Fifty-six days, three hours, and ten minutes have passed since the night Rai and I last slept in the same room. It's feels like it's been even longer since we had a conversation or had dinner together.
He's been disappearing lately. Sometimes I would return from work and find that he's not home. And those days I would sleep before he returns. The longest he's disappeared was two days and a night. The morning of that chaotic period I asked where he was and he said he didn't know.
It would be orderly to say the worst experience I had because of Rai was the night Jeff's men were shooting at me- but these past few weeks have been worse than any physical wound I've ever endured since moving out of my mother's.
The second time he disappeared I practically lost it- I searched the neighborhood high and low. But saw no sight of him or the car. By the time I returned I was exhausted and had no energy to move a muscle.
"Come on Rai, where are you?" I whispered climbing the stairs to my balcony.
"Hey Christina!" Jenna called in my direction and waved.
Christina? Ahh. The name I lied was mine when we first moved in. I smiled and waved back hoping that would be the end of it- but she didn't read body language as well as a girl her age should. Jenna jogged across the front lawn and stood at the bottom of the staircase.
"Hey- I have a question." She began- "Why did you lie to my mother about Rafael's real name?"
"What are you talking about?"
"Rai told us that his name isn't Rafael. He said it was Raimondo."
What? He remembers? He can't remember- I mean only recently I spent an hour telling him about who he was- who I was and basically being his memory for him. How could he suddenly remember?
Ignoring Jenna's obvious interrogation I asked her if she's seen Rai anywhere.
"Yeah- a few days ago when he told us that his name wasn't Rafael. He had some yellow papers in his hands-"
"Excuse me," I interrupt her and enter the house dead bolting the door after me.
What in the world is going on? I barged into Rai's room and searched for anything that would clarify why Rai had yellow papers- the only time he ever had those papers was when Jeff was using him as an asset for his father's gang. And if he had them now that would only mean one thing-
I pulled open one of the cabinets and then another and another until the room looked like it was just hit by a tornado.
Nothing.
Not a single thing. I lifted the mattress and pushed it off the bed. Beneath it there was the folded magazine cut out of the Jacuzzi Rai was building. I dropped to my knees and looked under the bed to find a box. Pulling it out, I silently prayed for my intuition to be wrong.
I sat cross legged and removed the top. Inside the box was the video camera I bought ray and white papers filled with writing in cursive script. Most of them were incoherent. But some were readable. Ignoring the camera for a second I rummaged through the papers and until I found something I could read.
3.4. i don't remember.
3.5. i don't remember
3.6. i don't remember
3.7. i don't remember
3.8., 3.9., 3.10.,3.11.,
They all had I don't remember. I flipped the paper to the back and it was the same- all except the last line.
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Reminding Raimondo (Book 2) Complete
ChickLitAfter escaping from Jeff and his father's men, Audrie manages to get Raimondo and leave the city. She finds a house that she makes her own. As she lives with Raimondo, she realizes that helping him remember his past may be harder than she thought. S...
