Previous
Chapters 21–30
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Inheritance Games, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Money and Social Class
Competition, Cooperation, and Manipulation
Family
Charity and Responsibility
Violence and Intimate Partner Abuse
Summary
Analysis
Chapter 31. In the bowling alley, Avery inputs her initials in the touch-screen—and sees a message on the monitor welcoming Avery Kylie Grambs. Avery, disturbed, infers that Tobias programmed the house to greet her sometime before his death. She wonders again whether Tobias knew her mother and thinks of her mother’s love of games and secrets. After bowling, she wanders into the gym, where Jameson is on the climbing wall. As she watches Jameson, she feels a strange sensation—and realizes that Grayson is glaring at her from the doorway. To defy Grayson, she calls to Jameson that she’ll meet him in the library.
The presence of a bowling alley inside Hawthorne House yet again underscores Tobias’s love of competitive games, while his having programmed Avery’s name into the bowling-alley touchscreen suggests he was planning his epic inheritance puzzle-game well before his death. Avery’s memories of her game-loving mother draw a parallel between her mother and Tobias, hinting at a possible connection between them.
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Chapter 32. Avery goes to the library. Jameson arrives shortly after, followed by Grayson, who insists on participating on whatever they’re doing. Jameson refuses to tell Grayson what they’re up to, but Avery explains that they believe Tobias’s letters contained a puzzle that they are now trying to solve. When Jameson urges Grayson to agree that a final puzzle would be characteristic of Tobias, the brothers almost share a moment—but then Grayson shuts Jameson down, saying that the grandsons clearly didn’t understand Tobias as well as they thought.
When Jameson urges Grayson to agree that it would be like Tobias to set up one final puzzle for them, he implicitly wants Grayson not only to agree but also to cooperate in solving the puzzle with them—an example of how puzzles and games can bring people together, not only force them into competition. However, Grayson—evidently still wounded by Tobias’s decision to disinherit his grandsons—refuses Jameson’s olive branch.
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When Jameson suggests that Grayson go, Grayson starts quoting the proverbs in Jameson’s letter. Jameson speculates that Tobias left Grayson the same letter with the same clues, but Grayson retorts that they aren’t clues—they’re evidence of mental instability. Jameson tells Avery that Grayson might use the letters against her in court, and Avery explains that Tobias’s previous will disinherited them even more thoroughly than the current one. Jameson accuses her of lying, while Grayson says she’s telling the truth—both responses that surprise Avery. When Grayson announces his intention to stay in the library till Jameson explains what clue he thinks he’s following, Avery says he can stay—and Jameson tensely accedes.
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Chapter 33. Avery feels uncomfortable being alone with Jameson and Grayson as they spend hours checking books and covers. She wonders whether the brothers got along better before Emily’s death. When Grayson and Avery come near each other, Grayson tells Avery very quietly that Jameson is an adrenaline junkie who’s using “the rush of the game” to deal with his grief. Then, from elsewhere in the library, Jameson announces that he has something—a copy of Faust with the wrong cover—and he says, “The devil you know. […] Or the devil you don’t.”
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Avery, opening the book, finds a red square inside. She shows it to Jameson, who examines it. Grayson explains that it’s red acetate filter paper, which can “reveal[] hidden messages.” Avery flips through the book and finds words circled: “Where. A. There is. A. There is. Way.” Avery concludes they must be supposed to rearrange the words. She and Jameson conclude that the message reads, “Where there is a . . . there is a way.” Jameson adds that the missing word is will. When Jameson and Grayson explain that the red acetate filter paper would be used to find a hidden message in a document apparently printed in red, Avery speculates that some version of Tobias’s will must be printed in red.
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Chapter 34. Later, when Avery mentions a red-printed will to Alisa, Alisa says she’ll get Avery in to see it—once Avery has seen her stylists. As Libby spectates, a female stylist offers Avery three wardrobe choices: “classic,” “natural,” or “preppy with an edge.” When Avery blows off the choice, the female stylist explains that clothing isn’t “shallow” but the “story” you tell the world. Avery asks why she has to tell the world a story—and Xander, walking in, says that if she doesn’t tell her story, someone else will. Avery snarks that if she were male, this wouldn’t be happening. Xander retorts that if he were White, “people wouldn’t look at me like I’m half a Hawthorne.” Avery takes his point and accepts the scone he offers.
In the end, Avery chooses “preppy with an edge” because she can’t stomach “classic” or “natural.” Once the stylists have done her hair and makeup, she asks Libby’s opinion, only to see Libby staring “deer-in-the-headlights” at her phone. Avery infers that Drake is texting Libby again. Worrying that Libby might text Drake back, Avery tries to reassure herself that Libby wouldn’t resume her relationship with Drake after he punched Libby and betrayed her and Avery to the paparazzi. Then Zara walks in and asks to speak with Avery.
