Raul Barlow survived brain cancer, but one evening in San Francisco's Mission District he finds himself in an inconvenient position. He'd dead-killed by a suspicious hit-and-run car accident just hours before he planed to meet his lost love, Christina.

The medical examiner called to the scene, Leo Bacigalupi, takes it upon himself to discover the dead man's identity-no small task without ID on the body and nothing but a key in the pocket of his jeans and a note signed "C." Medical tests and some rogue snooping reveal more, but Leo's mission has become personal: he wants to find the beautiful young woman who wrote the mysterious note. Leo's detective work takes him to Raul's home, where he relives Raul's battle with cancer and tormented love affair through the dead man's writings. But Raul's not quite ready to release his story, or the love of his life.