“Ready?” Leigh had the backpack over her shoulder. She was a lawyer, so Callie didn’t explain what a gun and a shit ton of drugs could mean because her sister had earned herself a slot in that rarefied world where the rules were negotiable.
“Just a minute.” Callie used her foot to kick Binx’s carrier out from under the bed. The cat stiffened, but didn’t fight when Callie placed him inside. This wasn’t his first eviction, either.
She told her sister, “Ready.”
Leigh let Callie go first out the door. Binx started hissing when he was put into the back seat of the car. Callie buckled the seatbelt around his carrier, then got into the front seat and did the same for herself. She watched her sister carefully. Leigh was always in control, but even the way she turned the key in the ignition was done with a strangely precise flick of her wrist. Everything about her was freaked out, which was worrying, because Leigh never freaked out.
Trafficking.
Junkies were by necessity part-time lawyers. Georgia had mandatory sentencing based on weight. Twenty-eight or more grams of cocaine: ten years. Twenty-eight or more grams of opiates: twenty-five years. Anything over four hundred grams of methamphetamines: twenty-five years.
Callie tried to do the math, to divide her list of customers who had probably flipped by the ounces or total grams she had sold in the last few months, but, no matter how she toggled it around, the numerator kept bringing her back to fucked.
Leigh turned right out of the motel parking lot. Nothing was said as they pulled onto the main road. They passed the two cop cars at the end of the residential street. The cops barely gave the Audi a glance. They likely assumed the two women were looking for a stoned kid or slumming around trying to score for themselves.
They both kept silent as Leigh pulled out onto the outer loop, past Callie’s bus stop. The fancy car smoothly navigated the bumpy asphalt. Callie was used to the jerks and bounces of public transportation. She tried to remember the last time she’d ridden in a car. Probably when Leigh had driven her home from Grady Hospital. Callie was supposed to convalesce at Leigh’s zillion-dollar condo, but Callie had been on the street with a needle in her arm before the sun had come up.
She massaged her tingling fingers. Some of the feeling was coming back, which was good but also like needles scraping into her nerves. She studied her sister’s sharp profile. There was something to be said for having enough money to age well. A gym in her building. A doctor on call. A retirement account. Nice vacations. Weekends off. As far as Callie was concerned, her sister deserved every luxury she could give herself. Leigh hadn’t just fallen into this life. She had clawed her way up the ladder, studying harder, working harder, making sacrifice after sacrifice to give herself and Maddy the best life possible.
If Callie’s tragedy was self-knowledge, Leigh’s was that she would never, ever let herself accept that her good life wasn’t somehow linked to the unmitigated misery of Callie’s.
“Are you hungry?” Leigh asked. “You need to eat.”
There wasn’t even a polite pause for Callie’s response. They were in big sister/little sister mode. Leigh pulled into a McDonald’s. She didn’t consult Callie as she ordered at the drive-thru, though Callie assumed the Filet-O-Fish was for Binx. Nothing was said as the car inched toward the window. Leigh found a mask in the console between the seats. She exchanged cash for bags of food and drinks, then passed it all to Callie. She took off her mask. She kept driving.
Callie didn’t know what to do but get everything ready. She wrapped a Big Mac in a napkin and handed it to her sister. She picked at a double cheeseburger for herself. Binx had to settle for two French fries. He would’ve loved the fish sandwich, but Callie wasn’t sure she could clean cat diarrhea out of the contrast stitching in her sister’s fancy leather seats.
She asked Leigh, “Fries?”
Leigh shook her head. “You have them. You’re too skinny, Cal. You need to back off the dope for a while.”
Callie took a moment to appreciate the fact that Leigh had stopped telling her she needed to quit altogether. It had only taken tens of thousands of dollars of Leigh’s money wasted on rehab and countless angst-filled conversations, but both of their lives had become a hell of a lot easier since Leigh had entered into acceptance.
“Eat,” Leigh ordered.
Callie looked down at the hamburger in her lap. Her stomach turned. There wasn’t a way to tell Leigh that it wasn’t the dope that was making her lose weight. She had never gotten her appetite back after Covid. Most days, she had to force herself to eat. Telling that to Leigh would only end up burdening her sister with more guilt that she did not deserve to carry.