“All right,” said Sam, sounding more Matthew McConaughey than media executive. “Oh, one last thing, actually. GenePuul is ready to sign on as our leading sponsor. But they won’t do it without a guarantee you’ll use their product for testing.”
“What is GenePuul?” asked Maggie.
“Genetic testing. Like Ancestry.com or whatever. Anyway, this is the first podcast GenePuul has ever offered to sponsor. It’s a major coup.”
“And we just have to agree to use their product for DNA testing?” Thomas asked.
“Truth,” said Sam.
Thomas smirked. Even if their search went nowhere, Sam Tamblin’s hipster persona was at least good for a few laughs.
Savannah hit the Mute button. “Of course we’ll do DNA tests, right? To make sure we have the right guy. But I mean, only after we’ve learned what we can about him. Where he’s from, how he met Mom, all that stuff?”
Thomas nodded and shot a look at the phone. “Tell him.”
Just as before, Sam Tamblin had gone on talking. “By using GenePuul’s science from the start, the story is so much bigger, with so many leads to pursue. That’s how they caught the Golden State Killer. You know that, right? Because his relatives researched their genealogy through DNA testing? You’ll never know who you could be related to without it.”
“He makes it sound like our podcast should be called To Catch a Killer,” Savannah whispered.
“We’re making a big mistake if we don’t tap the forensic science fans. Think about it—all the top-rated TV shows for the past decade have been forensic crime dramas. People. Dig. DNA. This opportunity we’re sitting on is huge. Think Team Jacob versus Team Edward. But bigger. Think The Bachelor, but with biodads—”
“Sam, we don’t want to turn our experience into a game show,” Savannah interrupted.
“Game show? This isn’t a game show! This is drama! The Divine effing Human Drama!”
Savannah whispered, “He just described a DNA rose ceremony—we’re not doing it.”
Sam moved on to talking about episodes on location and the challenges of outdoor recording.
“Mr. Tamblin...” said Maggie, but he continued to talk over her. She waited about a breath before: “SAM TAMBLIN!”
Thomas and Savannah snapped to attention. Even Sam went silent.
“Think about this from our side. The reality is, we don’t know if this search will be successful. Even if we do locate the biofather, my grandchildren don’t know if they’ll like him. And what’s more, we could learn a few things about their mother, Bess, that we wish we’d never known. Are you following?”
Savannah wrote goal: learn more about Mom on the slip of notes Thomas was taking and underlined it twice.
He nodded, and underlined it, too.
Sam stayed silent, then finally said, “If you won’t go the DNA route, that leaves us with the Serial model.”
Savannah punched the air with a triumphant fist. “That’s exactly what we’re talking about.”
Thomas smiled and nodded. Serial hadn’t just been a breakout success, it had become a cultural phenomenon. Over the course of several episodes, it explored the 1999 murder of a young woman, Hae Min Lee, and tried to answer a fundamental question: Did the man in prison for her murder actually commit the crime? Everyone listening seemed to have an opinion. And they didn’t just have opinions, they got involved. They did their own research. They started podcasts about the podcast. They made websites to track the theories that then got discussed on other podcasts.
Even more amazing, with all the attention and evidence the show shook loose, the defendant in question had been awarded a new trial. Serial was the listener-engagement Holy Grail, and every podcaster was chasing its success.
“Do you know how much work that type of show requires?” Sam no longer sounded quite so enthusiastic. “Taking the DNA route would cut your work in half. Three-quarters.”
“But,” said Savannah, “it probably wouldn’t tell us a thing about our mother. This is about her as much as it is about our father.”
She and Thomas exchanged smiles, and Thomas felt a lump in his throat he couldn’t swallow down. He said—quickly, since he could hear the note in Sam’s voice that said he was ready to call this discussion history—“We’re doing this to learn our story. Not to ambush our dad. We want to find him and hopefully meet him. And the only way that will happen is if we act like decent people. Like the sort of people he’d be proud to meet.”
