Leigh gathered she was talking about Andrew and Sidney’s respective crimes now. She tried to make Linda say Tammy Karlsen and Ruby Heyer’s names. “Which women are you talking about?”
Linda shook her head as she blew out more smoke. “It doesn’t matter. He was as rotten as his father. And that girl he married—she was just as bad as he was.”
Leigh looked down at the tapes. Linda had brought them for a reason. “Do you want to know why Callie killed Andrew and Sidney?”
“No.” She tossed the cigarette into the grass. She walked to the back of the car. The garbage bag came out. She dropped it onto the ground. “Those are the only copies I know about. If anything else comes out, I’ll say it’s a lie. A deepfake. Whatever they call it. I’ll have your back the same as before, is what I’m saying. And for what it’s worth, I told Cole Bradley what happened wasn’t your fault.”
“Am I supposed to thank you?”
“No,” Linda answered. “I’m thanking you, Harleigh Collier. As far as I’m concerned, you put one animal down for me. Your sister put down the other.”
Linda climbed into her car. She gunned the engine as she drove away.
Leigh watched the sleek black Jaguar prowl its way out of the cemetery. She considered Linda’s anger, the manic chain-smoking, the total lack of compassion, the laughable thought that, all of these years, Linda Waleski had persuaded herself that her husband had been murdered by two incredibly hygienic teenage hitmen.
Callie would’ve had questions.
Leigh couldn’t begin to answer them. She looked up at the sky. Rain had been in the forecast, but white clouds were rolling in. She wanted to think her sister was up there reading Chaucer to a kitten who was using digital currency to hide his money from the IRS, but reality kept her from going that far.
She hoped instead that Dr. Jerry was right. Leigh wanted to continue to have a relationship with her sister. She wanted the Callie who wasn’t on heroin, who had a job at a vet clinic and fostered baby animals and came by for lunch every weekend and made Maddy laugh at funny jokes about turtles being farty assholes.
For now, Leigh had their last moment together in Dr. Jerry’s office. The way that Callie had held her. The way that she had forgiven Leigh for her lie that had turned into a secret that had festered into a betrayal.
If this is the guilt you’ve been carrying around for your entire adult life, then set it the fuck down.
Leigh hadn’t felt the burden lift when Callie had said the words, but with every day that passed, she felt a lightness in her chest, as if slowly, eventually—maybe—the weight would finally, one day, be gone.
There were other more tangible things that Callie had left Leigh to remember her by. Dr. Jerry had found Callie’s backpack inside the breakroom. A Boo Radley assortment was inside—a tanning salon membership card for Juliabelle Gatsby, a DeKalb County Library card for Himari Takahashi, a paperback book on snails, a burner phone, twelve dollars, an extra pair of socks, Leigh’s Chicago driver’s license that Callie had stolen out of her wallet, and a tiny corner of the blanket that had been wrapped around Maddy inside the cat carrier.
The last two items were particularly meaningful. During the past sixteen years, Callie had been to jail, to prison, to various rehabs, and had lived in cheap motels and on the street, but she had managed to hang onto a photo of Leigh, and Maddy’s baby blanket.
Her daughter still had the blanket at home. She still did not know the story of the missing piece. Walter and Leigh went back and forth about whether or not it was time to tell her the truth. Every time they decided they had to be honest, that there wasn’t a choice— that the secret had already turned into a lie and it wouldn’t be too long before it blossomed into a betrayal—Callie talked them out of it.
She had left a note for Leigh inside of her backpack, the words mirroring the note she had left with Maddy sixteen years ago. Callie had obviously written it after their conversation in Dr. Jerry’s office, just as Callie had obviously known that she was never going to see Leigh ever again.
Please accept the gift of your beautiful life, Callie had written. I am so proud of you, my lovely sister. I know that no matter what happens, you and Walter will always and forever keep Maddy happy and safe. I only ask that you don’t ever tell her our secret, for her life which will be so much happier without me. I LOVE YOU. I LOVE YOU!
“Hey.” Walter was stamping out Linda’s smoldering cigarettes. “Who was that lady in the Jag?”