Hello readers. It's been quite a ride, hasn't it? We're nearly there.

Charlie, for those who didn't quite pick up on it (I only mentioned it in passing), is now the Director of Communications for Zimmerman.

And the Hollis Foundation, for those who haven't watched the West Wing, is a charitable foundation set up by a Bill Gatesian entrepreneur, to spend his money on important world-wide work. It has nothing to do with Will. I don't think Lizzie could work for Will. They'd probably end up dissolving the Geneva convention or something.

Finally, katesie, I hear you. Will has been largely absent recently. He has been skipping around in the background, setting things up in a devious master plan, aka, sorting Lydia out and becoming Zimmerman's campaign manager. He's coming back, honestly. If he's not meaty enough for you here, it'll happen in the next few chapters.

There's only so many ways I can say thank you. You guys blow me away. I'm thinking that many of you deserve cabinet positions in the Amazing Adventurers. Seriously.

Will you succeed? Yes you will indeed! (98 and ¾ percent guaranteed)

"UMBRELLAS!"

I surface from the murky layers of heavy sleep to see the back of Will's head as he marches out of my room, leaving the door open. "Wha…?"

Jane appears in the doorway, walks in, closes it behind her, kicks off her heels, and sits on the end of the bed. "It's raining," she says, and hands me a cup of coffee.

"You're an angel. You know that?" My voice sounds scratchy and sleepy, even to me.

She grins. "I've heard tell. You got some sleep last night?"

"A few hours."

She nods. "It will not surprise you to know that Will has not been to bed."

"He was quite chilled yesterday."

"Bizarrely."

It was bizarre. Will had been some kind of crazy for weeks, working so hard as you wouldn't believe, and then suddenly, yesterday, had this air of calm and composure. It doesn't quite have appeared to last. I take a long drink of coffee and try and run a hand through my hair in the hopes that I don't look too much like a crazy person or some kind of adolescent. "You said it was raining?"

She nods. "Widespread. We heard it was expected, yesterday. The Zimmerman umbrellas were all sent out days ago, and the volunteers will have them."

"And Will didn't know this?"

She grins. "I think he's a little stressed."

"You don't say." She smiles again, and it catches my breath. "How did you sleep?"

"All right," she says. "A few hours."

"And how do you manage to look so good on so little sleep?"

She grins again. "A clear conscience?"

"That must be it." I can't resist leaning in and kissing her. She smiles against me, kisses me back, then slides off the bed.

"See you in a bit."

"You're leaving?"

"Someone has to check that Will doesn't OD on coffee." She puts her shoes back on, leans down and kisses me again, then leaves the room, closing the door behind her. It always feels like the air has gone when she leaves. I roll over onto my stomach and reach for my legal pad on the bedside table. With all the possible outcomes of the election already covered in many drafts of the speech, there is one which so far has eluded me. I click out the pen, and begin.

Fr: jfb at zimmerman

To: kitbee; ebethbnet; francesca; sexylyddieohlala; mary; rex; charlottelu at warnerstantonandlane; mirilu

Subject: VOTE!

We have been instructed by Will to use these next five minutes to remind you to vote. Not that you really could have forgotten, but at this stage, we're humoring him.

So. Please vote. Preferably in such a way that I keep my job.

Love you all.

Jane x

"Will? You said you wanted the tracking polls?"

He looks up from his seat on the very top step of the stairs up to the roof. He rubs a hand across his neck, refolds the creased piece of paper he has open in front of him, puts it back in his pocket, and reaches out for the papers that I am holding. "Thank you," he says, hoarsely. He leafs through the pages, frowning over a few things, he brow clearing over others.

"Sam said that it was looking good."

He looks up, and smiles ever so slightly. "It does. We don't want to get ahead of ourselves. Bad weather screws up the whole thing, but you never know." He reaches up and kneads his neck again.

"Are you all right?" I ask.

"I'm fine," he says, rolling his shoulders. "Just a little tired." He pauses, and looks up at me. "How's Lydia getting on?"

I had entirely forgotten that he knew. Lizzie must have filled him in on everything else since it happened. "All right," I say. "I think they're coming up for Thanksgiving."

"That sounds promising."

"Yeah," I say. "I think so. Charlie and I might go down for some of that weekend too."

"Diffuse the tension?"

"Something like that," I say. "Dad and Lizzie and especially Mary still aren't too thrilled about it."

"I can imagine." He smiles again, sighs, then stands up. "The Governor still a picture of calm confidence?"

I find myself smiling. "It's a little unnerving."

He smiles back. "Tell me about it," he says, and we walk back down the stairs together.