“Are we in agreement, then, Mr. Tamblin?” Maggie said.
“Crystal.”
* * *
A few days later, Thomas and his best friend, Nico, made their way from the track to the locker room. Together, they made up one half of the varsity team’s 4x200 relay. Pete Biehl, along with Roger Rostenkowski—who they called Ro—made up the other half. Track practice went until five o’clock, which meant Thomas and his friends spent two hours every afternoon pushing their metabolisms to the brink. Their first stop on the way home was at Burger Mania, just around the corner, for to-go vanilla shakes.
“Dude, you’ve added eight-tenths of a second in your two hundred,” Nico said.
“You better drop time,” Pete said. “Or they’ll put Soltis in for you.”
“Slow-tice,” said Ro.
Thomas unwrapped his straw and smirked. “Soltis is way too slow to replace me.”
“He’s running two-tenths faster than you right now,” said Pete.
“No way.” Thomas was fast, a born sprinter. His times couldn’t have taken that much of a hit.
“Coach writes it all down, stupid,” Nico said. “Which means, you’re either getting slow or Soltis is juicing on steroids.” He looked at Thomas’s shake. “You sure you should be eating that, fatty?”
“Shut it, Nico,” Thomas said.
“Shut it, Nico,” mimicked Nico.
Such an idiot. Nico’s dad was a radiologist and his mom was a neurosurgeon, and between the two of them, they’d raised a kid with a foot permanently implanted in his mouth.
“We’ve only got a few qualifying meets left before the State meet in June.” Pete excelled at ignoring the Nico-Thomas dynamic. “Wayzata is running three-tenths faster than they did last year when they beat us out for the title. Which means we’ve got to hit the training hard if we have any hope of winning this year.”
Ro examined his half-empty cup and threw it in the trash without finishing it.
“No rest days,” Pete said. “I say we even meet up Saturday morning for a long run.”
“Can’t Saturday. That’s the podcast launch party,” Thomas said. “I promised Maggie I’d be around to help set up.”
“Party’s not until that night though, right?” said Pete. “Plenty of time to set up between a.m. and p.m.”
Thomas took a final pull on his shake. He was starving, but maybe they were right. He was running the slowest time on the team, and he never ran the slowest time. When it came to running track, he didn’t want to just be good—he ran to catch the feeling of what it was like when he excelled.
“Fine.” He threw the remainder of his shake in the trash. “See you tomorrow, then.”
“See you tomorrow, sweetie,” said Nico.
Thomas turned at the corner and headed for home, finally alone. Maybe the idea of finding their dad had him a little preoccupied, but Maggie’d made sure their contract said they weren’t supposed to do any work until school ended, and that was still a few weeks away. He wasn’t going to think about it yet.
Still. He couldn’t help but wonder.
At a minimum, his dad was athletic. He knew because his mom told him once. They’d been watching the summer Olympics when she’d said it. The sprinters. Thomas said that was the track-and-field event he liked best.
“I’m not surprised,” she’d answered. “You’ve got the long legs
of a sprinter.”
“If I’m fast enough, I can get a college scholarship. Then you won’t have to pay.” Thomas felt a constant awareness that their mother had one salary paying for two kids: two mouths to feed, two closets to fill, two tuitions to pay.
“That would be great. But you know you don’t have to worry, Thomas. We are plenty blessed.”
“I know,” he said, like he always did, telling himself to believe it. “But if I got a scholarship, then I’d be on the team, and that’s my best chance for real training.” He hooked a thumb toward the television. “You know. Like if I ever wanted to make it to the Olympics, or something.”
His mom smiled, her brown eyes crinkling at the corners. “Let’s hope you’re as athletic as your father, then.”
As athletic as. He hoped he remembered that correctly. As athletic as meant he stood out somehow. That his athleticism was notable. That people noticed it. Maybe the same way you’d remember an athlete by name.
Thomas turned the words in his head the whole way home. As athletic as...
