SCOTUS: A Powerplay Novel

by Selena Laurence

  Roland shook his head. “Teague, I been inside a lot of years—most of my adult life.”

  Teague’s heart raced at the reminder that the brother he’d only just found again was sentenced to this until the day he died.

  “And we’re going to deal with that, I promise. I haven’t had time to go over your various appeals that have been denied, but I’ll get the best criminal defense attorney in the country working on it immediately. I think with time served and your good behavior, we’ve got a great case for parole, even though that wasn’t an option with your original sentencing. It might take a couple of years but I really think—”

  “Teague,” Roland interrupted. “I killed a child. And even if you can forget that, I can’t ever. He’s with me every day and every night. I’m in here for life because that’s the right thing.”

  “No!” Teague snapped as Dr. Forbes and the nearby guards looked over at them.

  He lowered his voice. “Don’t tell me that bullshit, Roland. I know it was awful, but it was an accident. You would never have killed anyone intentionally, and certainly not a kid. You’ve served fifteen years in here. It’s long enough. Being in here longer won’t make that little boy come back. It’s time for you to get a fresh start. I know cancer is scary as hell, but you can kick it, and while you’re working on that, I’ll be working on your parole.”

  Roland sighed, dissolving into a coughing fit that took a couple of minutes to calm. Dr. Forbes came over and quietly asked if Roland wanted to use the nebulizer, but he shook his head, looking at the doctor firmly, and the doctor nodded as if they’d had some sort of silent conversation.

  After Dr. Forbes returned to his seat, Teague spoke quietly to Roland.

  “We can decide about the appeals later after you’re well, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’d planned to be here in California for a couple more days and we need to get your medical plans squared away.”

  Roland gazed at Teague, and he could feel the love from his brother, and with it a sense of foreboding.

  “It’s too late for a fresh start.”

  “No—”

  “Yes. I’m tired, Teague. I’m a convicted felon who spent seventeen years inside, most of those in solitary. No one’s going to let me on their college campus or give me a job.” He patted Teague’s hand again. “Trust me, I’ve known plenty of guys who got out. And they weren’t as bad off as I am. It doesn’t work. Our system wasn’t made to put guys like me back on the streets.”

  Teague’s heart sank. “So, you’re saying you’d rather stay in here for the next three decades?”

  “No.”

  And that was when Teague knew, and if hearts breaking could make sound, his would have been heard out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean that pushed against the shores of San Quentin.

  “No.” Teague’s voice was thin, reedy, even to his own ears.

  “We don’t need to worry about fancy cancer treatments.”

  “No!”

  “Little brother, I’ve had everything I could possibly want today. To see you and talk to our mama again—it’s all I needed. I can go in peace now.”

  “Jesus, Roland, please.” But even as he made the plea, Teague knew that it was too late, and also that he owed Roland this, no matter how much it hurt. He’d stolen so much from his brave brother, he wouldn’t steal the only bit of free will Roland was allowed now.

  “It’ll be okay. I promise,” Roland whispered, smiling at Teague through tears.

  Teague couldn’t speak, so he just nodded, clutching his brother’s hand and lowering his head to the bed, where he shed the last tears he would in Roland’s presence, because if this was what his brother wanted, then Teague was determined that he would help him every way he could, and he would make sure that they packed seventeen years of love into whatever time remained.

  Dr. Forbes made his way over, and Roland smiled at him. “He understands, Doc. Can you tell him what you told me now?”

  The doctor smiled back at Roland and squeezed his shoulder fondly. “Without a biopsy, it’s impossible for me to put an exact timeline on Roland’s disease, but given the size of the mass, I’m guessing that he may have a couple of months left.”

  Teague cleared his throat, determined not to break down again.

  “We can continue to treat him for things like the pneumonia if it comes back. The chances that the cancer already has or soon will metastasize are very good. As we see symptoms, we can treat those with palliative measures. Painkillers, things like that. We’ll make him as comfortable as possible, and if there are medications that they don’t typically have here at the prison, I can make sure Roland gets those.”

  “I’ll stay,” Teague said when he was able to look Roland in the eye again. “Until the end—I’ll be here. Every day. We’ll do anything you want. We can talk to Mom every day, watch any movie you want, eat everything you like.”

  “What about the nomination?”

  Teague sighed. “I may have to go back to DC a few times for that, but everything else I can handle from here.

  Roland nodded. “Thanks for explaining it all, Doc.”

  “Of course.” He smiled. “I’ll be around if you need me.” He looked at Teague. “I’m planning to stay another day to make sure his pneumonia’s under control.”

  Teague thanked him, then Dr. Forbes melted away back to his corner.

  “He’s not who you think he is,” Roland said.

  “Deanna’s father?”

  “Yes. He made a mistake, and he knows it. And he’s been trying to make up for it ever since. He provides free health care to the homeless shelter in his town, and he endowed a scholarship for black students at his old medical school. Ms. Forbes wants to give him a second chance, but she won’t if you’re not okay with it. You can give her her family back.”

  Teague snorted softly. “Like I said, I’m not sure Deanna and I are together anymore.”

