“That’ s ridiculous,” Leigh said. “Terriers and spaniels look nothing alike.”
“I know!” Maddy launched into the rest of the story, which was more complicated than an evidentiary hearing for a RICO case.
Callie would’ve loved this conversation. She would’ve loved it so much.
Leigh leaned her head against the car window. In the privacy of the Audi, she allowed her tears to flow unchecked. She had parked down the street from Walter’s house like a stalker. Leigh had wanted to see her daughter’s light on in her bedroom, maybe catch Maddy’s shadow as she paced by. Walter would’ve gladly let Leigh sit on the porch, but she couldn’t face him yet. She had driven to the suburbs on autopilot, her body yearning for the closeness of her family.
The fact that Celia Collier’s RV was parked in the driveway hadn’t exactly brought her comfort. The tan and brown monstrosity looked like the meth lab from Breaking Bad. Leigh had casually pried it out of Maddy that Walter’s mother had decided to come visit on a whim, but Celia didn’t do anything on a whim. Leigh knew that she had gotten both doses of the vaccine. She had a sinking feeling Maddy’s grandmother was here to babysit while Walter took a weekend away with Marci.
“Mom, are you listening?”
“Of course I am. What did she say next?”
Despite the strident tone in her daughter’s voice, Leigh felt her blood pressure drop. The faint sound of crickets came through the car windows. The moon was a sliver low in the sky. She let her mind wander back to that first night she had spent with her daughter. Walter had put pillows all around the bed. They had curled their bodies around Maddy like a protective heart, so in love that neither of them could speak. Walter had cried. Leigh had cried. Her list of cat litter and kitten food had turned into diapers and formula and onesies and plans for Walter to immediately accept the job in Atlanta.
The paperwork that Callie had left in the bottom of the cat carrier had made it impossible for them to stay in Chicago. As with everything else in her sister’s life, Callie had spent more brainpower doing the wrong thing than she would’ve had to expend doing things right.
Without telling anyone, Callie had moved to Chicago eight months prior to Maddy’s birth. During her pregnancy, she had used Leigh’s name at the women’s health clinic on the South Side. Walter was listed as Maddy’s father on her birth certificate. All of Callie’s prenatal visits and blood pressure checks and her inpatient hospital visits and wellness checks had been covered by the Moms & Babies program of the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services.
Leigh and Walter had been given two choices: They could move to Atlanta with all of the medical records and pretend that Maddy was their baby, or they could tell the truth and send her sister to prison for Medicaid fraud.
And that was assuming the investigators would believe the story. There was a chance that the government would’ve accused Walter and Leigh of being in on the scam. Maddy could’ve ended up in foster care, a risk neither one of them was willing to take.
Please accept the gift of this beautiful girl, Callie had written. I know that no matter what happens, you will both always and forever keep her happy and safe. I only ask that you will call her Maddy. PS: Félicette was the first cat astronaut. You can look it up.
Once they were safe in Atlanta, once the fear had died down, once they were sure that Callie wouldn’t tear back into their lives and try to take Maddy away, they had tried to introduce her sister to their daughter. Callie had always politely refused. She had never asserted ownership. She had never implied in any way that Leigh was not Maddy’s mother, or that Walter was not her father. The child’s existence had become like everything else in Callie’s life—a distant, vague story that she let herself forget.
As for Maddy, she knew that Leigh had a sister, and she knew that the sister suffered from the disease of addiction, but they still had not told her the truth. At first, they had waited for the statute of limitations to run out on the fraud, and then Maddy wasn’t old enough to understand, and then she was going through a difficult time at school, and then being a twelve-year-old with parents who were separating was bad enough without having Mom and Dad sit you down to explain that you weren’t really their biological child.
Unbidden, Leigh found herself recalling Andrew’s words while they stood in his backyard this morning. He had said that Callie loved what Buddy had done to her, that she had moaned his name.
None of that mattered. Callie might have enjoyed the touching, because touching felt good, but children were incapable of making adult choices. They had no comprehension of romantic love. They lacked the maturity to understand the way their bodies reacted to sexual contact. They were physically and emotionally unprepared for intercourse.