“You didn’t actually ask to produce, Van. And he’s giving you a chance to write.”
“Yeah, but—” She deflated into her chair. “Oh, whatever. Fine, I’ll write. But it just goes to show how women always start out two rungs below their male competitors, no matter how good they are.” She gave Thomas a pointed look.
He threw his hands up. “What did I do?” Typical Savannah.
Maggie studied her. “Are you certain?”
Savannah nodded. Then Maggie, their guardian and the only one at the table who could legally agree to a deal, unmuted the line one last time. “Mr. Tamblin? I believe we’ve reached an agreement.”
“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?”