I was sitting in a waiting room when a little boy walked over, looked at me, and said, “You look like my dad.”
I laughed.
“Does your dad look like me?”
He nodded seriously.
“Exactly.”
His mother immediately apologized.
“I’m sorry. He hasn’t seen his dad in a while.”
I told her it was fine.
The boy kept staring at me.
Then he asked, “Can you call him?”
She froze.
I assumed his father had passed away.
Instead, she quietly said, “He hasn’t spoken to us in two years.”
The boy looked down at his shoes.
Then he handed me a crumpled drawing.
It was a picture of three people holding hands.