XV
Sam strode purposefully into the meeting room and sat down. He nodded at the two men. "Major Whiting, Major Hardcastle, sorry to keep you waiting."
"Where's Josh?" frowned Hardcastle. Sam looked up from his notes.
"Josh isn't going to need to be here. This is gonna be a pretty short meeting."
Whiting shifted irritably in his chair; whether he was angry at being kept waiting or being palmed off on somebody he'd made it clear yesterday he considered no more than a poster boy was hard to tell. "Now listen, I'm an officer in the US armed forces, and-"
"And we know damn well you've been abusing your position to pressurise members of the House of Representatives into vetoing an amendment that would make your organisation's discrimination against homosexuals illegal, so I'd lay off the self-righteousness if I were you," Sam said coldly.
The Major spluttered very satisfactorily; Hardcastle shot to his feet
"Now listen, Seaborn-"
"No, I would suggest you listen. Let me give you a list of names. Anthony Thomas Braxton, Robert J. Lewisham, Damon Knetchel, Gavin Liferman, Richard Drafer... Are any of these sounding familiar? I think they probably should, given that they're high-ranking members of the military hierarchy. If not?" He lifted the corner of the top page before him. "I have two dozen more right here."
Whiting narrowed his eyes. "Whatever kind of stunt this is-"
"Oh, this is no stunt," Sam said calmly. "Did I mention the second list of names? You probably won't know those, but it's a considerably longer list. They're all servicemen and women who brought complaints about being harassed, blackmailed, emotionally, physically and mentally abused into revealing their sexuality by those highly placed individuals. Which, apparently, was somebody's idea of 'telling' under the Don't Ask Don't Tell system, since no inquiries were ever made into any of those complaints."
"That's because those complaints were entirely baseless," Hardcastle said sneeringly.
Sam nodded slowly. "Then I guess it won't matter if I go down the hall, put this list in the president's hand, and he announces on national TV that these complaints - and any others like them that come out of the woodwork - are going to be pursued exhaustively until the truth is discovered."
"The president won't launch an all-out attack on his own military support base," Major Whiting said with absolute confidence.
"This president will," Sam corrected him. "This president will, and he'll do it with the full support of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This president will do that and you know it, because if you didn't know it then your men would walk right into the Oval Office and say 'We're not accepting this'. You and I both know that if your opposition to this bill had a single leg to stand on, you would not be fighting this battle through Congress. So consider yourself warned. You want to fight this battle, then you do it on the record, and the American public can judge for itself whether your objections are anything more than stubborn adhesion to a code of behaviour as archaic as it is narrow-minded and self-defeating."
Both men were on their feet by now. "I don't think we have anything more to discuss here," said Whiting coldly.
"No, I don't think we do," Sam said, looking him in the eye and matching his tone. "Make no mistake, Major, that we will pursue this if you persist in trying to interfere with the democratic process." He folded his arms decisively as they got to their feet.
Major Hardcastle stopped in the doorway. "You have no concept of military discipline," he said tightly.
"If that's what you call it, then no, I guess I don't," Sam agreed. He smiled harshly. "But I have a grasp of legality, morality, and simple common sense that's just fine, and so does the man in the street. I might not be allowed to serve in your so called 'disciplined' military, but I do serve at the highest seat of government, and if you want to fight your fellow Americans' right to serve their country in whatever manner they desire, then I say bring it on."
Hardcastle purpled, but stalked out without saying anything. Sam stood and watched them leave.
"Good afternoon, Donna," Josh beamed.
"Die, Lyman," she growled, storming past him into the office.
He followed after her. "It's nice that we have these little chats," he noted dryly.
"This is all your fault," she scowled.
"It's my fault you're hung over?"
"You couldn't have stopped me?"
"At some stage in between you saying 'Josh, take me and CJ to the bar so we can get drunk' and the point where I you know, stopped you?"
She was about to say something scathing when her gaze fell past him and onto the TV set, currently showing the press briefing. "Is that live?" she demanded.
