Madam President ✓

69. Voting

Tanya

The takeout pasta feels like cardboard in my mouth. I slide it across the table, not wanting to even look at it- and focus on Melissa.

"Anything?" I ask.

"Nope." She shrugs. "Not since the last time you asked- exactly forty seven seconds ago."

Darrel glances at his phone. The time reads 4:37 pm.

  "Christ-" he says. "It's been almost three hours. What could they possibly be talking about that requires that much debate?"

"New procedural rules." Carlos shrugs. "A lot's changed since...."

He regrets speaking the second the words leave his mouth, because even though it's far from what he meant, Darrel'll hear: "A lot's changed since your family died."

I forcibly swallow the last bite I managed to shovel in my mouth, and I slowly glance between the two.

Instead of having a full blown panic attack from the flashbacks- he shrugs.

"A lot has changed since they died." He says. "But I'm working through it so I'd really appreciate it if ya'll would stop acting like I'm broken."

I get a mental image of a protest his daughter organized against evictions. A nice concept- but something that'd never work in reality, not anytime in the next fifty years. Her speech and voice was so powerful it was clear they raised her to be strong and speak for herself- regardless of the problems it caused him throughout his political career.

I think about how different everything would have been if I made my sexual partners take paternity tests- tracked him down by getting the guest list for that damn party and started asking around about the guy in his early thirties in the skeleton costume.

Would his daughter even exist today- or would that daughter have been Katie? Would the bombing still have happened- or would the thought never have crossed her mind because she already had one parent in politics?

Would I have ran for office if my spouse or boyfriend was the president of the United States?

Would a younger, early thirties him, having barely broken into the political scene as the mayor of Dallas,Texas- have divorced his brand new wife for the nineteen year old mother of his child? Would he have even wanted anything to do with me or his.... offspring then? It would've been another two years before his daughter was conceived.

I decide that, yeah- he would have at least been involved. His wife would have( rightfully so) divorced him when she found out- and they both would've accepted that it wasn't meant to be instead of being stuck with each other for fourteen years- as morbid as that sounds.

"Darrel-"

"Madam President?" A congressional aide peeks her head in. "Congresswoman Mathews."

I stand up- and the others follows seconds later. Finally- we're all thinking.

  She steps in and the first thing I notice is a tiny piece of tissue shoved up her right nostril.

  "You okay?" I raise an eyebrow.

  "Nose bleed- high blood pressure. I will be." She sighs. "Madam President- you should know that my colleagues have been debating whether or not to continue with this hearing or... advance it to an impeachment one."

  "And?"

  "We've decided to vote. It's.... It's close. I think I may be the deciding vote." She looks past all of us, staring off in the distance. She purses her lips together- and then I get it.