Today was Sunday, and Anneliese decided to go to her father's apartment complex again to ask if the landlady gave him her letter and possibly see him. "Hi, I want to ask if you gave my letter to Mr. Raymond," she asked the landlady.

"Ah, sorry. No, I haven't. Mr. Raymond has gone on vacation with his family for two days. He left yesterday," the landlady replied.

"Oh, well, where does the mail for the tenants of this building go?" Anneliese asked.

"They go into their mailboxes in the back room," she answered. "Are you a relative of Mr. Raymond?" she asked.

"Ah, no. Just a friend." Anneliese smiled. "I want to add in I might be sending a few more letters to Mr. Raymond, so I want to ask you for a favor to please make sure they get to him. They're very important," she added in.

"Yeah, sure. Just give them to me, and I'll keep it for him until he returns," the landlady remarked. Anneliese left and sat in her car not knowing what to do next.

'Could he be avoiding me?' she thought to herself. Suddenly, her phone rang. "Hello?"

"Anneliese! Let's go shopping!" Clarissa exclaimed.

"Sure. The usual mall?" Anneliese asked.

"Yep! Meet you there in fifteen!" She hung up, and Anneliese drove to the mall. They met at the entrance fifteen minutes later.

"Hey, Anne!" Clarissa called out as she waved her hand.

"Hey, Clare," Anneliese greeted her back. Clarissa linked her arm with Anneliese's and pulled her into the mall. They shopped for several hours then took a break at the food court.

Clarissa sat down and set her shopping bags down on the seat beside her. "Do you want to grab something to eat?" she asked. "I'm hungry."

"Sure, what should we get?"

"Why are you so compliant with me today?" Clarissa asked.

"I just have a lot of things going through my head at the moment," Anneliese replied.

"What's going on?" she asked.

"So remember my father? My biological one." Clarissa nodded her head. "Well, I saw him again a few days ago with his new family."

"Shut up! Really?"

"Yeah."

"That's crazy! Well, didn't you want to find him?" Clarissa asked.

"Well, yeah..." Anneliese answered.

"So then what's the problem?"

"I'm not ready to talk to him in person, so I wrote him a letter."

"Did he reply?"

"That's the thing. He didn't, and I wrote him a second one yesterday, but he apparently went on vacation for two days, so he couldn't receive it." Anneliese played with the handle of a shopping bag.

"Is he avoiding you?" Clarissa asked.

"I don't know! That's what I'm questioning at the moment! Am I that much of a nuisance to him? Does he not want to have any kind of relation towards me now that he has a new family?" She covered her face with both hands, and Clarissa patted her back. "All I wanted to know was why he left..."

"I understand. You want closure," Clarissa remarked. "But you know what?"

"What?" Anneliese looked up.

"I've always found your father's disappearance fishy," she stated.

"Fishy as in how because leaving your family out of nowhere is fishy enough," Anneliese remarked.

"No, I mean your father loved you very much. That you know, and he wasn't a coward either."

"I'm not so sure about those anymore..." She frowned.

"No, listen to me. Your father loved you tons from what you told me before he left, so there's no way, absolutely none, that he left you guys without a single explanation unless he was forced to do that."

"So you're saying someone threatened my father to leave us?" Anneliese raised an eyebrow.

"Exactly." She snapped her fingers and nodded.

"That's impossible," Anneliese stated. "Who would do that to us?"

"Your father was the boss of some big shot company. Right?" Clarissa asked, and Anneliese nodded. "He could get hundreds of enemies from that."

"Clarissa, stop making things up."

"No, Anneliese. Please. Think about it. Your father loved you so much. How could he have the heart to leave you?"

"But then, that would mean my mother lied to me."

"I'm not saying she's a liar. Maybe she didn't know, and she had to come up with something to tell you."

"Or maybe, she's a liar," Anneliese said. "She always dismissed my questions about him and told me the same reason. Plus, she wouldn't let me find him."

"I don't want you doubting your mother, but another thing is, she got over him way too quickly. Gabriel was too willing to marry your mother too. It's as if they knew each other before. No man is absolutely okay with marrying a woman who has had a child and is not financially stable unless they're financially stable then I guess that..."

Clarissa's voice disappeared as Anneliese thought about the possibility that her mother and Gabriel had something to do with her father's disappearance. She wanted to deny the fact that her mother would do such a horrible thing, but there were so many factors pointing towards them. Why would her mother want to bring hardship to herself? Was she pretending the whole time? Were her mother and Gabriel planning the whole thing behind her back from the beginning? These were the questions that were running through her head.

"Anne? Anne?" Clarissa called out to her. "I'm sorry I brought this topic up. Please don't think about it too much. Maybe I'm just making crazy speculations. I don't want anything bad to happen between you and your parents."

"It's alright. Let's get something to eat. I'm the one who's hungry now," Anneliese said and smiled a bit. After she returned home, Anneliese pulled out a piece of paper to write another letter to her father.

Dear Mr. Raymond,

If you're questioning why I'm calling you Mr. Raymond now is because I feel I'm a bit rude by calling you by your first name. By the time you get this letter, you might just be reading my second letter because I heard you went on vacation with your family. Did you enjoy it? I bet you did. It reminded me of when we went to the Grand Canyon, but you know after you left, we didn't even have enough money to go on vacation. Mother was too busy to go anyways. She'd even work on holidays, but I don't even know if that was true. My friend made these speculations about you and mother, but they might just be crazy speculations as she said. I just hope you'd reply to me soon with an explanation.

Sincerely,
Anneliese Mormont

Anneliese took the letter, gave it to the landlady, and left. When she returned home, her mother questioned her. "Where did you go, Anneliese?"

"Oh, I went shopping with Clarissa, and she left her phone in one of my bags, so I returned it to her just now," she answered.

"Okay, come and help me set the table for dinner." Anneliese complied and set the table.