The moment that it happens, I'm not at all ready for it. We weren't expecting to win Florida. We had campaigned there, but in all honesty, not very much. We thought we were getting hammered, and states with closer races were bleeding money, so we had all but pulled out. Zimmerman had made a remark in a press conference about how the choices made over who was decided to be an illegible voter needed to be revisited, and that we couldn't call ourselves truly Democratic if we were not allowing those who deserved a voice, to vote. We thought it was nothing. That was until the press started blowing up stories yesterday that the firm hired to purge the voter rolls in Florida this year were in fact, in O'Connell's pocket. Whether it is true or not, we had a massive landslide early, got the twenty-seven electoral college votes, and damn near reached the two-hundred and seventy needed to win. Five minutes later, O'Connell was on the phone to Zimmerman.

We all think that we know what is being said. Zimmerman has wandered off, muttering into the phone, deliberately not letting us know what is going on. Slowly, the room quietens to a dead hush. Then, the click of a cell snapping shut, and he walks back to us.

"So," he says, teasing it out. "That was O'Connell."

"Yeah?"

Zimmerman smiles ever so slightly. "He has conceded."

The room erupts. I have to sit down. It is all too much. Zimmerman gives his wife a bone crushing hug, lifting her feet off the ground. He kisses his daughter, slaps his son-in-law on the shoulder. His sons pile on him. Then he turns to me.

"Will?" he says. "Are you OK?"

"Slight shock, I think."

He rests a hand on my shoulder and smiles. "It's all down to you."

No, I don't think so. His smile betrays that I may have said that out loud. "I mean…I had a lot to work with."

"We make quite a team."

I stand up, and am immediately swept into a bear hug. "Yes sir," I say, still a little shell-shocked.

He grins, slaps my shoulder, then turns back to other people, to Sam and Ainsley, to all of the other excited people, leaping around, popping corks and finding glasses. I turn to find Charles. To thank him. To maybe, at last, tell him that I think him and Jane is a great idea. Except, of course, he already knows that, because I turn to find him on one knee, in front of Jane Bennet, holding a small box.

"Didn't I say? But didn't I? I did, I said it, and it's true…"

Mom has taken to wandering around my room as I pack up again, telling me how Jane and Charlie getting engaged was all her. You wouldn't even think that they had anything to do with it. She is over the moon though, and while she drives me to distraction, I'm pleased for Mom that at least one daughter will get married from home, given away by Dad, have all the family round and all that, and not, I don't know, elope alone to Vegas. If only Lydia was in my head. She would be burned right now. Probably.

"Yes Mom," I say, in an increasingly automatic response. "You did."

She sits down, at long last, and smiles, blissfully. "When will you find this happiness Lizzie?" she asks, realising that now she has ticked off Jane, and got Lydia sorted earlier than scheduled, it is now time to move on to daughter #2. "Is there anyone that you have your eye on?"

I manage to not make eye contact, which is the key. We developed a theory long ago that Mom may possibly be a ninja. Given the right moment, she can just about guess anything. I'm not even joking. Dad said that it was bull, until Mom asked where the bonus money from selling one of the horses went, and after one brief glance, she already knew that he had spent it on the tractor rather than her, or us. Dad got this look of fear in his eyes and scurried off to the study, far away from Mom's eyes. Since then, we avoid giving her the opportunity. Come to think of it, it's probably why Lydia was so elusive this last year. Anyway, I can feel her looking at me, and I shrug, nonchalantly.

"Oh, you know…I'm a bit busy now to be thinking about guys."

Mom is silent. Scarily so. Then she sighs. "Don't leave it forever, sugar. I wasn't kidding about the fish and how there aren't plenty. Every day another one gets caught. I mean, take Charlie, for example. That's one more fish…"

"OK," I say. "I'll think about it."

"And don't settle for some second rate man, all right? I mean, you're no Jane, but you could do better than a lot of what's out there."

Even with the 'no Jane' comment, it's nice to hear. For Mom, I mean. "Thanks," I say, and smile at her.

"I mean, you could have had that Billy Collins, easy. You probably still could…"

"They're getting married in a month."

She shrugs. "Well, what I was going to say was, I think you might even be able to do better than him, if you choose wisely."

"Thanks Mom."

She smiles, and stands up. "Well," she says, brushing down her skirt. "I have a wedding to plan," and with that, she walks out.

"She said what?"

It's hard work not laughing down the phone at Jane's horrified tone. "That she had a wedding to plan. You might want to come home and corral it."

Jane groans down the phone.

"Anyway," I say, "Dad is grumbling over how Charlie didn't ask his permission. You guys might want to come home and smooth the waters, sometime. How's Thanksgiving looking for you?"

"We had talked about maybe coming down, but I know Charlie's family does something big and fancy each year. We might need to go to that."

"Why not try and drop in on us, sometime over that weekend? You know, eat some pie, Dad can gently threaten Charlie, Mom can get out all her wedding photos…"

Jane groans again. "I guess," she says, resigned. "Oh," she adds, "keep the second weekend in December free. We want to have an engagement party. You won't have started work by then, will you?"

