Jian nods. He knows. He also knows that whatever his father wants to talk about, it won't be something he can share with them. Some things run in families like blood type or the shape of a nose. Secrets. Loyalties. The weight of a name.
He picks up his fork and takes another bite of cake. It's dry, overpriced, from a Safeway bakery. He chews slowly, buying time, while his phone sits on the table like a bomb waiting to be defused.
"Let's finish the deck," he says. "Then I will deal with this."
Alex and Maddy exchange a look, but they don't push. They're learning when to give him space. It's one of the things Jian likes about them. They understand that some silences are not empty. They're full of things too heavy to carry out loud.
Jian opens his laptop and pulls up the Cencora onboarding timeline. He starts making notes, numbers, projections. The work is clean. The work makes sense. The work doesn't have a father who appears and disappears like smoke, who sends four-word texts that carry the weight of nations.