He tried to think about what had transpired in court, but his mind was blank. All he could think about was Cady Jordan and what her return might mean to all of them. He’d played the cool lawyer to the hilt in front of the twins. But the truth was, he was scared. Damn scared. Were the twins right? He rather suspected they were. Who would want to hire any of them for anything if the past came out? No one, that’s who.

He’d busted his ass all these years to make something of himself. How in the hell could a tragic accident that happened twenty years ago take it all away? They were just kids trying to do the right thing, trying to save Cady, and it had all backfired. They weren’t bad kids back then. Adventuresome, yes. A little on the wild and daring side, but they were never mean or malicious like Jeff and Boomer.

He wished there was someone to blame for the past. Hell, why not lay it on his drunken father or his weird mother, who thought she was a direct descendant of some alien life force. His father had died of cirrhosis of the liver the year Pete had graduated from law school. His mother was busy and happy directing traffic to Mars via Venus and Jupiter at the mental health facility where she lived now. He’d pretty much raised himself.

Maybe that was why he’d had a soft spot for Cady in his heart. She’d told him about her own parents and how she hated what she called the preaching circuit where her parents used God to beg for money.

Andy and Amy’s parents were so far over the top, even back then, that the twins avoided talking about them and their antics. As far as he knew they hadn’t improved with age.

Maybe that’s why the four of them had gravitated toward each other. A messy family life wasn’t easy for a kid to live with, but it was easier if you didn’t suffer alone. Back then, they’d shared everything—their secrets, their young desires, and even their hates.

Misfits.

Jeff King, now, he was something else entirely. Jeff’s father owned the local glove factory, and his mother had blood so blue she could have posed for the Blue’s Clues. His sisters and brothers excelled in sports and life. The Kings were one of Indigo Valley’s finest families. If they had had their way, Cady Jordan would have been locked up in an asylum never to see the bright light of day. It might have happened, too, if Lola Jor Dan hadn’t stepped in with the best criminal lawyer in the state of Pennsylvania to defend her granddaughter’s reputation. The movie star’s celebrity hadn’t hurt their case either. With no concrete evidence to support the Kings’ theory, the case had been dismissed, at which point, Lola Jor Dan had whisked her granddaughter to California to a private hospital and, from what he’d heard, years of painful therapy.