So that was the party.
An engagement dinner.
Brooke had turned my house into a showroom for her future while my wife and son ate behind it like hired help.
The room didn’t quiet all at once. First a few people noticed me. Then more. Then the music suddenly seemed too loud, and one by one conversations snapped as the guests turned toward the man standing in the doorway with a dusty suitcase at his feet, a child on his hip, and a plate of rotten rice in his hand.
My mother rushed in behind me, smiling too brightly.
“Everyone,” she said, “my son just got back from overseas. He’s exhausted—”
I set the plate down in the center of the polished dining table.
The smell hit the nearest guests almost immediately. One woman recoiled. A man from the fiancé’s family lowered his wineglass and stared at the plate, then at Noah, then at the lavish buffet.
I looked around the room.
“This,” I said, touching the plate with two fingers, “is what my wife and son were eating behind the house while you were being served all this.”
Nobody spoke.