Please see Chapter 1 for general info and disclaimers.

*~*

It was a few minutes past one in the morning when Sam descended down into the basement in search of coffee. The hallway leading to the mess was dimly lit, and he could hear the rev of a vacuum cleaner on the other side of the building. Even though the President had butchered the answer he'd written for him to say in response to the question of whether he would resign, Sam's thoughts weren't focused on that or the President or Jenn or whether he would still have a job fifteen months from now. No, his mind was full of Lisa.

He'd stepped out of his shower that morning (or, more technically, yesterday morning) and had immediately thought of Lisa. It'd been almost a whole year since he'd had even a passing thought about her, so it bothered him that she'd managed to plague him for almost twenty-four hours straight. As he had done a final run through of the President's Dateline statement with him, he'd been thinking about Lisa. As he had watched the President and First Lady look straight into a camera and discuss their marital problems with an audience of thousands, he'd been thinking about Lisa. And now, as he was on a mission of great importance (because when isn't getting coffee an important mission?), he was thinking about Lisa. It was driving him crazy.

He hadn't thought about her in a year, and it had been an even longer span of time since they'd last spoken. So, what had changed? Sam wasn't sure, but he supposed it might be because he missed her. Even though they hadn't ended their relationship on good terms, he knew a part of him would always love her. After all, he'd been ready to marry her, and that had to count for something. He wondered how things would have turned out if he and Lisa had remained together, if Josh hadn't swept into New York and rekindled his dream of putting 'the real thing' in the Oval Office. He probably wouldn't have stayed with Gage Whitney Page because he'd already known for months that he wasn't happy there, but perhaps he would have moved on to a different firm, maybe even joining Lisa at her father's firm, as she'd suggested numerous times. Sam wasn't a man who questioned his past decisions. He didn't believe in hashing and then rehashing over every minute detail in his life as he pondered what might have been/could have been/should have been. But now, at 1:08 am, he found himself doing exactly that.

As he rounded a corner, his ears perked up as he heard the sound of a piano mingling with the vacuum cleaner's whir. The closer he got to the entrance of the mess, the louder the music grew until he could also make out a woman singing along with the music in a clear alto. As he walked into the mess, Sam saw that, off in a far corner, Jenn was seated in front of an up-right piano, singing the most melancholic rendition of 'Bridge over Troubled Waters' he'd ever heard.

Her hands slowly caressed the keys and she wistfully sang, "…When darkness comes and pain is all around, like a bridge over troubled water I will lay me down. Like a bridge over trouble water I will lay me down."

Sensing that he was intruding on a private moment, Sam tried to back out of the room without drawing any attention to himself. However, since he was endowed with the power of the pen and not the lightness of the feet, he accidentally tripped over a chair and dragged it along the floor for a couple of inches, its feet loudly screeching their anger at being moved in such a manner.

The music instantly ceased and Sam untangled his leg from the chair to see Jenn staring at him, a look of horrified terror on her face.

"I'm-I'm sorry," he spluttered. "I didn't mean to— I wasn't trying— I…I needed coffee and Josh drank all of our coffee upstairs," he said lamely.

Jenn just continued staring at him.

"But I'm gonna go 'cause you're here and I'm interrupting." Sam attempted once more to vacate the mess.

Jenn snapped out of her reverie and shook her head, an amused smile creeping on to her face. "Sam," she called out, "come back. You don't have to leave. This place is more yours than it is mine. Anyway, I think there's a fresh pot of coffee back there."

Sam made a beeline for where she was pointing and located the coffeemaker on the counter next to one of the stainless steel refrigerators. He poured himself a full cup and then walked hesitantly back in Jenn's direction. She'd turned her attention back to the piano and was idly playing a simple tune with her right hand when he pulled a chair out and sat beside her. "That was really beautiful what you were singing before," he murmured.

"Thank you." Her cheeks unconsciously blushed at the compliment.

