I don’t recognize him at first.
The man standing in front of me looks like he’s been chewed up and spat out by life itself. His clothes hang loose on his frame, dirty and torn, a grimy jacket clinging to his shoulders as if it’s the only thing keeping him together. His face is gaunt, hollowed out by hunger, by suffering, by whatever hell he’s been through before he landed here. But it’s the eyes—the eyes that make my stomach drop. Too familiar. Too much a part of me, whether I want them to be or not.
“Dad?” The word barely leaves my lips before his body gives out.
The world blurs as I watch him crumple onto my doorstep. A strangled noise rises in my throat, and I barely hear myself whisper his name again, my knees hitting the cold ground beside him. His skin is ashen beneath the white s
