“And you say crazies because—”

“They are! That lady channels some dead guy who says he lived in Atlantis.”

“I can do an Indian accent, too. It don’t make me Ramtha,” someone yelled.

For the next twenty minutes, Tully did what she did best: she talked to people. Six or seven minutes in, she found her groove and remembered what she’d been taught. She listened and asked the follow-up questions she would have asked anyone on an ordinary day. She had no idea if they were the right questions or if she was always standing in the best place, but she did know that by her third interview, Mutt had stopped directing her and started letting her lead. And she knew that she felt good. People really opened up to her, sharing their feelings and concerns and fears.

“Okay, Tully,” Mutt said behind her. “That’s it. We’re done.”

The minute the camera was off, the crowd broke up.

“I did it,” she whispered. It was all she could do not to actually jump up and down. “What a rush.”

“You did good,” Mutt said, giving her a smile that she’d never forget.

Mutt packed up his camera gear in record time and climbed into the van.

Tully was on an adrenaline high.

Then she saw the campground sign.

“Turn off here,” she said, surprising herself.

“Why?” Mutt asked.

“My mom is . . . on vacation. She’s staying at this campground. Give me five minutes to say hi.”

“I’ll take a smoke break. That’ll give you fifteen. But then we gotta boogie.”

The van pulled up in front of the campground’s reservation desk.

Tully went to the desk and asked about her mother. The man on duty nodded. “Site thirty-six. Tell her she needs to pay when you see her.”

Following the path through the trees, Tully almost turned around a dozen times. Honestly, she had no idea why she was here. She hadn’t seen or spoken to her mother since Gran’s funeral, and although Tully had become the executor of Gran’s estate at eighteen, and responsible for the monthly disbursement to Cloud, she’d never once received a thank-you for the money. Just a series of I’ve-moved-please-send-money-to-this-address postcards. This campground in Yelm was the most recent.

She saw her mother standing by a row of Sani-cans, smoking a cigarette. Wearing a coarse gray Cowichan sweater and pajamalike pants, she looked like an escapee from a women’s prison. The years had sanded down some of her beauty and left a network of fine lines across her hollowed cheeks.

“Hey, Cloud,” she said when she got close.

Her mother took a drag of her cigarette and exhaled slowly, watching her through heavily lidded eyes.

She could see how bad her mother looked, how the drugs were aging her. Not even forty yet, Cloud looked fifty, easy. As usual her eyes had the glassy, unfocused gaze of an addict.