“Do you think Graham and Laine would be up for a phone call?”

“I’m sure they’d love to hear from you.”

“Well, I won’t keep you any longer. God bless you and your staff, Nick. Our thoughts and prayers are with you all.”

“Thank you so much for calling, Mr. President.” Nick put down the phone and looked over at Christina.

“Unreal,” she said.

“Surreal,” he added, filling her in on what the president had said.

She began to cry again. “I keep waiting for John to come bounding in here asking why we’re all sitting around.”

“I know. Me, too.”

“I actually had a few people ask me today how this affects their jobs,” she said with disgust.

“Well, you can’t blame them. They have families to support.”

“Couldn’t they have waited a day or two to bring that up?”

“Apparently not. I’ll talk to them about it tomorrow and tell them we’ll do our best to get them placed somewhere in government.”

“What’ll you do?” she asked.

“Shit, I don’t know. I can’t think about that until after we get through the funeral. The two of us, maybe a couple of others, will be needed for a while until the governor appoints someone to take John’s place. Whoever it is will want to bring in their own people, so we’ll help with the transition and then figure out what’s next, I guess.”

Christina looked so sad, so despondent that Nick felt his heart go out to her. “Why don’t you go home, Chris? There’s nothing more we can do here tonight.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll be going soon, too.”

“All right,” she said as she got up. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Try to get some sleep.”

“As if.”

He walked her to the door and sent her off with a hug before he wandered into John’s office. The desk had been swept clean and the computer removed. If it hadn’t been for the photo of John with his niece and nephew on the windowsill, there would’ve been no sign of him or the five years he’d spent working in this room. Nick wasn’t sure what he hoped to find when he sat in John’s chair. Swiveling to look out the window, he could see the Washington Monument lit up in the distance.

Resting his head back, he stared at the monument and finally gave himself permission to do what he’d needed to do all day. He wept.

Sam arrived home exhausted after a sixteen-hour day and smiled when she heard the whir of her father’s chair as he came out to greet her.

“Hi, Dad.”

“Late tonight.”

“I’m on O’Connor.”

The side of his face that wasn’t paralyzed lifted into a smile. “Are you now? Farnsworth’s got you right back on the horse.”