Sam pulls the blanket over Cerulean. She curls in a tight ball in her sleep, as she has since she legally became his daughter, but her breathing is so much softer, so relaxed compared to those awful early months. Sam knows she's doing much better than she was, but he waits a few minutes before leaving the room anyway. Cerulean stays peacefully asleep. When he's sure she won't wake up, Sam starts for the door.
"Sam?" Zoey enters quietly, her voice hushed. "Mom asked me to give you these." She holds out two devices out to him. They look like walkie-talkies, one with a speaker and one without. Sam stares at the things, unsure of what they are. Zoey rolls her eyes. "Haven't you ever seen a baby monitor before?"
"No," Sam replies. Zoey pushes past him and puts one of the devices on the nightstand beside Cerulean. She flips a switch and it lights up without a sound. Zoey walks out with the other, Sam behind her. When he shuts the door, she flips the switch on the second device and Sam can hear Cerulean's even breaths.
"It lets you listen to her. In case she has a nightmare," Zoey says. "We keep them around for Liz and her kids."
"Oh. Thank you," Sam says. She hands him the second device, which has a clip on the back like his pager and his phone case. His immediate thought is to clip it onto his belt beside those two.
"Is she doing okay? With all the Christmas stuff?" Zoey asks.
"Yeah. She decorated the tree with Mom a couple days ago. I got in on a little of that. She loved getting presents for people," Sam says.
"Yeah, but with Jason and everything," Zoey says. "Christmas can be hard for stuff like that."
"Mm. She…she does bring him up sometimes," Sam says. "Cerulean insisted on making him this little paper star ornament. The Dosils and Zach are taking it…to him. I really didn't want her going."
"Really?"
"She doesn't talk about him like he's dead," Sam answers. Zoey's eyes widen. "I mean, we've talked about it once or twice and I know she knows he's dead, but Cerulean still refers to Jason in the present tense and she made him a gift for his birthday and for Christmas. I don't know what seeing the actual grave would do."
"Yeah, I don't know either," Zoey says. "Does she ever ask to see him?"
"She hasn't asked me," Sam says. "I don't think she'd ask anyone else-"
"Sam!" Josh's voice rings through the hall like a bomb blast. Zoey and Sam both turn to him.
"Shh! She just went to sleep!" Zoey half-whispers, irritation keeping her voice louder. Josh flinches.
"Sorry!" His hush is still not that quiet. The baby monitor on Sam's belt lets out a soft huff and they all freeze. Nothing else comes from the speaker. Sam glares at Josh.
"If you had woken her up, I would have hit you with this thing."
"What is that thing?" Josh whispers.
"A baby monitor. Don't you watch TV? They're on TV, I know they are," Zoey says.
"I work 18 hours a day. I don't have time for TV," Josh says. "And I'm sorry, but Sam, you gotta come to Toby's office. Now."
"Why, what's going on?" Sam asks.
"Anna Barber," Josh says. Sam's jaw drops. Zoey and Josh watch him for a minute while he does nothing to merit being watched other than be stunned into silence.
"Sam? You okay?" Zoey says.
"I…I will be. Let's go to Toby's office," Sam says. Josh nods and they head down towards the West Wing.
Leo walks into the President's study to find Jed and Abbey in the middle of what sounds like a conspiratorial conversation.
"And I've had the porters gather those up. We'll put them in the parlor by the guest rooms we're putting the Senior Staff in," Abbey says from her seat in the redder armchair. Jed, across from her in the brown chair, nods.
"I've talked to the guys in the garage. They think the roads will be completely clear by five, which is just about the time we want according to Hannah," he says.
"Mr. President?" Leo says. Jed and Abbey turn to him.
"Leo! We were just planning some Christmas magic for the morning," Jed says with a broad smile.
"I thought so, sir. Do you have a minute?" Leo asks.
"Yeah, we're not going anywhere," Jed says. "Sit down." He waves Leo over. Leo comes over to the chair beside the President and sits. "What's going on?"
"Anna Barber got into the building," Leo says.
"Anna Barber as in Cerulean's mother?" Abbey repeats. Leo nods. "Did she-"
"She only got as far as the mail guy's office. She delivered a package while pretending to be a courier and left."
"Package for whom?" Jed asks.
"Sam and Cerulean. Toby managed to intercept it and alert the Secret Service, who examined the package and found it was harmless," Leo says. "They are pretty pissed she got past them, though."
"They're pissed?" Jed exclaims. "I'm furious! What if she had tried to get to Cerulean? Are you telling me that this woman could have made off with Cerulean and the Secret Service would have been none the wiser?"
"I think she would have been stopped if she had tried that, sir," Leo says.
"Yeah, by a staffer, not by the Secret Service. I'm calling Ron Butterfield-"
"He's already briefing his people on this. Anna Barber tries to get in the building again, they'll take her into custody," Leo says. "It turns out getting into the White House under false pretenses is illegal."
"Damn right it is. And when that woman is arrested, I want to find out where the hell she's been all these years! There is no excuse for abandoning your children to a monster like Thomas Barber," Jed declares.
C.J. and Josh sit on Toby's couch, watching Toby explain to Sam what had happened with the package. C.J. thinks Sam is taking this fairly well; he hasn't started yelling yet. He hasn't said much of anything. When Toby finishes, Sam looks down at the box on the desk.
"So why is there a package for me?" he asks. Toby shrugs.
"I don't know. Want to find out?"
"You think I should?" Sam says.
"Well, Toby's made sure it's not a bomb, so you'll probably be okay," Josh says.
"It'll still hurt if we throw it at you, I imagine," Toby replies. "But the letter should be first."
