The Missing Link by Erica Pensini - HTML preview

Chapter 25

I open my eyes to a dimly lit ceiling. I’m lying on a bed where I’ve never been before, and it smells of old fashioned soap, as if I have landed in a long gone past. I turn my head around and I see Antonio sitting on a chair besides me, clasping his head between his hands.

“What happened?”, I whisper, my voice an odd sound I hardly recognize

Antonio starts. “Thanks God”, he says

I wait for an explanation which doesn’t come.

“We have to be very careful now and we couldn’t call a doctor, but you…we didn’t know what to do…”, Antonio tells me

He looks so startled it scares me.

“But I am fine, I promise”, I reassure him

“You were talking in your sleep…”, Antonio begins

“So nobody knocked me on the head?”, I want to know

“No…no, you just passed out for no reason. Probably it’s the stress you are going through…but how do you know your father?”, Antonio asks me

I look at him blankly, stunned at the question.

“What do you mean, how do I know my father? I don’t know my father”, I say

“But you were calling his name during your sleep”, Antonio insists, and now he is looking at me intensely, as if determined to dig out the truth I am hiding

“I dreamed he was here…it was nothing but make-believe. My father looked like me, he said he had always been with me and other nonsense. So I just passed out like that? I thought someone knocked me on the head”, I insist

Does Antonio believe me? I can’t get myself to trust him either. Was my father nothing but a dream? But Antonio seems too frightened to lie.

So my father was nothing but a dream. Weighed down as I am on this bed I feel farther from finding Veronica than I’ve ever been.

“Ronny told me he would bring me here because it’s safe. But I don’t want to be safe. I want to find my sister. Did he get the phone call he was waiting for from…his contact?”, I want to know

“His contact will try to bring your sister here, but we shouldn’t rush things”, Antonio tells me

“I’ve waited 24 years, isn’t this enough?”, I reply angrily

“We will find Veronica, I promise”, Antonio almost whispers, taking my hand

I retract it defensively

“So did Ronny’s contact call or did he not?”, I insist

Antonio is about to say something when I hear a cellphone ring.