A suburb outside Austin....
The still, peaceful morning air was shattered by the sound of a coffee cup hitting the floor.
"Ay Dios mio," Rita Donado whispered unconsciously under her breath. She couldn't believe what she was seeing. Something had happened. Something very, very bad....
"Uh-oh!"
She whirled to see that Jonas had run into the room, doubtless on account of the puddle of coffee and smashed ceramics at her feet. She hadn't even realized she dropped it.
"What happened, Mom?"
She shook herself quickly to regain her composure, and reached for a kitchen towel to start cleaning up. "Nothing, baby, Mommy just dropped her cup."
"Ooh, you're in trouble!" At eight years old, Jonas had broken plenty of things to know that was how it went.
"Go finish your cereal, dear."
"I can help clean it up," he volunteered brightly, but as he came closer he was paying attention only to the TV behind her. It was tuned to some boring news station. "Hey, that guy's name is the same as ours!" He pointed at the screen.
Kneeling on the floor, Rita looked back towards the television for a moment so that Jonas would not see the dreadful horror that flashed across her face. "It's just a coincidence, baby," she answered almost voicelessly. Then she steeled herself and turned back to her son, a stern and commanding mother once again. "Be careful, the broken pieces are very sharp. You shouldn't touch them. Go back and finish your breakfast of you'll miss the bus."
"What's 'sacrifice'?"
Immediately Rita stood and turned off the television. "Eat your breakfast," she ordered, pointing back towards the table. It was all she could do not to scream it.
"Aw, okay...." Jonas made a show of trudging back to his seat, but as soon as he sat down he resumed eating his cereal with gusto, kicking his feet under the table in a unflappable eight-year-old manner.
Her hands shaking, Rita slowly finished mopping up the spilled coffee, wrapped up all the broken pieces of the mug and threw the whole bundle in the trash. There was no mistaking what she'd just seen but.... but how in the world....? She couldn't believe it. She wouldn't believe it. She knew Antonio had his faults -- it broke her heart to have to lock him away in that place, she knew she'd failed as a mother for not being able to help her own son. But this was just too much. She could never believe this of him. It was too horrible to even think about.
It's all a lie, her mind rambled desperately. That wasn't even his picture! Someone's trying to frame my boy for this....this atrocity! Oh my poor, sweet Antonio! But she knew that couldn't be true, either. The destruction she'd seen was real enough; if Tony hadn't been involved with this cultist group, the only other option was that he'd been killed by them. She honestly couldn't say whether that would be better or worse. And it was that realization that horrified her the most.
She barely noticed when David breezed into the kitchen, grabbing some coffee and kissing her on the cheek. "Gotta go, I'm late --" he started, but then stopped as she stood there rigid and unresponsive. "Honey, what's wrong? You look like you've seen a ghost."
As she slowly turned to face him, Jonas piped up from the breakfast table, "Mom broke something. She's in trouble and she's mad."
"What?"
"Honey, it's...."
Concern was written all over David's face. "What's wrong? Are you all right?"
"I'm fine," Rita lied. "Everything's fine. But.... There's something we need to talk about. When you get home." It would be all over the news for the next few days, at least, she'd be a fool to think he wouldn't find out. He'd probably know as much as she did by the time he got home from work.
David watched her closely for another moment. "All right," he said finally. Rita was his wife, after all, and he trusted her completely. Whatever it was, she'd tell him when she was ready.
His worried look smoothed into a cheery grin as he turned back to Jonas. "All right, champ, time to get your shoes on and head down to the bus stop! Whaddaya say, I'll race ya!"
Jonas jumped from from the table like he'd been sitting on a spring. "No fair, your shoes are on already!" he shouted, trying to shove his feet into his sneakers, tie the laces, and grab his backpack all at once. "You're cheating!"
"I'm doing daddy things," David smiled back, and pretended to be very busy until Jonas ran past him out the door.
He winked at Rita and gave her another peck on the cheek. "Love you," he said simply, and left before their son could get too far ahead of him.
Rita stood alone in the kitchen for a long, long time. And when the police came that afternoon to ask her a few questions, she told them the truth: That she didn't know a goddamn thing.