“Sorry!” Perec pushed her hair behind her ears again. “Can you tell me your name? I’m afraid I didn’t write it down when I saw your e-mail.”

“V.I. Warshawski.” I explained who I was, what I wanted.

Perec shook her head slowly as I went through my litany. “I know Ferring’s name. We have old VHS tapes of the movies she made with Jarvis Nilsson here, but I don’t think we have any personal papers or records.”

“Old phone directories?” I asked. “I’m hoping to find where she lived.”

Perec brightened: she could produce those. “Lawrence has two newspapers, the Lawrence Journal-World and the Douglas County Herald. I can go through the old indices while you look at the phone books, if you’d like—they didn’t digitize anything before 1990, but we’ve got them on microfiche.”

She sat me down with several boxes, covering 1945, the year Ferring’s mother had left Fort Riley, to 1968, the year Ferring had gone to Hollywood with Nilsson. I found a Mrs. Steven Ferring on Sixth Street from 1945 to 1951, but no Ferrings after that. Frustrating and baffling.

Cady was still busy with the newspaper fiches, but she turned away from the fiche reader to pull a map up on her computer screen. She showed me where the Ferrings would have been living when Emerald was a little girl.

There was a thin sliver of town on the north side of the river, just beyond where Peppy and I had been walking earlier. I had seen a few houses from the river path, but the heavy undergrowth had blocked most of them from view. I’d go back over there in the morning, although I was beginning to think Ferring and August had never made it to Lawrence.

I was brooding over whether there was anyone else I could talk to when Cady Perec gave an excited squeak.

“I found her! At least I found her in 1983. She was at this protest, see: maybe she met my mother!”

I got up to peer over her shoulder at the fiche reader, but Cady printed out the article and handed it to me.

Douglas County Herald

July 5, 1983

We all believe in free speech: it’s the cornerstone of our democracy. But when America is at war, we need to think before we speak. The demonstrations at the Kanwaka Missile Silo yesterday smack more of treachery than patriotism. Those missiles are there for a reason: to protect America from a nuclear attack by our deadliest enemies. Our President is trying to show the Russians that we are not afraid of anything Uncle Ivan wants to bring on. In our humble opinion, decorating a missile site with peace symbols made out of daisy chains, and doing it on the anniversary of our country’s birth, comes perilously close to treason.