Charlie, Toby and Tess all rode in Charlie's suburban in silence. Tess stared out the window and occasionally sniffled and wiped at her face. Tess looked up and watched the back of her uncle's heads.
"Is Grandpa Jed going to be okay?" she whispered.
"I don't know," Toby said quietly shaking his head.
"Does Grandma Abbey know?"
"No one knows Tink," Charlie said as he drove on to the grounds of the White House and showed the proper ID for all of them.
As Charlie pulled up to the residence and stopped Tess ran out of the car and into her god-father's home. As she bounded up the stairs she ran into the arms of her older sister.
"Joanie," Tess sobbed, "Tell me he's going to be okay! Tell me he'll be fine."
"Tink," Joanie whispered into her hair. "You know we can't, we can't promise that."
"Tess? Tinkerbelle?" Josh calls as he runs toward her.
"Daddy, he can't die," Tess sobs, "he can't."
"I know baby," he responds as he hugs her and strokes her hair.
Donna enters and begins to tear up at the sight before her. Her oldest daughter, Joanie, standing with her husband, Brad, who is holding their sleeping daughter, Torrie, and her husband holding their youngest, their baby, Tess, all of them either crying or with a tear stained face trying not to start again. As Donna takes in this sight, Ainsley and Sam enter from behind her.
"She's here?" Ainsley asks, before she can see the scene in front of Donna.
"Yea," Donna whispers.
Sam enters and kisses both Donna and Ainsley on the cheek as he walks into the room and Tenley and Chris enter behind them.
"Are we ready to go?" Sam asks quietly as he wraps his arm around Ainsley's shoulders.
"Where is everybody else?" Tess asks as she pulls out of the hug that her father has had her in since he entered the room.
"They're meeting us at the Manchester house," Chris answers as he wraps his baby sister in his arms.
"Noah and Chelle?"
"And Chrissie and Joey, and Leo and Margaret, and CJ and Zoƫ and everyone, they'll all be there," Toby says as they walk down the stairs to waiting suburbans that will take them to Andrew's and Air Force One.
"Carley and Huck and Vince are meeting us at the base," Toby reminds Sam as they walk outside and into the cars.
All of them climb in and ride in silence. The eleven of them had split between the three suburbans. Sam, Ainsley, and Toby in one; Josh, Donna, Tess, and Charlie in the second; and Brad, Torrie, Joanie, Tenley and Chris in the third. With the police escort they arrive quickly at Andrew's for their flight to Manchester. Tess waits outside the plane for Huck and his partner Vince and Carley, her best friend, to show up. As the fourth suburban pulls up to next to the plane, Huck, Vince and Carley pile out of the suburban. Huck and Vince kiss Tess on the cheek as they pass her. Carley and Tess hug to greet each other. They wrap their arms around each other shoulders as they walk up the stairs to the airplane.
As they settle in for the flight everyone sits in the same area of the plane, nearly afraid to let each other out of sight. Tess and Carley curl up in two seats across from each other and stare out the window into the night as they take off and quickly pass over the east coast. Donna, Josh, Ainsley, Sam, Charlie and Toby all sit on the other side of the cabin and watch the girls as they drift off to sleep.
"They're scared," Toby says as he watches the girls fall off to sleep.
"We all are," Sam says quietly.
Huck, Vince, Chris, Tenley, Joanie and Brad all sit together between their parents and the "little" girls they all consider their little sisters, whether biologically or just of the heart.
All of them started thinking about the man they were going to see. The man who's funeral they had packed for. They all began to think of the impact, Josiah Bartlett, the former President of the United States had had on their lives.
