The Program

Chapter thirty-seven

Leah left another check-in message for TD and went straight back to Ginny's room. Tim walked around in the cold of the backyard, finally settling on top of the Costco picnic table.

He replayed the cell-phone message he'd received that morning: "I've been thinking about the drafting table, Timmy. I think your mother would want you to have it. Come on over tomorrow night – I'll be up late."

He saved the message, stuffed the phone into his pocket. Contemplating the palm fronds scattered at the base of the back fence, he realized he'd grown less meticulous in keeping up the house. Until last year he'd been just as uptight as his father, and though no one would now accuse him of slackness, he would occasionally let dirty dishes languish overnight. Maybe he'd recognized the futility of feigning control. Or maybe he was just worn out.

What would Monday hold? Once again keeping the world safe for sheet metal? TD's empire would continue to metastasize, and Leah could very well resume being a cog in it.

He heard the sliding door thunk closed and then the crunching-leaf sound of Dray's approach. Her boots struck the far bench, the tabletop, then she slid down behind him, legs outside his, gloved hands cinching around his waist. She set her chin on his shoulder.

"Growing up with my dad, I was never taught the moves. So I tried to…I guess fake it. I felt like the other parents really knew what they were doing. Part of me was always waiting for Ginny to catch on."

"You were a great father to Ginny."

"Maybe that's why I stay in touch with him. My dad. To remember what I never want to be."

"You still need that?"

When she was inclined, Dray could serve up a hell of a rhetorical. They watched a dead frond try to windsurf up the back fence. Determined bastard.

Dray said, "Will just called."

"He wants to swim by and bump the prey again? Forget it."

"We're not her parents, Timothy. At some point you've got to let her go."

"It's not that simple."

"Nothing's simple," she said.

The frond rattled against the wood like a dying manta ray. "I'm all over the map," he said. "I want to protect her, and I want her to protect herself. I want her to trust me, and I want to prove her trust right."

"None of it's gonna get us Ginny back."

He bent his head. Dray brushed his hair back from his forehead. Rainwater ran across his lips, some of it salty.

Will answered the door himself, the cavernous house behind him emanating the sound-swallowing hum of emptiness. He wore eyeglasses in thin gold frames, the arms pinching his graying hair at the temples and making it bow out in wisps.

"Thank you for coming."

Tim followed him across the tile, their footsteps echoing off the high wooden ceiling beams. They turned right and headed down a broad hall, passing a set of yellow – and – blue paintings composed of blown-up benday dots. Entering a vast office, Will crossed the hardwood floor and collapsed into a mesh chair behind a glass-topped desk the size of two doors laid end to end. A director's chair embroidered with WILL HENNING, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER sagged under a heap of scripts. Three sets of French doors spilled out onto the back lawn and a Bahamian-blue slab of an infinity pool.

Interspersed with movie posters, framed photos of Leah dotted the walls. Leah on the awkward brink of her teens, spouting water in a swimming pool. Leah blowing out ten candles mired in a daunting restaurant dessert, Wolfgang Puck beaming at her shoulder. Leah wearing a life buoy like a sash, perched on the arm of a kid encumbered with an ill-fitting sailor's cap and an oversize Adam's apple, the anchor-bedizened streamer overhead proclaiming, CALABASAS