Save the Date(127)

I’d been sending as many texts to Siobhan as I could—she was heartbroken her rescheduled flight wouldn’t get her here in time—but since Jackson hadn’t emerged yet, these were mostly just pictures of his trailer in our driveway.

The last hour had been a blur of the Good Morning America crew taking over our house. I hadn’t realized that the crew who had come to set up on Friday were just the advance team—there had to be twenty people here now, everyone bustling around at speeds that seemed to get faster the closer we got to airtime. The last twenty minutes or so had been Jill trying in vain to get rid of the spectators and then getting us camera ready, which meant three makeup artists were basically working in a line, going remarkably fast. And considering that none of us had gotten much sleep, I was very grateful for their presence.

We’d all gone through makeup, even my dad, who protested this very loudly and sneezed whenever the powder brush came near him. It seemed like maybe it was good that things had been so busy and frenetic. It had meant that we didn’t have the time—or the privacy—to discuss what had happened the night before.

Waffles was sitting on my lap—we’d discovered the hard way that he had a tendency to growl at either the boom mic or the boom mic operator; we still weren’t sure which, and as the time of the interview got closer and closer, I found myself smoothing down his ears nervously, which he thankfully didn’t seem to mind.

“Okay,” Jill said, clapping her hands together as she looked at us. Waffles jumped at the sound, and I ran my hand over his back, trying to calm him down. “Are we set, Grant family? We’re going to be live in”—she glanced at her tablet—“four minutes, so I need to make sure we’re prepped.”

“Where’s Jackson?” Liz called from the doorway.

“He’s getting ready,” Jill called back, her voice tight with tension. “So, like I mentioned, this isn’t a super-long segment—we’re going to go through the questions and answers we talked about. And don’t worry,” she added, glancing down at her tablet again, then speaking much faster. “Jackson’s a pro, so he’ll be guiding this whole thing. Okay? Great.” She turned and left the room without waiting for a response, speaking into her walkie as she went.

“So, this will be fun,” J.J. said after a pause in which the enormity of what we were about to do seemed to hit us all simultaneously.

“You guys will be great!” Jenny W. called from the doorway, holding up her mimosa glass and winking at J.J.

“Totally,” Jenny K. echoed.

“Okay, then, here we go!” Jill said, returning, her voice bright and cheerful, even though she was speaking twice as fast as she had been before. She gestured behind her, and Jackson Goodman came into the room. He was taller than he looked on TV—but he had the same close-cropped black hair and the same blindingly white teeth. For some reason, there were two tissues tucked into either side of his shirt. The Jennys waved at him and Liz pulled out her phone and started snapping pictures. “Jackson’s here, and we’re just about ready to roll, so is everyone set? Great,” Jill said without waiting for an answer. The crew was moving a lot faster now that Jackson had arrived—there seemed to be more of them than there had been just a moment before, everyone hustling around, and a chair was produced from somewhere and placed in the center of the room.

“Hi,” Jackson said, giving us all a bright smile. “I’m Jackson Goodman.”

We all nodded at him, just staring mutely, and Rodney was the one who recovered fastest. “Right,” he said, nodding a few too many times. “Hi.”

“It’s such an honor to be here in your lovely home,” Jackson said, looking around at all of us and holding eye contact with everyone. He seemed to blink less than normal people. I figured maybe it was an anchorperson thing.

“Thanks,” I murmured back, now looking a little nervously at the cameras that were pointing our way and getting closer, the camera crew pushing them into place. I didn’t watch Good Morning America all that often, but I knew who Jackson Goodman was, and he was sitting in our family room, only a few feet away from me. I glanced up at the lights and the boom guy standing just out of frame and felt my palms start to sweat. I quickly wiped them on the dog.

“Jackson, we’re going in two,” Jill said, glancing at her tablet. She gestured to one of the PAs, who handed her nine copies of the Stanwich Sentinel, which she fanned out on the coffee table. “Prompter is ready for you, and these are for the final shot, where we’ll film the family reading the paper. Then we’ll cut from you to a slide of the strip itself. Sound good?”

“Sounds great,” Jackson said. He had the same peppy demeanor that he had on TV, and I wasn’t sure if it was just the way he was, or if this would drop the minute he went outside to his temporary trailer.

I’d thought everyone was moving fast before, but it was like things went into hyperspeed, as crew members were practically running as they moved plants, adjusted lights, and hair and makeup people descended on Jackson, calling for “last looks.”

“Don’t worry,” Jackson said, his eyes closed as his face got powdered. “I promise this isn’t going to be painful.” The makeup artist stepped back, pulled the tissues from his shirt, and hustled away just as Jill shushed the group standing out of the shot.