exited the car, locked the door, and took off in a self-conscious sprint towards the law offices of Dole, Everman, and Dole. As she passed the last row of parked cars, she made eye contact with her awaiting and pacing sister.
“Aviva Hawthorne!”
Uh oh…Gracie was seething with full-first-name anger.
“Where have you been?! I’ve been calling you for over an hour. Did you sleep in again?”
“I…”
“What, did that silly flip-phone of yours stop working? Did you just not care that the whole family was waiting for you?”
“My…”
“No time for excuses, Aviva. You’ve really done it this time.” Gracie said as she held open the door for her big sister. “Of all the things to forget…Grandma Jean’s will reading? You do realize you’re the only thing standing in the way of twenty-some Hawthornes and their inheritances, don’t you?”
“I’m sor…”
“What are you waiting for? Let’s move!”
Though Avi had never been there before, the law offices of Dole, Everman, and Dole felt all too familiar. The monotonous conformity to modern architectural perfection was perfectly boring - completely forgettable in an unforgettable sort of way. Its layout was designed to optimize function with an unrelenting rate of right angles, and while determining interior paint options, the lease-holding legal team no doubt beamed with frugality when they came to the color swatch that read, “Cheapest, Dullest White Your Clients Ever Will See.”
With a lobby that smelt of nothing and a stairwell bereft of any echoing creaks or character, the place of business reminded her of her apartment: a sturdy cage aimed at maximizing profits while neglecting the human experience. How she hated that cookie-cutter small town and longed for the peculiarity of the city. There, limitless rows of antiquated brick buildings left their unique fingerprints along the old broken roads. She pictured their interiors full of enticingly strange corridors, abnormal rooms, and hidden artifacts forgotten by the original owners. However, in reality, Avi knew the best she could hope to find there was a friendly squatter and only minimal traces of asbestos, radon, and fentanyl. The city was a danger zone, so until modern architects decided to reintroduce an artistic flair to their line of work, choosing between urban aesthetics and a soulcrushing place like the building she was currently racing through was an easy choice to make.
Avi was tenacious for prioritizing safety. Her timid demeanor had always been painful to behold, but her constant worry and borderline pantophobia were later additions to her learned persona. And who could blame her? Recurring and overwhelming anxiety would probably plague anyone who, as a child, had lost both parents the way Avi Hawthorne had.
Still, a twenty-year-old tragedy was no excuse for her forgetfulness that morning. Even if Avi were the type of person to use a past trauma to justify excessive tardiness, the statute of limitations for such an excuse must have already expired. She was at least somewhat prepared to own up to her mistake. However, part of her did want to see if her muffled character and small stature were ninja-like enough to sneak into the conference room undetected by her family.
As she reached the top step at a hurried pace, she stopped at the door, took a deep breath, entered, and was met at once by a blank-stare sea of familial frustration whose waves of glares and angry whispers rose and crashed against her; slicing at her heartstrings like a storm against the sails.
“I’m so sorry,” Avi mimed as she avoided all eye contact and tip-toed with Gracie over to two open seats along the back wall.
With the perfect guilt-tripping mixture of worry and embarrassment, Gracie asked, “Well, are you ready to tell me…why you’re so late?”
Gracie was a spectacular sibling and as dependable as all get out, but she came prewired with the annoying tendency to play the role of Avi’s overbearing mother. Not only was Avi the oldest of four siblings; she was just shy of thirty and far too mature for a lecture on tardiness, even if it was deserved. Still, filling in for Mom had always been Gracie’s coping mechanism, so Avi selflessly tolerated it, and on the rarest of occasions, secretly loved her sister’s excessive care. However, this was not one of those rarestof occasions.
From the row in front of her, her younger brother Josh chuckled with Josh-like exuberance at Avi’s unenviable situation. While bouncing his twin boys, Kai and Devin on his knees, Josh turned around in his chair, shot Avi his signature crinkled-nose grin, and with two gentle pats on her leg, made everything in the world right again - just as he so often did.
