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one hundred per cent.”
    Dr. Halperin shot Luke a tentative smile. “Well, then, don’t let me hold you back.”
    Luke guessed she didn’t know yet that Alicia was a walking encyclopedia of baseball knowledge—a fact he’d discovered on his first visit with her. The little girl had a photographic memory, and could match knowledge with the most die-hard adult fan. He’d never met a smarter kid, or a nicer one. And somehow that made her situation seem all that much worse.
    “Like I said, I’m going to make the questions harder every time,” he warned, “so you’d better be on your toes. Ready?”
    “Ready,” she said, knitting her brow in concentration.
    “Okay, name the player that holds the record for the most consecutive hits with no bases on balls.”
    “Oh, that’s a pretty easy one,” she said with a cat-that-ate-the-canary grin. “Walt Dropo, twelve hits in a row.”
    Luke slapped his forehead, only half kidding. “Wow, you got it. Do you remember his team, and maybe even the year?”
    “Detroit Tigers, nineteen fifty-two.”
    “Right again. I guess that one was too easy,” he lied.
    “Give me a really hard one,” she said, scrunching up her thin face. Despite her illness, her round, chocolate brown eyes had a playful sparkle.
    “Okay, you asked for it. This one’s going to stump you for sure.” At home, he’d pored for a long time through the three-inch thick book of baseball historical data to come up with this doozy. “Who was the last player to lead his league in strikeouts for the season, but had less than one hundred? Name, team and year.”
    Alicia pinched her eyes shut for about three seconds. “Harry Anderson, Pittsburgh Pirates, nineteen fifty-eight.”
    Luke figured his eyes must be close to popping out of his head. “Bingo,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief. “I think I’m going to have to go back into the eighteen hundreds to stump you, Alicia Trent. Are you sure you’re only seven? I think you’re really about twenty-five, and just a little short for your age.”
    Alicia broke into a high-pitched giggle while Dr. Halperin chuckled.
    “You know very well that I’ll be eight next month, Luke,” Alicia finally spluttered.
    “How do you know so much about baseball, Alicia?” the doctor asked.
    The little girl’s giggles turned into a wheeze as she struggled for a moment to suck in a breath. Halperin watched her carefully.
    “Daddy used to take me to spring training games. Sometimes we went to Miami to watch the Marlins, too. Daddy had a lot of baseball books and almanacs. When I read them, I always remembered everything.”
    “Do you have a favorite player?” Halperin asked.
    Alicia rolled her eyes. “Luke Beckett, of course. He could do everything, and people said he was always nice to everybody, too. He hit four hundred and sixty-five home runs and one thousand, five hundred and sixty-nine RBI’s in eleven major league seasons for the Montreal Expos and Washington Nationals. I know he’s going to be elected to the Hall of Fame the first year he’s eligible.”
    Luke felt his face redden. “Honey, that’s sweet, and I love you for saying it. But I’m yesterday’s news. Who’s your favorite
active
player?”
    “Oh, Giancarlo Stanton,” she said, without hesitation. “He came here the last time I was in the hospital and brought three other Marlins players.” She plucked a little book from her bedside table, holding it open for Luke to examine. “Look, he signed my diary.”
    “That’s so cool,” Luke replied, smiling down at her. “I think you’re going to grow up to be Commissioner of Baseball someday, young lady.”
    As soon as the words left his mouth, though, he could have kicked himself for being so brain-dead. Alicia’s heart condition was life-threatening. Maybe she wouldn’t be around long enough to have a job, or a husband and kids of her own.
    Luke struggled against the sudden upwelling of anger tinged with sorrow. It was eerily