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“These used to be my Jacky’s favorite. The only thing he would eat,” Mama Dalton says, voice quiet and wistful. Her hand shakes as she places the chipped, white china plate on the table in front of Mac, and he reaches over, covering her hand with his own and squeezing gently. He looks up into wet eyes, the same whiskey brown that watched over him and kept him safe for so many years.
“So, Jack survived on grill cheese sandwiches as a child?” Mac voice wavers as he glances at the plate sitting in front of him, the smile that curves his lips just as shaky as he pictures the whirlwind that must have been his best friend as a child.
“Oh no, Angus….” Mama Dalton laughs, the sound ends in a shuddered sob, but amusement and mirth and such love shine in her gaze.
“Not only as a child… Always. As a child. As a teenager… When he came home from leave from the army, from Delta. Between all those government missions he tried to keep secret from me. It became our thing,” she confesses quietly. “No matter the time of day, or what else was going on… We would sit together at this very table, and eat our grill cheese sandwiches… Always cut diagonal—”
“The only way a sandwich should be cut,” Mac adds with a rough chuckle, Jack’s soft insistent drawl echoing the words of proper sandwich construction in his head.
“The only way a sandwich should be cut,” Jack’s mother agrees. “We would sit right here, together. Just the two of us, and the world and all it’s problems would just… melt away.”
Mac wraps his hand around hers once again, his voice a choked whisper when he speaks. “And now it can be ours.”
She nods her head as she leans down and wraps her free arm around his neck, giving him a tight hug as she places a kiss on his forehead. “And now it’s our. Jacky would like that.”