The Driver in Providence

Chapter 10 - The Driver in Providence

Samuel Pike lay in a hospice bed beneath a quilt with ducks on it. It was the kind of quilt volunteers made for people who had outlived their friends and their lies. His face was all bone and yellowed skin, but his eyes were alert when Cora entered with Wesley, Rowan, and a federal agent named Hollis who had the careful patience of a woman used to powerful men disappointing her.

Samuel looked first at Wesley. “You’ve got your father’s shoulders.”

Wesley said nothing.

Then Samuel looked at Cora, and tears filled his eyes so quickly that anger rose in her like a shield. “Don’t,” she said. “You don’t get to cry first.”

The drive to Providence took place under a low white sky. Cora sat in the back seat between silence and exhaustion, her bandaged hand resting on Nora’s letter. Wesley sat up front, speaking quietly with Rowan about agents, warrants, and names Cora had never heard. Every so often he turned slightly, not enough to stare, just enough to make sure she was still there. She pretended not to notice because noticing required deciding what it meant.

Lila slept for twenty minutes and woke crying Rafael’s name. Each time, Wesley’s face tightened, but he said nothing cruel. Hurt siblings have their own private language, and silence is often the first sentence. Cora watched them and understood that reunion was not repair. Finding Lila alive did not restore the brother who had buried her in his mind. It only handed him a living woman with scars he could not avenge away.

At the hospice entrance, an elderly volunteer offered them visitor stickers shaped like yellow flowers. The absurdity nearly broke Cora. After fire, black cars, secret ledgers, and men with guns, here was a woman in orthopedic shoes asking them to sign in and use hand sanitizer. Life had a rude habit of continuing in ordinary forms while hearts split open. Cora wrote her name carefully: Cora Donnelly. Then, after a pause, she added nothing else. Not Costa. Not Mercer. One truth at a time.

Samuel Pike’s room smelled of antiseptic and applesauce. A daytime television host laughed somewhere down the hall. On the windowsill sat three cards from strangers and one photograph of a young Samuel in a chauffeur’s cap, standing beside a black car with pride in his shoulders. Cora studied it and wondered when cowardice had entered him. Did it arrive all at once on the night of the crash, or had it grown slowly from every time he chose his paycheck over his conscience?

He nodded. “Fair.”

Agent Hollis set a recorder on the bedside table. “Mr. Pike, you asked for immunity review in exchange for testimony. We are recording voluntarily.”

Samuel gave a dry laugh. “At this point, ma’am, prison would be a climate upgrade.” He coughed until a nurse stepped in, then waved her away. “Ask.”

Cora did. “Did Senator Price kill my mother?”

Samuel closed his eyes. “He was drunk. Angry. Nora had the ledger. Lila was in the back seat with it, arguing with him. Rafael followed in another car. Price swerved. Nora’s car hit the rail.”

“Lila was in his car?” Wesley asked.

Samuel opened his eyes. “She was working with Nora, yes. But she also loved Rafael.”

The room went silent.

Cora looked at Lila, who had insisted on coming and now sat wrapped in a blanket near the window. Lila’s face crumpled with a grief so old it had become part of her bones. Wesley turned toward his sister slowly. “You loved Rafael Costa?”

Lila whispered, “Yes.”

“And you never told me.”

“I tried. Father found out first.”

Samuel breathed shallowly. “Wesley’s father didn’t want Cain blood tied to Rafael. Mercer didn’t want Rafael’s heir found. Price didn’t want the crash known. Marianne made one solution for everyone.”

Cora gripped the bed rail. “What solution?”

Samuel looked at her with unbearable pity. “They let Nora die. They took Lila. Rafael was told Cora died too. He broke after that.”

“No,” Cora said.

“I drove him to the docks two weeks later,” Samuel continued. “He was supposed to leave the country. He never made the boat.”

Wesley looked at Rowan. Rowan was already on his phone.

Cora’s world narrowed to the duck quilt, Samuel’s thin hand, and the thought of a man she had never known believing his child was dead. Patrick was still her father. That did not change. But now there was another grief, another theft, another empty chair at the table of her life.

“Is Rafael alive?” she asked.

Samuel’s lips trembled. “I don’t know.”

Lila began to cry without sound. Wesley looked at her, hurt carving lines into his face. “Why did Thaddius tell Cora to ask what you did?”

Lila stared at her hands. “Because I signed a statement after Nora died. Marianne told me if I didn’t, they would hurt Wesley. The statement said Nora stole the ledger for money and ran. It ruined her name.” She looked at Cora. “I am so sorry.”

Cora wanted to hate her. It would have been easier than understanding the anatomy of fear. But Lila had spent seven years in a cellar because powerful people liked loose ends kept breathing. Cora sat beside her. “You were trying to survive.”

“So were you,” Lila said.

Samuel motioned weakly toward his bedside drawer. Wesley opened it and found a cassette tape in a plastic case, labeled in faded ink: NORA / PRICE / ACCIDENT. Samuel’s voice thinned. “Insurance. I was a coward, not a fool.”

Agent Hollis took the tape like it was made of glass. Her phone rang before she could bag it. She listened, then looked at Wesley.

“Senator Price just called a press conference for noon,” she said. “He’s going to accuse Wesley Cain of kidnapping his retired prosecutor and fabricating evidence.”

Cora stood so quickly her chair scraped the floor. “Then we hold ours first.”

Wesley stared at her. “Cora, this is federal, political, dangerous—”

May you like

THE MAFIA BOSS WAS TOASTING CHAMPAGNE WITH HIS MISTRESS... UNTIL HE FOUN...

t

THE MAFIA BOSS WATCHED HIS MAID STRUGGLE WITH A HEAVY MIRROR... UNTIL HI...

t

THE MAFIA BOSS WAS ABOUT TO BLAME AN INNOCENT MAN... UNTIL HIS MAID SPOK...

t

“I know what danger is,” she said. “It has eaten dinner across from me for years.”

At 11:58, as cameras gathered outside the federal courthouse, Cora saw Evelyn Mercer step from a black town car wearing pearls, sunglasses, and the expression of a woman arriving to bury a girl for the second time.