It couldn’t be a coincidence that billionaire Tobias Hawthorne had left his fortune to a stranger who knew his ‘dead’ son.
-- Narrator (Chapter 1)

Importance: Avery believes that Tobias chose her to inherit his estate because she knew his son, Toby, a man who has supposedly died more than 20 years in the past. Avery knew Toby as Harry, a homeless man with whom she played chess in the park right after her mother died.

Toby was adopted.’ I turned to look at Xander. ‘Nobody knew. Not Toby. Not his sisters. No one. Your grandmother faked a pregnancy. When Toby was sixteen, he found something. Proof. I don’t know what.
-- Avery (Chapter 13)

Importance: Avery learns from the journal that Toby kept on his walls that he became angry and began using drugs when he learned that he had been adopted. It is indicated that Toby’s mother went so far as to fake a pregnancy to...