I could hear laughter from the dining room. Glasses clinking. Jazz spilling too loudly from the ceiling speakers. The smell of butter, meat, and expensive wine drifted back to the place where my wife had been washing spoiled rice to make it taste less sour for my son. The contrast was so grotesque it barely felt real.
So I bent down and picked up the fallen plate.
The rice clung in sour, greasy clumps. Noah buried his face in my neck, ashamed that I was holding proof of what he had been fed for dinner. I kept the plate steady and said, “Good. Then they can all hear.”
I walked straight past my mother into the main kitchen.
Brooke rushed after me first, all perfume and panic. “You cannot take that in there—”
I didn’t raise my voice. “Try to stop me.”
She didn’t.
The kitchen opened into the formal dining room, where maybe thirty guests sat under chandeliers I had paid for with overtime, heatstroke, and years stolen from my own family. Men in tailored suits. Women in silk and diamonds. Servers weaving between them with trays of lamb, roasted chicken, and tiny desserts arranged like jewelry. At the head of the room, a champagne bucket sweated beside a three-tier cake covered in ivory flowers.