She looks at him, stunned, then flounders for the right words. “Honey, we weren’t together like that,” she says. “Nick is married.”
It is the first she’s discussed this basic truth with her son, a fact that fills her with even more guilt.
“We were just friends,” she finishes.
“But you’re not friends anymore?” he asks, his voice trembling.
She hesitates but dodges the question. “I will always care about him,” she says. “And he will always care about you.”
Charlie is not fooled, staring into her eyes and asking, “Did you get in a fight?”
Valerie knows she cannot evade his questions anymore, that she has no choice but to crush him. Two days before Christmas.
“Charlie. No. We didn’t get in a fight. . . We just decided that we shouldn’t be friends anymore,” she says, flustered and feeling certain that she chose the wrong words. Again.
He looks at her as if she just told him that there is no such thing as Santa Claus. Or that he’s real, but just won’t be coming around to their house this year.
“Why?” Charlie says.
“Because Nick is married and has two children of his own . . . and he’s not in our family.”
And he never will be, she thinks. Then forces herself to say the words aloud.
“Is he still my doctor?” Charlie asks, his voice strained, panicked.
She shakes her head and says, as cheerfully as she can, that he has a new doctor now—a doctor who taught Nick everything he knows.
Hearing this, Charlie begins to choke up, his eyes growing huge, red, wet.
“So I can’t be friends with him, either?” Charlie asks.
Valerie shakes her head slowly, barely.
“Why not?” he says, now shouting and crying. “Why can’t I?”
“Charlie . . .” she says, knowing that there is no explanation she can give him to make sense of this. Knowing that all of this could have been avoided if she hadn’t been so selfish.
“I’m going to call him now!” Charlie says, pushing up to his knees and then feet. “He told me I could call him anytime!”
Her heart fills with guilt and sorrow as she reaches out for her son.
He angrily resists, swatting at her hand. “He gave me his number!” Charlie sobs, his scar now aglow in a new angle of light. “I have a present for him!”
She tries to hold him again, this time catching him, wrapping her arms around him as tightly as she can.
“Sweetie,” she says, holding him to her. “It’s going to be okay.”
“I want a daddy,” he says, sobbing as he goes limp in her arms.
“I know, sweetie,” she says, her heart breaking even more—something she didn’t think possible.
“Why don’t I have a daddy?” he continues to cry, his sobs gradually losing their edge, turning into soft whimpers. “Where is my daddy?”
“I don’t know, sweetie.”
“He left us,” Charlie says. “Everybody leaves us.”
“No,” she says, breathing into his hair, now crying herself. “He left me. Not you.”
She isn’t sure who she is talking about, but she says it again, more firmly. “Not you, Charlie. Never you.”
“I wish I had a daddy,” he whispers. “I wish you could find my daddy.”
She opens her mouth to tell him what she always tells him—that families are all different and that he has so many people who love him. But she knows that it will not be good enough. Not now, maybe not ever. So she just says his name, again and again, holding on to him under their perfectly lit tree.
39
Tessa