“Like a hobbit house,” said Sam Tamblin. “Only people sized.”
Savannah bit down on her lip and took a sudden interest in her fingernails, knowing if she caught Thomas’s eye, there’d be no way to keep from laughing.
Saj broke the moment for them. She touched a hand to Savannah’s stylist, stopping her mid style. “Can we try her hair up?”
The stylist mumbled a crude reply that made Savannah snicker.
Unfazed, Saj continued. “Ignore the cameras. Ignore the lights. Just keep your eyes on the interviewer and let yourself engage. Remember, it’s a conversation.” She held up a copy of the messaging strategy. “With a few very important points to make!”
Savannah looked in the mirror. Besides her hair looking lopsided halfway pinned up, she didn’t appear anxious. She wasn’t frowning or wrinkling her nose. She wasn’t flushed. Her heart raced in her chest, but not in the way that made her stomach want to follow.
She finally looked at Thomas. How are you? she mouthed.
He wasn’t looking so calm, starting with the red that had all but swallowed the freckles on his cheeks. Nervous, he mouthed back.
Not ideal. Savannah didn’t want to have to carry his weight again. He’d choked halfway through their last interview, and she’d had to step in. Yesterday on the plane she asked what the chances were of him doing that again, and all he’d said was, “Shut it, Van.”
Now it struck her. Maybe their mother had known. Thomas was nervous and Savannah needed to be ready. Maybe that’s why she’d come to visit.
A woman in a headset appeared at the door. “McClairs up next,” she said to the room.
“We’re ready!” Saj chirped, while simultaneously flicking at Savannah’s stylist again. “No time to finish. Take it down!”
A minute or so later, headset woman hustled Savannah and Thomas onto the set, and the first interview began.
“Well, you two have made quite a splash!” The woman sitting on the couch across from them had blond hair that fell to her boobs and legs long enough to stretch into the next room. Her male cohost diverted attention from his balding head with a giant neon-toothed smile.
“What’s next for you guys?” he laughed. “Finding the real D. B. Cooper?”
The woman smacked his knee and put on her serious face. “This is quite a personal journey for you, though, isn’t it? Tell us how you decided a podcast would be the best way to go about your search for your father.”
Savannah glanced at Thomas, who looked ready to bolt from the couch and hide. Good grief.
“Well, at first, we wanted to reach as wide an audience as possible,” she started. “But as the search got underway, we realized we also wanted people to get to know our mother. At least enough to understand how wonderful she was.”
“Why don’t you tell us about her.”
“I’d love to.” As Savannah answered the question, she followed Saj’s advice to keep smiling, no matter what. “Most importantly, Mom taught us to think for ourselves, to reach for our dreams. She’d say, ‘You have everything you’ll ever need, way down deep inside. Sometimes, you just have to dig.’ She was always our biggest cheerleader.”
“So, you believe she’d support your search?” the woman asked.
Savannah answered, “Absolutely. We know she does.” Because Savannah did know, in her heart, in her whole being. She’d been reminded again last night.
She also knew, however, that these were only the windup questions. The tougher ones would come next. Her stomach knotted.
First, the interviewer broached the privacy issue.
“The podcast, though. There are so many stories of people finding their biological parents through DNA tests and genealogy sites. Why not use tools that don’t present such privacy concerns?”
Thomas finally found his voice and jumped in. “I’ll admit, that was my preference at first, too,” he said. “I love science. But, where I love all that stuff, Savannah is a storyteller, and she pointed out that a DNA test wouldn’t teach us anything about our mother. About her life before us.”
Savannah added, “Mom would have answered our questions herself—she was always open with us. But we never got the chance to ask them. With the podcast, we can unfold a richer story than data alone can tell.”
The woman nodded, smiling as if she agreed with all her heart. Then she said, “And yet you’re doing this so publicly. Do you ever worry you’re exposing other children to risk? What if you find that your father has a family of his own?”
And there it was, the trigger question—the one specifically designed to make it clear to viewers this wasn’t any common fluff piece. This, Savannah realized, is where Saj’s humanize, personalize, sympathize strategy had come from.
“Counter every defensive question by going on charm offensive,” Saj had said before drilling the skill of the “charm pivot” into them. They’d practiced with question after question.
Savannah smiled at the interviewer. “Our mom used to say, ‘More than anything, remember to be kind.’ We hope our father—or any father listening to the podcast, really—would be proud of how we’re trying to honor her advice.”
“And if he is raising kids of his own,” Thomas continued, “we hope he sees that we haven’t lied or stretched the truth to fit our story. We don’t curse or make nasty insinuations. We ask honest questions, but we don’t believe it’s fair to shame anyone...”
Thomas paused, and turned his face directly into the camera. The woman interviewing them cocked her head, waiting for him to finish. But he didn’t. He just stared. Stuck, or confused, or trying to push something down that was threatening to break out.
The woman was about to interject when he snapped to.
“A-anyway,” he stammered, regaining his footing. “It’s not about fame or attention. It’s about finding our roots. We hope that if our father is still alive and learns about us, he’ll be proud to know us.”