Avi was always grateful Josh was too young to remember the foggy night Aunty Lisa, silhouetted by blue and red police lights, delivered the earth-shattering news. Not that he or their baby sister, Corey weren’t at all jaded by the loss of their parents, it’s just that Avi’s and Gracie’s scars tended to be more visible.
“Well..?” Gracie asked in a piercing yet hushed tone.
Josh’s Joshy vibes had caused Avi to forget that an interrogation was afoot. But before she could respond, a tall, portly gentleman in a wrinkled suit stood up in the front of the cramped conference room. He was visibly elated. No doubt it was either Dole, Everman, or Dole, and it appeared his elation stemmed from the extra billable hour Avi’s delay had tacked onto the estate’s running tab.
As he stood, a hushed reverence fell over the bereaved. Avi recognized the opportunity to avoid an awkward explanation and seized it with a silent gesture in the direction of the gleeful attorney. With some reluctance, Gracie turned her attention to the front of the room sighing in motherly disapproval.
“First of all, I would like to welcome you all here today and offer my sincere condolences for your loss.”
His condolences were ten years too late. They had lost Grandma Jean to Alzheimer”s a decade before losing her to death. And his smile paired with those green dollar sign eyes made Avi question the sincerity of his sympathies. But who was she to judge? At least that guy was decent enough to show up on time.
He continued, “Now, I didn’t know Jean Hawthorne, but it says a lot about her that she wanted all of you here before beginning the probate process. That to me is evidence that she loved every one of you very much.”
“Speaking of every one of us, where is Corey? Better question: who has Corey?”
There was no chance her youngest sister was physically in the building, but Avi would bet the entirety of whatever she was about to inherit that Corey was there virtually. For the past four years, she and her husband, Ben, had been out west making their fortune in LA’s commercial real estate sector, only leaving the West Coast when substantial growth to their lucrative portfolio presented itself abroad. Still, she had never even gone a week without talking to her family via Facetime.
So, Avi began scanning the room for a tablet, phone, or laptop streaming the proceedings. She did so until she saw Josh’s wife, May standing in the closest back corner of the room. The twins had clearly made May a motherly mage of multi-tasking; for with one arm she rocked baby Bree, and with the other, she held her phone high for Corey to stream.
May was the best. Avi had always thought that no woman alive could make Josh happier than he already was, but May proved her wrong time and time again. She was adorable, fun, and even more optimistic than Avi”s little brother.
This combination of two nephews, a niece, a sister-in-law, and three siblings was Avi Hawthorne’s family and fortress. Sure, the entirety of the room, except the attorney, was technically family, but she couldn”t escape the feeling that they all felt foreign to her. It had been years since she’d seen their faces outside the occasional Christmas card or graduation invitation, and most of her cousins were in diapers during the last true reunion; too young to retain any memory of her.
The vast gap in reunions was nobody”s fault. She and her siblings had more or less fallen off the map not long after moving in with Aunty Lisa. And when Grandma Jean’s Alzheimers started setting in, any remaining glue holding the Hawthornes together lost its strongest stick and tack.
The circumstances were torture. And it wasn’t just the hurtful glances or the attorney’s long-winded and scripted introduction. It was the pain of nostalgia. Most people enjoy hearing the song they were listening to when they first fell in love or inhaling the aroma of a burning candle made to smell like the waters in Disneyland. But to Avi Hawthorne, nostalgia was a noxious and prickly weed; a reminder of how sad the present was compared to the past.
There she was, with people who existed in a life that seemed so bygone…so different…so happy…she couldn”t be certain it was ever even hers. The circumstances made her want to stand up and run out of the room in the only direction she understood: forward. After all, when the now lacks everything and the past’s perfection is unreachable, the only place to flee is the future. But just then, she heard something that made her want to stay in the present forever…
“Hello, everybody.”
Tears of overwhelming joy streamed down Avi’s face as she released every locked-away laugh and cry. There at the front of the room on a pull-down screen, was the face of Grandma Jean. She appeared lucid and just as beautiful as Avi remembered her; no doubt pre-recorded only a few months before she started forgetting their faces. Avi couldn’t tell through her tears, but there wasn’t a dry eye or a smileless face in the audience. The soft, wavering, warmth of Grandma’s voice was the sweetest sound Avi’d ever heard, and it seemed to reverberate down to the very helixes of her DNA.
