We were on our way to Detroit, me and Dolly, though our leave taking wasn’t without stress. First, I had to find Harry to come feed and water Sorrow, and let him out a few times a day. He wasn’t home when I went across Willow Lake Road to his crooked little house, down an overgrown and picker-treacherous drive. His dogs, back in their kennel behind a high chainlink fence, barked and snarled and tried to run me off the property.

It must have been all the noise the dogs made, for Harry soon ambled into his clearing dragging a long mesh bag of morels behind him.

“Sure,” Harry said. “I’ll take care a yer dog. You do the same for me someday.”

I’d eyed his snarling, leaping kennel of animals and hoped it would never come to that. “What neighbor won’t do a favor for t’other, I’d like to know?” he asked.

So I left it there, deciding I’d worry about feeding Harry’s dogs the day he ever went somewhere. Since, as far as I knew, Harry had not left his house for more than a few hours in his whole sixty-some years on earth, I figured the odds were on my side.

Second, I had to get over my amazement at the dye job Gertie of Gertie’s Shoppe de Beaute had given Dolly. Her hair resembled striped mattress ticking. It was still a dirty brown, but with stripes of some shade of blond she called “Topaz Triumph.” She took off her hat and bent her head down to show me. I told her to keep her hat on and then she was mad at me.

Next, we had the “who’s going to drive” struggle.

“Not you,” I said as I loaded the back of the Jeep with my overnight bag and her backpack. She made a face, crossed her arms over her chest, and tapped one foot against the gravel. Dolly was in jeans and a sweatshirt with LAW ENFORCEMENT—YA GOTTA LOVE US across the back. One of the few times I’d seen her out of uniform.

“My car,” I said. “I drive.” Memories of wild trips with siren blaring were too seared into my brain. I wasn’t going to let her pilot my yellow Jeep. We would travel the speed limit, or maybe a few miles over, but this wasn’t going to become one of Dolly’s trips from hell.

“I’m the professional.” She’d planted her body like a tree stump.

“My car,” I repeated, got in on the driver’s side, stuck the key in the lock, and started the motor. I buckled the seat belt then leaned down to grin at Dolly.

“You can’t drive the whole way. Maybe just the first hour. I’ll take over after that,” she said.

I shook my head, as stubborn as she could be. “I drive. You’re crazy behind the wheel.”

She looked off toward the lake, then up at the clear sky, then down again at me. “You’ll get tired. You’ll be begging.”

“Yeah,” I said, and revved the motor.

With slow dignity, Dolly got in and settled beside me. She gave me a look that said a lot and pulled the seat belt across her body.

“Hope you’re not going to be a big pain in the ass through the whole trip,” she said, as if we were off on an adventure and I hadn’t been coerced into going with her on what was probably going to be a big wild goose chase, producing nothing, and proving unnecessary in the end.

“And my hair does too look good. I don’t care what you say. You just got no taste. No taste at all.”

“Hmph,” I answered, and we were off.

A flock of turkeys greeted us near the end of Willow Lake Road. Mating season got interesting in spring. Robins swooped, orioles dived, hawks sailed, sparrows and chickadees and goldfinches acted silly and coy. The deer got stupid and couldn’t tell a Ford van from a doe, becoming sad hood ornaments and costing drivers lots of money. Tom turkeys stood along the side of the road with their tails spread like peacocks, trying to attract females more interested in the new grass beside the road than strutting males. And humans? Well, there wasn’t a season on human stupidity.

Along M72 the trees were in the little leaf stage that quickly turns to heavily burdened branches hanging to the ground. Always something special about spring, about the first warm wind, the first warm day when I dared take off my heavy jacket, or strip down to a turtleneck sweater. We had about forty miles to go to get over to I-75, the main artery splitting Michigan’s lower peninsula in half—east side from west side. I took the shortcut around by the Grayling National Guard base and we were on our way to Detroit.

It was noon when we got to Saginaw. We stopped for lunch at a McDonald’s, then had our second fight over who was going to drive.

My car. I drove.

The plan was to stop somewhere outside Detroit and find a cheap motel. From there we could start making phone calls and looking over city maps. We got down close to Detroit by two o’clock, found an Econo Lodge, and took one room with twin beds.

Dinner later was at a nearby Burger King. We picked up an area map at a Barnes & Noble, and went back to our room. Dolly wanted to show me her old Christmas list and a paper Chet left behind, which turned out to be a couple of addresses on a dirty, lined scrap. No names. Just addresses.

I took a shower and got into my tacky pjs and floppy slippers. Dolly was in the bathroom a long time and came out in a camouflage nightgown with camouflage slippers to match.

“Hope I don’t have to find you in the middle of the night,” I groused. “I mean, in case there’s a fire or anything. Between the camo and that dye job, you fade right into the shadows.”

“Hmph,” she said right back at me.

“You remember any of those addresses? I mean, who they belonged to?”

She shook her head and spread the map on the floor, then lay down on her stomach, legs bent into the air. She began tracing Detroit streets with her finger. “Never knew any of his people from Detroit. We weren’t married that long.”

“How long, Dolly?”

“Oh, maybe six months.”

“Six months! He left you after six months! And you feel you owe him … ?”

Her hand was up, stopping me. “Still makes him family.”

“Dolly, how many foster homes were you in altogether?”

“Ten.”

“Did you ever know your mother or your father? Any family?”

She wrinkled her nose and sniffed. “Nope. That don’t mean I don’t have one or the other. Just that I don’t know where they are.”

“You ever look? All these years?”

“Why? Never looked for me.” She picked at a red cuticle around her thumb, then bit it and spit out the piece of flesh. “Doesn’t it seem it’s their job? I mean, to come looking for me?”

She thought awhile. “There is one woman I’d like to see in Detroit. If we have the time. She was the best foster mother I ever had. Phyllis Dually. Maybe I was six. Six and a half. Something like that. Seems I remember …” I looked away from Dolly’s sad face. “I send her a Christmas card every year so I’ve got her address. Lives in Utica. East side. Just outside Detroit. If we have the time, and we’re not too far from there …”

“Was she your last foster mother?”

Dolly shook her head. “Somewhere in the middle.”

“Why’d they take you away from her?”

“She couldn’t handle me. I was a troublemaker. Real pain in the ass. But I didn’t want to leave that one. Truly sorry.”

“Why go see her?”

“Well, it wasn’t really her. It was her husband. Mean son of a bitch, if you will excuse my French. He made her get rid of me ’cause I bit his ear hard.”

“Oh come on, ‘bit his ear’?”

“He … eh … was … one of those too friendly types. Even then, I knew I had to fight him. She understood, Phyllis did. She knew. But what could she do? No money. No place to go. So it was me. I went.”

“And you want to see her?”

She picked at the little speckles in the motel carpeting. “I think she kinda loved me. Be nice to see her. I’ve got some happy memories …”

Rutting around in Dolly’s past was painful. I thought I could see why she considered Chet “family.” Why she had fond memories of a woman who didn’t protect her. There was a glimpse here into a world I could only imagine. I could go along with her. It cost me nothing.

We spent the next hour finding addresses on our map and marking them with big Xs.

When we had our plan for the next morning in place, she put on the small TV. I got out a book to read but soon gave up because an old Matlock was on, and it was on loud.