Savannah saw Saj offstage, grinning and punching at the air. Savannah, though, was still stuck on Thomas’s weird glitch.
“What about the risk, however?” The interviewer hadn’t taken the charm pivot bait. “What if you expose him publicly against his will?”
Thomas answered, sounding calmer. “Our policy is to never broadcast any identifiers that verge on the invasive. From the very beginning, we’ve aimed to conduct ourselves in a way that invites our biological father to reach out. We have no interest in outing him publicly. And if that happens, it will be because of others. Because of people with questionable intent.”
“Are you asking people to back off?” Savannah was surprised to see this was the male cohost asking the question since, so far, he hadn’t made any contribution but jokes. “Are you asking people to respect your father’s privacy, if he’s out there?”
Savannah leaned in and smiled, just as Saj had taught. “We are asking people to follow the lead we’ve set,” she said. “Ask honest questions. Invite connection. Stay away from shaming.”
The woman added that was a lesson everyone could take to heart, before thanking them for coming and telling viewers interested in listening to the podcast how to find it.
And, we’re out.
Twenty-Four
Jack
“Jack! You in there? What the hell you gone and done?”
Whoever had come to visit didn’t wait for an answer. Not that it mattered. They could just go on and do whatever they were gonna do. And anyway, he didn’t think he could get up off the floor.
He heard the screen door open and then slam shut. He heard the crunch of glass underfoot. He heard a pair of boots stop near his head.
He strained to sort his muddled head, trying to remember. He tasted beer. But the ground beneath him was steady, not spinning. He was home. And alone. And...
Right.
He opened one eye onto familiar we
ather-beaten pants.
“You do all this yourself?” he heard Ford say. “Or is there someone I gotta go chase down for you?”
Jack groaned and spit a piece of—what?—from his mouth. “Nah.”
“You want to explain why your bathroom door is half-off its hinges then?”
“They found me.” His throat felt like he’d been eating razors. “Them and him. All of ’em.” He knew he wasn’t making any sense, nor did he care.
Ford didn’t respond. Instead, he walked across the room and returned with a towel. “Sit up.” He knelt and pulled Jack half-upright against the side of the couch. “Put this on your arm. Yer bleedin’.”
Sure enough, Jack looked down to find a gash across his forearm. If he remembered right, he’d caught it on a broken beer bottle stuck down between the couch cushions. He held the towel to his arm, feeling it throb, thinking he’d got what he deserved.
“Doesn’t look like you’re in good enough shape to talk any,” said Ford.
Seemed pretty obvious.
“Anything else bleedin’?”
He didn’t think so.
“And yer sure there weren’t anyone else responsible.”
Jack swore there wasn’t.
“All right then. Sleep it off. Take a shower. Make sure you show up on time for your morning charter.” Ford walked across the room, ran the sink and returned once more. He handed Jack a glass of water. “I’m leavin’ for Atlanta in the morning. I’ll be gone a few days, but at least that’ll be enough time for you to get yer head back on straight. When I get back, though, we’ve got business to discuss.”
Jack felt his stomach turn and prayed he could keep everything down until Ford left. As soon as the screen door slammed shut, he balled back up on the only patch of floor not covered in glass and tried to do the math on how he’d gotten there.
It wasn’t Thomas’s fault, all this mess. But it had started with him. They’d been on a roll, emailing and answering within minutes. Almost normal. As if they weren’t perfect strangers sitting in front of screens hundreds of miles apart. And the similarities. That kid’s brain worked just like his. It wasn’t enough to just call them both analytical. Jack could guess what Thomas was going to ask next.
Back and forth and again. Every day after work. Talk about college. And baseball. And Savannah. And Bess. It gave him something, those emails. Made the days on the water shorter, his charter clients less aggravating. The kid, even in electronic form, was good company.
Tonight, he’d stopped at Chen’s Quick Shop on his way home from the landing. He planned to eat, shower off the day’s salty grime and check his email. He bought a six-pack of Coors and a frozen pizza. Sara Chen rang him up and gave him a hard time for never eating anything healthy. He grabbed a banana from the basket of overpriced fruit they kept at the register.
Then he spotted the man raising a camera at him from behind the cardboard MoonPie display.
Carter’s warning exploded through his thoughts. “There’s a guy been askin’ around ’bout you.”
Jack grabbed his food and sprinted for his truck, nearly killing the engine as he threw the gear into Drive. He didn’t think the camera guy had time to follow him, but he took every wrong turn possible between the Quick Shop and his apartment, just in case. He covered half the island, turning left and right, always keeping east of Highway 80, where the summer tourists would be clogging the crosswalks on their way to the beach, dragging traffic to a crawl.
He kept going for several minutes, south, then west toward the raised houses along Tybee Creek, and east again into the small nook of subdivided cement bungalows where his apartment was. He passed his driveway and parked on the street a block away, then hauled his beer, frozen pizza and his forty-pound toolbox up the road, Peter Rabbit–like, through the hole in old man Frederick’s gardenia bushes and over Mrs. Truesdale’s sagging backyard fence. He stopped just before turning the corner to his front door. He needed to catch his breath—his lungs were burning from the overloaded sprint—and sneaked a glance at the street. No sign of anyone. Not even Carter.