“Well, I don’t know if I’m working this thing right…” Grandma Jean said as she pushed some buttons on the camera, “But if you can all see and hear me, I just have one thing I thought you all should know: You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. You make me happy when skies are gray…”
By the third word of the song, everybody in the room was singing along. For its entire duration, the glue was back, and no one in the room seemed like a stranger anymore. It was no longer nostalgia. It was here and now and incredible.
Gracie abandoned the surrogate mother facade and with tears in her eyes, embraced Avi as a sister once more. May returned to her seat next to Josh. He encircled his little family…and iPhone Corey… in the gaping arms of his love and enjoyed the music.
“…You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you. Please don’t take my sunshine away.”
She’d spent hours singing that song to all her children and grandchildren, yet somehow Grandma made everyone feel like it was some secret, melodical code that only she and the individual could decipher.
“I sure do love you all, and I hope you’re enjoying being together,” she said before taking a long pause and looking at some notes she had prepared for the recording. Grandma raised her reading glasses to her squinting eyes and began to read.
“As you all know, my memory is getting worse. The doctors think it could go any day now, and my attorneys think it would be wise to go over and solidify my will before that happens…”
Grandma Jean’s mouth moved, but Avi was too busy wading through the flood of feelings and memories to absorb the audio. She remembered the putt-putt hole-in-ones, the bacon burgers and mint shakes at Kidd Valley, the dinosaur encounters at the Science Center, the bonfires on the beach, the chimney fires at the cabin, and more than anything she remembered the puzzles.
There weren’t two people in the family more alike than Grandma and Avi, and puzzles seemed to showcase their similar strengths and conceal their shared weaknesses. Both were hyper-focused, organized, and detailed. Both were also awkward conversationalists and regrettably introverted. The best thing about puzzles was while working on them, very few people ever expected conversation, and those who did weren”t offended by short responses.
The whole point of reunions was catching up; discussing the new facets of everyone’s life and reforging bonds over a shared dialogue. While Jean loved providing the environment for those things to occur, she and her granddaughter thrived under more silent circumstances. That is why the pair could always be found in a quiet corner of the rental, at peace in their element as they began with the puzzle’s borders and worked their way to the center.
But Avi’s favorite part was the game within the game. She knew at some point that Grandma Jean would - with covert precision - remove a puzzle piece from the table and slip it into her pocket to save for Avi. While she never called her out, Avi felt like she’d won whenever she recognized the sleight of hand. Towards the end of the puzzle, when the rest of the family finally decided to contribute, Jean would wait until all other pieces were in place, and without drawing attention to herself, she would slip Avi the final piece she deserved.
Jean’s video addressed each family member, starting with her two surviving sons, Mel and Ken. Hearing their names made Avi think about her father - the son Grandma Jean had lost - before remembering her one cardinal rule: Don’t! No nostalgia! Sure, the video of Grandma Jean was surprisingly healing, but it wasn’t nostalgic. It was brand new. Avi was making a memory rather than dwelling on one she could never relive, and while it was stirring up scenes of past experiences she was happily replaying in her mind’s eye, it was altogether different than dwelling on the memory of her father!
But whether Avi was willing to admit it or not, the degree of potential pain that could come with channeling memories of Mom and Dad, compared to those of Grandma Jean was what made all the difference. Such hurt fell into the realm of painbeyond description. And so, Avi, safe as always, turned her attention back to the video at the front of the conference room and purged her mind of her parents. Josh unknowingly helped.
“Hey!” He whispered to May while Grandma’s video focused on one of the cousins. “You got any gum?”
“Check my purse.”
“Where’s your purse?”
“Under my chair.”
Josh didn’t move.
“Did you hear me?” May asked.
“Yeah.”
“Well…are you gonna get it?”
“You’re closer.”
“I’m also holding your daughter and your sister.”
