Tully bent close, noticing now how grayed and wrinkled her mother’s skin had become. “Cloud?” She said the name three or four times, and got no response at all. Finally she reached out, touched her mother’s shoulder, gently at first and then not so gently. “Cloud?”

Fat Bob got into position, pointed the camera at the woman in bed.

Slowly, her mother opened her eyes. It took her a long time to focus; she had a vague, vacant look. “Tallulah?”

“Hey, Cloud.”

“Tully,” she said as if just remembering the nickname her daughter preferred. “What are you doing here? And who the hell is that guy with the camera?”

“I’m here looking for you.”

Cloud sat up slowly, reaching into her dirty pocket for a cigarette. When she lit up, Tully noticed how palsied her mother’s hand was. It took three tries to touch the tip to the flame. “I thought you were in New York, getting rich and famous.” She glanced nervously at the camera.

“I’m both,” Tully said, unable to squelch the pride in her voice. She hated it that still, after all the disappointments, she craved this woman’s admiration. “How long have you been living here?”

“What do you care? You live in some fancy place while I’m rotting away.”

Tully looked at her mother, noticing the wild, unkempt hair now threaded with gray; the baggy, stained cargo pants with the ragged, torn hem; the worn flannel shirt that was buttoned wrong. And her face. Lined, dirty, and grayed from cigarettes and alcohol and a life poorly lived. Cloud was barely sixty and she looked fifteen years older. The fragile beauty of her youth was gone now, scrubbed away by harsh excess. “You can’t want this, Cloud. Even you . . .”

“Even me, huh? Why did you come looking for me, Tully?”

“You’re my mother.”

“We both know better than that,” Cloud cleared her throat and looked away. “I need to get away from here. Maybe I could stay with you for a few days. Take a bath. Eat something.”

Tully hated the tiny lurch of emotion that followed those words. She had waited a lifetime for her mother to want to come home with her, but she knew how dangerous a moment like this could be. “Okay.”

“Really?” The disbelief on Cloud’s face revealed how little faith they had in each other.

“Really.” And for an instant, Tully forgot the camera was even there. She dared to imagine the impossible: that they could become mother and daughter instead of strangers. “Come on, Cloud. Let me help you to the car.”

Tully knew she shouldn’t believe in the possibility of forging a connection with her mother, but the idea created a dizzying cocktail of hope that, once drunk, made her light-headed. Maybe she could finally have a family of her own.