He was taller than when I left. His face was thinner. There was a small scar under his chin I had never seen before, and that alone almost drove me through the wall. He looked from my face to the gifts spilled at my feet and then back at me again, like he had already learned that wanting something too quickly could get it taken away.
“Daddy?” he whispered.
I nodded once, because if I tried to speak, my voice would come out like an open wound.
Noah launched himself at me so hard the plate tipped sideways and the rotten rice slid onto the concrete floor. He wrapped both arms around my neck with the force of years, not seconds, and started crying into my shoulder with the quiet, frightened sobbing of a child who had trained himself not to ask for too much. I held him so tightly my arms shook.
Behind me, my mother finally found her voice.
“This isn’t what it looks like.”
I rose with Noah in my arms and turned toward her.