* * *
As if he weren’t already on edge from his surprise at the Quick Shop, his water heater was on the fritz and he’d had to take a cold shower. He burned his pizza, and then his tongue, and washed it all down with lukewarm beer. Everything was suddenly wrong—cold was hot was cold.
At least there was an email from Thomas.
We’ve sort of been all over the news lately. Didn’t know if you’d seen any of it.
So, they’d be on TV. That was great for them, no? Savannah had Hollywood goals. And Thomas must have found all the studio equipment interesting. Getting on the news meant the podcast was getting noticed.
Except. He was the guy they were looking for on that podcast. The guy a lot of people suddenly seemed to be looking for—his cold existence becoming suddenly hot. He took a long swig of his beer and rubbed at the patch of sand or dirt he’d missed on his face during his icy shower. Then kept reading.
We’re not going to out you or, whatever. The attention is just getting a little out of hand.
What did that even mean, a little out of hand? He didn’t watch the news and, most days, he didn’t care. Then again, what did Thomas mean? Were he and Savannah in trouble? Getting hassled?
The realization hit him head-on: if he knew this kid the way he was starting to believe he did, he knew this was Thomas’s idea of a warning.
The beer went sour on his tongue.
We’re not going to out you or, whatever.
Jack had done enough living in his forty years to know that promises and outcomes didn’t always match up. Keeping his life private might not be up to them. He was already on the radar of at least one guy with a camera.
Even so, the sentiment was enough to calm him, and he took a moment to think before he answered Thomas’s email.
Are you and Savannah ok?
It was all he wrote because he knew, with swift clarity, that was all he cared about.
He clicked Send without allowing himself to rethink his choice and sat back in his chair. He’d said it. It was out there. They knew how he felt.
And then...
Thomas didn’t answer.
Nothing.
Silence.
All Jack could do was sit, waiting. The accumulating beer bottles counted the hours for him as they passed.
That was the problem with waiting. For Jack, waiting always turned to thinking, and thinking turned to another drink. And finally, after enough beer, he realized, this is total shit. There he was, hanging on, staring at an unchanged screen like some sucker, hoping to hear from a kid he didn’t know and hadn’t cared about.
As if Thomas was his responsibility.
As if Jack should even care whether he’d freaked the kid out or pissed him off.
Or if he was even for real.
The attention is just getting kinda out of hand.
We’re not going to out you or, whatever.
Jack sat, trapped in a mental spin cycle that wouldn’t quit. Finally, he did the only thing that made sense.
You know what, kid? Forget this. Leave me out of whatever mess the two of you have gotten yourselves into and have a nice life.
He clicked Send, then picked up his computer and threw it against the wall. He didn’t have to think about those kids for one more second.
The sound of the glass shattering was incredible. It rang in the air like rain. Drops of rain on the concrete in the middle of a steamy afternoon. He wanted more—and he did it again. This time, a beer bottle. Then another. Then his plate with half a piece of pizza still left on it. And his water glass.
He would’ve thrown himself through a window if he could have managed it.
The sound of the glass wasn’t enough anymore, so he scanned the room for something bigger. Somethin
g heavy. Something he’d have to dig deep to manage. He considered his kitchen chairs, two pieces of mismatched seventies crap he’d scooped off the street corner on trash day. But they’d only hit the wall with a thud.
Jack wanted more.
Looking around, he finally saw his tiny apartment for the shit hole it was. Cracked linoleum and a wobbly table covered in maps and manuals and bills. A stained couch he slept on most nights without bothering to pull it open for the bed inside. The only things worth stealing in the whole place were his TV and VCR and they hadn’t been worth stealing since sometime back in the nineties.
And now glass and broken shit everywhere.
He picked up the burled oak coffee table he’d bought at a yard sale for two dollars, wrangled it over his head and threw it. Hard. Gave it everything he could, because he was pissed off, and because it was the only thing he had left to destroy. The table smashed a hole the size of a garbage can into the bathroom door and crashed to the floor. If he’d been thinking, he would have thrown that through the front window, instead.
One more regret to add to his list.
Twenty-Five
Savannah
The interviews went on the same way for three hours, the whole morning show lineup. Into the station, up the elevator, into makeup for a touch-up, and into the greenroom to wait. Thankfully, other than his weird, deer-in-the-headlights moment during the first interview, Thomas was mostly holding up his half of the work.
At nine-thirty, they all took a brief food break. Thomas swallowed two whole bagels with cream cheese and Savannah debated whether to try lox, but ultimately thought better of stuffing her face with fish just before going on TV. She was exhausted, ready to crawl into a hole and not come out.
That didn’t stop her phone from buzzing.
OMG!!!!!! I’ve totally been watching you all morning!! YOU ARE KILLING IT!!
Tell them to put better lipstick on you
Savannah was about to ask what color when Saj swept them into the elevator and out of the building.
As soon as they reached the street, Sam Tamblin announced he had an appointment across town and wouldn’t be going along to their final appearance. “Make me proud,” he told them. Then he ushered the four of them into a waiting town car and waved goodbye from the sidewalk.
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