“You look great both ways,” Valerie says.
“Yeah,” Nick agrees. “Your skin is healing great. . . but the mask is way cool.”
Charlie smiles as Nick transfers their burgers onto three open buns, the sight of which gives Valerie a jolt of joy. “Yeah. You can tell your friends that you’re a stormtrooper.”
Nick nods. “And that you know Darth Vader.”
“Can I?” Charlie says, looking expectantly at Valerie. “Yes,” she replies emphatically, thinking she’d say yes to just about anything tonight, that they have earned the right to do whatever they want. She knows in her heart that it doesn’t work like this. That misfortune doesn’t give you the right to disregard others, ignore the rules, tell lies and half-truths.
Still considering this, she carries two of the three plates to the table, Nick with the third, Charlie trailing behind. The three of them sit together at the small, round kitchen table, covered with deep grooves and scratches and permanent marker from Charlie’s art projects, a contrast to the fine, blue and yellow linen napkins and place mats that Jason brought back to her from his trip to Provence last summer, the one he had taken with his boyfriend before Hank.
“We’re glad you’re here,” Valerie murmurs to Nick, her version of grace. She looks down at the napkin on her lap while Charlie offers a more formal blessing, giving himself the sign of the cross before and after, just as his grandmother taught him.
Nick joins in the ritual, saying, “I feel like I’m at my mother’s house.”
“Is that a good thing?” Valerie asks.
“Yeah,” he says. “Only you look nothing like, my mother . . .”
They grin at one another, launching into lighthearted topics while they eat their burgers, fries, and string beans. They talk about the big snowfall expected midweek. Christmas right around the corner. Charlie’s desire for a puppy, to which Valerie can feel herself succumbing. All the while, she does her very best to ignore the thought of two other children, having supper at home with their mother.
After they finish eating, they clear the table together, rinsing, loading the dishwasher, laughing, until Nick abruptly tells them he has to go. As Valerie watches him kneel down to give Charlie a gift, a gold coin for good luck, she thinks that this is almost better than continuing what they had started three nights before. She loves spending time alone with him, but loves watching him with Charlie more.
“This was mine—when I was little,” Nick says. “I want you to have it.”
Charlie nods reverently, then takes the gift in his hands, his face lighting up, looking as whole and beautiful as she has ever seen him. She almost instructs him to say thank you, her instinctive response whenever Charlie is given a gift, but this time, she says nothing, not wanting to interrupt their moment, sure that Charlie’s smile says it all.
“Reach in your pocket and touch this if you start to worry about anything,” Nick says. Then he slips a piece of paper into her son’s other hand. “And memorize this number. If you need to call me, for any reason, at any time, you call me.”
Charlie nods earnestly, looking down at the paper, whispering the numbers aloud as she walks Nick to the door. “Thank you,” she says when they get there, her hand on the doorknob. She is thanking him for the burgers, the coin, the number in her son’s hand. But most of all, for getting them to this night.
He shakes his head, as if to tell her that this, all of this, is something he wanted to do, something that requires no gratitude on her part. He glances in Charlie’s direction, and upon realizing they are not being watched, he takes her face in his hands and kisses her once, softly, on the lips. It is not the first kiss she has imagined so many times, more sweet than passionate, but a chill still runs along her spine and her knees go weak.
“Good luck tomorrow,” he whispers.
She smiles, feeling luckier than she has in a long time.