For the next six hours they drove from place to place, following leads—Tully, Johnny, Marah, and a cameraman who called himself Fat Bob for good reason. At every stop, they filmed a segment of Tully talking to people at the various campgrounds and communes. Several people knew who Cloud was, but no one seemed to know where to find her. They went from Issaquah to Cle Elem to Ellensburg. Marah hung on Tully’s every word.

They were finishing a late night dinner in North Bend when Fred called with a report that Cloud’s last monthly check had been cashed at a bank on Vashon Island.

“We could have been there in an hour,” Johnny muttered.

“You think we’ll find her?” Tully asked, pouring sugar into her coffee. It was the first time they’d been alone all day. Fat Bob was in the van and Marah had just gone to the restroom.

Johnny looked at her. “I think we can’t make people love us.”

“Including our parents?”

“Especially our parents.”

She felt a hint of their old connection again. They’d had that in common, she recalled. Lonely childhoods. “What’s it like, Johnny, being loved?”

“That’s not the question you want to ask. You want to know what it’s like to love someone.” He gave her a grin that made him look like a kid again. “Besides yourself, I mean.”

She leaned back. “I need new friends.”

“I won’t pull back, you know. You better be okay with that. You’ve got me on this story now. The camera will be there, seeing all of it. If you want to back out, this is the time.”

“You can protect me.”

“That’s what I’m telling you, Tully. I won’t. I’ll follow the story. Like you did in Germany.”

She understood what he was saying. Friendship ended when the story rolled; it was an axiom of journalism. “Just try to shoot me from the left. It’s my good side.”

Johnny smiled and paid the bill. “Go get Marah. If we hurry, we might be able to catch the last ferry.”

In fact, they missed the last ferry and ended up sleeping in three rooms in a run-down hotel near the dock.

The next morning Tully woke with a pounding headache that no amount of aspirin could tame. Still, she got dressed and put on her makeup and ate breakfast at some greasy spoon diner that Fat Bob recommended. By nine in the morning they were on the ferry, headed to a berry-growing commune on Vashon Island.

Every step of the way, every mile driven, the camera was on Tully. As she interviewed the tellers at the bank where the last check was cashed and showed the old and creased picture of her mother—the only photo she had of her—she maintained her smile.