Chapter One

      “Are we lost, Mom?”

      “Nope,” Sadie McHenry fibbed. She glanced in the rearview mirror at her son Tyler. The clip light attached to his book, Frog and Toad Are Friends, illuminated his worried little face.

      “We’re taking the long way,” she said. It was almost midnight, and according to the GPS on her iPhone they should have arrived in Stampede, Texas, a half hour ago. When she’d passed the sign for Rocky Point, she realized she’d taken a wrong turn somewhere. “Is Tommy sleeping?”

      “Uh-huh.”

      Her four-year-old blue-eyed, brown-haired twins might be the spitting image of each other, but every day of their lives was another chapter in the tortoise and the hare story. Tyler was sober, quiet and shy. Tommy was outgoing, strangers were his best friends and walls were made to bounce off.

      Last year when she’d enrolled them in preschool, Tyler had come home the first day with a good-student award, while Tommy had broken the record for the number of minutes spent in the time-out chair—twelve. The teacher had recommended Tommy be tested for attention deficit disorder, and sure enough, at three years of age her son had shown signs of ADD. After several months of applying disciplinary techniques suggested by Tommy’s pediatrician, there had been little change in his behavior and the teacher had grown frustrated, so Sadie had withdrawn the boys and enrolled them in a different preschool program.

      “Are you tired?”

      “I’m fine, honey.” Tyler was a sweet boy and it broke her heart that she couldn’t focus more attention on him because she was constantly monitoring and containing Tommy’s wild ways. “Close your eyes and rest. Tomorrow we’ll see Aunt Lydia and Great-Aunt Amelia.” Aunt Lydia was actually a cousin, but the boys had become confused when she’d explained how they were all related, so aside from their grandparents everyone was an aunt or an uncle.

      Not