“She’s always been a big baby,” Callie said, though people often misunderstood Leigh’s tears. She cried when she was frightened or hurt, but she also cried when she took a piece of broken glass and hacked chunks of hair out of your scalp.
Walter said, “She thinks that Maddy doesn’t need her anymore.”
“Is that true?”
“You were sixteen once. Didn’t you need your mother?”
Callie thought about it. At sixteen, she had needed everything.
“I’ m worried about my wife,” Walter said, and his tone implied he had been waiting a very long time to share this thought with someone. “I want to help her, but I know she won’t ask me to.”
Callie felt the weight of his confession. Men seldom got to share their feelings and, when they did, despondency wasn’t on the acceptable list.
She tried to cheer him up. “Don’t be worried, Walter. Harleigh’s expendable caretaker is back on the job.”
“No, Callie. You’re wrong about that.” Walter turned to look at her, and she gathered this next part had weighed on him, too. “When Leigh got sick, we had a plan of care already in place. My mother was going to drive up to take care of Maddy. Leigh was going to quarantine in the master bedroom. I was going to leave food outside her door and call an ambulance if she needed it. She lasted one night and then she broke down and started crying that she wanted her sister. So I went out and found her sister.”
Callie had never heard the story before, but she knew that Walter would not lie about something so consequential. He would do anything for Leigh. Even score heroin for her junkie sister.
She asked, “Haven’t you been to enough Al-Anon meetings to know you can’t save somebody who doesn’t want to be saved?”
“I don’t want to save her. I want to love her.” He turned back in his seat, eyes tracking the girls on the field. “Besides, Leigh can save herself.”
Callie debated whether or not this point was worth discussing. She studied Walter’s profile as he watched his amazing daughter sprint after a ball. Callie wanted to tell him consequential things, too. Like that Leigh loved him. That she was only fucked up because Callie had made her do terrible things. That she blamed herself for not somehow knowing that Buddy Waleski was a bad man. That she was crying because she was terrified that Andrew Tenant would bring them both back to that same dark place that his father had.
Should Callie tell Walter the truth? Should she throw open the doors to Leigh’s cage? There was a sense of inevitability to the disaster her sister had made of her life. It was as if, instead of leaving for Chicago, Leigh had stayed in stasis for twenty-three years, then woke up to the life Phil had raised her to live: broken family, broken marriage, broken heart.
The only thing holding her sister together right now was Maddy.
Callie turned away from Walter. She allowed herself the pleasure of watching the teenagers on the field. They were so nimble, so fleet. Their arms and legs moved in tandem as they kicked the ball. Their necks were long and graceful like origami swans who’d never been close to swampy spirals or steep waterfalls.
Walter asked, “Can you spot our beautiful girl?”
Callie had already found Leigh and Walter’s daughter the moment she’d walked into the stadium. Maddy Collier was one of the smallest girls, but she was also the fastest. Her ponytail barely had time to brush her shoulders as she ran after the defensive midfielder. The girl was playing attack, which Callie only knew because she had looked up soccer positions at the library.
This was after she had googled the soccer practice schedule for Hollis Academy’s girls’ team. Callie had not found herself here after a Scooby Doo level of deciphering. The school crest was on the back of Leigh’s phone. Established in 1964, around the time white parents across the south spontaneously decided to enroll their children in private schools.
“Crap,” Walter muttered.
Maddy had accidentally tripped the midfielder. The ball spun loose but, instead of chasing after it, Maddy stopped to help the other girl stand up. Leigh was right. Phil would’ve beaten the shit out of either of them for doing something so sportsmanlike. If you can’t go big, then don’t bother to go home.
Walter cleared his throat, the same way Leigh did when she was about to say something difficult. “Practice will be over soon. I would love for you to meet her.”
Callie pressed together her lips, the same way Leigh did when she was nervous. “Hello, I must be going.”