That night, while reminding himself not to think about the podcast until school was out, he got to worrying about living up to his athletic potential. As athletic as... What did that mean? How was he supposed to know how far his potential could take him? How hard he should be pushing himself?
He didn’t know a single person who could give him the answers.
But there might be someone who could. And Thomas might just be able to find him.
Six
Maggie
Saturday afternoon, Maggie opened the door to a man with drumsticks tucked behind each ear. “Come in!” The podcast wasn’t due to start for a few weeks, but why wait to throw a party? Celebrating was more fun than waiting. “The party’s in the front parlor, but I’ll have you set everything up in the sunroom.”
A crew of four began to cart a full complement of electric keyboards, drums, vibraphones, cymbals and electric guitars into the house. They were going to record the podcast’s theme song tonight.
By seven o’clock, the pianist Maggie had hired for the evening was at the piano with a list of Gershwin favorites, and Katherine Mansfield sat by the front door, a lovely violet silk scarf around her neck. The doorbell began to ring.
Savannah’s best friend, Trigg, arrived first. “Hey, Maggie.”
“Welcome!” she said. Trigg Kline had always struck Maggie as a young girl in a woman’s body, something she feared would follow the girl long after her calendar age caught up to her looks. Emotional and physical maturity were such different things.
“Hey, Van,” Trigg said, glancing over Maggie’s shoulder.
“Trigg,” answered Savannah. “That the photo booth thingy?”
Trigg had arrived holding a cardboard tube nearly as tall as she was. “Obviously.”
Maggie noted an icy chill in the air between the two girls but put a pin in it. She’d have to ask Savannah later, when the doorbell quit ringing.
Their neighbors, Stan and Tabby Melby, arrived next, as did the owners of the local Vietnamese grocery, Trang and Tina Phan. There were Mayor Pennypiece and Samuel, who ran the airport shoe-shine stand, and a woman named Blue, who Maggie had never met but who sported a billowy, boho-chic style that few could have pulled off.
The house was full to bursting, and so was her heart.
A house full of people was medicine to Maggie, always providing exactly what she needed—laughter when she was down, hope when all felt lost. A means of crowding unwanted thoughts from her head. She loved how George used to say, “When doom strikes, fill the ice trays and throw open the doors. Pain is no match for a party.”
Sometimes, though, with George and Bess both gone, Maggie found herself wondering why God made the math work out so evenly. He took her husband and daughter and gave her Thomas and Savannah in return. Maggie shook the equation from her mind.
Chef Bart served a buffet of appetizers and created a new cocktail called the “Truth Hurts”—one part whiskey, three parts Fireball, and served in a glass rimmed with habanero pepper oil.
“You get it?” He handed Maggie the inaugural glass. “You’re either swallowing fire or breathing it.”
“Talk about foreshadowing.” She took a sip and felt it burn all the way down. “Yikes.”
Over in the corner near the piano, Savannah, Trigg and Bart’s daughter, Nadine, had begun to hang an oversize sheet of vinyl—a photo backdrop—to help kick off the podcast’s social media campaign. When they unrolled the sheet, there wasn’t much more to see than a Guava Media logo and the text, #McClairTwinsMystery.
Maggie set down her drink and headed over to help.
“That’s not even the name of the show,” she heard Savannah complain.
“I could’ve had the guy put the right name on there if you’d answered my texts,” Trigg replied.
Nadine got to work, saying nothing.
“I was a little bit busy today, Trigg.”
“Oh yeah? ’Cuz it sorta felt like you were just being—”
“Girls?” Maggie interrupted. “Having some trouble?” Savannah and Trigg sounded about one syllable away from total meltdown. Plus, the tape Trigg brought was too flimsy, and the heavy vinyl backdrop drooped feebly on the wall, ready to fall. Nadine plastered on strip after strip, trying to secure it.
“It’s just a play, Savannah. You need to calm down. It’s not my fault Mrs. Thornbird read it out loud.” Trigg’s face burned with the hot splotches of anger, like she was battling scarlet fever. “Poor Savannah. The star of the class again.”
