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hell was he thinking about Crystal? He suspected his subconscious had dredged up his ex-wife as a target for his helpless anger. He remembered standing in this same emergency room with
    Crystal four years ago when Jazzy had had her first attack.
    “She inherited this from your mother,” Crystal had accused. “It’s your bad DNA that’s ruined her.”
    He’d never wanted to slap a woman in his life, but in that moment, he’d wanted to slap her, mainly because she’d pushed the button of his darkest fear. That he was deeply flawed and it was his fault their daughter was so ill. There had been thirty-seven more attacks that year, each one progressively worse.
    They’d taken Jazzy to specialist after specialist and spent two weeks at a pediatric respiratory hospital in Austin. One quack had even suggested they remove her right lung, which seemed more affected than her left. Jazzy frequently ran a fever with the asthma attacks and no one could really explain why beyond telling them that colds and flu viruses often precipitated respiratory flare-ups. Jazzy had endured test after test as doctors searched for the asthma triggers and they’d come up empty time and time again.
    “Maybe she’ll out grow it,” they’d said hopefully. But she hadn’t. In fact, the older she got, the worse her symptoms became.
    Then came the night that Jazzy had gone into full cardiac arrest following a stress test at the children’s hospital and the doctors had been forced to put her on a ventilator and admit her into the ICU.
    He and Crystal sat in the critical care waiting room, staring into cups of cold rotgut coffee, while the doctors worked on Jazzy. His ex-wife had raised her head and looked at him like a coyotecaught in a trap. “I’m gonna go home and get a change of clothes.”
    He’d stared at her, incredulous. “It’s a three-hour drive back to Twilight.”
    “I know, I know. I just need to get outta here, get some air, clear my head.”
    “Jazzy needs you.”
    Crystal had twisted her wedding ring around her finger. “You’re better at this sick stuff than I am.”
    “You’re not going off and leaving her.”
    “I can’t take it. I need a break.”
    He remembered clenching his jaw and fisting his hands to keep from saying or doing something he would regret. “Fine,” he muttered. “Go have your break.”
    She’d fled the room without a backward glance and Travis had never seen her again. When he and Jazzy got back home, all Crystal’s things were gone. She’d left a note on the dining room table.
I’m sorry. I’m just not cut out for motherhood. Forgive me.
    Honestly, he’d forgiven her a long time ago. He wasn’t the kind of guy who held on to a grudge. Crystal was who she was and he couldn’t change her. All he could do was love Jazzy twice as much, and that was easy to do. He thought of his daughter with her wide blue eyes and her long, curly blond hair, and his heart squeezed. He’d never loved anyone the way he loved that child. That’s what he couldn’t understand about Crystal. How could she go away if she loved Jazzy? And how could a mother not love her own child enough to stick with her through thick and thin?
    When Crystal had discovered she was pregnant, she’d wanted to have an abortion. He’d told her absolutely not, that they were getting married and having that baby. Crystal had dreamed of becoming a country-and-western singer and making it big in Nashville. She’d blamed first Travis and later Jazzy for ruining her dreams. He’d heard through the grapevine she’d made it to Nashville, but she was waiting tables, not cutting records.
    Maybe he’d been wrong to insist on marriage, but he hadn’t been wrong about keeping Jazzy. She was the very best thing that had ever happened to him. Without her, he’d be far less of a man.
    An image popped into his head. His wedding day. He remembered the terrified look in Crystal’s eyes as she stood there and then the surprising turn of events