It was Boomer’s turn to nod. “I wanted to kill him the day he told me his dirty little secret. God, you have no idea how much I hated that kid. All I felt was relief when he died. I’ll never deny having that feeling either.”

Tears rolled down Cady’s cheeks. “Half this town believes I killed Jeff King. If you all had come forward, you could have corrected the situation. Damn it, Boomer, Jeff King told me I was his half sister. Do you have any idea what that did to me? I hated him because of how he treated me. He hated me because his father is my father, too. That’s why I blocked it out. I was just a little kid. There was no way I could handle something like that.”

“Cady, only the Kings believed that you killed Jeff, and now you know why.”

“I don’t know what to do, Boomer,” Cady said, forgetting how angry she’d been with him. “I just want to put this behind me. I want to be able to accept it and move on with my life.”

“Then do it.”

“Just like that,” Cady said, blowing her nose again. The napkin went on top of the pile.

“Yeah, just like that.”

“What about Amy? How do I deal with her?”

“That’s your call, Cady. Just remember, you’ll have to live with your decision for the rest of your life. What good will it do if we tell the truth to the Kings? If you decide you want to go public, Andy, Pete, and I are prepared to stand up and tell the truth. Like I said, it’s your call, Cady.”

“Does anyone else in town know Jeff King was my…half brother?” There, she’d said the words aloud, and the world hadn’t crashed down around her.

Boomer flinched at her matter-of-fact question. “I never heard a word even when I was a kid. My parents would have said something. You know how small towns are. I think your secret is safe.”

“When I remembered up there on the zip line, do you know what my first thought was?” Boomer shook his head. “My first thought was that Lola isn’t really my grandmother. That realization was like a stabbing pain right in my heart. Like you, I only felt relief that the man I thought of as my father isn’t my father. I don’t want to believe that Cyrus King, my real father, believed any of those stories about my killing Jeff. I think it was his wife who probably started the rumors. She must have found out about his affair with my mother, or else Mr. King confessed to it. Jeff was her only son. To lose him like that must have been more than she could bear. When a tragedy like that happens, you look for someone to blame it on. It was easy to pick on me considering I was her husband’s illegitimate child. It also explains that attitude of the man I thought was my father. He made my mother pay for her mistake every day of her life. I paid for it, too. Everything makes sense now.”