Liz ignores the tone underlying Grayson's voice as she turns back around once he steps next to her, both now facing the bricked up entrance to Toby Hawthorne's wing of Hawthorne House. She figures if she has no idea where to start with all of this, it might as well be the one place in the world she can directly correlate to the man she's on the hunt for.
On one hand, is she just supposed to ignore the letter the old man left her like it means nothing to her? On the other, if Grayson thinks it's a bad idea, maybe she should listen to the person who's objectively less impulsive and more emotionally mature than she is. But that hand's boring, so. Grayson seems like he wants to say more, but an alarm on Liz's phone goes off before he can go into some rant about how silly the whole thing is. Strong shoulders, and all.
Rather than heeding to Grayson's words, Liz spends the ride over to the stadium and the entirety of the game hiding into herself, googling everything there was to know about Toby Hawthorne. From his "death" by arson in some old town in Oregon 20 years ago to what his favorite store to shop at used to be, Liz knew everything the internet could offer her about the old man's youngest and seemingly favorite child. She was following up on the girl who was at the Hawthorne residence with Toby and his friends, Kaylie Rooney, when Xander came into the kitchen to see her perched on the edge of the counter, hunched over her phone, distractedly eating the cake pops Mrs.
Laughlin made her. Grayson never got around to telling her whatever it was he wanted to about the whole mystery thing, but the more research Liz did into the topic, the more it felt like something she shouldn't be digging up anyway.
Why fake his death? What did the girl have to do with it? Why go 20 years without seeing his family? Did the old man try to find his son? If he did and couldn't do it, what makes him think some teenagers can figure it out? If he did find his son, why not make him come home?
