Tapping his pen on the draft of the President's after-dinner remarks he was savaging, Toby looked at the small clock on his desk and sighed. It was after seven, and there was still no word from Josh. He tried not to dwell on what that meant. He had expected a call first thing that morning; a call that, with luck, would begin with Josh jubilantly crowing that he had been right all along. That they should have let him handle Sam from the start. Now, with the hours crawling by, Toby suspected and expected the worst.

"Toby, did you have a chance to look over those remarks?" Jerry asked, careful to remain in the doorway. Most of the Communications staff had taken to doing that since Sam had left.

Toby crossed the room and slapped the pages against his chest. "Yeah, burn these and start over."

"It's ten minutes, Toby! It's not the State of the Union!"

"Well, maybe we should treat it like it is. This isn't the Friars Club, and the President isn't Joey Bishop!"

Jerry flipped through the remarks, his eyes widening when he saw the crossed-out lines and paragraphs. "You said to keep it light."

"There's light, and there's inane. You've come solidly down on the side of inane. I want something better by two o'clock tomorrow." He looked at the nearly empty bullpen. Only Ginger remained at her desk, answering the phone. "Ask Ginger to print out what Sam wrote last year. Don't copy it, just use it as a guide."

"Okay." Jerry tried to look casual. "We — I mean I was, ah, wondering when Sam's gonna be back in the office."

Toby frowned. "When he gets here!"

Ginger looked up. "Toby, I've got Josh on line three."

"Tell him I'll be right with him."

"Sure."

He looked at Jerry who was trying to slip away into the near darkness of the bullpen. "Any questions, I'll be here for another hour or so."

He nodded, and Toby was sure he wouldn't see him again that night. Closing the door, he walked back to his desk. For a minute, he stared at the blinking light on his phone, trying to dredge up some small hope that Josh had good news. With a sigh, he picked up the receiver.

"Josh?"

"Hey, I've been trying to call you, but it's been crazy."

"You saw Sam?"

"Yeah, last night."

"How did it go?"

"We talked —"

"And?"

"We pretty much said what we needed to, you know?"

"No, I don't know!" Toby snapped.

There was a brief silence, and then Josh sighed. "I apologized, okay? I told him I acted like a jackass."

"And?"

"And he agreed. Then we talked."

"How did you leave it?

"I made sure he knows we want him back."

Toby dropped his head into his palm, wondering if Sam had believed Josh. Why would he after the months they had showed him exactly the opposite?

"Toby?"

"Yeah. Did you mention the thing?"

"He said he'd think about it." There was a pause. "That's a good sign, right?"

"I'll take it. How did you leave it?"

"I'm going to give him a call when I get back to Washington. If he agrees, we'll iron out the details then. I'll tell you one thing, though."

"What's that?"

"His mother hates me."

"I don't blame her," Toby returned.

"What? What did I do?"

"Josh, think about it from Kate's perspective. As far as she's concerned, it all comes down to the fact that you're supposed to be Sam's friend —"

"Hey, I'm not the only one. We're all his friends!"

"You're the one she knows. She's bound to hold you responsible."

Josh sighed. "I suppose. It was kind of unnerving, though. I thought my mother was the only one who could make me feel that guilty."

"So, how did it go with O'Dwyer?"

As Josh relayed his meeting with the candidate and Joey Lucas, his campaign manager, Toby tilted back in his chair, gazing out into the bullpen. Ginger had put on her coat, but she showed no sign of leaving. She fussed with something on her desk, but her eyes were trained on his office. For a minute, Toby wondered what she was waiting for. He had told her half an hour before that she could leave. Then it came to him. She knew Josh was in California, and it did not take a rocket scientist to figure out what one of his stops would be.

"… So I'm gonna hit the 4th tomorrow and then catch the red-eye home," Josh finished.

"So you'll be in on Thursday?"

"Yup."

"Okay, see you then."

"Hey, could you trans—"

Hanging up the phone, Toby beckoned Ginger in. She crossed the office at a trot.

"Did you need something?" she asked.

"Come in, and close the door, will you?"

She complied. "That was Josh."

He nodded. "He went to see Sam last night."

"And?" Her voice held both hope and trepidation.

"He thinks Sam's mother hates him."

"That's not really a surprise, is it?"

"Not to me, but apparently it was to Josh."

"And Sam?"

"Josh said they talked. He was pretty happy with the outcome."

"And the, ah—" Ginger lowered her voice. "— thing?"

"Sam's thinking about it." He watched the smile light her face. "You'll tell Bonnie and Cathy?"

"I told them I'd call them both at home." She fastened her coat. "Do you need me for anything?"

