By early evening on Monday, CJ was ready to tear her hair out. She had spent three frustrating days telling her colleagues individually and as a group that no, she had not heard from Sam. Thanks to the FBI, they knew he had arrived in Los Angeles as scheduled and rented a car, but after that, nothing. From the President down to Cathy, they all wanted one thing — word from Sam himself. And until they got it, they seemed hell-bent on making her life miserable. In desperation, she had sent Sam an email late on Sunday, but had not yet received a reply.
After calling a full lid, CJ escaped the Press Room and hurried to her office. Josh checked in after every meeting, eagerly asking, "Heard anything from Sam?" As annoyed as she was with the way he had treated Sam, CJ felt worse and worse as she watched his face fall every time she said no.
Toby had asked only twice, the sadness in his eyes deepening when she shook her head. Every time she walked through the Communications bullpen, all three assistants looked up expectantly. Cathy had shown her the bracelet Sam had sent through Charlie, the delicate silver shining against the satin inside the box. He had sent a letter as well, but she refused to open it. CJ understood. The letter made Sam's resignation real, and Cathy was not ready to believe that was possible.
Sitting down at her desk, CJ opened her laptop and typed in her password. With little real hope, she scanned the list of messages. Ten new ones in fifteen minutes, but nothing from Sam. She cursored down the screen, deleting a few as she went. As she read the first one, another one popped up at the bottom. She glanced at the name and grinned.
"That's my boy!" she murmured as she opened it.
Before she read it, Carol knocked lightly on her open door. "Charlie just called. The President wants to see you."
CJ looked up. "Did he say why?"
"Sounds like a status thing."
CJ nodded. "On my way." She clicked the print icon and waited long enough to grab the email before heading down the corridor.
Toby and Josh were both leaning in the doorway of the Outer Oval so she stepped into the Mural Room and scanned the page.
I know, I know! I promised to email on Friday, but I barely said hello to my mother before staggering upstairs and falling asleep. (I won't say I was "tuckered out" because I know it will just end painfully for me.) Mom made an incredible dinner which I ended up eating at 10:30 before going back to bed for another 10 hours. This was, of course, followed by a day of intermittent napping.
My dad and I spent yesterday sailing. I haven't been near a boat since Labor Day, something my muscles are reminding me of this morning. It was fantastic being on the water again. I love the Pacific this time of year. We went out to the Channel Islands, ate the lunch Mom packed, and came back. I was in high school the last time we did that. The weather was perfect — sunny with just enough wind. One of my dad's partners has a Laser that he's said I should use while I'm here. I plan to take it out tomorrow.
With the country between us, I can confess I haven't watched a single briefing since Thursday. I read the front page on Sunday, but still haven't caught the evening news. I'm currently working under the premise that, if anything important happens, someone (read here: you) will tell me. I'll try to call in the next few days.
Regards,
Sam
CJ tucked the sheet of paper into her portfolio and joined Toby and Josh. "What's the hold-up?" she asked.
"He's ready for you now," Charlie announced as a small group from State left. He looked at CJ. "I hope you have news."
She grinned. "I'm the Press Secretary, I always have news."
"He's threatening to call."
"At least he hasn't learned to use email," Josh said as he passed him.
"Don't even joke about that!" Charlie ordered him. "You know who'd be responsible for teaching him, don't you? And the idea of the President with access to the internet..." He shuddered.
As she started into the Oval Office, CJ tapped her portfolio on his chest. "Don't worry, I've got your back."
Charlie smiled, the tension dropping from his shoulders. "Yes! Thank you, Sam."
As CJ sat down beside Josh, the President turned to her. "Well? Have you heard from our boy?"
She pulled out the email. "Yes, sir. It just came in."
"And?" Josh demanded, and she knew he was seconds away from snatching it from her hand.
"He apologized for not writing sooner, but apparently he spent most of Friday and Saturday asleep. Yesterday, he went sailing with his dad." She looked at the email. "Anybody know what a Laser is? 'Cause he's got one to use while he's there."
"It's a one-man sailboat — they race them in the Olympics," Toby offered. He saw the surprise on CJ's face and shrugged. "What? Sam talked about it once or twice, and it stuck."
"Anything else?" Leo asked.
