🎀 THE RIBBON GRACE KEPT

Chapter 07 - A Passenger in the Rain

Vanessa said the photograph meant nothing. She had taken rides in foundation cars all the time. Catherine had asked her to attend meetings; the two of them used to work together. A grainy image could not make a woman a murderer.

On that last point, Luca agreed. He did not call her a murderer. He asked why she had not mentioned being in the car Catherine believed was following her.

“Because Nicholas said you would misunderstand,” Vanessa replied.

“You keep saying Nicholas told you things. Did you ever decide anything yourself?”

“Of course I did.” She looked away. “I decided to protect the life we were building.”

Their conversation took place in Miriam's office, under light so plain it was almost rude. Vanessa had brought her own attorney. Without a chandelier above her, she looked smaller, though no less determined. She refused to answer when the questions reached the night of the accident.

Eleanor had warned Luca that grief seeks a single person to blame because a single person seems manageable. But Catherine's death was beginning to reveal a series of choices made by people who had trusted each other too little and their own importance too much.

The original police report described rain, a sharp curve on Sheridan Road and a collision with a concrete barrier. Catherine had died before paramedics reached the hospital. No second vehicle was identified. Luca had accepted the finding. At the time, he could barely bear to hear her name, let alone discuss road conditions and mechanical inspections. Nicholas had offered to handle everything. Luca had let him.

Miriam persuaded the police to review the case in light of the new financial investigation. A retired traffic officer, Sergeant Brennan, agreed to meet them. He remembered the crash because of an unanswered question: fragments of dark paint near the driver's side did not match Catherine's silver sedan, but rain had destroyed most other traces.

“We flagged possible contact from another car,” Brennan said. “There wasn't enough to identify one. And no witness came forward.”

“I was told it was black ice,” Luca said.

“Someone may have told you. That wasn't in my report.”

Brennan opened the old file and showed Luca the small box where the investigating officer had marked “possible secondary vehicle.” Luca studied it as though it were a foreign language. He had attended the funeral in a fog of pain and let other men choose which facts might reach him. He wondered how many hours Catherine had spent alone with frightening truths because he preferred his own uncertainty unexamined.

Luca drove home without speaking. Beside him Eleanor looked at passing storefronts, one hand resting on Catherine's blue tin. She had insisted on attending the meeting. Age had taken strength from her knees, not from her determination.

“Did you tell me it was ice?” Luca asked.

“No. I was hardly allowed to speak to you after the funeral.”

He thought of Nicholas guiding guests through the receiving line, Vanessa bringing soup to the house, his own reluctance to look at a paper if it threatened to make the loss feel more real. They had offered him a story simple enough to survive. He had accepted it because it required nothing of him.

At home, Emily was helping Grace practice a piano piece. The girl played the first eight notes twice, stopped and said she hated them. Emily suggested they play something else. Grace refused. “Mommy liked this one. I just don't like making mistakes when she isn't here to tell me it's okay.”

Luca stood unseen in the doorway, listening. Later he asked Grace whether she'd like to show him how the piece went. She informed him that he would have to learn how to read music first. He agreed. It was one of the first ordinary demands she had made of him in years.

The following day, Ruth Malloy called with the name of a man she had tried to reach several times: Eddie Alvarez, formerly a maintenance supervisor at St. Anne's. He had left suddenly after Catherine's death. He now worked at a small auto shop near Joliet and did not want to talk on the phone.

Luca did not send anyone to fetch him. Miriam arranged a meeting in a diner chosen by Eddie, with a retired investigator present to record the account properly. Eddie was fifty-six, with tired eyes and fingernails stained by years of oil. He brought his own paper cup of coffee and kept the lid on throughout.

“I was there when Mrs. Moretti came asking questions about those invoices,” he said. “She didn't accuse me. Asked me to show her the roof. Nobody from the family had ever asked to see it before.”

Two nights later, Eddie had been closing the loading entrance when he saw Nicholas pull away in the black SUV. Vanessa was in the front passenger seat. Catherine had left ten minutes earlier in her silver car. Nicholas's vehicle went in the same direction.

“Why didn't you tell the police?” Miriam asked.

Eddie watched the coffee cup. “I did tell the man who came to the building. He wasn't police. He said Mr. Moretti was handling the family side and the information would upset a little girl. My employer put me on leave the next morning.”

“Who was the man?”

Eddie took a yellowed visitor log from his jacket. Someone had signed in on the day after the accident.

*N. Moretti — family office.*

Luca looked toward the diner window. He wanted to smash something, and for a moment that desire frightened him more than anything Nicholas might have done. For years he had believed he could keep his worst nature away from Catherine and Grace simply by directing it toward other people. Now he understood why Catherine had argued that a home needed more than fear of its owner.

Eddie was not finished. “I saw the SUV again a week later. It had damage on the front passenger side. The shop that fixed it sent the invoice to Pier Seven.”

Miriam asked whether he still had the repair order. Eddie had kept a copy, not because he expected justice but because his supervisor once told him never to throw away a piece of paper that could explain why he'd lost a job.

The invoice listed replacement of the bumper, right headlamp and fender after an unspecified impact. It was dated two days after Catherine died.