“And I’m holding your sons. Based on the weight each of us is holding multiplied by the distance from the gum, mathematically speaking, you should probably be a peach and grab the purse for me.”
“Fine,” she said in playful disbelief as she sat down the phone and reached under her seat.
Just as May leaned over, Kai - playing the part of swift justice - forced his tiny fist into his father’s mouth.
“Ah! Dude!”
“What?” May asked.
“Kai stuck his hand in my mouth, and I’m pretty sure he went diaper diving right before that. I can’t get the taste out of my mouth! Hurry up with that gum, will ya?”
“I’m hurrying.”
“Faster, hun. Ammonia tastes worse than it smells.”
“Would you give me a hot sec?”
Josh - speaking louder than he likely meant to - responded, “I’ve given you plenty of hot secs!”
The whole room turned to look at him in stern disapproval. Avi concealed her grin under rolled lips wondering how long it would take Josh to realize that what he said sounded nothing like what he meant to say. Perhaps he replayed his words in his head until it clicked, or maybe he saw cousin Karen covering her daughter’s ears; guarding them from exposure to any further spicy declarations. Whatever it was, Avi pinpointed the moment Josh had his epiphany when she saw the side of his face turn beet red.
After gaining his composure, Josh said, “What? We’re married.”
May playfully slapped his arm and shooshed him as everyone’s attention reverted to the will reading.
It took about a half hour before Jean got to Avi and her siblings. With each of her posterity, Jean started with her favorite memory, offered some personal advice, and concluded with their inheritance; which included a family heirloom and the same sum of cash. While her mind had been lost in the past for most of the proceedings, Avi did notice that both her uncles got $100,000, and every grandchild received $25,000. Avi had never been concerned about money, but she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t excited to discover which of Grandma’s keepsakes she’d been bequeathed. More than anything, she hoped for Grandma’s book collection.
Before Alzheimer”s forced her to move into the care facility, Grandma’s back office was less a den and more a library whose walls set the stage for all of Avi’s literary adventures. Its wall-to-wall shelves overflowed with leather, gold gilded, centuries-old, and rare books. Its rolling ladder had served Avi with honor as the perch of Ahab’s Pequod, Mr. Wonka’s great glass elevator, Treebeard of Fangorn, and countless other fictional high places and moving things. Furthermore, it was Grandma’s love for books that inspired Avi’s; so much so that when she turned eighteen and inherited the funds that had been set aside from Mom and Dad’s estate, Avi bought the tiny store on the small-town corner of 700 East and Main and turned it into a rare bookstore patterned after Grandma’s den.
It didn’t make much if any money, but that wasn’t the point. The point was, as owner, she could charge exorbitant prices on books she never intended to sell; which was what she intended to do with Grandma’s books if the collection proved to be part of her inheritance.
Still reading from her notes, Jean said, “Now, just so you’re all aware, I wrestled for a long time with what to do about Sam’s side of the family.”
Even hearing her father’s name felt like falling through the ice of a frozen lake.
“So far I’ve given each child $100,000 and $25,000 to every grandchild. At some point when Mel and Ken pass away, their kids will hopefully get some of what I’ve left them. But with Sam’s passing, his kids will only ever receive what they’re getting here today. So…in the name of fairness, I have decided to give them a little more…not $100,000 more…but a little more. I hope you can all respect that decision even if you don’t agree with it.”
“Wonderful!” she thought.
Not only had she kept them waiting, but she would be leaving with more money; money she didn’t even care about. Avi examined the room to see if anyone was shaking their heads in disbelief or staring at her or her siblings with rageful disapproval, but she saw nothing of the sort. Still, she had a gut feeling this would not be the end of it…
“Firecracker…”
That was the pet name Grandma called Corey since she was three years old.
“…I”m sure you don’t remember this, but when you were five…maybe six years old, I was watching you while your aunt Lisa was out of town.”
