He was already there.
He was sitting at the table in the back, and she knew him immediately, the way you knew people who had been inside the formation of you — not from the face, which was different, older, lived-in in the way of someone who had spent time outside and worked with his hands and made choices that left their mark. She knew him from the way he sat. From the angle of his shoulders. From something that was below recognition and lived in the body instead.
He stood when she came in.
He was taller than she'd remembered. Or she was taller than she'd been.
"Camila," he said.
"Pai," she said. The word surprised her. She hadn't planned to use it. It arrived on its own, the residual reflex of a daughter who had called him that for eighteen years and whose mouth still knew the word
