False Witness

by Karin Slaughter

  “I would kill for you,” Leigh said, with a full understanding of exactly what that would entail. “You mean everything to me.”

  “But you wouldn’t really—”

  “No.” She cupped his face in her hands. “I would do anything for you, Walter. I mean it. If you want to go to Atlanta, then I’ll find a way to live in Atlanta.”

  “I’ve gone off the idea, actually.” He smiled. “Atlanta can get pretty hot.”

  “You can’t—”

  “What about California?” he asked. “Or Oregon? I hear Portland is crazy.”

  She kissed him to shut him up. His mouth felt so good. She had never met a man who knew how to take his time getting a kiss right. Her hands moved down, unbuttoning his shirt. His skin was sweaty. She tasted salt on his chest.

  Then some fucking idiot started banging their fist on the door.

  Leigh startled, hand to her heart. “What time is it?”

  “It’s only eight thirty, Grandmother.” Walter slid out from under her. He buttoned his clothes as he walked to the door. Leigh watched him press his eye to the peephole. He glanced back at her.

  “Who is it?”

  Walter swung open the door.

  Callie stood in the hallway. She was dressed in the usual pastel and cartoon offerings from the kids’ rack at Goodwill because even the petite adult sizes didn’t fit her. Her Piglet’s Big Movie T-shirt was long-sleeved, even in the heat. Her baggy jeans had tears at both knees. She was carrying a stuffed pillowcase under her arm. Her body listed to the side, balancing out the cardboard cat carrier she gripped by the handles.

  Leigh heard a mewing sound through the airholes in the sides.

  Callie said, “Good evening, friends.”

  “Long time,” Walter said, with absolutely no indication that the last time he’d seen Callie, she was vomiting down the back of his shirt as he carried her into rehab.

  “Callie.” Leigh stood up from the couch. She felt stunned, because Callie never left the ten square miles around Phil’s house. “What are you doing in Chicago?”

  “Everybody deserves a vacation.” Callie’s body bobbed back and forth as she walked in with the heavy carrier. She gently placed it on the floor by the couch. She dropped her pillowcase beside it. She looked around. “Nice digs.”

  Leigh still needed an answer. “How did you find my address?”

  “You sent me a Christmas card at Phil’s house.”

  Leigh muttered a curse under her breath. Walter was the card-sender. He must’ve gone through her address book. “Have you been living with Phil?”

  “What is life, Harleigh, if not a series of rhetorical questions?”

  “Callie,” Leigh said. “Tell me why you’re here.”

  “I thought I’d see what the big deal is about the ol’ Windy City. I have to say, I do not recommend the bus stops. Junkies are everywhere.”

  “Callie, please—”

  “I got sober,” Callie said.

  Leigh was speechless. She had longed to hear those words come from her sister’s mouth. She let herself look at Callie’s face. Her cheeks were full. She had always been small, but Leigh could no longer see the bones under her skin. She actually looked healthy.

  Callie said, “Almost eight months. How about that?”

  Leigh hated herself for feeling hopeful. “How long will it last?”

  “Let history be your guide.” Callie turned her back on the prospect of disappointment. She walked around their tiny apartment, a bull in a china shop. “This is a nice spread. How much do you guys pay for rent? I bet it’s a million bucks a month. Is it a million bucks?”

  Walter took the question. “We pay half of that.”

  “God damn, Walter. That is a fucking bargain.” She leaned down to the cat carrier. “Do you hear that, kitty? This fella knows how to strike a deal.”

  Walter caught Leigh’s eye. He smiled, because he didn’t understand that Callie’s humor always came at a price.

  “This looks fancy.” Callie was leaning over his laptop like a bird pecking down. “What’s this you’ve got going here, Walter? The fundamental disposition of blah-dee-blah-dee-blah. That sounds very smarty-pants.”

  “It’s my final paper,” Walter said. “Half my grade.”

  “So much pressure.” Callie stood back up. “All it proves is that you can make any words come out of your mouth.”

