Prime Time

Chapter 1: The Parrot

The parrot said it first.

Not the veterinarian. Not the receptionist behind the counter who recognized Lennox Tillman from the opening credits of *Our Best Days* and dropped her coffee mug. Not the camera operator who'd been told this would be a "warm, organic moment" and was already questioning his career choices.

The parrot — an African Grey named Colonel Mustard, according to the tag on his cage — took one look at the camera crew pushing through the front door of the Northside Animal Care Clinic and screamed, at full volume, a word that would require extensive bleeping in post-production.

Lennox paused in the doorway. Behind him, the Minneapolis wind cut through his sport coat like it had a personal grievance. He was fifty-five years old. He had eleven hundred dollars in his checking account, a storage unit in Burbank full of memorabilia from a show that had been off the air for twenty years, and a contract with Pinnacle Entertainment that promised him a hundred and fifty thousand dollars if he could convince his estranged children to love him on camera in six episodes.

The parrot screamed the word again.

"That's new," Lennox said, because he was a professional and professionals fill dead air.

The receptionist — a young woman with a nose ring and a sweatshirt that said CATS AGAINST CAPITALISM — was still staring at him. "Are you — you're —"

"Lennox Tillman," he said, extending his hand. "I'm looking for Dr. Sonia Tillman. She's my daughter."

The receptionist's expression performed a remarkable journey from starstruck to confused to deeply uncomfortable in under three seconds. "She's — I mean — she's with a patient."

"We can wait," said the voice behind Lennox. That was Liz Oberg, executive producer of *Coming Home*, a woman who radiated the aggressive optimism of a kindergarten teacher holding a knife behind her back. She was forty-two, blond, and had produced three seasons of a show called *Altar Call* in which people proposed to their exes at their exes' weddings. She understood human emotion the way a butcher understands a cow.

"Actually," Liz said, stepping forward with a smile that could strip paint, "we'd love to catch her in a natural moment. Could you just point us toward the exam rooms?"

The receptionist looked at Lennox. Lennox looked at the floor. Colonel Mustard contributed another profanity.

"I'll — let me go get her," the receptionist said, and disappeared through a door marked STAFF ONLY.

Lennox stood in the waiting room of his daughter's veterinary clinic and tried to remember the last time he'd seen her. It had been — what? The wedding. Brenda's wedding to the new guy, the accountant. No, the financial planner. Whatever the distinction was. That had been six years ago. Lennox had shown up uninvited, three drinks deep, given a toast no one asked for, and been escorted to a taxi by two of Brenda's cousins. Sonia had been twenty-four then. She hadn't looked at him once.

Now she was thirty, a veterinarian, and by all accounts doing fine without him. Which was, if Lennox was being honest with himself — a thing he tried to avoid — the part that stung the most.

The staff door opened. Sonia appeared.

She was taller than he remembered, though of course she hadn't grown. She was wearing blue scrubs and her dark hair was pulled back and there was something on her sleeve that Lennox chose not to identify. She had Brenda's cheekbones and Lennox's jaw and an expression that belonged entirely to herself.

She looked at Lennox. She looked at the camera. She looked at Liz Oberg's professionally sympathetic face.

"No," Sonia said.

"Sweetheart —" Lennox started.

"No."

"If we could just —" Liz began.

"No. Get out of my clinic."

Sonia's voice was calm and clear and absolutely final, the voice of a woman who regularly told anxious dog owners that their pets needed surgery. It was not a voice that invited negotiation.

"Sonia, I know this is a surprise," Lennox said. He'd rehearsed this part. On the plane. In the mirror of the hotel bathroom. The words felt like cardboard in his mouth. "I've made a lot of mistakes, and I want to —"

"You brought cameras," Sonia said. "You brought cameras to my workplace. To ambush me. At my job."

"It's not an ambush," Liz said cheerfully. "It's a reunion."

Sonia turned to Liz with an expression that Lennox recognized with a cold shock as his own — the look he used to give directors who wasted his time. "If you don't leave in the next thirty seconds, I'm calling the police and then I'm calling my lawyer and then I'm calling every local news station to tell them that Lennox Tillman is harassing his daughter for content."

The camera operator looked at Liz. Liz's smile didn't waver.

"We're going," Lennox said quietly.

Sonia looked at him for the first time — really looked at him — and what he saw in her face wasn't anger. Anger he could have worked with. Anger meant she still cared. What he saw was exhaustion. She was tired of him. She'd been tired of him for years.

She went back through the staff door. It closed with a soft click that was worse than any slam.

Colonel Mustard screamed one final obscenity as they filed out.

The footage — shaky, raw, the parrot's contributions bleeped into a staccato rhythm that somehow made it funnier — hit the internet that evening. Pinnacle's social media team posted it as a "sneak peek" with the caption: *Some reunions don't go as planned. #ComingHome premieres this fall.*

Two million views by morning.

Lennox watched the number climb from his hotel room at the Holiday Inn in Bloomington, Minnesota, sitting on the edge of a bed that smelled faintly of industrial detergent, eating a gas station sandwich, and wondering at what precise moment his life had become a thing that happened to other people for their entertainment.

His phone buzzed. A text from his agent, Gus Pereira.

*Trending on Twitter. Liz is thrilled. Network wants more.*

Lennox put the phone down. He looked at the sandwich. The sandwich looked back.

"I deserve this," he told the sandwich.

The sandwich did not disagree.