"No, really, I mean it. You have a really nice voice. And with the piano, you've got a whole one-woman lounge act going on. If you just punched it up with a little Prozac, you could have a real—" Sam cut himself off as he realized what he had just said. "Oh, God, I'm sorry, Jenn. I didn't mean—"

"It's okay, Sam," she assured him gently. "Don't worry about curbing the mental health jokes on my behalf. I've told enough of them in my lifetime to make me pretty resilient to them."

Sam silently cursed his stupidity as he took a sip of coffee. "I didn't even know there's a piano in here. I've worked here for three years and never noticed it. You've been here for what? Three days? And yet you've managed to find the hidden treasure, so to speak. Guess that doesn't say much for my observation skills."

"Well, I've had some extra time on my hands lately," she replied lightly.

"Where'd you learn how to play?"

"Oh, um," Jenn scratched an inch on her temple and then tucked some hair behind her left ear, "my landlady lived above me and my mom, and she's a piano teacher. I spent a lot of time up at her place when I was younger and my mom would kind of…forget to come home. I think she taught me how to play so that I'd keep my mind occupied."

"Well, she's a good teacher."

"And a good woman." Jenn turned and gave Sam a small smile, her right cheek dimpling as the corners of her mouth moved upwards.

Sam lowered his lips to the rim of the cup in his hands, deep in thought. It was disconcerting to see this quiet, less abrasive side of Jenn. He knew he was probably going to regret asking her the question currently running through his head, but the inquisitive side of him wouldn't let him keep it in. "Jenn, I…I know this is none of my business – and you can tell me to mind my own bee's wax – but…what was it like?"

"What was what like?"

"What was it like growing up knowing that you had a father on the other side of the country you weren't allowed to get to know?"

Jenn closed her eyes and chuckled mirthlessly.

"Did I say something funny?" Sam asked in confusion.

"No one ever forbade me from getting to know my father."

"But Leo told us that—"

"Sam, by the time I was fourteen, I was the one running the show in my family. My mom still signed all the checks and the bills were still sent to her, but I was the one who wrote the checks out and I was the one who figured out which bills we had to pay and which ones we could let slide a little bit longer. It's true that, at the very beginning – when I was ten – my mother did threaten to spirit me off somewhere if the President didn't back off. But as I got older, she…became a little less stable, and I… Well, let's just say that if I'd wanted to write him a letter or give him a call, she couldn't have stopped me."

Sam's mouth fell slightly open in surprise, and his forgotten coffee grew cool in his hand. "Then, as much as I hate to sound like Ainsley, why didn't you ever try to contact your dad?"

"I don't know." Jenn removed her hand from the keyboard and gazed pensively at the music stand. "I guess the desire to want a father lessened as the years passed. And I think there was a part of me that never got over being that ten year old girl who had a father for a few months, only to be abandoned by him without a second thought. But I think the main reason I never tried to contact him was because I realized that, for better or worse, it was me and my mom against the world, not me, my mom, and this guy from New Hampshire who could, at best, visit on the weekends. Sure, my mom and I had our problems like any mother-daughter pair do, but we were always there for each other. I looked after her and she looked after me. My mom had her faults, Sam, but…she was a great mother. She really was." Jenn dropped her head and didn't brush any strands of hair away as they fell around her face after coming dislodged from behind her ears. She could feel the tears building up in her eyes and she had to will herself not to begin crying.

A shield of hair now prevented Sam from seeing her face and he felt terrible for making her dredge up all these painful memories, but he couldn't stop himself from asking, "What about when you found out Jed Bartlet was running for President? Leo told us that it was your mom who forbid him from contacting you anymore."

"Yeah, that was, um, that was me. I was the one who started sending back Uncle Leo's letters and hanging up on him when he'd call. One afternoon, I pretended that I was sneaking him a phone call and told him that my mom was freaking out and threatening all sorts of things if he didn't stop trying to contact me."

"Why? Did you just get sick of Leo hanging around or something?"