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Chapter 35. Once Avery and Zara are alone, they establish that the lawyers have explained the situation to Zara. Zara informs Avery that Avery has inherited control of the Hawthorne Foundation, which gives away about $100 million per year. When Avery asks where the money goes, Zara lists many causes—leaving Avery to infer that with her new inheritance, she could fund “nearly anything” and “change the world.” Zara says that she’s headed the Foundation for years and doesn’t want Avery to unravel that work. When Avery says she wants to be involved in the Foundation, Zara offers to teach her and says they’ll meet on Monday after Avery finishes school.
Chapter 36. The following day, Avery goes with Oren to the firm to see the “Red Will.” Avery has the red filter paper in her pocket, which Jameson gave her. At the firm, Alisa leads them to a corner office, where she explains that Tobias ordered the firm to show Avery, Nash, Grayson, Jameson, or Xander the will if any of them asked. When Avery asks whether Alisa told Nash, Alisa retorts that she doesn’t share things with Nash any longer. Then she leaves. Avery, reading the red-printed will through the red filter paper, finds that only four words remain when she does so: the Hawthorne grandsons’ middle names, Westbrook, Davenport, Winchester, and Blackwood. Avery memorizes the names and texts Jameson, unsure whether he’ll share the scoop with Grayson.
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Chapter 37. When Avery returns to Hawthorne House, she runs into Nash while looking for Jameson. When Nash asks why Avery is hurrying, Alisa informs him that Avery just saw a “special copy” of Tobias’s will. Nash asks whether this “special copy” is related to the incomprehensible letter he received. Avery infers that all four grandsons received the same letter.
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After Alisa leaves, Avery tells Nash that she’s supposed to meet Jameson in the solarium. He offers to lead here there. Then he tells her that each year on the grandsons’ birthdays, Tobias would give them $10,000 to invest and ask them to choose some skill to pursue—and some assignment to fulfill, like a “work of museum-quality art.” He asks whether Jameson told her about the Saturday puzzles. When she says yes, he tells her sometimes Tobias would give his grandsons objects like “a glass ballerina” or a “knife” at the start of the puzzle. To Jameson, that’s what Avery is: “the glass ballerina—or the knife.”
Chapter 38. When Avery enters the solarium, Jameson is there, shirtless and drunk. When Avery asks why he’s drinking, he explains that Skye never told her sons anything about their fathers (she considers her children “hers alone”) or explained the origin of their middle names. Jameson asks Avery whether she’s coming, and Avery understands that they’re going to see Skye.
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Jameson leads Avery down a secret passage. Discomfited by her physical attraction him, she points out that he doesn’t require her to solve the puzzle. When he insists that she’s necessary somehow, she says that she’s “the glass ballerina” or the “knife.” Jameson says she’s talked to one of brothers, eventually guessing that it was Nash. When Avery asks whether she’s only a tool to Jameson, he replies that she’s “the puzzle”—and asks whether she wants to give up or find answers. She chooses answers.
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Jameson and Avery reach Skye’s suite. When Jameson calls in, Skye invites him to enter—from the bathroom. He asks whether she’s “decent,” she assures him she is, and he opens the door, only to find her in a bubble bath. When Jameson asks whether his middle name came from his father, she asks him to hand her her champagne. She muses that she would’ve named him after herself if he’d been a girl—and she then says she’ll tell him after she speaks to Avery alone.
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Chapter 39. Once Avery is alone with Skye, Skye “forgive[s]” her but demands “financial support.” Avery’s about to storm out when Skye says she’ll answer the question once Avery clarifies what she’s doing with Skye’s “shirtless, grieving” son Jameson, who is an amazing person just like Tobias and Toby. Skye claims that Jameson was Tobias’s favorite grandson—because he’s “hungry” and so similar to Toby. Describing how young Jameson used to run away and hide in Hawthorne House, Skye claims that Avery is just a means for Jameson to “get lost”—the way Emily was, though Avery is a lesser girl than Emily. Finally, Skye admits that Tobias is the one who chose her sons’ middle names.
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Chapter 40. After Avery relays to Jameson that Tobias chose his grandsons’ middle names, Jameson reviews the timeline: Tobias wrote the will disinheriting the Hawthornes 20 years ago. Grayson is 19, Jameson is 18, and Xander is almost 17. Ergo, Tobias chose all the middle names but Nash’s (Nash is the oldest, in his mid-20s) after the disinheritance. Jameson concludes darkly that Tobias was “playing a long game” with his grandsons. When Avery insists that the names must have meaning, Jameson suggests, even more darkly, that Tobias could have found out his grandsons’ fathers’ names because Tobias could find out anyone’s secrets. When Avery suggests she could get a private investigator to investigate men whose last names match the middle names, Jameson suggests she wait until he’s sober so they can do something else.
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Once Jameson is fully sober, he takes Avery to an enormous garage and tells her all the trophy cars inside now belong to her. They get into the Astin Martin Valkyrie, and Jameson drives them out a back exit, faster and faster. Abruptly, Avery discovers that she “feel[s] free” for the first time since inheriting.
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