"There's a letter, too?" Sam says.
"Yeah. It's not overly thick, so it's not long," Toby says.
"What about the package?"
"That's heavy. All I know is that it's not dangerous, according to the Secret Service," Toby says.
"Tell you what, Sam, I'll open the box while you open the letter. Bite the bullet," C.J. says.
"Why would we do it that way?" Josh asks.
"Because the anxiety is starting to get to me. Can we please just open them and find out what Anna Barber so desperately wants you to know?" C.J. says. Sam nods.
"You open the box. I'll open the letter." C.J. gets up and walks to the box on Toby's desk. She reaches into the box and takes the envelope off the larger package, which is wrapped in dark blue and twice the size of the smaller, light blue-papered box. She hands the envelope to Sam.
"Ready?" C.J. says. Sam nods. She tears the paper as he pulls on the envelope. He's got the letter out before she has the paper off the box. Sam waits for her to lift the lid of the box before unfolding the letter.
"What's in it?" Josh asks, standing to peer into the box. C.J., after making sure she was seeing what she thought she was seeing, looked up at him.
"Photo albums," she says. "There's two photo albums in here, maybe three."
"Albums?" Toby repeats. C.J. lifts the top of the first one to find photographs of a very tiny baby. Cerulean Emily Barber is written in the middle of the page, the handwriting neat and flowing.
"Yeah. And I'm gonna go out on a limb and say they all feature Cerulean before you adopted her, Sam."
"Mmm." Sam's uninterested reply gets the attention of the other three away from the package. Sam, reading the letter, has apparently forgotten they were there.
"Sam?" Josh says. That fails to get an answer as well. "Sam!"
"Josh, I'm reading the thing-"
"Tell us what it says!"
Dear Mr. Seaborn,
I cannot thank you enough for what you've done for Cerulean. For Zachary and Jason as well, I suppose, but mostly for Cerulean. I know you have been a loving parent, and you have given her an extended family that cherishes her too. She deserves that and I wish I could have given it to her.
I don't know what you know about me. I am probably just the long-lost mother of three abandoned children, a runaway who left her children to a pair of monsters. I could attempt to defend my actions, but it doesn't matter to you why I did it; you have a wonderful daughter because of my actions and that's all you really need to know. What matters is that you love Cerulean and so do I, and we both know she is better off with you and yours.
I have enclosed in the wrapped box a gift. These are photo albums that I and the nanny Thomas hired made of the children. These are mostly Cerulean, which I thought you might appreciate. In Cerulean's gift are some things she's missed from the house. I wrote her a letter as well. I imagine you'll read that to make sure I haven't written anything awful in it. All I wrote was an explanation of my actions and how they in no way reflect upon my love for her. Maybe she's not quite old enough to understand it yet, but one day she'll have questions and that letter should provide some answers. Perhaps Cerulean will be able to forgive me one day.
Merry Christmas and Thank You,
Anna Graham Barber
"This is ridiculous," Josh says. He sits next to Sam, the Senior Staff gathered in a parlor in the Residence. Charlie came to tell them that they were not allowed to work any longer or the President would come down and lecture them on the history of the Christmas tree. They were met by Leo, who had just left the Oval with the same threat. When they arrived at the parlor, Sam read the letter to them. C.J. balls her fist on the arm of the couch she sits on. Beside her, Toby glares at the carpet. Leo's mouth has fallen open in surprise.
"It is ridiculous," Sam says. "She shows up now, after five- after six years of not seeing any of them and acts like a letter is going to solve everything. Jason's dead, for God's sake! It's a little too late!"
"She's not asking to be back in Cerulean's life," C.J. says. "She just wants to give her a letter."
"And a gift, which we still don't know what that is," Toby says.
"I'm not ripping open Cerulean's present if the Secret Service says it was safe," Sam replies. "And that's the not point-"
"You're still giving it to her?" Leo says.
"I'm more afraid of what happens if I don't," Sam says. "If Anna Barber can break into the White House once, I don't see what's gonna stop her from trying again."
"The Secret Service are pretty pissed. She came in, got past them, got a package past them and got back out. They're gonna arrest her if she tries again," Leo says.
"Yeah, but I think we should give her the gift anyway," C.J. says. "It's from her mother."
"Her insane mother who abandoned her when she was a year old," Josh says. "And then broke into two secure buildings to give her gifts without bothering to see her."
"Still, she said Cerulean missed it and I think we should give it to her," C.J. says.
"I'm going to. Anna gave me those photo albums, which I appreciate very much and I am going to pass along her gift to Cerulean," Sam says. "I just don't want to give her the letter. Not now."
"You don't have to," Toby says. "Hang onto it. Put it in a drawer."
"After he reads it, right?" Josh says.
"If he wants to."
"I don't want to," Sam says.
"Sam!" Josh exclaims.
"I don't want to! It's not for me, it's for Cerulean. I don't want to invade her privacy," Sam says.
"You're her father, that gives you every right to invade her privacy," Leo says. "This woman is psychotic."
"No one said she was psychotic. We just all think she's a piece of shit for abandoning her kids," C.J. says. Leo shrugs.
"Okay, maybe so. I still think you should read the letter."
"Read the letter or don't. I'd rather you open the gift," Toby says. "Make sure there aren't decapitated dolls or something."
"Why would she send Cerulean decapitated dolls?" Josh asks.
"I don't know. But she might have."
"I doubt it," Sam says. "Do you really think I should open the box?"
"There's not going to be decapitated dolls or anything like that. There's no evidence to suggest that Anna Barber is doing anything other than giving Cerulean a gift," C.J. says. "You'll see what it is in the morning."
"Right."