The Hawthorne Snake

Grandpa’s funeral was what I like to call a shitshow. The old man couldn’t even get an hour of peace before he had family members bombarding his casket, desperate to get a glimpse of him, maybe see if the rumors surrounding his death were true. The thick bandages still wrapped around his neck proved that they were. I think the main issue with the funeral was its publicity. The guest list was too long, and few names had any objective relation to Grandpa. I opted for a smaller, more private event. They outvoted me.

“He would’ve wanted the world to get one last look at him,” my mother had said at the family gathering a week or so before the funeral. I didn’t bother to argue. Grandpa’s children– my mother, Aunt Addison, and Uncle Frederick– had always been the ones to get their way. No grandchildren, in-laws, or cousins held sway in the family’s decisions, not even me. Therefore, when the funeral date finally came, we had a small city’s worth of people crammed into Grandpa’s Vermont estate. Despite the house’s considerable size, people stood shoulder to shoulder, trying to peak at my grandfather’s body. 

 Aunt Addison was practically clawing at the fabric of his suit jacket, her red nails scraping the seams. Whether she was trying in vain to wake him up or frantically searching his pockets, I don’t know. Several members of the family did the same thing. I’ve only been to a few funerals in my life, but I’ve never seen people get this handsy with the body. I considered telling Aunt Addison that there would be no cash in his pockets. I decided against it. It was better to keep things civil for now. I was not in a position to have anyone turn against me. 

The funeral was loud, likely because of all the guests and their morbid curiosities. I guess I understood; his death did come as a shock to the world. No one expected Chester Hawthorne, the great entrepreneur and generous philanthropist, to wind up dead in a puddle of his own blood, a bullet wound in his neck. Newspapers called it the story of the decade, a horrific crime against a wonderful man. I disagree. The newspapers, the paparazzi, and all his fans didn’t honestly know him. Chester Hawthorne had elite marketing skills and a talented media team, sure. His public image was squeaky clean. There were no allegations, no record, and not a single charge. The man had never even jaywalked. However, those who knew him, lived in a house with him, and grew up with him, understood who he was. That’s why we were all looting his pockets at the funeral.

The will reading was a week later. It’s what we were all truly in town for. The Hawthorne family has been spread out for decades now. We hate each other so much that we all live on opposite sides of the globe. None of us would’ve flown back to Vermont to see Grandpa’s dead body or even to show respect or grief. The will reading, though… 

We all booked first-class flights for it. Needless to say, Grandpa was rich. You can’t be as influential as he was without a pile of cash to sit on. He had a mountain of it. I knew what my family members wanted before they said it; they were predictable. That didn’t stop them from making their wishes clear, though.

Aunt Addison wanted the cash: access to the bank accounts in Grandpa’s name. Chester Hawthorne made most of his money off real estate and investments and never had a long-term career in anything else; he didn’t need to. Addison, who was not the brightest bulb, followed in her father’s footsteps and invested all the money he’d given her. However, she did not have her father’s sharp mind and ruthless personality. Addison lost the money faster than we could blink. She’d been acquiring debt for years, likely from the multiple loans she had to take out. None of us understood why Addison never tried to get a job. She didn’t like to speak of it, probably from embarrassment. All we knew was that she owed big money to bad men and that she needed a substantial increase in her bank account to save her ass. 

Uncle Frederick wanted the properties in Italy. Grandpa had parcels of land near Florence and Milan: a large estate and a few lovely villas. He’d been making a considerable income renting them out to tourists and events. Frederick and his younger wife, Genevieve, lived in Italy for years before Grandpa’s death and probably wanted a luxurious– and free– new home. Perhaps he’d sell the villas. Maybe he’d continue renting them out. Either way, he would be set for life. 

Frederick’s two sons, Justin and Damon, were too young to know what they wanted from the will. Genevieve gave birth to them only eight years before, and they didn’t understand much about Grandpa, certainly not the extent of his wealth. Perhaps that was a good thing. Genevieve only wanted an account set aside for them to use for college. She asked for nothing more. I never spoke to Genevieve; her being a meager two years older than me made things a bit awkward between us, considering she married my much older uncle. However, there was no tension, hatred, or loathing towards each other. She was, perhaps, the one thing keeping Uncle Frederick from losing himself to his fiery ambition, and I respected her for it. I don’t think she married Frederick for the money; she never seemed to be the gold-digging type. I believe she truly loved him and the boys. The only time she’d ever brought up money was at the will reading, and even that was tame. She just wanted her sons to live stable lives, and no one could blame her.

My mother, Felicity Hawthorne, wanted the main house: the Vermont estate. It was the largest of Grandpa’s properties, where she and her siblings grew up. Felicity was by far the most sentimental of the entire Hawthorne family. She never inherited the cutthroat competitiveness or the ice-cold heart that the rest of us shared. No, my mother was kind and compassionate. She was probably the only one who grieved for her father, the only one– aside from Genevieve and the twins–  who felt anything besides greedy opportunity. She didn’t need the money or the income from the Italian houses; Felicity Hawthorne was successful in her own right, having started numerous businesses and invested in many prosperous start-ups. My mother just wanted her childhood home. I hoped she’d get it. 

