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When we dried off and dressed, we made our way downstairs where I made our morning coffee and Raniero checked his phone. He was in the living room when I heard him talking. I gathered someone had tried to get ahold of him last night as he had shut his phone off so we could enjoy the movie, so I made him a mug and brought both of our cups into the living room where I was expecting to watch the news with him before I headed to work.
That was not going to happen this morning.
“Really?” Raniero was saying as I entered the room. “When will you be here?”
There was a nervous tension running through his body as he paced the living room, his cell phone plastered to his ear.
“Okay, I’ll see you soon. Please… just tell me…. Is she alive?”
He paused while the person on the other end answered.
“Okay, okay, I know. Right. Thank you, Butch, I’ll see you soon.” He said and hung up the phone. He turned to me with a hopeful look in his eyes. “That was Butch. He’s on his way with the answers I’ve been looking for.”
“Really?” I asked excitedly. “He found out what happened to your mom? The woman talked?”
“Guess so.” He said and headed upstairs. I didn’t follow him because I assumed that that meant that Butch would be here in a few minutes so he was going to put on his shirt. I grabbed Raniero’s sweatshirt from the edge of the sofa and put it over my spaghetti-strap lounge shirt. I had a few hours until I needed to get ready for work, but depending on what Butch found, I might not be heading to work. Especially if Raniero’s mom was living somewhere, I would want to be with him when he found her.
Raniero came back downstairs and we sat on the couch sipping our coffee and only half watching the news. His leg jiggled with impatience as we sat there, his energy trying to explode from him, but it had nowhere to go. Not until he got the answers he was waiting for.
When the knock on the door finally came, Raniero practically lept from his seat and raced to the door. When he opened it, Butch was on the other side.
“Good morning.” He said and walked past Raniero to go to the kitchen. I grabbed our coffee cups and followed behind the two of them, closing the door as I passed. Raniero was so excited he had forgotten to shut it.
“Please, I have to know. Just tell me before we get into any details. Is my mother dead?” Raniero asked and I stood beside him across the table from Butch, holding his hand. He squeezed it so hard I thought my fingers might snap, but I didn’t care. I would lend him whatever strength I could, no matter the outcome.
Butch cleared his throat and opened the briefcase. Out came the two folders, though they both had a hefty amount of paperwork in them this time.
“Raniero… unfortunately, your mother is dead. I am very sorry, I was hoping to find out a different result, but it seems she died not long after she disappeared.”
Raniero’s face fell and all the energy he held a moment before was gone. He kind of deflated in front of me, giving in to the loss he was hoping wasn’t coming.
“It’s alright.” He sighed and held my hand tightly. “I had a feeling.”
“Right. Well with that news out of the way, let me get into the details. I also found the answer to your question Anita and you’ll be happy to know that there is no extra charge for the information.” Butch said and I lifted an eyebrow at him.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because I didn’t have to do any extra leg work. You see, I went and talked to your mother’s best friend Raniero, and when I showed up she didn’t want to talk to me, but I convinced her. She talked to me, but only after I promised that Dante would never know where she was. Of course, I promised and then she told me the story of why she left.’ Butch started, then pulled out a tape recorder from his briefcase. He set it on the table and turned it on. Butch’s voice came from it.
BUTCH: Hello, Cindy, thank you for answering my questions.
CINDY: It’s Amanda now, but yes, no problem. You said this is for Raniero? Dante and Olivia’s son?
BUTCH: Yes. He hired me to find his mother.
CINDY: Poor boy. Doesn’t even know after all these years. That man, Dante, is a monster, even to his child huh? What a spineless imp. If I never see that man again, it will be too soon.
BUTCH: Well I promise you never will. No one but Raniero and his wife knows I’m here.
CINDY: Oh, Raniero got married? Oh good for him. That boy deserves all the happiness in the world, especially after what happened to his mother.
BUTCH: Would you mind telling me about that?
CINDY: Sure. It’s a simple thing. Dante was ignoring Olivia so Olivia got lonely. She told me she met someone and that she started sleeping with him, but I couldn’t tell anyone because if Dante found out, he would kill her. Well, it went on for a good… year, year and a half? They had gotten good at covering their tracks, but one night I guess Dante got suspicious and put a line tap on Olivia’s phone and overheard a conversation between her and the guy she was sleeping with. Dante went crazy and beat her to within an inch of her life. He dumped her on my doorstep and told me she was my trash now.
BUTCH: That must have been awful.
CINDY: It was! I had to bring her to the hospital, but we couldn’t tell them who she was, otherwise the police would get involved so I told them she was me. I had had papers drawn up to become Amanda if anything happened and gave them my fake ID. They took her in and she was in the hospital for 4 days. When she got out, I took her back home and told her that we had to go. I knew Dante wouldn’t stop at that, so I left the house to go to the man who made my false documents. When I came back she was gone.