  “Yes, you are,” Roland said again, dismissively. “You love each other too much to quit now. You found your way back to each other. Hell, I figure the two of you is why I’ve been sitting here all these years instead of getting shanked in some hallway. I’ve been the glue between you and Ms. Forbes even when you didn’t know it. I’m not leaving this world with you two at odds.”

  Teague chuckled. “Okay, okay. I’ll talk to her. But in the meantime, you need to get over this pneumonia, because I won’t be robbed of the few weeks you’re giving me.”

  “You realize how stupid that sounds, right? Get well before you die?”

  Teague grinned even though his heart ached. “Since when have we ever done things the normal way?”

  “I’ll see you in the morning, little brother.”

  Teague stood and picked up his jacket from the back of the chair, but before he walked out the door, he stopped, looking over his shoulder. “I love you, Roland,” he said, even though when he was growing up, they didn’t say it often. But he was damned if he wasn’t going to say it all day, every day for the next few weeks. He had seventeen years’ worth of love to show, and he wouldn’t send his brother to the next life without making sure he’d given him every drop he had.

  Chapter 20

  Deanna was curled on the sofa in her hotel room, watching a Hallmark movie and trying not to cry, when the knock sounded on her door. She went to the peephole and felt her heart race like a hummingbird’s when she saw Teague on the opposite side of the door.

  She swung it open, waiting for him to make the first move.

  “Hey,” he said, sending a chill through her from her chest to her knees. “Can

  we talk?”

  She nodded and stood aside for him to enter. Once the door had closed behind him, she leaned against it, her arms crossed in front of her. He took a few steps into the room, then turned to face her.

  “I owe you an apology,” he said. “I said some things in anger that I shouldn’t.” He looked up to the ceiling, and that was when she noticed his eyes were red, his face e
xhausted.

  He continued. “I wish that you had called me right away when you found out that Roland was sick, but I understand that you didn’t do it to leave me out. I also understand that it wouldn’t have made a difference on the outcome. He needed a doctor, and you got him a very good one.”

  She nodded, but though he was apologizing, it was obvious he wasn’t suggesting they go back to business as usual.

  He paced over to the window, looking down at the parking lot and the ocean beyond. “Did you know about the cancer?” he asked softly.

  “What?” She blinked, trying to process what he’d said.

  “He has lung cancer, and maybe two months to live.”

  “Oh my God, Teague.” She took a couple of steps toward him, then stopped, her heart racing, not sure if he would welcome her touch or rebuff it. But next she was in his arms and they were clinging to each other, tears mingling with kisses and whispered apologies.

  Eventually, he led them to the sofa, holding her pressed to his side, stroking her hair as she wrapped her arms around his waist. A sadness permeated them both, and she knew that the kisses and closeness hadn’t erased the problems they faced.

  “I’m going to stay,” Teague said. “I need to be with him these last few weeks. I’ve already called my partners. I’ll do the research and writing portions of my cases from here, and they’ve divided up my court appearances between them.”

  Her gut clenched, but she tried not to let him feel how the idea of him being the width of the nation away from her for weeks made her stomach roil.

  “I’m glad you’ll get to be with him. You both deserve that time together.”

  He nodded absently, and she bit her lip to keep from crying again.

  “Dee, I think we need to put this whole thing—us—on hold until this is done. I need to give all my energy to Roland. I’ve failed him for so long, I can’t make a mistake here. I owe him my undivided attention for the brief time he has left.”

  “Okay,” she whispered.

  He put a finger under her chin and tipped her face up toward his. “I do love you.”

  “I know.”

  Then he kissed her softly on the lips, and her heart bloomed with a sharp pain that was so very familiar. It was the pain of twelve years of yearning for this man, no matter who she was with or where she was. Through other boyfriends, through different jobs and cities, through having a family, losing a family, and now possibly getting a piece of her family back. No matter what, her heart hurt when she wasn’t with him. And while she’d come to expect it, understand it, she wasn’t ready to embrace it. She wanted him, not the loss of him, and she was ready to fight with everything she had in order to win.

  He stood slowly, sighing as he did, and moved to the door before turning back and looking at her, his face full of self-doubt and contradictions.

  “You go ahead,” she told him. “Do what you need to for Roland. But when you’re done, I’ll be waiting, because I lived without you for too long to give you up now.”

  Two weeks after he went to California, the Senate rejected Teague as President Hampton’s nominee to the Supreme Court.

  “I’m so sorry, Teague,” the president said.

  “It’s okay, ma’am, we knew it was a long shot.”

  “You didn’t deserve any of this,” she told him, steel in her voice.

  “If you need to feel sorry for someone, Madam President, feel sorry for my brother. No one has suffered more in all of this than him.”

  He sat in his house in DC after the phone call came. He’d come back for nearly a week of committee hearings, and when the confirmation had gone to the full Senate and an all-night filibuster had ensued, he’d known it was a lost cause. And while everything in him said he should be devastated—his mind and his heart couldn’t gather up the energy for it. The dream to be a Supreme Court justice seemed incidental right now. Everything seemed incidental in comparison to his only brother’s life.

