The refrigerator light hummed over almost nothing.
One half-empty bottle of milk leaned against the door. A jar of mustard sat in the corner with dried yellow crusted around its rim. There was a plastic container with one stubborn spoonful of rice stuck to the bottom, and a bruised apple rolled lazily against the back wall whenever the refrigerator motor kicked on.
That was it.
No string cheese.
No leftover pizza.
No little cups of yogurt with cartoon animals on the lids.
No fruit waiting to be packed into a lunchbox.
Just cold air and the echo of everything I had been pretending not to see.
It looked like a refrigerator in an abandoned office break room, not the refrigerator of a home where a four-year-old boy still slept with a night-light and woke up asking for cereal shaped like stars.
My father stood in front of it without saying a word.
