But this woman was eating it bite by bite, savoring every mouthful, and the weight on my chest grew so heavy I could barely breathe.
I tested her.
"Emma, do you remember what we ate the night before the exam?"
Her hand paused mid-bite.
Then she smiled.
"Of course. Just simple home cooking, right? Something light so it wouldn't mess with my test."
Something went cold behind my eyes.
Wrong.
The night before the exam, my daughter had been too nervous to sleep. I made her a bowl of brown sugar glutinous rice balls.
Her favorite. The one time I let her break the no-sweets rule.
The woman in front of me had no idea.
I kept my face still and pressed on.
"What about when you were little? What bug were you most scared of?"
She answered without thinking.
"Cockroaches. Everyone's scared of cockroaches."
My heart sank all the way to the floor.
My daughter had only ever been afraid of caterpillars. She'd never flinched at a cockroach in her life. She'd stomp them with her bare foot and not think twice.
Every answer was wrong.
Not a single one was right.
On the surface I held it together, but inside I was coming apart, and I couldn't stop staring at the woman sitting across from me.
My eyes went red.
The silence stretched until I couldn't hold it anymore. When I finally spoke, my voice came out scraped raw.
"You're not my daughter, are you?"
The air went dead.
She looked up at me. Something cold flickered at the corner of her eyes, there and gone, and then it was confusion and meekness again.
"Mom, what are you even saying? If I'm not your daughter, then who is?"
I clenched my fists and stared at her without blinking.
"Impossible. You're not my daughter."
"None of it lines up—not a single memory!"
Emma paused. Then she set the durian down and laughed.
"The night before the exam, you made me sweet rice balls in brown sugar syrup. Your own hands. And what I'm scared of is caterpillars—not cockroaches."
"Cockroaches are *your* thing. You shriek every time you see one, and I'm the one who charges over and smashes it with a shoe. Isn't that right, Mom?"
She caught my stunned expression.
Her smile stretched wider.
"I was messing with you. Look at your face."
"All right, all right. You're getting on in years—I won't pull that kind of joke again."
I stood there, numb, watching Emma scoop up the kitten and carry it off to be fed. Something in my chest unclenched—but it didn't settle all the way down.