To Fix a Mistake

It didn’t help that he had hardly spoken to her since her confession that she had seen Cliff Whatshisname. He didn’t know why; Sam said that she thought he was pissed at her. He wasn’t. Quite possibly he should be, but he wasn’t. After all, it had been an innocent mistake, even though they had seen each other a second time. And he certainly had no right to be pissed at her for seeing someone on her own time, even if it was a Republican. If he felt anything about that it would be a touch of jealousy—and even that wasn’t logical, given that they could not see each other socially, and he wasn’t even interested in her in that way (something he had to keep telling himself every day). But even that touch of theoretical jealousy did not explain why he was so worried about her.

Her confession about accidentally perjuring herself during the deposition did not help matters any. Of all the things to perjure herself with, why did it have to be something as trivial as a diary? He could not understand why she had said she didn’t keep a diary when she did—it’s not like she would have written anything incriminating to the Administration in it. But Josh knew that it was not as simple as that, it could never be as simple as that. The consequences of this accidental perjury were not just bad for Donna; the mere appearance that she had lied about keeping a diary meant that other, more serious things could be hidden as well.

And to complicate things even more, there was the potential for this little piece of perjury to become official. Normally the question of keeping a diary or not would not be something that the House Government Oversight and Reform Committee could really follow up on. But in this case, Cliff had quite possibly seen Donna’s diary and could easily call her up on her testimony. And since he was on that committee he had a legal obligation to (which was exactly the reason that Donna should not have seen him in the first place). Donna’s little slip-up had the potential for causing the White House a whole heap of problems.

Which was why Josh resolved to fix the situation without involving anyone else. And if he was being honest with himself, his motives were not solely about protecting the White House from the fallout of the mistake. If he was being brutally honest, his concern was mainly with protecting Donna from the consequences of her perjury, and he knew they were steep. He cared about her too much to let her go through that. He knew that Donna thought he was really pissed at her now, and truthfully, he was angry when he first heard what she had done. But the anger faded and all that remained important was to fix things for Donna. It took him a while, but he finally came upon a solution. It wasn’t the best solution, and it possibly left Donna wide open for reprisals, but it was all he could do. And at least this way he had something on Cliff should that gentleman do anything to take advantage of the situation.