Tully tried not to let her relief show. “They do need me at the studio. Things are probably a real mess without me.”

Kate smiled knowingly. “I couldn’t have done it without you, you know.”

“Really?”

“Really. Now kiss your goddaughter and get back to work.”

“I’ll be back for her baptism.” Tully leaned down and kissed Marah’s velvety cheek, and then Kate’s forehead. By the time she whispered goodbye and made it to the door, Kate seemed to have forgotten all about her.

Downstairs she found Johnny slumped in a chair by the fireplace. His hair was a shaggy, tangled mess, his shirt was on backward, and his socks didn’t match. He was drinking a beer at eleven o’clock in the morning.

“You look like hell,” she said, sitting down beside him.

“She woke up every hour last night. I slept better in El Salvador.” He took a sip. “But she’s beautiful, isn’t she?”

“Gorgeous.”

“Katie wants to move to the suburbs now. She’s just realized this house is surrounded by water, so it’s off to some cul-de-sac where they have bake sales and play dates.” He made a face. “Can you imagine me in Bellevue or Kirkland with all those yuppies?”

The funny thing was, she could. “What about work?”

“I’m going back to work at KILO. Producing political and international segments.”

“That doesn’t sound like you.”

He seemed surprised by that. When he looked at her, she saw a flash of remembrance; she’d reminded him of their past. “I’m thirty-five years old, Tul. With a wife and daughter. Different things are going to have to make me happy now.”

She couldn’t help noticing that he’d said going to. “But you love gonzo journalism. Battlefields and mortar rounds and people shooting at you. We both know you can’t give it up forever.”

“You only think you know me, Tully. It isn’t like we traded secrets.” She remembered suddenly, sharply, what she was supposed to forget. “You tried.”

“I tried,” he agreed.

“Katie would want you to be happy. You’d kick ass at CNN.”

“In Atlanta?” He laughed. “Someday you’ll understand.”

“You mean when I’m married, with kids?”

“I mean when you fall in love. It changes you.”

“Like it’s changed you? Someday I’ll have a kid and want to write for the Queen Anne Bee again, is that it?”

“You’d have to fall in love first, wouldn’t you?” The look Johnny gave her then was so understanding, so knowing, she felt skewered by it. She wasn’t the only one who was remembering the past.

She got to her feet. “I gotta get back to Manhattan. You know the news. It never sleeps.”

Johnny put down his beer and got to his feet, moving toward her. “You do it for me, Tully. Cover the world.”