"No, not until after Christmas. I can be there."

"Good," she says. "Then I guess we'll try and be there sometime over next weekend."

"Good," I say. "Then you can talk Mom down from the massive meringues that she is cutting out of Bride Today."

Jane puts the phone down on me. Clearly she doesn't find it as funny as I do.

I have never understood the kind of people who like to exercise on Thanksgiving. The kind who immediately after eating a tiny portion of food, leap onto their treadmill. The kind who tot up their calorie intake, mid-pumpkin pie. I, and my sisters, have never been those kinds of people. We believe in eating, then vegetating, normally watching Home for the Holidays. Or Miracle on 34th Street. Very occasionally, Pieces of April, but only if Jane has some hideous threat over all of us, like the year that she knew that the dogs had in fact, not 'accidentally' got to Mom's experimental pumpkin and banana pie. We had. So, whilst we all find exercise deplorable, I do feel sorry for Charlie when he utters the words 'does anyone want a walk?' like, half an hour after we had finished cleaning up dinner. Even Jane laughs. In his face.

"Oh, no, honey," she says, then waltzes off into the front room.

He stands in the kitchen, dish rag still in hand, looking a little lost. George stands too, having also been unceremoniously abandoned by Lydia.

"I could do with stretching my legs. Walking off some of this turkey."

Charlie smiles at him in brotherly solidarity. "Hey, thanks. Anyone else want to come?"

"No."

Kit, Mom and I follow Jane and Lydia's path to the fire and the TV. That is, until Dad stands up and says "sure. I'll come with you boys."

We freeze. "What, Daddy?" I ask. "You're going too?"

"What's taking so long?" asks Jane, reappearing in the doorway. "We've got the DVD set up and everything."

"Dad is taking George and Charlie for a walk."

Jane gets this look of abject fear in her eyes. "Why?" she asks.

Now, to anyone else, this would seem an over-reaction. A needlessly fearful response. However, we who know our father know two very clear facts about him:

1) he does not go for long walks after massive meals. In fact, he was the one who encouraged the vegetating in the first place. I think it was designed to discourage our wanting to play board games or, heaven forbid, team games, when all he wanted to do was snore in front of the fire. That, and:

2) he is, or at least used to be, an absolute menace to any boys we ever brought home. Prom dates were interrogated. School project partners were forced to sit just so far away that we could barely communicate. He would just happen to be cleaning his gun. Or exercising the dog who could feign rabies. He was, and, no doubt, is, a nightmare.

Lydia turns up behind Jane. "Seriously" she says. "I'm going to turn on Miracle On 34th Street and not wait for any of you losers."

"Dad's taking George and Charlie for a walk," says Jane.

"What, now?" Lydia turns wide eyed to Mom. She thought she had got off lightly. Dad was thrown a massive curve ball in his normal terrorising, what with Lydia eloping, and never really cornered George. Now, however, he appears to be double teaming it, a two for one special with Charlie and George, cut down to size, all at once.

"Come on," says Dad, predictably picks up his shot gun from where none of us had noticed it, behind the door, slings it over his shoulder, then ambles out, the dogs at his heels.

Charlie shoots Jane a look of mild apprehension, George to Lydia one of fear that these last few months are going to catch up with him, and then they follow him out.

"Should we go too?" asks Jane, watching as they shrug on jackets and walk off across the fields, both guys trying, and failing, to vault the fence as easily and quickly as Dad. "Oh, Charlie," Jane mutters, and stands still, watching through the glass in the door, arms wrapped round herself.

"He's not going to shoot them, is he?" asks Lydia, joining Jane at the window. For once, she doesn't sound quite so sure of herself.

"I reckon it'll involve Dad showing his shooting prowess, balancing an apple on Charlie's head…"

"MARY!"

Jane whips round from her vigil at the window and fixes Mary with an almighty glare.

"Or," says Mary, looking a little scared, "not."

"Come on," says Mom, and leads the way into the front room. We settle around the fire, the opening frames of the film frozen on the screen.

"They'll be all right," I say, fighting a grin that is pulling at my mouth. Jane and Lydia both nod.

"Yeah, of course."

"I didn't really think otherwise."

"Glad you're not freaking out," says Kit, eyebrows raised. Mary snorts, then pretends that she didn't.

"Girls…" says Mom, warningly. "Let's just watch the film." She settles back with her knitting, and Lydia presses play. The room is filled with the festive chords of the opening music, and we too, settle down.

"Now Dylan McDermott," Mom says as his name comes up on screen. "He'd be a good match for any of you. Maybe you Janey, if your Father leaves Charlie dead in the bear cave."

We gape, open mouthed. Who ever knew? My Mom can pull off a joke.