“This is already our third New Year’s, and look how far we’ve come from when you were promising me one year in the Senate, and then we could get back to normal. Ah,” she said on a deep sigh, “weren’t those the good old days?”

His eyes sparkled with amusement. “I can think of only one way to shut you up that never fails.” With his fingers on her chin, he tipped up her face to receive his kiss. Leaning his forehead on hers, he said, “Happy New Year, love, and cheers to us and our amazing family.”

“Cheers to us.”

January came at them like a tsunami of activity, obligations and grueling physical therapy at the hands of a sadist named Nancy, who came to the White House daily. Sam and Nick hosted their first state dinner as president and first lady for the German chancellor, which had been on the schedule long before President Nelson passed away. The pomp and ceremony of the evening reminded Sam of the night she and Nick got engaged in the Rose Garden, during an earlier state dinner for the Canadian prime minister. Fortunately, she’d graduated to a cane by then and didn’t have to be on a walker in the photos.

Stahl refused to meet with any of them, so that’d been a dead end. Farnsworth and Malone did the interview with Darren that put a spotlight on Stahl’s malfeasance as they assured the public they’d be looking into everything he’d ever done. That seemed to take some of the heat off the recent revelations that had come to light after the arrest of Daniella Brown.

Sam’s friend Roni Connolly started as the new communications director in Sam’s White House office, and Sam and Nick attended the first meeting of Nick’s new task force on gun violence at which he pledged his full support to working with leaders on all levels to come up with sensible policies to address the problem. The Senate, back from holiday recess, took up the nomination of Gretchen Henderson to be Nick’s vice president, and the White House dealt with the blowback about yet another unelected official, not to mention one who was even more inexperienced than the president, possibly leading the country as vice president.

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Sam stood by Nick’s side in the Roosevelt Room as he delivered remarks on the enduring legacy of the civil rights leader.