All the Lies They Did Not Tell

by Pablo Trincia

Dario’s new home was in a white, two-story building a few steps away from a stream that separated it from a wooded area. A boy with olive skin was in the yard opposite the building. It was Matteo, Dario’s adoptive brother, who’d also been raised by the Toninis.

Staying would have only made things worse. Better to leave. But we’d be back. We wanted to talk directly to Dario. He was twenty-six years old now and could decide on his own if he wanted to tell us his version of the facts or send us on our way.

It was raining, and the wait was grueling. For several interminable minutes, the cars speeding past us seemed to be the only things moving. Then, just before lunchtime, as I was scrolling through the news on my phone to pass the time, I glimpsed the shadow of a person crossing the path by the white house. He had a dog and was walking directly toward our car.

With bated breath, Alessia and I waited for him to walk away. We wanted to keep his family members from seeing us speak to him. We didn’t want him to feel uncomfortable. We got out and followed him from a distance. He was wearing a tracksuit, a wool beanie, and a jacket, the classic look of someone who is just running out on a brief errand. When we caught up with him and explained who we were and why we’d sought him out, he didn’t seem afraid. At twenty-six years old, he still hadn’t found direction.

As soon as we got the conversation going, he came out with a comment that left us speechless. “Boh, honestly, I’m not sure whether anything actually happened or not . . . Many shrinks also try to make you tell them what they want you to say, you know, for money, so I’m not sure anymore . . . I have some memories, but I don’t know if they’re real or not . . . I mean, as a kid you pull out whatever you want . . .”

He didn’t have good feelings for Dr. Donati, who’d treated him until he turned eighteen. He believed she used him to make money and advance her career, because after the children were removed from their families, she’d been promoted to an important position, and “she made a boatload of money,” he said, though he didn’t specify what he was referring to. He used the expression brainwashing twice during our conversation.

The fears of persecution had left him traumatized, which lasted well beyond his elementary school years. Dario spent his adolescence looking over his shoulder. “They also came looking for me when I was in middle school . . . I mean, all these people would come looking for me at school . . . Anyway, the teachers would keep them away. They always made sure they didn’t see me. I had constant paranoia.” He dragged his paranoia with him to Modena when he went to live there in his early twenties.

He avoided taking regular routes. He didn’t know anything about how the story had ended. He didn’t know how many suspects had been involved, how many convictions, how many other children. His knowledge of the case was limited to his own involvement, and that was it. Thinking back to those years and the people he’d named, he could no longer distinguish between the facts and the nightmares, the real people and the visions, the scenes of the life he’d lived and the life he’d imagined.