  He laughed again. “That’s very true.”

  Leigh tried, “Cal—”

  “Walter, I gotta say, I love the whole idea of this.” She had moved on to the bookcases Walter had built from cement blocks and slabs of wood. “Very masculine, but it works with the overall style of the room.”

  Walter bobbed his eyebrows at Leigh, as if Callie didn’t know that Leigh despised the bookcase.

  “Look at this amazing gewgaw.” Callie shook the snow globe they’d bought at a roadside stand on the drive to Petoskey. She couldn’t tilt her head down, so she brought it to her eyes to watch the tumult inside. “Is that real snow, Walter?”

  He smiled. “I believe it is.”

  “God damn, you guys—I don’t even understand the fancy-ass world you live in. Next you’ll tell me you keep all your perishables in a refrigerated box.”

  Leigh watched her sister tromp around the room, picking up books and souvenirs Walter and Leigh had collected on the scant few vacations they could afford because fifteen thousand dollars was a lot to blow on someone who was going to spend one day in rehab.

  “Hello?” Callie called into the mouth of an empty flower vase.

  Leigh felt her jaw clench. She hated herself for feeling like the perfect little space that only she and Walter had ever shared was being ruined by her obnoxious, junkie sister.

  The wasted fifteen grand wasn’t the only money Callie had effectively set on fire. Over the last six years, Leigh had flown back to Atlanta half a dozen times to help her sister. Renting motel rooms for Callie to detox in. Physically sitting on her to keep her from running out the door. Rushing her to the emergency room because a needle had broken off in her arm and the infection had nearly killed her. Multiple doctor’s appointments. An HIV scare. A Hep C scare. Mind-numbing mountains of paperwork for bail to be processed, commissary accounts to be funded, calling cards to be activated. Waiting—constantly waiting—for a knock on the door, a cop with his hat in his hands, a trip to the morgue, the sight of her sister’s pale, wasted body on a slab because she loved heroin more than she loved herself.

  “Sooooo,” Callie drew out the word. “I know this is going to come as a shock to both of you, but I’m between places right now, and—”

  “Right now?” Leigh exploded. “God dammit, Callie. The last time I saw you, I was bailing you out of jail for crashing a car. Did you skip bail? Did you show up at your hearing? There could be a warrant out for—”

  “Whoa there, sister,” Callie said. “Let’s not crank up the crazy.”

  Leigh could’ve slapped her. “Don’t you ever talk to me the way you talk to Phil.”

  Callie held up her hands, taking a step back, then another.

  Leigh crossed her arms so she didn’t strangle her. “How long have you been in Chicago?”

  “I got here yesterweek,” Callie said. “Or was it lasterday?”

  “Callie.”

  “Walter,” Callie turned away from Leigh. “I hope I’m not being rude when I say this, but you seem like an excellent provider.”

  Walter’s eyebrows went up. Technically, Leigh made more than him.

  Callie said, “You have provided my sister with an awesome home. And I see by that ring on her finger that you’ve decided to make her an honest woman. Or as honest as she can be. Nonetheless, and what I’m saying is, I’m very happy for you both, and congratulations.”

  “Callie.” If Leigh had a dollar for every time she’d said her sister’s name in the last ten minutes, she could pay herself back for rehab. “We need to talk.”

  Callie pivoted back around. �
�What do you want to talk about?”

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” Leigh said. “Would you stop acting like a goddam ostrich and get your head out of your ass?”

  Callie gasped. “Are you comparing me to a murder dinosaur?”

  Walter laughed.

  “Walter.” Leigh knew she sounded like a harpy. “Don’t laugh at her. It’s not funny.”

  “It’s not funny, Walter.” Callie turned her body back toward Walter.

  Leigh still found the robotic movements jarring. When she thought of her sister, she thought of the athlete, not the girl whose neck had been broken and fused back together. And certainly not the junkie who was standing in front of the man Leigh desperately wanted to create a new, boring, normal life with.

