29. Prodigy Moretti
PRODIGY MORETTI
Since I almost kissed Novi, we’d gotten so close that she had started feeling like a real friend. I could tell her things I wouldn’t bring to my cousins without having to sit through ten minutes of jokes before they took me seriously.
I stopped by her place often. Her pregnant ass was either cooking something or had enough Uber Eats containers in her refrigerator to feed three people, so I rarely left hungry. I often brought her food and snacks that I felt like a pregnant woman would love.
Her stomach had started showing more, but enough that my eyes went to it whenever she rested her hand there.
That evening, we sat on her couch watching some show neither of us had really been following. I’d had a few drinks after eating two plates of the lamb spaghetti she’d made, along with enough garlic bread to embarrass myself.
My eyelids felt so heavy. The food had given me the “itis” and the liquor had me feeling too comfortable, but whenever I was around Novi, my nervous system relaxed. We were still learning each other, but my body had already decided her space was somewhere it could rest.
My phone dinged against the coffee table.
I forced myself back from the sleep I had been falling into.
When I reached for my phone, I saw Jamir’s name across the screen.
I opened the text message and first noticed the picture attached to it.
My thumb hovered over it before I opened the message.
The man in the photo was older than he was when I’d last seen him.
A few grays had spread through his beard, but, still, I knew him.
It was Renzo.
My father.
For a few seconds, I forgot how to breathe.
My hand locked around the phone so hard my fingers started to ache, but I couldn’t loosen my grip.
A broken and ugly sound left me before I could stop it.
My father was alive. All the years, all the questions, all the grief my mother carried, all the times I wondered if he had left us on purpose, and he had been breathing somewhere in Michigan this whole time.
Along with the picture was his confirmed, current location.
I caught Novi moving in my peripheral vision. A second later, the TV went silent.
“Prodigy,” she called softly. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”
I could hear her, but my focus was on reading the message Jamir had sent along with the image.
I found out that your uncle, Sal, recently went to Michigan.
I thought it was strange since he has no connections out there and that isn’t part of his normal routine.
I pulled what I could from toll records, traffic cameras, gas station footage, and plate hits.
Once I narrowed the area down Sale had been in, I found the only road leading toward a house and placed a trail camera where it wouldn’t be seen.
Renzo triggered it more than once over the next few days.
That picture came from the camera. I matched him against old photos.
That’s him, Prodigy. Your father is alive, and that’s where he is.
I stared at the picture until the words beneath it blurred. All those years wondering where he was, whether he was alive, whether he ever thought about me, and now I had proof that he was still somewhere in this world living a life without me.
My heart pounded so hard it made my breaths shaky.
I’d spent years waiting for this moment, imagining what it would feel like to finally know where my father was.
Now, excitement blended into every question and fear I’d carried since he disappeared.
I swallowed against the pain burning in my throat and stared at the image, fighting tears while trying to accept that I had finally found him.
“Prodigy?” Novi urged. “What’s wrong?”
I dragged my palm over my face, then handed her the phone. “Jamir found my father.”
Her eyes moved from the screen to me. She studied the photo again before returning my phone.
I’d missed so much of his life that the man on my screen felt familiar and foreign at the same time.
Novi didn’t rush to fill the silence. She gave me room to get the words together.
“I wanted this for so long.” My voice sounded so fragile. Suddenly, I felt like I was ten years old all over again. “Now that I know where he is, I don’t know if I wanna go.”
“Why not?”
“Because what if I get the wrong answers? What if he left because he wanted to? What if he really was hiding because he didn’t want to be a husband or father?”
Novi’s face softened with sympathy as she turned toward me and pulled the leg closest to me onto the couch. “You need to go find out. You’ve spent years wondering what happened. Now you have a chance to stop wondering.”
“And if the truth is fucked up?”
She shrugged a shoulder. “Then it’s fucked up.
Prodigy, you’re strong enough to handle whatever he tells you.
Good or bad.” She gave my arm a gentle touch, telling me, “Whatever he says can hurt you, but it can’t erase who you became without him.
You need the truth so you can move on. Whether that means letting him back into your life or accepting that he doesn’t deserve a place in it. ”
My thumb returned to the picture. I could still see pieces of myself in him.
“I don’t think you should tell your mother yet, though.”
I frowned. “Why not?”
“Not until you talk to him yourself,” she explained. “There is no need to tell her if what you find out will break her heart.”
“She’d be mad if she found out I kept this from her.”
“She might be. But you’re not keeping it from her forever. You’re making sure there’s something good to tell her.”
I leaned back against the couch and stared at the ceiling.
Novi was right. If Renzo had chosen to abandon us, I needed to know first.
“You gonna go?” Novi pressed.
I looked at the picture one more time. “Yeah…I’m going.”