Walter said nothing, but Leigh couldn’t hide from him any longer. She looked him directly in the eye.
“Buddy was still alive when I got there. Callie had nicked his femoral vein with the knife. He didn’t have long, but we could’ve called an ambulance. He might’ve been saved. But I didn’t try to save him. Callie told me what he’d been doing to her. That’s when I remembered what happened in the car. It was like a light switch turning on. One minute I didn’t remember. The next minute, I did.” Leigh tried to take another breath, but her lungs would not fill. “And I knew that it was my fault. I pimped out my own sister to a pedophile. Everything that happened to her, everything that brought me there, was my fault. So I told Callie to go into the other room. I found a roll of cling film in the kitchen drawer. And I wrapped it around Buddy’s head and I suffocated him.”
She watched Walter’s lips part, but he still said nothing.
“I murdered him,” she said, in case that wasn’t vividly clear. “And then I made Callie help me chop up his body. We used a machete from the shed. We buried the pieces in the foundation for a strip mall off Stewart Avenue. They poured the concrete the next day. We cleaned up after ourselves. We let Buddy’s wife and kid believe that he had left town. And I stole around eighty-six grand from him. That’s how I paid for law school.”
Walter’s mouth moved, but he still said nothing.
“I’m sorry,” she said, because there was more to this confession. If she was going to finally tell him the truth, she was going to tell him the whole truth. “Callie has—”
Walter held up his hand, asking her for a moment. He stood up. He paced to the back of the RV. He turned around. One hand rested on the kitchen counter. The other braced against the wall. He shook his head again, completely without words. It was his expression that killed her. He was looking at a stranger.
She pushed herself to continue.
“Callie has no idea that Buddy tried it with me first,” Leigh said. “I never had the balls to tell her. And I guess while I’m at it, I should tell you that I don’t regret killing him. She was a child, and he took everything from her, but it was my fault. It was all my fault.”
Walter started to slowly shake his head like he was desperate for her to take it back.
“Walter, I need you to understand that I really mean what I just said. Not warning Callie—that’s the only part of this that I regret. Buddy deserved to die. He deserved to suffer more than the two minutes that it took for him to suffocate.”
Walter turned his head, wiping his mouth on his shirtsleeve.
“I carry that guilt with me every second of the day, with every breath, with every molecule inside of me,” Leigh said. “Every time Callie has overdosed, every emergency room visit, every stretch of time when I don’t know whether she’s alive or dead or in trouble or in jail, the one thing that my mind always goes back to is why didn’t I make that motherfucker suffer more?”
Walter gripped the countertop. His breathing was erratic. He looked like he wanted to bust apart the cabinets, to pull down the ceiling.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I should’ve told you before, but I told myself that I didn’t want to burden you or I didn’t want you to get upset, but the truth is, I was too ashamed. What I did to Callie is unforgivable.”
He wouldn’t look at her. His head bowed. His shoulders shook. She waited for him to scream, to rail against her, but he only wept.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, her heart breaking at the sound of his grief. If she could’ve held him for just one moment, if there had been a way for her to ease his pain, she would’ve done it. “I know you hate me. I’m so sorry.”
“Leigh.” He looked up at her, tears pouring from his eyes. “Don’t you know that you were a child, too?”
Leigh stared at him in disbelief. He wasn’t disgusted or angry. He was astonished.
“You were only thirteen years old,” Walter said. “He molested you, and nobody did anything. You said you should’ve protected Callie. Who protected you?”
“I should have—”
“You were a child!” He banged his fist against the counter so hard that the glasses shook in the cabinet. “Why can’t you see that, Leigh? You were a child. You should’ve never been in that position in the first place. You shouldn’t have been worried about money or getting a goddam job. You should’ve been at home in bed thinking about which boy you had a crush on in school.”