Charlie has filed for custody. He tells Vera this in confession, in her flat, a week before Christmas, a few moments after she refuses him sex. She has decorated her living area with white tinsel and Charlie strokes it as he talks, every now and then a sparkly strand coming loose in his fingers. He has had the paternity test, he says, wrapping one such strand around his thumb and not quite looking at her. He has been visiting Charles (as he says he is known) for more than a month now. ‘Presumption of Contact’, he explains, as if this is an explanation. And during the weeks and weeks of, well, unreturned phone calls, he has decided that with or without Vera, he wants his son. Charlie’s face glows as he says the word ‘son’. He twiddles the tinsel strand into a ball, and flicks it into the air like a miniature basketball. Vera nods, her heart tightening a little, but says nothing. She watches the tinsel land and unravel on the floor. Now Charlie moves closer to her on the sofa. He puts his hand under her chin and leaves it there for a moment, studying her, tilting her face upwards. She lets him. It is great fortune, he continues animatedly, that he made contact with St Andrew’s when he did. Charles has not yet been adopted but was about to be placed with his first foster family, which would have made the process much harder, many more legal hoops to jump through. His lawyer’s pleased. He lets go of Vera’s chin and waits for her to say something. “That is fortunate,” she agrees quietly. Charlie smiles. The staff are stunned that he has only just learnt of his paternity, he tells her. At first they were sceptical but now they’ve covered him in plaudits for stepping into his fatherly role so willingly, and he likes this, he admits. But points out that he need not have also stopped drinking and smoking and taking coke - all of which he has done. All of which he has done, he repeats. She congratulates him. He could easily have continued in secret but he wants to be a good father, he reiterates. She nods. He never wanted the abortion. She nods again, slowly. He has thought about it ever since.
“So have I,” Vera mutters carefully.
Charlie frowns, and there is a long silence before he addresses her again. He has a girlfriend, he tells her now, but if Vera wants to get back together, be a family, then for the sake of Charles he will end the relationship. His hand has somehow made its way onto Vera’s thigh. Gently, she pushes it away. And this is when Charlie mentions that the staff have also been asking about Charles’ mother: Has he seen her recently? How did he find out about the child? Does he want to prosecute? There are legal consequences, it seems, for abandonment.
Vera does not respond and Charlie allows another lengthy pause before getting up and pulling her to her feet. “Of course I’m not telling them V,” he winks, drawing her in for a too-long hug. “Who you are, I mean. Cheer up.”
She smiles, obediently.
“But think about it, okay?”
“Think about what?”
“About us. About whether you want there to be an ‘us’. A family. Because, well, it’s all of us V, or none of us. It’s the whole hog, or else, when I get custody, I’m taking Charles with me. I’ve got a job in New York. And there’s no point mixing him up by introducing him to an absent mother. Don’t you agree? It would be selfish really. Not a very Christian thing to do.
“I’ll be a good dad,” he softens on his way to the door, when she says nothing.
The following day, a Friday, Luke announces that he is taking Vera to Venice. “We need some time for the two of us,” he explains quietly when he appears at her work at midday, a surprise, both of their bags already packed in the back of his Prius. Vera has been sitting at her corner desk in the office surreptitiously Googling the law surrounding child abandonment and she clicks off the screen quickly when Luke appears. She would however like to go through the computer memory more thoroughly. She would like to make sure that the articles citing jail terms, and sites for legal help lines have been properly deleted. Not that it’s the threat of jail that has been consuming her. Or rather, not most. Most, is the question she has been asking herself over and over since Charlie’s ultimatum and cannot answer; the question of whether knowing her son is alive, is enough.
For so long Vera has believed him dead, and at her hands, that merely the knowledge of his living in the city, somewhere, is far more than she had ever dreamed. Far more than she ever deserved. And should, she supposes, be enough. But is it? She isn’t sure now if she can stop with just knowing. If she owes it to her baby not to stop. If she owes it to Charlie to stop. And what the hell she owes herself.
Luke hovers. Vera glances again at her computer and takes her time tidying her desk. Under her stack of files is her bible. This too she has been searching surreptitiously. As she slips the book into her bag, Luke winks and Vera smiles at him. She would love to ask Luke what to do, what he thinks she should do. He would weigh her questions carefully, mull them, pass them through the filter of his goodness, and then he would solve them, with a few words tidying them away, tucked like a strand of escaped hair behind her ear. But he hasn’t mentioned the baby since she told him about it, it is a bump she feels they are smoothing over, and besides she cannot declare to Luke that her son is alive (alive!), because he never knew otherwise. Vera touches her hand to her face, neatening her hair herself. Office chatter rises and falls around them. Luke waits patiently. Waits for her. To be clean. She picks pencils up one by one and carefully tears Post-it notes off pieces of scrap paper. And glances at her screen. Felicity and the other girls saunter over to her desk and grin at Luke with the same admiring look they once gave her engagement ring. Luke smiles and leans one hand against the wall, ever so slightly amused by the attention, or flattered by it? It is the same way he used to look at Vera. But she cannot remember the last time they had such light, fun moments, the last time they felt so close and easy, the last time she noticed him glancing at her in such a benevolent way. Abruptly, she feels saddened by this realisation, and guilty, and a little afraid. Vera shuts her computer down. A co-conspirator, her boss smiles as she is bundled away.
Once they are seated in the car, Luke turns to her. “I know I’ve been distant lately, and impatient, and bad-tempered,” he says softly. “Of course there’s been a lot to think about, but I’ve been praying over it and asking God for a revelation, and I’ve realised that I’ve been unfair, and unkind, and I’m sorry. I’d really like to make it up to you. Will you let me?”
Vera’s heart thumps. Here is the tenderness, the benevolence. Vera ventures across the dark interior to find Luke’s hand. His nails are bitten painfully short. She runs her fingers over the uneven stubs.
She cannot tell Luke that she is meant to be meeting Charlie for lunch. She cannot tell him that today she is meant to be giving Charlie an answer - Luke or Charles. She cannot tell him how sick she feels for having barely even noticed the distance he is trying so hard to cross.
“Of course,” is what she tells him. “Wow, Venice!”
Luke accepts her enthusiasm gratefully and changes gear. “I love you, you know,” he says gently, a whisper of the old him dashing for a moment across his face. “It’s my something true,” he says.