"He'll try to call in a few days." She started to put the email away, but caught Josh's look and handed it to him instead.
The President nodded. "All right. It's time to start planning how we'll go on from here."
Toby's head shot up. "I'm sorry, sir, but Sam's barely gotten home. Didn't we agree to give him some time before we launched another assault?"
The President held up his hand. "I'm well aware of that. I have it on good authority, though, that we need to start working on this now to avoid another —" He looked at Leo. "What did you call it?"
"I believe I used the term 'unmitigated disaster', Mr. President."
"And I'll take it as a stroke of luck that you managed to contain your feelings on the subject."
"Yes, sir."
As Toby tried again to dissuade the President from doing anything, CJ glanced at Josh. He was frowning at the eagle on the presidential seal woven into the carpet.
"Everything okay?" she asked quietly.
He turned to her. "He… Yeah." His voice was quiet. "It sounds like Sam."
"A Sam we haven't seen for a while."
He sighed. "Yeah." He met her gaze. "I want Sam back."
"You're not alone."
"I want this —" He waved the email. "— Sam back. I want him fighting and arguing and full of life. I didn't realize how far he'd drifted from that. And if it takes him a couple of weeks on a sailboat to figure everything out, I'm willing to wait."
"I'm not."
They both turned, startled by the sound of the President's voice. CJ recovered first. "Why not, sir?"
"Because every day, every hour, Sam's away from us, we lose a little more of ourselves, a little more of the reason we worked so hard to get here."
"We'll get him back," Leo interrupted, "but we all agreed to give him time to sort things out."
"I never agreed to weeks." The President looked at each of them. "The day Sam resigned, I told you all that I wanted it fixed. The time has come to add the word 'now'."
"Let the word go out from this time and this place," Abbey quoted as she came in. "I take it you've heard from Sam."
"Yes, ma'am," Josh said, passing her the email.
Sitting on the arm of the President's chair, she read it and then handed it back. "He's eating, sleeping and exercising. Exactly what I would have prescribed. Now we give him some time. I'm sure there are other things we can do in the interim."
"Josh, did you have any luck tracking down that friend Sam spoke to about environmental law?" Leo asked.
Josh passed the email to Toby. "I couldn't find anything in his phone logs, so I made a couple of calls. There's only one firm in DC that handles environmental law and has a Duke grad who was in Sam's class. The guy made partner last year."
"Where do we go from here with that?" CJ asked. "You can't exactly threaten him for talking to Sam."
"Not that I haven't considered it," Josh admitted, smiling for the first time since they had come in. "I'm going to do some more research on the firm. Find out what kinds of litigation they've done in the past, who they worked for, that kind of thing. See what they've got that would interest Sam."
CJ nodded. "If you need help..." she offered.
"Thanks."
"Leo, I want to sit down with you and Toby," the President announced. "We'll review what Sam's done for the last couple of months."
"I've started that already, sir," Toby said quietly. "Cathy and Ginger are pulling together the schedules and assignments for the last six months."
"I've been evaluating some of the things we have in-house that nobody has been able to touch," Leo admitted. "There may be some areas that would appeal to Sam."
"You might want to have Cathy go through his files," CJ said to Toby. "When we had dinner, he mentioned doing a lot of homework on things nobody cared about. She might be able to tell what he was reading."
"I'll talk to her," Toby said, handing back the email. CJ gave it to Josh, who looked surprised before folding and sliding it into his jacket pocket.
"All right then, we'll see what we can put together that might tempt Sam," the President decided. "Josh, you'll let us know what you and CJ find out?"
"Yes, Mr. President."
"Jed, we really need to hurry if we're going to make it to dinner on time," Abbey said. "You may be the President, but you know that if Doug and Marian don't eat at 8:15 on the dot, their world's going to end."
"Which might not be such a bad thing," the President grumbled as he stood up, "but their chef makes this incredible lamb dish. Cook it ten minutes too long, though, and it's as tough as shoe leather. For that and that alone, I'll be on time."
"Good night, Mr. President," Leo said as the First Couple left the Oval. He turned to the rest of them. "All right, everybody knows what they're supposed to be working on?" When they all agreed, he nodded. "Okay, get out of here. We still have a country to run."