“Oh, very nice! Is that why you told everyone what I’d said to you in confidence? Because you were jealous?”
Trigg didn’t answer, but instead, let go of the vinyl sheeting and walked away. It broke loose from the wall and landed on Nadine.
Chef Bart hustled across the room. “Let me,” he said. “I’m sure you’ve got something in the pantry heavy-duty enough to hold that up.”
Maggie mouthed a silent thank you at him and quickly helped Nadine guide the vinyl off her shoulders and onto the floor. Then she took Savannah’s hand and led her into the kitchen.
“What is happening with you and Trigg?”
Savannah was now burning as hot as her friend had been. “It’s this dumb one-act play I wrote for English class. It’s about a girl who sees her dead grandmother in her sleep and Trigg had to go and tell everyone that sometimes I see Mom.”
Maggie stroked her cheek. “Did you have another dream?” Bess regularly antagonized Maggie, but she treated Savannah differently, stepping into her daughter’s sleep to soothe her when she needed it most.
Not that Maggie believed in supernatural hoodoo-voodoo nonsense.
“It’s nothing.” Savannah huffed. “I mean, whatever. It’s just a few idiots. They’ll probably get so stoned this weekend they won’t even have enough brain cells left to remember on Monday.”
Maggie studied her granddaughter. “You have the right to feel hurt, Savannah.”
Thomas then burst through the door with Nico, Pete and the other member of their relay team whose name Maggie could never remember. “Hey, Maggie! Nico just bet Ro he couldn’t eat a dozen raw eggs. Do we have any?”
Maggie pointed toward the back door. “Take it outside, boys. I don’t even want to see.”
* * *
As the evening went on, the crowd began to thin. Trigg, who was supposed to sleep over after the party, had gone home, which perhaps had been a blessing. Savannah’s mood had improved significantly.
The remaining adults sat around in clusters of threes and fours, finishing drinks and the last of their stories, tired and nearly chatted out. Thomas and his friends, along with Nadine, huddled in the sunroom, laughing and recording theme songs.
Finally, Thomas emerged and hushed the group. “Listen to this.” When it was quiet, he clic
ked a button on his remote control.
Everyone waited.
First came the sound of children laughing, followed by the circus-like pipes of a calliope. For a moment, it sounded like a day at the park, the happy noise of a children’s playground. Then, even as the laughter and the pipes carried on in the background, there came a confused mash-up of bells and vibraphone and drum—audible chaos. That continued for a few confusing moments until suddenly, the loud CRASH of a gong. As the sound drifted away to silence, Nadine’s wisp of a voice broke through. “You know what they say... The kids are gonna ask.”
The room was still for no more than a beat, then thundered with applause.
Nadine blushed. Thomas beamed. His friends ran around the room slapping high fives with guests.
Even Savannah couldn’t help grinning. “That. Is. Cool! Nadine, you could do voice-overs, I swear.”
The piece, every part of it, was unexpected. Maggie felt as if her heart were about to leap from her chest, racing and jumping, her entire circulatory system applauding the music. “Play it again!” she shouted.
Thomas fiddled with the remote control. “Hang on, lost my place.”
He paused just long enough for Maggie to notice that her heart hadn’t slowed. It wasn’t racing as it had been a moment ago, but neither had it calmed. Instead, it seemed to have established a new rhythm, like an excited, dancing child. Not arrhythmic, and yet, entirely unique.
She stood, thinking she might just slip out to the kitchen for a glass of water, when Thomas hollered, “Got it!”
Again, the room filled with sound—the children and the pipes and the chaos and the crash.
Followed, note-for-note, by Maggie’s pirouetting heart.
How absolutely fascinating.
She brought a hand up under her ribs, far enough away from the undulation of her lungs to get a better feel for what was happening. She wasn’t frightened. The ol’ girl was still ticking, pumping blood where she needed it. But it was telling her something. It was beating in time to the music.
The Kids Are Gonna Ask Page 5
