His mother, Eleanor Sterling, a woman who commanded boardrooms with the same icy, unshakeable authority she now used to command the hospital’s nursing staff, paced the floor like a caged panther. Her movements were sharp, precise, and filled with a barely contained rage at a universe that had dared to defy her. I, Anna, his wife, simply sat by his bed, holding his cool, limp hand in mine, my own grief a silent, heavy presence in the room. I came from an ordinary world of love, laughter, and scraped knees, and in the five years of my marriage, the Sterling family had never let me forget it. I was the outsider, the commoner, the woman deemed unworthy of their precious, hallowed bloodline.

The doctor, a kind man with the weary eyes of someone who