Maybe she needed to look at the scrapbook about the accident. She’d never seen any of the newspaper articles. Even when she’d gotten older and asked her mother if she would get them for her, both her parents had been adamant that there weren’t any articles. Even Lola had said when the time was right for her to see them, she would know. The time seemed right now.

Cady sucked in her breath as she reached for the scrapbook that chronicled the accident that had left her partially paralyzed for almost three years. She reared back at the bold, black headline of the Indigo Sentinel.INDIGO VALLEY TEEN DIES. Cady flipped the pages as the headlines got uglier and uglier. Perspiration beaded her forehead.

MYSTERY SURROUNDS TEEN’S DEATH.

PARENTS BLAME TEN-YEAR-OLD IN SON’S DEATH.

NO WITNESSES IN MYSTERY DEATH.

TEN-YEAR-OLD PARTIALLY PARALYZED WITH MEMORY LOSS.

Cady gulped at the remaining coffee in the fragile Dresden cup. She felt clammy and dizzy. She was the ten-year-old Jeff King’s parents were blaming. She squeezed her eyes shut as she tried to visualize what Jeff King had looked like back then. He and Boomer Ward were three years older than she and her friends. Both boys had been big for their ages. Jeff had a mean streak and terrorized her and her friends. For some reason he’d always home in on her. Back then she had never been able to figure out why he hated her more than the others. Once he’d cornered her, his eyes full of hate as he spewed out something despicable, but she couldn’t remember now what it was.

The four of them had spent hours and hours trying to figure out ways to outwit Jeff and Boomer. Boomer had always been nice to her when Jeff wasn’t around. She didn’t know why that was.

She should read the articles. She really should.

A cold, wet nose touched her ankle. Atlas had come into the room. That had to mean Lola had awakened. “These papers say I killed Jeff King. Even though I can’t remember the accident, I would remember something that awful, wouldn’t I? I’m not a murderer. I could never kill anyone.”

She was so light-headed, she jumped up and ran out of the room, down the hall to the French doors leading to the garden. She sat down on a bench and put her head between her legs as she struggled to take great gulps of air into her tight lungs. “I wouldn’t do something like that. It’s a sin to take a life. I didn’t like Jeff King, but I didn’t hate him enough to kill him. They said I fell off the zip line. I never rode the zip because I was afraid. If no one was there, how can they say I did it?”

Cady pushed up and off the bench. She started to run, Atlas at her side. She ran until she collapsed against a giant lilac bush in full bloom. The scent from the clusters of flowers was so heady she almost passed out.