Chapter 12 - THE DAY OF THE CRASH
Roberto felt the room shift around him.
Sofía’s mother, Elena, had died four years earlier. Vanessa had entered their lives long afterward.
“What could you know about the crash?” he asked.
The woman’s name was Ruth. She looked exhausted and kept both hands wrapped around her purse.
“Vanessa asked me about it before she met you,” Ruth said. “She knew where it happened. She knew your wife’s name.”
Roberto glanced at Claire, who had stayed for dinner and was now standing near the doorway.
“Lots of people knew,” Claire said. “It was in the news.”
Ruth nodded. “I told myself that too. Then Vanessa said something about the other driver.”
The crash had happened on a wet two-lane road. Another driver had crossed the center line. That driver had been identified, and investigators had found no connection to Roberto’s family.
“What did she say?” he asked.
“She said Adrian knew him.”
Roberto called Harris immediately.
Harris listened to Ruth and requested the old case file. For two long days, Roberto kept the information from Sofía. He would not put a frightening possibility in her mind before anyone knew whether it was true.
The records gave them an answer. Adrian had known the other driver. They had worked at the same company years before the crash. Investigators found no contact between them near the date of the collision, no money exchanged, and no evidence that anyone had planned it.
Ruth admitted she had waited years to tell Roberto because Vanessa had insisted the connection meant nothing. After seeing the news about the forged documents, Ruth no longer trusted her daughter’s explanation.
Roberto thanked Ruth for coming. He wished she had come sooner.
That night, he stood in Sofía’s doorway and listened to her sleep. He had carried guilt since the accident because he had asked Elena to drive across town that evening. He had never told Sofía that. He knew the collision had been caused by the other driver, yet he had kept searching for a way he might have prevented it.
Claire called just after midnight.
“Harris has finished reviewing Vanessa’s older messages,” she said. “There’s no evidence she or Adrian had anything to do with Elena’s death.”
May you like
Roberto sat down.
“But there is something else,” Claire continued. “Vanessa kept notes about Sofía before you two met. Detailed ones.”