Then, there was Aaron Pritchett. He wasn’t related to Chester Hawthorne, not by blood. Grandma had been married once before she took the Hawthorne name. At eighteen, she had a daughter, who then had Aaron at the same age. However, there was a fire, and only Grandma and Aaron escaped. She remarried and quickly had more kids and grandchildren, all younger than Aaron. Chester had always treated him as a true Hawthorne, but Aaron was bitter. Perhaps he resented us for replacing his old family, or Aaron couldn’t handle Grandpa’s ruthlessness like the rest of us. I think it was a bit of both. He did not come to the funeral. I don’t suppose anyone expected him to. Aaron Pritchett only wanted one thing from the will: papers. When Grandma died years ago, Chester locked away all the pictures of her, the letters she’d written, and any documents regarding her life. Grandpa constantly said feelings were a weakness, that coldheartedness was the key to success and survival; he’d drilled that truth into our bones since birth, yet his wife had always been his Achilles heel. Aaron Pritchett only asked for the collection of his grandmother’s– our grandmother’s– things at the will reading. 

That leaves me. My relationship with Grandpa was the strongest of the family despite not following the conventional pattern of grandparent-grandchild bonding. He did not consider me his grandson but rather a business partner. He and I had been searching for something for a long while, something that would nearly triple his wealth. It was an old shipwreck, said to contain priceless treasure. When he first told me of it, I did not believe him; only fools waste time and resources on a child’s treasure hunt. As he told me more, though, I started to understand. We studied for years, researching the history of the Spanish ship, the geography of its theorized location, and the process required to extract it. Of course, we kept everything under wraps. I didn’t even tell my mother. I don’t think Grandma ever knew of it when she was alive. We stored all the information on a computer older than dirt, and only we knew its keycode. 

Soon, though, our alliance grew thin. I saw Grandpa’s raw greed and ambition slip through his cold mask and remembered who he was. I had let our growing closeness blind me to the obvious truth: Chester Hawthorne did not truly care about anyone. Not his daughter, his son, or his grandchildren. Not his wife. Not even me. I went through his office while he slept. I saw the documents, letters, and contracts designed to remove me from his plans and, therefore, the profit. It wasn’t the money that angered me, but the blatant disrespect. My grandfather planned to do me the utmost dishonor, and I couldn’t just sit and take it. He had taught me not to accept something like that; he’d driven the need for revenge deep inside my soul for my entire childhood. I wondered if he saw it coming, the bullet to his neck. He had to have suspected. The pistol had been so cold in my hand, and yet, I did not flinch away from the trigger. I left him dead in his study, all the betraying documents burned. It was a big shock for everyone to hear how a burglar had broken into the estate and killed the head of the Hawthorne family. Well, it was a shock to almost everyone. 

At the will reading, I laid claim to one thing: the damn computer. The family didn’t question me too much about it. After a quick, lame-ass excuse about childhood memories, they were content to ignore me and focus on their needs. The man reading the will was a friend of Grandpa’s, though none of the family was particularly close with him. I think he knew who Grandpa was, who all of us were: snakes. We were vipers, us Hawthornes. The man trembled as he read the paper. 

To everyone’s dismay, the document intentionally divided his assets to most effectively screw everyone over. Frederick received nothing, and he threw quite the temper tantrum about it. Pritchet got the collection of his grandmother’s things, but every photograph, letter, and document was torn to shreds. Addison received a fifty-dollar bill and a plastic bag full of pennies. I let loose a small chuckle at that. The will had been kind to some, though. It had set aside a fund for Genevieve’s children. It was generous and more than enough to get both boys through college comfortably. My mother was gifted with everything else. The cash, the investment portfolios, the Italian properties, and the Vermont estate were all hers, along with the several luxury cars Grandpa had owned. 

I was gifted a single brass key. I smirked at my family’s confused faces as I took my tiny inheritance with glee. The reason I had been the one to assist Chester Hawthorne was not because of any solid familial bond between us. It was because I was three steps ahead of the rest of them, and he knew it. However, he didn’t expect me to outsmart him as well. Chester Hawthorne had never written the key into his will. In fact, I was not mentioned in the will at all since he had planned to cut me out entirely. Papers can be burned, though, and signatures forged. It was child’s play, really. Because of his closeness to me, everyone expected Grandpa to gift me something, but I wasn’t dumb enough to write the actual computer into the will. If Grandpa valued something, the entire family would be clambering to claim it. But a rusty, old key? It was so easily overlooked. And by giving everything else to my mother… 

The family didn’t stop me as I left the will reading, too focused on their bickering and swearing at each other over the main assets. Part of me pitied my mother. After all, I had left her there to take the brunt of my actions. I didn’t feel bad enough to stop as I climbed into my car and drove away. It took a few hours to reach the storage facility and another fifteen minutes to locate the door in my name. The rusty key slid into the lock. I stepped inside the garage and closed the door behind me. The computer sat on a folding table in the center. It was cheap-looking, but secret bunkers didn’t need to be stylish. I booted it up and typed in the passcode. My grandmother’s birthday. Everything was still there. The maps, the files, and the account to pay for the extraction were precisely as I had last seen it. I guess he hadn’t known I’d double-cross him. How utterly foolish of him. 

A year later, I’m on board a large ship heading for open water. I will finish this confession and put it in a bottle like the sailors used to. Maybe someone will find it someday. Perhaps it’ll sink to the bottom of the sea. Either way, I’ll be the richest Hawthorne to date, and it won’t even be close.

So, in a twisted sort of way, I suppose I should thank my grandfather, wherever he’s rotting now.