“That’s history being made, right in front of our eyes,” he’d say, gesturing at the TV with his glass. Sitting on that couch, with their basset hound Murrow between them, her dad had imbued the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room with a kind of enchantment that still held her in its sway despite the coffee-stained institutional blue carpet and balled-up newspapers on the floor.

He’d died sixteen months ago and she thought she’d done her grieving. But being here now brought back an unexpected flood of missing him that had tears pricking at her eyes.

At that moment, one of her phones vibrated again, saving her from an unforgivable lapse that might have risked ruining the fake eyelashes and mask of professional makeup she’d applied that morning. She had gotten used to torturing her hair into silky straightness and wearing one percent of her body weight in foundation and eye shadow, but the lashes were now a compulsory, and already itchy, new addition applied at the insistence of ATN’s head of talent. “Everyone at the White House has lashes. They are a must. Otherwise viewers won’t see you!”

When Natalie had protested, “But I can’t see so well when I wear them,” the head of talent had given her a pained look and said, “Many people can’t see at all, dear,” as though Natalie had been brazenly taking sight for granted up to that point.

Natalie angled the screen so it was easier to read through the forest of lash and watched it fill with the dress pictures from her sister, providing vivid evidence that their mother was going through an unfortunate hippie phase. The dresses looked like they’d been designed by someone who hated women or eyeballs or both. She tried to come up with a criteria for evaluating them—“Well, at least I can wear a bra with that one” versus “Well, at least that one doesn’t look like Janis Joplin’s burial shroud”—when a smug male voice over her shoulder said, “The one on the left.”

“I beg your pardon?” Natalie twisted toward the guy speaking. Her first impression was one of doughy plumpness. He looked about her age and wore a dark suit and a rumpled blue button-down shirt that she would have bet was chosen by a woman who told him it brought out his eyes. Probably his mother.

“The dress on the left,” he repeated, looking not at her but her phone. “Absolutely. A classic of the ‘I hate my bridesmaids’ genre. You can’t go wrong. When’s your wedding?”