Please see Chapter 1 for general info and disclaimers.
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Meanwhile, in the room next door to Zoey's, Jenn sat on the bed with her knees tucked under her chin and her arms hugging her bent legs. She found the room disturbingly silent and would have turned on the TV if she weren't afraid of disrupting the quiet. Her newly bought suit hung in the near-empty closet, and she stared impassively at it. Ainsley had advised her to look for something 'conservative' since she was to appear on TV in it, so they'd finally settled on a classic black pantsuit with just a subtle hint of pinstripes, courtesy of some fine silvery thread. When she'd seen the price, she'd balked at purchasing it – it cost more than she usually spent on groceries for a whole month – but Ainsley had assured her that, at a discount of 75% off, it truly was a steal.
Shopping with Ainsley had turned out to be surprisingly painless. Jenn had been afraid the lawyer would spend the day peppering her with questions about her past, but that never transpired. At some point in her life, Ainsley had perfected the talent of going on and on about absolutely nothing, which suited Jenn just fine since she hadn't been in a very talkative mood herself. With two Secret Service agents in tow, the two women had gone to several of Ainsley's favorite stores, visited the Smithsonian as well as all the presidential memorials, and had returned to the White House around five in the afternoon.
After ensuring that Jenn would be fine on her own, Ainsley had retreated to her office in order to check her messages and Jenn had gone in search for either Leo or her father (in that order). She received more curious looks from different staffers as she wandered through the West Wing, but no one questioned her right to be there (probably because there were already two agents stalking her every move). After awhile, she succeeded in locating an assistant who informed her, somewhat coldly, that both the President and Leo were participating in a very important meeting and could not be disturbed. With nothing left to do, she had allowed herself to be shown to the room where she currently sat.
At around six, she had received a rushed call from her father asking her to join him for dinner. But twenty minutes later, she received another call – this time from Charlie – notifying her that the President had to cancel because something bad had happened somewhere and the situation required his attention. So she ate her dinner in solitude and went back to the Residence without speaking to anyone or having anyone speak to her.
As Jenn pulled her legs closer to her chest and willed herself not to cry, she realized that, in retrospect, the sense of overwhelming loneliness she had thought she felt when she'd disembarked at the airport was actually only a shadow of the loneliness she was currently feeling.