Renee Moretti
I threw up in the toilet of the guest bathroom with one hand pressed against the edge of the marble counter and the other covering my mouth.
I tried to keep it quiet. Denise was still outside by the pool, but if she heard me, she’d know I hadn’t drunk enough champagne to be sick already. I had barely finished half a glass before Prodigy walked outside and ruined the whole morning with Renzo’s name.
My stomach rolled again.
I bent over the toilet and gagged until my eyes watered.
“Damn it,” I whispered.
Prodigy wouldn’t stop. That boy had always been smart, stubborn, and too observant for his own good.
I flushed the toilet and stayed there for a second, breathing through my nose and gripping the counter until the shaking in my hand stopped.
I stood, rinsed my mouth, and stared into the mirror. My makeup still looked decent, but my eyes told the truth. Fear had a way of aging a woman in seconds.
I gripped the sink. “No,” I whispered to my reflection. “No, no, no.”
Renzo was supposed to stay gone.
I didn’t hate him. Hate would’ve made all of this easier.
Renzo had loved Denise, and Denise had loved him with a softness I had never seen in her with any other man.
Before grief made her guarded, before motherhood forced her to be strong, before Marcus came along and made it safe her to open her heart again, she and Renzo had been real.
That was why his disappearance had almost destroyed her.
I remembered the weeks after he vanished.
Denise barely ate. She barely slept. She sat in Prodigy’s room at night and watched that baby breathe because he was the only piece of Renzo she had left.
She would hold herself together all day, then fall apart when the house got quiet.
I had been there. I had watched my best friend lose the man she loved and still get up every morning because her son needed breakfast, clean clothes, rides, kisses, bedtime stories, and a mother who didn’t disappear with his father.
I had told myself back then that my silence was mercy. But I soon learned that was a lie.