"No, I'll see you in the morning."

"G'night, Toby."

Leaning back in his chair, he rested his chin on his fist. Josh had accomplished what they had all hoped he would. Toby himself was slightly amazed. The potential for disaster had loomed large, as it always did when they depended on Josh for tact and diplomacy.

"Good evening, Toby," Abbey Bartlet said from the door. "Am I interrupting?"

Toby stood up. "No, ma'am. Come in."

She dropped onto the couch. "Have you heard from Josh?"

"I just hung up with him," he admitted, moving to one of his guest chairs and turning it to face her. "He saw Sam last night."

"And?"

"He said they talked and resolved some issues."

Abbey kicked off her shoes and put her feet on the coffee table. "I wondered if Sam could stay angry with him. They've been friends a long time."

Toby allowed himself a small smile. "Sam is incredibly stubborn when he gets his back up. I think that was the first thing I learned about him when he joined the campaign — well that, and the fact he doesn't use enough punctuation."

"You know, I've thought about the campaign a lot since he resigned. I miss it in a way. We were so fired up, so ready to take on all comers. Now I wonder if we would've tried as hard if we'd known what all this —" She waved a hand. "— was going to be like."

"We would have," Toby said. "We were fighting for a set of ideas that we all believed in. I've been in politics for most of my life, and I've never seen a group of people more committed to getting a candidate elected."

"But all the disappointments we've had..."

"Sometimes it feels like we can't get anything right, but when we do..." Toby stopped, thinking of the moment Mendoza had been confirmed. "That's when I remember why I went into this to begin with."

The two of them sat, listening to the familiar hush that came over the West Wing when the fever of day finally ended. Toby thought of the other silences they had shared, silences that had never been awkward or uncomfortable. They were both prone to shouting when they were angry — and more than once, it had been at each other. It was, perhaps, in those arguments that they found these times of quiet.

"Was that Michael you were 'encouraging' earlier?" Abbey teased.

"Jerry." Toby braced his hands on the arms of the chair, not bothering to question how she knew. There was little Abbey missed. "I never knew how many things Sam handled so I wouldn't have to deal with them. I'll tell you, the number of questions I've answered in the past two weeks is staggering. In addition to everything else he did, he kept an eye on the other writers and stopped them from turning out some of the most abysmal crap I've ever read."

"Do you miss Sam?"

Toby sighed. "Yes. He drives me crazy, I drive him crazy, but it works for both of us. I'm telling you, though, when Sam starts spouting trivia at two o'clock in the morning, and you're too tired to walk away..." He shook his head.

Abbey raised an eyebrow. "Have you forgotten who I'm married to? The sheer tonnage of worthless information I've acquired since I met Jed is staggering."

Toby laughed for the first time all day. "I can imagine."

"He goes on these..." She reached for the words. "...Flights of fancy, I think you'd call them. I don't understand them, but after thirty-two years of marriage, I've never grown tired of them. They've led us to some interesting places."

"This being one of them?"

She laughed. "No, that was pure Leo McGarry."

"Thank god for Leo," Toby murmured.

"Jed sees a lot of himself in Sam — the same quick mind; the same imagination. That's why his resignation hit Jed so hard. He can't forgive himself for letting Sam down."

"We're all guilty of that, ma'am, not just the President."

Abbey rested her head on the back of the couch. "How do these things happen, Toby?"

"They happen because we let them. It's as simple as that."

"But we learn from our mistakes," the President said from the doorway, "and we try not to repeat them."

Toby rose to his feet, clasping his hands behind his back. "Good evening, sir."

"Leo and I just got off a conference call with Josh. Things went well with Sam, it seems."

"Yes, sir. I spoke to Josh earlier."

The President turned to Abbey who was putting on her shoes. "What would you say to calling Kate Seaborn?"

She looked up at him. "I'd say no."

"Abigail..."

"No, I'm not going to call her and try to justify why the playground bullies beat up her son. She doesn't want to hear it."

"How could you possibly know that?"

"Jed, I'm a mother. If some kid picked on one of our girls, the last thing I'd listen to was his mother explaining why he did it. I'd only want a promise he'd never do it again."

"That's what we want you to do!"

"And I will after Sam's agreed to come back."

When he started to protest, Toby interrupted. "She's right, Mr. President."

Putting his hands in his pockets, the President tapped the leg of the coffee table with his foot. "Yeah, I know."

"The ball's in Sam's court," Abbey said gently.

"And what do we do in the meantime?"

"You start out by walking your wife home," she told him, standing up and taking his hand. She smiled at Toby as the President led her out of the office. "You should go home as well, Toby."

"Yes, ma'am. Good night."