Avi leaned over May’s shoulder to see Corey’s live feed reaction. Just as she anticipated, Corey was juggling the will reading with a Bluetooth business call. Her apparent distraction may have seemed rude, but Avi knew just how gifted a multi-tasker Corey was. If four years of Facetime calls had taught her anything about Corey, it was that after everyone had gone home, Corey would be able to recall more of what Grandma Jean had said than anyone else in attendance.
“You said to me ‘Grandma, let’s go get some French fries.’ I went to the freezer and pulled out a bag of steak fries. Well, you didn’t want steak fries. You wanted curly fries, but I didn’t want to drive to the store. The next thing I know I hear the front door closing. I figured it was Gracie coming back from her friend’s house, so I said, ‘Gracie?’ No response. That’s when I remembered your aunt reminding me to always keep the top bolt locked. Well, I caught up to you about a quarter mile down the road, and I’ll never forget the confidence I saw in your steps. You’ve always known what you wanted, you’ve always been driven, and you’ve always been independent. Just don’t leave all of us behind.”
Avi’s attention shot back to Corey. She was still in the middle of a sale, but her watery eyes were noticeable all the way from LA.
“To help you do this, I’m leaving you in charge of all the family photo albums. Just promise me you’ll slow down and enjoy them every once in a while.”
While her message came from the heart, it hurt Avi to see Grandma’s dependence on notes - an outward manifestation of the disease that was about to steal her away.
“I’m also leaving you $40,000. Enjoy it! I love you, Firecracker.”
“$40,000 isn’t that much more than $25,000. They’re not going to hold a grudge over an extra $15,000...especially when they consider the morbid reason for it.”
Grandma proceeded to tell a heartwarming story of the healing power of Josh’s cheery disposition and a humorous tale of Gracie’s stern demeanor. They received the same $40,000 gift as Corey, and neither were willed the books! Jubilation consumed her as she awaited her Grandma’s final message and gift. To everyone’s surprise, Grandma set her notes aside before addressing her oldest grandchild.
“Last but not least...Aviva…” she said as her eyes twinkled with moisture, “…you made me a grandmother.”
Avi’s tears came rushing back.
“Grandmas don’t have the capacity to love one grandchild more than another, but I can say without any guilt or worry that I’ve loved you the longest, and that means something. It means I’ve had more with you. I’ve had more time…more experiences…more insight into who you are as a person, and what I’ve discovered is...well...you’re basically me…for better…and for worse.”
Avi wasn’t offended. She knew it was true.
“When you truly love somebody you’re willing to do what’s best for them even if it’s not the easiest or most enjoyable thing.”
“Where is she going with this?” Avi thought.
“I knew what to leave you when I wrote my will because I knew what I’d want from the estate if I were in your shoes. But the more I thought about it, the more I just couldn’t cripple you with all those books. When you come to the end of your life, you start to reflect more and more on the choices you regret. I’ve spent my whole life avoiding risk and failure…even avoiding people. I know if I left you my books, you’d do the same thing with them that I did: lose yourself in them. I want you to find yourself, Avi. I want you to stop reading about adventures, and go have one of your own.”
Avi was a motionless whirlwind of emotion. All at once she felt heartbroken, anxious, and a surge of excitement.
“Stretch yourself! See the world! Take some risks! Throw caution to the wind! You need this, Avi Hawthorne.”
To her surprise and embarrassment, Avi saw far too many heads in the room nodding in agreement.
“So, in order to inspire you I took my own advice…and a little risk of my own. I’m not leaving you an heirloom nor am I leaving you $40,000. Instead, I took your $40,000 and invested it in the most random investment I could find. By the time you watch this, it could be worth hundreds of thousands or just thousands, but no matter what it’s worth, I want you to make me one promise…”
Avi nodded.
“...promise me, you’ll use every last bit of it to have an adventure…and one grand enough that you’ll never have to look back in regret.”
Avi nodded again.
“And if you even buy one book with that money…I will haunt you.”
Everyone laughed except Grandma Jean. She put back on her glasses and went right to her notes.
“So with $40,000, I bought…now, let’s see…I bought…where is it?”
She flipped through her notes, unable to remember the investment’s unique name or the number of shares.
“Oh, what was it called?”