Prodigal son

Mike Garrity, a former police detective, has come through brain surgery for a tumor, and his cancer is now in remission. The good news brings a practical problem: he had expected to live only a few months and had not planned for the future. Now he must return to work, and he is taking up private investigation whether he wants to or not.

His renewed relationship with Debbie Watson, a fellow member of his cancer support group, is also back on track. Just as Mike's fortunes turn, Debbie receives a bleak medical diagnosis. She asks him to find the son she gave up for adoption two decades earlier, a search she sees as her final wish.

Mike is also drawn into the case of a young man, a former classmate of Mike's daughter, who died from a drug overdose. The boy's father insists it was not suicide. The case is officially closed, but the officer who handled it has doubts of his own. As Mike resumes his career and begins a new romance, he learns that his troubles are not limited to his illness.