LITMIR.BIZ

       PROLOGUE

      Texas Children’s Hospital

      Houston, Texas, 1992

      DR. PAULA BENNING, one of Houston’s busiest pediatric cardiologists, stood outside the door of the consultation room, her stomach twisting in dread. She loved every part of her profession—except this one.

      A headache throbbed in her left temple, a signal that her blood sugar was low. She knew she should eat something before she broke the news, or at least find a carton of orange juice. But she’d learned early on in her career that delaying unpleasant tasks only made them harder. So she took a deep breath as she reached for the doorknob, then walked inside.

      A man and a woman sat on the worn plaid sofa, their faces drawn and their hands clenched together. They looked up at her, guarded hope reflected in their eyes. Dr. Benning glanced hastily at her watch. A signal that she didn’t have time to waste. Get in and get out. In her thirteen years of practice, she’d learned that was the best way to deliver devastating news. Best for her, anyway.

      Walt Graham rose to his feet, pulling his wife along with him. “Is Calley all right?”

      “She’s in stable condition now,” Dr. Benning confirmed.

      “I’ve never been so scared,” Liv Graham confessed, her voice cracking. A petite woman, she looked almost as frail as her daughter. They both had the same wide-set blue eyes and flaxen blond hair. “Calley couldn’t catch her breath and she was so pale. I didn’t know what to do.”

      She glanced up at her husband, a detective with the Houston police force. Walt Graham wore his worry in the deep lines etched in his forehead and between his thick, dark brows.

      Dr. Benning wished she didn’t know so much about the Grahams. Wished she didn’t know that they’d struggled with infertility for years before they’d finally been blessed with a daughter. Liv Graham, a renowned local photographer, had been past forty when she’d conceived Calley, automatically classifying the pregnancy as high-risk. But she’d delivered a healthy baby girl, then went on to chronicle the first fifteen years of her daughter’s life with incredible black-and-white photographs that had brought Liv recognition throughout the state.

      Ironically, one of those photographs of Calley, her golden pigtails flying as she leaped toward the sky, graced a wall in the ICU, where the girl now lay cocooned in a hospital bed, tethered to earth by an IV line and a heart monitor.

      Dr. Benning cleared her throat. She’d put off the inevitable long enough. “Perhaps you should sit down.”

      Walt Graham ignored her suggestion, his green eyes intent on her face. He stepped forward and curled one large hand around the top of a chair, his knuckles bleached white. “What’s wrong?”

      Liv Graham forced a smile, looking back and forth between the two of them. “Nothing’s wrong, Walt. Calley is fine. Right, Dr. Benning?”

      “I’m afraid the preliminary tests tell us otherwise.”

      The blood drained from Liv’s face. “What do you mean?”

      Dr. Benning motioned them toward the sofa. “Please, sit down.”

      They obeyed without protest, walking numbly to the sofa. Dr. Benning had seen that same stoic reaction numerous times before. It was the mind’s defense mechanism for dealing with shock. A mechanism that would fade soon enough. She only hoped she’d be gone before it did. Her headache had spread to the other temple and now threatened to turn into one of her rare migraines.

      She pulled a chair close to the sofa and sat down, folding her hands together in her lap. “Calley has a condition called myocarditis.”

      Liv Graham shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

      “Myocarditis is an inflammation of the heart muscle,” Dr. Benning explained. “It can be caused by a variety of conditions. However, in Calley’s case, we believe it was brought on by a viral infection.”

      “An infection?”

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