Avery and Jameson make a wager about who will be the first to solve the mystery of Toby Hawthorne's disappearance.

Avery opens the secret compartment in Tobias's old desk and finds photos of herself with Toby and her own birth certificate.

Avery, Xander, and Jameson use a sledgehammer to break down the bricked-up wall sealing off Toby's old wing.

The group shines a black light on Toby's bedroom walls and discovers he used them as an invisible ink diary.

Avery notices Toby's unique handwriting matches the odd signature on her birth certificate and concludes Toby is her biological father.

Grayson identifies four charitable organizations in Tobias's old will that the Hawthorne Foundation does not normally fund.

A cow's heart with a knife stabbed into it is found on Avery's bed as an explicit death threat.

Avery overhears Sheffield tell Grayson and Jameson that Toby purchased the accelerant used in the deadly Hawthorne Island fire.

Avery connects the name True North in a fundraiser binder to a clue in Tobias's will and arranges for the group to fly to the ski chalet.

The group uses a powder brought back from Costa Rica to reveal a hidden letter from Tobias to Skye and Zara confirming Toby is alive.

Avery uses a black light on her mother's blank-looking postcards and discovers they are love letters from Toby addressed to Hannah.

Avery meets fisherman Jackson, who gives her a bundle of postcards, a small metal disk, and Toby's goodbye letter to Hannah.

Avery's private jet explodes as she and her security team leave Jackson's location, killing two guards and leaving Avery in a coma.

DNA test results confirm that Ricky Grambs is Avery's biological father, completely disproving her theory that Toby is her father.

Avery attends her court hearing and is formally declared a legally emancipated adult.

The Hawthorne Legacy opens with Avery and Jameson wagering over who will first solve the mystery of Tobias's missing son, Toby, who is alive despite being presumed dead. Avery uncovers clues hidden across Hawthorne House, including invisible ink diary entries on Toby's bedroom walls that reveal deep family secrets and lead her to conclude—wrongly—that Toby is her biological father. The investigation leads the group to True North and ultimately to a fisherman named Jackson, who holds crucial evidence about Toby's past and the deadly Hawthorne Island fire. A bomb planted on Avery's private jet nearly kills her, and when she recovers, DNA results shatter her theory about her parentage. The book closes with Avery winning legal emancipation in court, cementing her transformation from a passive object in someone else's game into a fully self-determined adult.

The core mystery of Toby's disappearance and its explosive resolution.

Avery attends the football game as the new team owner and spots her estranged father Ricky Grambs in the crowd.

Avery's locker is vandalized at school and security chief Oren assigns a new bodyguard, Eli, to shadow her at all times.

Xander reveals to Avery that Tobias secretly left him a hidden message to find Toby, and that Thea and Rebecca are already on his team.

Thea sits with Avery at school and shows her the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine on her tablet as a key clue.

Avery and Jameson use the cipher disk to decode the blacked-out message hidden in Toby's old law book.

Avery, Jameson, and Xander compare the old and new versions of Tobias's will and identify discrepancies in the list of charities.

Avery and Jameson visit Skye in her hotel room, where she confirms Sheffield Grayson is Grayson's biological father.

Avery grabs Ricky's empty beer bottle at the Emily Laughlin memorial fundraiser and asks Alisa to arrange a DNA test.

The group discovers a hidden passage at True North containing the message You knew, and you did it anyway.

The group opens the picture frame holding the photo of Toby, Skye, and Zara, finding a hidden photo, a blank paper, and a compass engraving on the back.

Grayson, Xander, and Jameson tell Nash the identity of his biological father after the group identifies the mysterious man in the hidden photo.

Xander reveals that Toby was born a Laughlin—the secret child of Rebecca's teenage mother who was forced to give him up for adoption.

Avery confronts Mrs. Laughlin with the truth about Toby's real parentage and shows her proof that Toby is still alive.

During a televised interview, Grayson kisses Avery to cut her off before she accidentally reveals her belief that Toby is her father.

Eli is fired from Avery's security team after being identified as the person who leaked the chess photos of Avery and Toby.

While the central mystery drove the plot forward, a web of secondary events shaped how Avery and her allies gathered information and faced threats. Early chapters established the dangers surrounding Avery, from a vandalized locker to an expanding team of investigators, as Xander, Thea, and Rebecca formed their own group to find Toby. Avery pursued the mystery through careful research, decoded clues, and a daring trip to the Hawthorne ski chalet at True North, where hidden photos and secret passages yielded new questions. Mid-book revelations about family secrets—including Toby's true parentage as a Laughlin and Grayson's connection to Sheffield—reshaped everyone's understanding of the past. The pool closes with Grayson's instinctive kiss saving Avery during a televised interview and the eventual firing of the bodyguard who had been working against her.

The clues, confrontations, and revelations that filled in the gaps of the mystery.

Avery reveals Toby's existence to Grayson at the football game, then panics and drops to the floor when fireworks sound like gunshots.

In Toby's old room, the group finds a cipher disk and a handwritten excerpt from William Blake's A Poison Tree before the groundskeeper throws them out.

After both independently reaching the same conclusion, Avery and Jameson agree to team up to solve the mystery together.

Grayson speaks Latin to Jameson and Xander in front of Avery, declaring her one of them and that they must protect her.

Avery researches Colin's Way and finds a video of its founder, Sheffield Grayson, who looks exactly like Grayson Hawthorne.

Alisa gives Avery the legal emancipation paperwork and urges her to call Max instead of relying on the Hawthornes for emotional support.

Max arrives unexpectedly at Hawthorne House, having just turned eighteen and no longer needing parental permission to stay.

Rebecca's mother breaks down at the fundraiser and tells Libby that the Hawthornes take everything and should never be trusted.

While skiing, Grayson tells Avery about the glass ballerina game and Avery firmly tells him she is not the glass ballerina.

Avery and Jameson kiss in the hot tub at True North, but a professional photographer captures the moment from outside.

Avery and Jameson determine that the engraved numbers inside the two wedding rings are coordinates pointing to Cartago, Costa Rica.

Avery calls her biological grandmother, who furiously rejects her and wants no connection to Avery or the Hawthorne money.

Documents in Tobias's safe deposit box reveal that lightning caused the Hawthorne Island fire, but Toby's accelerant made it deadly, and a fisherman named Jackson pulled Toby from the water.

Thea lures Avery into a hidden passage where someone chloroforms her; Avery wakes up tied to a chair in a gasoline-soaked room with Sheffield.

Toby tells Avery he considers her his daughter despite sharing no blood, then takes the metal disk without explanation and flees back into hiding.

Beneath the mystery, The Hawthorne Legacy is a story of a girl becoming a woman—and nearly every chapter contains a moment that pushed Avery closer to that transformation. Early turning points included Avery confronting her fear response at the football game and Grayson declaring her one of the group in a language she couldn't understand, a gesture that both included and excluded her. As Avery signed emancipation paperwork, pursued a romance with Jameson, and was rejected by her biological grandmother, her sense of self was repeatedly tested and reshaped. The kidnapping at the novel's climax forced Avery to face real danger without rescue, and her final conversation with Toby—who calls her his daughter despite sharing no blood—redefines family as a matter of choice. The pool closes with Toby taking the mysterious metal disk and disappearing, leaving Avery changed but the game unfinished.

The emotional shifts, discoveries, and decisions that defined Avery's coming-of-age.