Finally he found a doctor emerging from the last door. “I’m Garrett Keating. I was told my sister, Caroline Keating-Spence-”

“Yes, Mr. Keating. She was here until late this afternoon. We just moved her a couple hours ago to a private room.”

“So she’s better.” For that instant, it was all he wanted to hear.

“You’ll need to speak with her doctor, but the nurse will tell you her room-”

More rigmarole. More running. He took the stairs rather than waiting for the elevator-he’d never been good at waiting, and there wasn’t a chance he could pretend to be patient tonight. Room 201. That’s where they told him to go. A private room with a twenty-four-hour monitor. Garrett suspected the monitor meant that either his sister wasn’t out of the woods yet or that they feared she’d try suicide again.

Even the nurse hadn’t specifically used the word suicide, but Garrett immediately knew what she hadn’t said-because he knew his sister. This last year, once she’d mended the breach with her husband, Caroline had seemed solid and happy, not as fragile as she’d been for so long. Yet Garrett knew her. How the baggage of their childhood had affected her. How deeply she felt things. How fiercely she hid those feelings.

Some people would never buy the farm, but Caroline was always someone who couldn’t quite close the gate to depression.

He scraped a hand through his hair and suddenly halted outside 201. He felt as if he’d been running hell-bent for leather for hours, which was fine but not how he wanted his sister to see him. He forced himself to stand still for a few minutes, pull it all together, concentrate on pulling off an image of calm strength.