#emily cale

It went without saying that they were invited to the White House celebration that Christmas, but John was still surprised somehow to receive the invitation, stiff and elegant on its heavy paper.  He’d expected to attend, yes, but not as a guest.  

It meant he had to go out and buy a tux, which was a pain in the ass, but the annoyance paled at the ecstasy on Emily’s face when she opened her own invitation.  John was just grateful that Melanie would be taking care of finding Em an outfit to wear.  

Melanie had been invited too, but she was nursing a wicked cold the night of the party, so John was his daughter’s only escort when they arrived.  Emily was so excited she could hardly hold still, and John kept his amusement to himself, though he was glad to see that the artificial hardness she’d sported that summer was gone.  

And despite the fact that he now knew the White House inside and out, and better even than his fellow Special Agents, it seemed unfamiliar in its holiday trappings, aglow with lights and shimmering with colors.  There were singers, decorations, even a huge gingerbread house; Emily took it all in with shining eyes, and to John she looked simultaneously like a child and a woman, both combined in the coltish girl in the spangled dress and her first pair of heels.  

Then the President came in with his family, and John got to introduce Emily to Amber, and the First Lady leaned up to press a kiss to his cheek.  It was surreal, but in a good way.  

There was music and food, and mingling with people John knew as names and faces in the news.  Some of them wanted to hear about his rescue of President Sawyer, and he did his best to summarize the story without getting too flustered, but he was happier just watching his daughter as she spoke with dignitaries and celebrities, poised and smiling and flushed with excitement.  

It came to him then, a calm certainty, that someday he would spend the holiday in the White House again.  Not as an accidental hero, but as a proud father.  

President Emily Cale.