  Roland was, in fact, more upset than Teague was about losing the confirmation, but they talked—about some ideas Teague formulated on the plane ride back to California—and Roland was so proud when he heard, that he forgot about the Supreme Court and went back to beating Teague at the Scrabble game they’d been playing for five days straight.

  When his mind gave up, Roland’s body seemed to as well, and he deteriorated quickly. Teague flew their mother out before Roland became completely bedridden, and the warden even allowed the three of them to spend a night in the conjugal visitation trailer. Teague’s mother cooked them dinner, and then they all played Jenga and watched movies on the DVD player. Roland was required to submit to an inspection every four hours, even through the night, so while their mother slept, Teague got up with him and walked outside where the guards patted him down, checking in his mouth and ears. They were kind enough to skip the other body cavity search since Teague was now officially his attorney and therefore vouching for him.

  In the morning, before their mother left to go home, she spent thirty minutes alone with Roland while Teague paced outside the little trailer, frustrated that both his mother and his brother had to go through what they did. He wanted to fix it for them, turn back time, make a happy ending where there wasn’t one. But of course, he couldn’t.

  And then one morning, Teague woke up and made the drive between his hotel and the prison just as he had almost every day for the last six weeks. And today felt the same, but somehow he knew it would be different.

  Roland had been in and out of consciousness for nearly a week now. Brief moments of lucidity before plunging back into morphine-induced sleep.

  When Teague arrived this morning, the guards didn’t even search him, waving him through to the infirmary. The warden and the chaplain were waiting for Teague when he arrived, and it didn’t surprise him at all. His soul knew it was time. His brother was finally leaving not only the prison they could see, but also the prison they couldn’t.

  “Good morning,” the warden said as Teague approached Roland’s bed.

  Teague nodded at both men.

  “Roland was awake earlier and asked for the chaplain,” the warden explained.

  “Okay,” Teague said, sitting down in the chair next to the bed and running a hand over Roland’s arm.

  “If it’s okay with you, I can stay, we can pray together, and if he wakes, he can join us,” the chaplain said.

  Teague wasn’t religious, and Roland wasn’t overtly so, but he’d developed his own relationship with his god during his time inside. Teague knew that this was a comfort to Roland, so he agreed.

  At eight fifty-two in the morning, Roland’s eyes opened, and he gave Teague a sleepy smile.

  “Hi there,” Teague said, holding on to Roland’s hand.

  “I’m so happy you’re here, baby brother. And I want you to know,” Roland said softly, “that these last few weeks were worth everything I’ve been through for seventeen years. Every bit of it.”

  Teague forced a smile to his lips. “For me too. Thank you for letting me share it with you. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Not anything.”

  With surprising strength, Roland pulled Teague down for a tight hug. “You do all those things we talked about, little brother. ’Cause I’ll be watching, and I can’t wait to see how proud you make me.”

  “I love you, Roland,” Teague answered.

  “I love you too.”

  Roland’s eyes drifted shut again, and at nine eighteen, he drew his last breath. He was finally free—from the pain, from the guilt, from the world that had never given him a chance.

  Chapter 21

  It had been three weeks, and Deanna still hadn’t heard from Teague. No phone calls, no texts, no word of any sort. And she was beginning to think that she wouldn’t ever hear from him again.

  She’d managed to fill her days with learning her new job at WNN, as well as writing a freelance story for her old Boston paper on the president’s new nominee, a US Circuit Court of Appeals judge, who, while no
t hiding any secrets of the magnitude of Teague’s, did have two ex-husbands and an estranged daughter that provided the kind of sensationalist fodder newspapers seemed to love.

  When she walked into her office on the fourth Monday since Roland had died, she was surprised to see a bevy of serious men in dark suits roaming the lobby and standing guard at the elevators.

  “Ms. Forbes.” The security guard at the reception desk called her over.

  “Yes, Jack? What’s going on? Who are all these guys?”

  The portly middle-aged rent-a-cop grinned in delight. “They’re Secret Service. You’ll never believe who’s upstairs in your offices right now.”

  She shook her head. “Not a clue.”

  “The First Gentleman,” Jack announced with pride.

  Deanna stifled the flare of hope when she heard that a friend of Teague’s was there in her building. He was undoubtedly there to see Marcus or have an interview of some sort.

  When she got to the elevators, the Secret Service searched her briefcase, then ushered her into the car. When she arrived at her office floor, another agent greeted her, asked her name, and then said that the First Gentleman was waiting for her in the conference room.

  Deanna worked to contain the panic as she set her belongings down in her cubicle and followed the agent to the conference room. When she arrived, both Marcus and Kamal Masri were waiting for her.

  The agent pushed open the half-shut door and announced her to his boss, who stood, a charming smile on his face. “Ms. Forbes, at last we meet,” he said, putting out his hand to shake hers.

  She glanced at Marcus, who just raised an eyebrow at her in question. I have no idea why he’s here either, she tried to communicate back to him.

  “It’s an honor, sir,” she said, shaking his hand. He looked at her warmly, and her anxious heart slowed a touch.

  “I was just telling Marcus how much the president and I enjoyed your articles on Mr. Roberts. He is a close friend of ours, and your coverage was fair and accurate, something that was welcome in light of the difficulties his nomination faced.”