"No, we made a greatest hits tape," he said, amused.
Donna glared malevolently at the little image of CJ, cheerfully bantering with the press as if she'd got to bed bright and early the night before without a drop of alcohol in her system. "Okay, CJ's definitely signed a pact with some kind of dark, nefarious power."
"CJ's working for the Republicans?"
"Shut up, Josh."
He smirked after her. "I think somebody has a 'sensitive system'."
She paused in the doorway. "Joshua, out of curiosity... exactly how badly do you want to get through to the end of this day still alive?"
She held his gaze until he actually started to look scared, and then swept off.
With plans to hole up in a corner and hold her head, groaning, for maybe an hour or fifteen.
He sensed more than heard her come up behind him. "I'm not smoking," he said, without looking up.
"Good boy." Abbey sat down beside him.
"Do I get a pat on the head and a cookie?" he asked wryly.
"You're not allowed to eat cookies." She kissed the top of his head and pulled back to regard him concernedly. "Did CJ speak to you about the book?"
Jed nodded. "I read it." He looked up at the sky. He always came to sit outside when he needed to think. It was best when the weather was colder; then, it was easier to pretend he was sitting on the step back home in Manchester.
Abbey leaned her head against his shoulder and wrapped her arms around herself, uncharacteristically silent. This was one thing that she had always been uncertain of how to handle, a part of his life that had belonged to him since even before he'd belonged to her. And unlike most of his life, a part that he had no desire to share with the woman who meant everything to him.
"What are you thinking?" she asked him, after a few moments. And it seemed strange to him that there could ever be a time that she needed to ask.
"About the girls," he admitted.
"You miss them?" It was a question only so far as she expected it to draw a response.
"Always." He sighed heavily, and wished that he had a cigarette in his hand so that he could take the puff that would usually punctuate his thoughts. "Sometimes I think I... I wonder if I'm just not there enough. If I've been too far away, even when I'm..."
He trailed off, thinking of gaps that couldn't be bridged. Had he ever been that man to his daughters; unreachable, untouchable? Had they ever looked at him and wondered what he was thinking, wondered if they would ever be able to make him understand them?
Abbey sounded quietly distressed. "You're a wonderful father, Jed."
"Ellie's afraid of me," he confessed.
"Don't be stupid, Jed."
"I frighten her. She's intimidated by me."
Abbey frowned at him. "Who told you that?"
"Millicent Griffith."
She shook her head slowly. "Ellie's not frightened of you, Jed."
"She doesn't come to me with things like Zoey and Liz do."
"They're different people, Jed."
"Millie says it's because she's not my favourite," he continued relentlessly.
"You don't have a favourite."
"Millie-"
"Jed!" she snapped. "Much as I love Millie, she's talking out of her ass on this one. You think she knows you better than I do? She can only tell you what she thinks she sees, Jed, but I know. I know you, and I've seen you with the girls every day, and do you think for one single moment that there could possibly be any scenario where I saw you be something less than the perfect father and didn't kick your ass for it?"
The corners of his mouth crept up in reluctant amusement. "No."
"Well then." Abbey folded her arms with such a look of triumphant self-assurance that he just had to lean forward and kiss the expression off her face.
She smirked at him as he pulled back. "Better now?"
"Well, I don't know. I think it's gonna take more than that," he smiled.
"Not out here in front of God and the Secret Service, it isn't."
He laughed, and then grew sober again, looking down at the ground. Abbey touched his hand. "You're not your father, Jed," she said softly. "You're nothing like him. He-"
"Abbey-"
He could hear the anguish in his own voice. She looked saddened, and laid a gentle hand against his cheek, comfort without words.
"I-" He struggled to articulate the mass of boiling emotions that still raged within him, and couldn't quite do it. "Abbey, he was- he was my father. And... and he was my father." Jed shrugged, unable to get beyond the complicated simplicity of that description.
Abbey smiled gently, and kissed his forehead. "I know, baby, I know."
He laid his head against her shoulder, and they sat together for a while in silence.