Callie was still tensed, but her reason was starting to return. She was inside the stadium where Maddy went to school. Walter was in the bleachers. Maddy was on the field. Neither Callie nor Andrew could afford for the police to come.
“Help her stand.” Andrew stood. “She’s not going to cause any more trouble.”
“You’re crazy, man.” Still, the guard tested Callie, releasing some of the pressure on her back. She felt the fight leave her body and agony flood back in. Her legs wouldn’t work. The guard had to lift her up and physically put her back on her feet.
Andrew stood close, daring her to come at him again.
Callie wiped the blood from her nose. She could taste blood in her mouth. Andrew’s blood. She didn’t just want more of it. She wanted all of it. “This isn’t over.”
“Officer, make sure she gets on the bus.” Andrew held out his hand to the guard, passing some folded twenties. “A woman like her can’t be trusted around children.”
SUMMER 2005
Chicago
Leigh scrubbed at the lasagna pan even as her own sweat dropped into the water. Fucking northerners. They had no idea how to use air conditioning.
Walter said, “I can do that.”
“I’ve got it.” Leigh tried not to sound like she wanted to beat his brains out with the pan. He had been trying to do something sweet for her. He’d even called his mother to get her lasagna recipe. And then he had baked it so long in the oven that Leigh’s skin was going to rub off her fingers before the burned sauce came out of the non-stick bottom.
Walter said, “You know that pan only cost five bucks.”
She shook her head. “If you saw five bucks on the ground, would you leave it?”
“How dirty is the five bucks?” He was behind her, arms wrapped around her waist.
Leigh leaned back into him. He kissed her neck, and she wondered how in the hell she had turned into the stupid kind of woman who felt her stomach flip when a man touched her.
“Here.” Walter reached under her arms, grabbing the sponge and pan. She watched him awkwardly scrub for almost a full minute before realizing the futility of the task.
Still, Leigh couldn’t give up entirely. “I’ll let it soak a little longer.”
“What’ ll we do to pass the time?” Walter’s teeth nipped at her ear.
Leigh shuddered, holding on to him tightly. Then she let go, because she couldn’t show him how desperate she was to be near him. “Don’t you have a paper to write on organizational behaviors?”
Walter groaned. His arms dropped away as he walked to the fridge and took out a can of ginger ale. “What point is an MBA? The unions up here, their succession plan is ten-deep. My name won’t come up until I’m drawing social security.”
Leigh knew where this was going, but she tried to steer him in a different direction. “You like Legal Aid.”
“I like being able to pay my share of the rent.” He drank from the can as he walked back into the living room. He flopped down onto the couch. He stared at his laptop. “I’ve written twenty-six pages of jargon that even I can’t understand. There is no practical, real-world application for any of this.”
“All that matters is the degree on your resumé.”
“That can’t be all that matters.” He leaned his head back, watched her wipe her hands on a kitchen towel. “I need to feel useful.”
“You’re useful to me.” Leigh shrugged, because there was no use talking around the obvious. “We can move, Walter. Just not to Atlanta.”
“That job with the fire department is—”
“In Atlanta,” she said, the one place she had told him she would never go back to.
“Perfect,” he said. “That’s the word I was going to use—perfect. Georgia is a right-to-work state. No one is going to let their cousin’s uncle’s grandkid skip the line. The job in Atlanta is perfect.”
Leigh sat beside him on the couch. She clasped together her hands so that she didn’t start wringing them together. “I told you that I will follow you anywhere.”
“Except there.” Walter gulped down the rest of the ginger ale. The can went to the coffee table, where it would leave a ring. He tugged at her arm. “Are you crying?”
“No,” she said, though tears had welled into her eyes. “I’m thinking about the lasagna pan.”
“Come here .” He tugged at her arm again. “Sit in my lap.”