  “Come on.” Walter smiled at Leigh. “It’s a little funny.”

  “It’s libelslander, Walter, and, as a legal brainiac, you should recognize that.” Callie put her hands on her hips as she launched into a half-ass Dr. Jerry impersonation. “An ostrich will kill a lion with his foot for absolutely no reason. Except the lion is also a known murderer. I forget my point, but only one of us has to understand what I am saying.”

  Leigh covered her face with her hands. Callie had said I got sober, not that she was currently sober, because she was clearly stoned out of her mind. Leigh couldn’t deal with this again. It was the hope that killed her. She had lain awake for too many nights strategizing, planning, laying out a path that took her baby sister away from a terrifying death spiral.

  And every single fucking time, Callie jumped back in.

  She told her sister, “I can’t—”

  “Hold on,” Walter said. “Callie, do you mind if Leigh and I talk in the back?”

  Callie waved her arms, theatrically. “Be my guest.”

  Leigh had no choice but to trudge back to the bedroom. She hugged her arms to her waist as Walter gently shut the door.

  She said, “I can’t do this again. She’s high as a kite.”

  “She’ll come down,” Walter said. “It’s just a few nights.”

  “No.” Leigh felt her head start to shake. Callie had been back for fifteen minutes and Leigh was already exhausted. “It’s not a few nights, it’s my life, Walter. You have no idea how hard I worked to get away from this. The sacrifices I made. The awful things that I—”

  “Leigh,” he said, sounding so reasonable she wanted to run from the room. “She’s your sister.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “My dad—”

  “I know,” she said, but she wasn’t talking about Callie’s addiction. She was talking about the guilt, about the grief, about the How old are you dolly you can’t be more than thirteen right but damn you look like you’re already a full-grown woman.

  Leigh was the one who had pushed Callie into Buddy Waleski’s clutches. Leigh was the one who had murdered him. Leigh was the one who had forced Callie to lie so much that the only relief she got was from a drug that was going to eventually kill her.

  “Baby?” Walter said. “What’s wrong?”

  She shook her head, hating the tears in her eyes. She was so frustrated, so sick of hoping that one day, as if by magic, the guilt would disappear. All she wanted in the world was to run away from the first eighteen years of her life and spend the next part building her world around Walter.

  He rubbed her arms. “I’ll take her to a motel.”

  “She’ll have a party,” Leigh said. “She’ll invite half the neighborhood and—”

  “I can give her money.”

  “She’ll OD,” Leigh said. “She’s probably stealing the cash out of my purse right now. God, Walter, I can’t keep doing this. My heart is broken. I don’t know how many more times I can—”

  He pulled her into a tight embrace. She finally broke down sobbing, because he would never understand. His father had been a drunk, but Walter had never put a bottle in his hand. The guilt he carried was a child’s guilt. In many ways, Leigh carried the guilt of two scarred, broken children inside of her heart every single day.

  Leigh could never be a mother. She could never hold Walter’s baby in her arms and trust herself to not damage their child as badly as she had damaged her sister.

  “Honey,” Walter said. “What do you want to do?”

  “I want to—”

  Tell her to leave. Tell her to lose my number. Tell her I never want to see her again. Tell her I can’t live without her. Tell her that Buddy tried it with me, too. Tell her it’s my fault for not protecting her. Tell her I want to hold on to her as tight as I can until she understands that I will never be healed until she is.

  The words came so easily when Leigh knew they were always going to stay in her head.

  She told Walter, “I can’t get to know that cat.”

  He looked down at her, confused.

  “Callie is really amazing at picking out cats, and she’ll make me love it, and then she’ll leave it here and I’ll end up taking care of it for the next twenty years.” Walter had every right to look at her like she had lost her mind. “We’ll never be able to go on vacation because I won’t have the heart to leave it alone.”

  “Right,” Walter said. “I hadn’t realized it was this serious.”

  Leigh laughed, because that was all she could do. “We’ll give her a week, okay?”

