“Right,” Walter said. “I hadn’t realized it was this serious.”
Leigh laughed, because that was all she could do. “We’ll give her a week, okay?”
“Callie, you mean.” Walter held out his hand so they could shake on it. “One week.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Sweetheart,” he told her. “I knew what I was signing up for when I said you could sleep on my couch.”
Leigh smiled, because he’d finally learned the proper way to use sweetheart. “We really shouldn’t leave her alone. I wasn’t kidding about my wallet.”
Walter opened the door. Leigh kissed him on the mouth before going back into the living room.
She should not have been surprised at what she found, but Leigh still felt the jolt of shock.
Callie was gone.
Leigh’s eyes bounced around the room the same way Callie had. She saw her purse open, the wallet devoid of cash. The snow globe was gone. The flower vase was gone. Walter’s laptop was gone.
“Motherfuck!” Walter swung back his foot to kick the coffee table, but stopped at the last minute. His hands balled into fists. “Jesus fucking—”
Leigh saw Walter’s empty wallet on the table by the door.
This was her fault. This was all her fault.
“Shit.” Walter had stepped on something. He reached down, then held up the USB drive, because of course Callie had left him the copy of his paper before stealing his computer.
Leigh pressed together her lips. “I’m sorry, Walter.”
“What is—”
“You can use my—”
“No, the noise. What is that?”
Leigh listened in the silence. She heard what had caught his attention. Callie had taken the pillowcase, but she’d left the cat. The poor thing was mewing inside the box.
“Dammit,” Leigh said, because abandoning the cat was almost as bad as robbing them blind. “You’re going to have to deal with it. I can’t see it.”
“Are you kidding me?”
Leigh shook her head. He would never understand how much she detested her mother for passing on an abiding love of animals. “If I see it, I’ll want to keep it.”
“All right, well this is a fantastic hill for you to die on.” Walter walked over to the box. He found the letter Callie had left folded into the flap of the handles. Leigh recognized her sister’s curly handwriting with a heart over the i.
For Harleigh & Walter because I love you.
Leigh was going to beat the life out of her sister the next time they were in the same room together.
Walter unfolded the note and read, “‘Please accept the gift of this beautiful—’”
The cat mewed again, and Leigh felt a lurch in her heart. Walter was taking too long. She knelt in front of the carrier, making a list in her head. Litter box, scoop, kitten food, some kind of toy, but not with catnip because kittens didn’t respond to catnip.
“Sweetheart.” Walter reached down and squeezed her shoulder.
Leigh opened the handles on the box, silently cursing her sister the entire time. She moved the blanket aside. Her hands slowly rose up to cover her mouth. She looked into two of the most beautiful brown eyes she had ever seen.
“Madeline,” Walter said. “Callie says to call her Maddy.”
Leigh reached into the box. She felt the warmth of the miraculous little creature spread up her arms and into her broken heart.
Callie had given them her baby.
SPRING 2021
12
Leigh smiled as she listened to Maddy report on the usual teenage girl contretemps at school. Andrew didn’t matter. Callie didn’t matter. Leigh’s legal career, the video tapes, the fail-safe, her freedom, her life—none of it mattered.
All she wanted right now was to sit in the dark and listen to the lovely sound of her daughter’s voice.
Her only quibble was that they were having this conversation on the phone. Gossip was the kind of thing you listened to while you cooked dinner and your daughter played on her phone, or, if it was something serious, you heard with your daughter’s head on your chest while you stroked back her hair.
“So, Mom, of course I was like, we can’t do that, because it’s not fair. Right?”
Leigh chimed in, “Right.”
“But then she got really mad at me and walked off,” Maddy said. “So, about an hour later, I looked at my phone, and she retweeted this video, like, of a dog running after a tennis ball, so I thought I’d be nice and say something about how the dog was a spaniel, and spaniels are super sweet and loving, but then she all-capped me back, ‘THAT IS CLEARLY A TERRIER AND YOU OBVIOUSLY KNOW NOTHING ABOUT DOGS SO SHUT UP.’”