Page 130 of Vega

“I never said that.”

“You didn’t have to. Every time you bring him up, you look at me like I buried him myself. I loved your father, Prodigy. I loved him when we were young, stupid, and thought love alone could protect us from the ugly parts of life. When he disappeared, it broke something in me I never got back.”

“Then why don’t you want to know what happened to him?”

“Because knowing might hurt worse.” She wiped under one eye fast. “What if he left because he wanted to? What if he really did decide we weren’t enough to keep him here? What if I spent all these years building a life around a scar, and you dig him up just so he can cut me open again?”

“And what if he didn’t leave?” I asked.

Her lips parted, but no words came.

“What if somebody took him from us?”

My mother shook her head, staring into the pool, fighting back tears.

“I know this hurts you. I know me searching for him keeps dragging you back to a place you’ve been trying to bury. I know you got a husband now, and I respect Marcus. I love Marcus. But Marcus being good to us doesn’t erase the fact that Renzo was my father.”

My mother looked down at her hands.

“And if I find him,” I said, “you might have to face why he left. Or why he couldn’t come back. I get why that scares you.”

Her eyes lifted to mine.

“But I’ve been scared my whole life too, Ma. Scared that everybody I love can disappear without warning. Scared that if I love somebody too hard, they’ll leave before I even understand what I did wrong.”

“Prodigy,” she whispered.

“I’m sorry that this opens your wounds,” I said. “I really am. But I can’t keep bleeding from mine just because everybody else learned how to cover theirs.”

She stared at me with hurt all over her face.

I hated doing that to her, but I still meant it.

“I have to find him,” I said. “Whatever the truth is, I have to know.”

“And what happens if you find him and he tells you exactly what I’ve been saying for eighteen years? What happens if you learn he did leave you?”

“Then at least I’ll know.”

“And if knowing destroys you?”

I stood. “Not knowing already did.”

Her shoulders sank with sympathy.

“I gotta go,” I said.

“Prodigy.”

I didn’t stop.

I walked back through the patio doors and into the kitchen with anger pulsing through my body. My father’s disappearance had always been the first abandonment I couldn’t explain. Every woman I loved, every person I feared losing, every goodbye that happened before I was ready, triggered that same abandoned feeling.

People left. Sometimes they died. Sometimes they walked away. Sometimes they vanished, and everybody expected you to accept whatever story hurt the least.

I couldn’t do that anymore.

Maybe I couldn’t let this go because it was the one thing I could do something about. I could have put this much effort in finding Arielle, but I thought it was pointless if I still wasn’t convinced that I could give her everything she wanted.