Leigh said, “You were never very clever.”
He blinked, and she saw a hint of the vulnerable little boy who always cried when he thought that Leigh was mad at him.
Then he blinked again, and it was gone.
She asked, “What does Sidney know?”
“She knows that I love her.” Andrew shrugged, as if to acknowledge the lie. “As much as I can love anyone.”
“And Reggie?”
“Reggie is as loyal as my pockets are deep.”
Leigh tensed when Andrew moved, but he was only kneeling down to smooth a mark out of the artificial grass.
He looked up at her, saying, “Callie loved him, Harleigh. Didn’t she tell you? She was in love with him. He was in love with her. They could’ve been happy together. But you took that away from them.”
Leigh couldn’t listen to this bullshit anymore. “What do you want, Andrew?”
He took his time standing back up. He smoothed an invisible crease out of his pants. “I want to be normal. I want to fall in love, to get married, to have kids, to live the kind of life I would’ve had if you hadn’t taken my father away from me.”
She laughed, because the fantasy was ludicrous. “Buddy couldn’t stand to—”
“Don’t ever laugh at me.” The change had happened again, but this time he did nothing to temper the threat. “Do you know what happens to women who laugh at me?”
His tone stopped any more sound from leaving her throat. Leigh looked back at the house. She looked over the fence. She had thought having this conversation in isolation would protect her, but now she could see that she’d given him an opportunity, too.
“I know what you’re planning to do, Harleigh.” He had somehow gotten closer to her. She could smell mint on his breath. “You think you’re going to use your legal maneuvering to make it look like you’re defending me, but all the while you’re going to be doing everything you can to make sure I get sent to prison.”
She looked up at him, too late realizing her mistake. Leigh became transfixed by his gaze. She had never seen anything so malevolent. Her soul threatened to leave her body again. Like any predator, Andrew exploited the weakness. Leigh could do nothing as his hand reached toward her chest. He pressed his palm flat to her heart. She felt it pounding into his palm, a rubber ball bouncing endlessly against a brutally hard surface.
“This is what I want, Harleigh.” He smiled as her lips started to tremble. “I want you to be terrified that any day, any moment, I can send that tape to the police and everything you have—your perfect, fake mommy life with your PTA meetings and school plays and your stupid husband—will disappear the same way my life disappeared when you murdered my father.”
Leigh stepped back. Her throat felt as if his hands were wrapped around it. Sweat rolled down the side of her face. She gritted together her teeth to keep them from chattering.
Andrew studied her like he was taking in a performance. His hand stayed exactly where she had left it, hanging in the air as if it was still pressed to her heart. While she watched, he moved his palm to his face. He closed his eyes. He inhaled, as if he could smell her scent.
She said, “ You can’t mail a tape from prison.”
“You were supposed to be the smart one, Harleigh.” His eyes had opened. His hand went into his pocket. “Don’t you know I’ve got a backup plan?”
Leigh hadn’t really been that stupid. She wanted him to admit he had a fail-safe. “Why did you save the knife?”
“You can thank Callie for that. She kept holding on to it, walking around the house with it in her hand, keeping it with her while we watched cartoons. And then she’d sit at the kitchen table for hours looking at that damn anatomy drawing.” Andrew shook his head. “Poor, sweet Callie. She’s always been the delicate one, hasn’t she? The guilt of what you made her do was too much for her to handle.”
Leigh felt her throat strain to swallow. She wanted to cut her sister’s name out of his disgusting mouth.
“I kept the knife so I had something to remember her by.” His lips tugged up at the side. The smirk was making its first appearance. “And then I saw how she used it on Dad, and it finally made sense.”
Leigh had to get herself back under control, but, more importantly, she had to move him off of Callie. She asked, “Andrew, has it ever occurred to you what that tape will really show?”
He raised his eyebrows. “Enlighten me.”
“Let’s game this out, all right?” She waited for him to nod. “You show the cops the tape. The cops arrest me. I go through booking and all of that. You remember the procedure from the first time you were arrested, right?”