She’d actually made her own internship. Someday, when Phil Donahue interviewed her, she’ll tell this story to show her gutsy determination.

Yes, Phil. It was a bold move, but you know broadcasting. It’s a dog-eat-dog world, and I was a girl with ambition.

But she’d tell Katie first. Nothing was quite perfect until she shared it with Kate.

This was the start of their dream.

The cherry trees in the Quad marked the passing of time better than any calendar. Pink and full of blossoms in the spring; lush and green in the warm, quiet days of summer; gloriously hued for the start of school; and now, bare on this November day in 1981.

For Kate, life was moving much too quickly. She was light-years away from the shy, quiet girl she’d been on arrival. In her years at UW, she’d learned to direct Rush Week skits, to organize and plan a dance for three hundred people, to chug a glass of beer and shoot a raw oyster, to work the room at a frat party and be comfortable around people she didn’t know, to write edgy news stories with a hook and a splash, and to film that same story even if she was moving while it happened. Her journalism professors had graded her highly and told her repeatedly that she had a gift.

The problem, it seemed, was her heart. Unlike Tully, who could barrel forward and ask any question, Kate found it hard to intrude on people’s grief. More and more often lately, she held back on her own stories and edited Tully’s instead.

She didn’t have what it took to be a network news producer or a first-rate reporter. Every day, as she sat in her broadcast and communications classes, she was lying to herself.

She dreamed lately of other things, of going on to law school so that she could fight the injustices she reported on, or writing novels that made people see the world in a better, more positive light . . . or—and this was the most hidden dream of all—falling in love. But how could she tell Tully these things?

Tully, who had taken her hand all those years ago when no one else would, who’d spun the gossamer dream of their lives as partners in TV news. How could she tell her best friend that she no longer shared their dream?