  “Callie, you mean.” Walter held out his hand so they could shake on it. “One week.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Sweetheart,” he told her. “I knew what I was signing up for when I said you could sleep on my couch.”

  Leigh smiled, because he’d finally learned the proper way to use sweetheart. “We really shouldn’t leave her alone. I wasn’t kidding about my wallet.”

  Walter opened the door. Leigh kissed him on the mouth before going back into the living room.

  She should not have been surprised at what she found, but Leigh still felt the jolt of shock.

  Callie was gone.

  Leigh’s eyes bounced around the room the same way Callie had. She saw her purse open, the wallet devoid of cash. The snow globe was gone. The flower vase was gone. Walter’s laptop was gone.

  “Motherfuck!” Walter swung back his foot to kick the coffee table, but stopped at the last minute. His hands balled into fists. “Jesus fucking—”

  Leigh saw Walter’s empty wallet on the table by the door.

  This was her fault. This was all her fault.

  “Shit.” Walter had stepped on something. He reached down, then held up the USB drive, because of course Callie had left him the copy of his paper before stealing his computer.

  Leigh pressed together her lips. “I’m sorry, Walter.”

  “What is—”

  “You can use my—”

  “No, the noise. What is that?”

  Leigh listened in the silence. She heard what had caught his attention. Callie had taken the pillowcase, but she’d left the cat. The poor thing was mewing inside the box.

  “Dammit,” Leigh said, because abandoning the cat was almost as bad as robbing them blind. “You’re going to have to deal with it. I can’t see it.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  Leigh shook her head. He would never understand how much she detested her mother for passing on an abiding love of animals. “If I see it, I’ll want to keep it.”

  “All right, well this is a fantastic hill for you to die on.” Walter walked over to the box. He found the letter Callie had left folded into the flap of the handles. Leigh recognized her sister’s curly handwriting with a heart over the i.

  For Harleigh & Walter because I love you.

  Leigh was going to beat the life out of her sister the next time they were in the same room together.

  Walter unfolded the note and read, “‘Please accept the gift of this beautiful—’”

  The cat mewed again, and Leigh felt a lurch in her heart. Walter was taking too long. She knelt in front of the carrier, making a list in her head. Litter box, s
coop, kitten food, some kind of toy, but not with catnip because kittens didn’t respond to catnip.

  “Sweetheart.” Walter reached down and squeezed her shoulder.

  Leigh opened the handles on the box, silently cursing her sister the entire time. She moved the blanket aside. Her hands slowly rose up to cover her mouth. She looked into two of the most beautiful brown eyes she had ever seen.

  “Madeline,” Walter said. “Callie says to call her Maddy.”

  Leigh reached into the box. She felt the warmth of the miraculous little creature spread up her arms and into her broken heart.

  Callie had given them her baby.

  SPRING 2021

  12

  Leigh smiled as she listened to Maddy report on the usual teenage girl contretemps at school. Andrew didn’t matter. Callie didn’t matter. Leigh’s legal career, the video tapes, the fail-safe, her freedom, her life—none of it mattered.

  All she wanted right now was to sit in the dark and listen to the lovely sound of her daughter’s voice.

  Her only quibble was that they were having this conversation on the phone. Gossip was the kind of thing you listened to while you cooked dinner and your daughter played on her phone, or, if it was something serious, you heard with your daughter’s head on your chest while you stroked back her hair.

  “So, Mom, of course I was like, we can’t do that, because it’s not fair. Right?”

  Leigh chimed in, “Right.”

  “But then she got really mad at me and walked off,” Maddy said. “So, about an hour later, I looked at my phone, and she retweeted this video, like, of a dog running after a tennis ball, so I thought I’d be nice and say something about how the dog was a spaniel, and spaniels are super sweet and loving, but then she all-capped me back, ‘THAT IS CLEARLY A TERRIER AND YOU OBVIOUSLY KNOW NOTHING ABOUT DOGS SO SHUT UP.’”

  “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.