Leigh said nothing. Callie had never mentioned Maddy’s biological father before and neither Walter nor Leigh had ever had the courage to ask.
“He took away some of my loneliness. He never yelled or raised his hand to me. He never tried to push me into doing shit so we could score.” Callie didn’t have to tell Leigh what women usually got pushed into doing. “He was a lot like Walter, if Walter was a heroin addict with one nipple.”
Leigh laughed out loud. And then tears sprang into her eyes.
“His name was Larry. I never got his last name, or maybe I did and I forgot it.” Callie let out a long, slow breath. “He OD’d in the Dunkin’ Donuts off Ponce de Leon. You can probably find the police report if you want his name. We were shooting up together in the bathroom. I was stoned, but I could hear the cops coming, so I just left him there because I didn’t want to get arrested.”
“He cared about you,” Leigh said, because she knew how impossible it was for anyone to not care about her sister. “He wouldn’t have wanted you to get arrested.”
Callie nodded, but she said, “I think he would’ve wanted me to stick around long enough to give him CPR so he didn’t die.”
Leigh kept her head turned so she could study her sister’s sharp features. Callie had always been pretty. She had none of the guarded, bitchy look that plagued Leigh. All her sister had ever wanted was kindness . That she had found it in such short supply was not Callie’s fault.
“Okay,” Callie finally said. “Tell me.”
Leigh wasn’t going to set this up slowly because there was no way to soften the hard truth. “Buddy tried it with me first.”
Callie stiffened, but she said nothing.
Leigh said, “The first night I started babysitting Andrew, Buddy drove me home. He made me let him drive me home. And then he pulled over in front of the Deguils’ house, and he molested me.”
Callie still did not respond, but Leigh saw her start to rub her arm the way she always did when she was upset.
“It only happened once,” Leigh said. “When he tried it again, I said no, and that was it. He never tried anything else.”
Callie closed her eyes. Tears seeped out at the corners. Leigh wanted nothing more than to hold her, to soothe her, to make everything okay, but she was the cause of her sister’s pain. She had no right to wound her, then offer solace.
Leigh pushed herself to continue. “Afterward, I forgot about it. I don’t know how or why, but it just went out of my mind. And I didn’t warn you. I told you to go work for him. I put you right in his path.”
Callie sucked in her bottom lip. She was crying now, big mournful tears rolling down her face.
Leigh felt her heart breaking into pieces. “I could tell you I’m sorry, but what does that even mean?”
Callie said nothing.
“How does it even make sense that I forgot, that I let you work for them, that I ignored everything when you started to change? Because I did notice that you’d changed, Callie. I saw it happen and I never put it together.” Leigh had to stop for a breath. “I only really remembered the details when I told Walter last night. It all came flooding back. The cigars and cheap whiskey and the song playing on the radio. It was there all along, but I guess I just buried it.”
Callie stuttered out a breath. Her head started to shake in a tight, constricted arc on her frozen spine.
Leigh said, “Cal, please. Tell me what you’re thinking. If you’re mad or you hate me or you never want to—”
“What song was playing?”
Leigh was thrown by the question. She had been expecting recriminations, not trivia.
Callie shifted her body on the couch so that she could look at Leigh. “What song was on the radio?”
“Hall & Oates,” Leigh said. “‘Kiss on My List.’”
“Huh,” Callie said, as if Leigh had made an interesting point.
“I’m sorry,” Leigh said, knowing that the apology was meaningless but unable to stop herself. “I’m so sorry I let this happen to you.”
“Did you?” Callie asked.
Leigh swallowed. She didn’t have an answer.
“I forgot, too.” Callie waited a moment, as if she wanted to give the words room to breathe. “I didn’t forget all of it, but most of it. The bad parts, at least. I forgot those, too.”
Leigh was still without words. All of these years, she’d thought that the heroin was because Callie had remembered everything.