"What? No, I love Leo. The fact that Uncle Leo was so reachable probably played a huge role in why I never tried to contact my dad as I got older. Severing ties with Uncle Leo was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. When I got back home after finding out that my father wanted to run for President, I told my mom. She did freak out when she heard the news, but not in the angry sense like I led Uncle Leo to believe. She just…she broke down crying. She was convinced that once my father got elected President – and she never had a doubt that he'd get elected – he'd sweep me off my feet and whisk me off to the White House to live the privileged life of a President's daughter. I tried to convince her that I wasn't going anywhere, that I couldn't give a rat's ass how high up the political ladder my father went, but she wouldn't be dissuaded. She didn't calm down until I promised her that I would stop all communications with Uncle Leo as proof of how I wasn't ever going to leave her." The tears returned to Jenn's eyes, forcing her to squeeze her eyes shut. "And I didn't. I stayed by her side all the way through to the end. On the day she died, she'd already been in the hospital for almost two weeks. She was having some problems swallowing solid foods, so I was feeding her some yogurt when I looked away for a second. I don't remember why I looked away…maybe something out in the hallway caught my eye. All I know is that when I looked back at her, she was just staring up at me. It didn't occur to me right away that she had…passed on. But when I gave her a little nudge and she didn't blink, I…I knew. I didn't know what to do, so I just sat there and watched as her lifeless eyes watched me. It was at that moment that, for the first time in years, I actually wanted my father. I wanted him to hug me and tell me that everything was going to be all right. So I flew out here. Maybe I should've called first."

Sam's eyes grew damp as he watched Jenn open her eyes and begin gnawing on her lower lip. Her last sentence – the plaintive 'Maybe I should've called first' – struck a chord with him. Why should she have to worry about whether or not she should have called first? He wanted to console her in some way – perhaps tell her that everything was going to be all right – but he didn't know how to broach the subject without sounding like a jerk. So he instead pretended to be fascinated by something to his right in order to provide Jenn with some time to recompose herself. After a few minutes had come and gone, he looked back in her direction and saw that her eyes had dried and her cheeks were no longer flushed.

"Your coffee's getting cold," she informed him softly as she sensed him scrutinizing her.

Sam glanced down at the cup and smiled. "Doesn't matter. I probably shouldn't be consuming that much caffeine anyway if I plan on sleeping at all tonight." Sneaking a peek at Jenn, he added, "Hey, do you want me to help you run through your questions for tomorrow?"

While she appreciated the offer, she couldn't help raising an eyebrow. "You don't have better things to do with your time? I'm sure you're swamped with work."

"I am, but I don't mind making time to help you."

"Thanks for the offer, but I'm, uh, I'm gonna pass. I think I'd rather just stay down here a little longer."

"Okay, but you should try and get some sleep. It's going to be a long day tomorrow."

Sam was sounding so concerned for her that Jenn found herself on the verge of tears again. "I could say the same for you, Mr. Seaborn," she countered with a laugh.

"Sleep? What's that?" Stretching his back he stood, Sam tossed his half-empty cup into the nearest trashcan. "Well, I'm gonna go. You sure you'll be okay down here?"

"Yeah, I'll be fine."

"Okay. You know where to find me if you change your mind about wanting some company. Good night."

"Night. Oh, and, uh, Sam? Could we keep the stuff I just told you about Leo and why I had to cut him off to ourselves? I just, um…I don't think telling him the truth would do any good at this point."

"Yeah, sure. No problem." Sam started to walk away before turning back around, a serious expression dominating his face. "Jenn, the thing you should know about me is that, even though I may bumble around here, tripping over things and acting all…geeky, I'm actually really good at what I do, so you shouldn't worry about going to the show with me tomorrow instead of Toby."

Jenn gazed into his eyes and truthfully replied, "I was never worried."

"Oh. Good."

He was about to begin exiting the mess again when he heard Jenn continue on to say, "And the thing you should know about me, Sam, is that I'm not usually such a pain. I know I've been a real jerk since I showed up here, but I'm not like that. I'm usually a very mellow, happy-go-lucky kind of girl. And I hardly ever yell. Much." She broke out into a huge grin as she said the last word.

Sam chuckled and shook his head as the corners of his eyes crinkled into laugh lines. "Don't stay up too late, Jenn."

"I won't. Thanks, Sam…for everything."