Chapter 2 - THE CAR THAT CAME HOME EMPTY
At five-thirty the next morning, someone knocked on my bedroom door.
I sat up before the second knock. For half a heartbeat I thought of my father waking me for school by tapping the wooden bed frame, then remembered where I was. The Moretti mansion had dozens of bedrooms but very little privacy. I occupied a narrow room above the kitchen, where pipes clicked at night and the radiator hissed whenever the heat came on.
“Claire?” Luca’s voice came through the door. “May I speak with you?”
I found my slippers and opened it a few inches. He was wearing a charcoal sweater instead of a suit. He looked tired enough to be a different man.
“Is your mother all right?” I asked immediately.
“She’s sleeping. An emergency physician checked her and found no reason to move her anywhere. I’ve canceled the Wisconsin transfer pending an independent assessment.”
Relief loosened my shoulders.
“There’s something else,” he said. “My mother’s driver is downstairs. He asked for you.”
“Me?”
“He says you’ll understand why he couldn’t speak before.”
I followed him to the breakfast room, where a thin older man stood holding a cap against his chest. I recognized him from the employee photographs: Samuel Ortega, the driver who had worked for Mrs. Moretti for eleven years.
“Miss Bennett,” he said. “Thank you for listening to her.”
His eyes were red at the edges.
“I didn’t know whether anyone believed she understood us,” he continued. “At the hospital, they said not to question her. They said talking made things worse.”
“Who said that?” Luca asked.
“Dr. Kessler. And Miss Bellini.”
Luca pulled out a chair. “Start at the accident.”
Samuel shook his head. “I need to start the morning before.”
He explained that Mrs. Moretti had asked him to bring her car around unusually early. She intended to meet a lawyer at a café near the lake. It was not a social visit. She had been checking bank statements from a private fund established by her late husband, a fund meant to help people with disabilities obtain transportation to medical appointments.
“The fund was her pride,” Samuel said. “She called it Open Road. Mr. Moretti set up the first grants years ago, but she kept it alive.”
I had heard her mention Open Road in our signed conversations. She had always looked sad afterward. I had assumed it was grief for her husband.
“What happened at the café?” Luca asked.
“Nothing. The attorney never came. Mrs. Moretti got a call and asked me to return.”
“From whom?”
“Adrian Bellini.”
Luca’s hand tightened around his coffee cup.
Samuel went on. Later that afternoon Mrs. Moretti told him to take the sedan to the estate garage for inspection. She said the brakes felt strange. The mechanics returned the vehicle with a clean report, although Samuel never saw their notes.
“On the day of the crash, I was told I had the morning off,” he said. “Miss Bellini said Mrs. Moretti wanted privacy.”
“Did she?” I asked.
“She’d never sent me away before a trip without telling me herself.”
The crash occurred that evening on a road west of the city. Mrs. Moretti was found behind the wheel. The police report described an apparent loss of control. The passenger door was closed. No passenger was documented. Adrian later swore he had been in a meeting in Oak Brook during the relevant hours.
Samuel looked at Luca.
“The next morning, I tried to visit the hospital. They turned me away. That afternoon Miss Bellini said I was no longer needed.”
Luca asked why he had waited three months to come forward.
“I was ashamed,” Samuel said. “And frightened. My wife’s treatment was being paid through a company health plan. I thought if I made trouble, they’d cancel it.”
That fear sounded painfully familiar.
I asked whether he had seen Mrs. Moretti’s belongings after the crash. Samuel nodded.
“Her coat came back in a sealed bag. Blue phone case in the right pocket. But the phone itself wasn’t hers.”
“Whose was it?” Luca asked.
Samuel looked toward the dining-room door as if someone might be listening.
“I don’t know. She always carried a silver phone with a clear case. The blue one had an engraved A on the back.”
Adrian, I thought. But I refused to say it. We had only a letter, not a name.
“Where did the bag go?” Luca asked.
“Mrs. Bellini took it. Said it needed to be cataloged.”
After Samuel left, I stood beside the window watching the first pale daylight touch the courtyard. A small part of me wanted to believe the explanation would be simple: a borrowed phone, a confused memory, a mistake on a hospital form. But simple explanations kept arriving conveniently on Vanessa’s behalf, never on Mrs. Moretti’s.
Luca stood beside me without speaking for a while.
“Why didn’t I know about Open Road?” he asked finally.
“You might have,” I said. “Maybe you forgot.”
He looked almost grateful for the gentleness, then shook his head. “My mother asked me to attend a review meeting last year. I sent Adrian.”
The silence after that answer belonged to him.
At breakfast, Mrs. Moretti looked stronger. She wore a deep green cardigan, her favorite color, and insisted on holding her own spoon. The new physician had ordered rest and a further neurological review, not silence or isolation. A certified interpreter, Miriam Cho, was expected after lunch. Miriam was not employed by the family and had years of experience working with deaf and hard-of-hearing patients in hospitals.
Mrs. Moretti watched Luca sit beside her and signed slowly.
“Still here?”
He smiled despite himself. “I’m not going anywhere today, Mom.”
She pressed her lips together, considering him.
Then she signed something that made me look away.
“You were away before.”
Luca understood enough of her expression, even without my translation. He asked me to repeat it. I did.
“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
She looked toward the window. Not forgiveness. Not refusal. Just a tired woman choosing not to answer immediately.
At eleven, Daniel Voss reported that the west attic had been searched. Three trunks of clothing, a box of hospital discharge papers, and several handbags had been found. No blue phone case.
“Was the attic locked?” Luca asked.
“The storeroom was. Mrs. Bellini had the inventory key.”
Vanessa had left for her family’s townhouse shortly after midnight, with permission from the police once her statement and contact information were recorded. Adrian had done the same. The locked gates were no longer a private command. The investigation now belonged to people with authority to collect evidence.
I was relieved by that. I had heard enough stories about the Moretti name to know how easily power could turn into intimidation. I did not want another kind of injustice performed in Mrs. Moretti’s name.
Just before lunch, my phone rang. It was my father on a video call. His face filled the screen, eyebrows drawn together as he signed quickly.
“You look tired. Did you eat?”
“Not yet,” I signed back.
He made the same exasperated face he had made since I was six. Behind him, Ruby appeared, holding a chipped mug.
“Mom wants to know if you can come Sunday,” Ruby signed. “Also the surgery office called. Payment needs to be confirmed by Friday.”
I felt that familiar squeezing sensation under my ribs. Friday. Two days earlier than I expected.
“I’ll figure it out,” I signed.
Dad narrowed his eyes. He knew that phrase usually meant I was scared. “You don't have to figure everything out by yourself.”
I promised to call later. When I lowered the phone, Luca was standing at the library door. He had seen enough of the call to understand who I’d been talking to, though not the words.
“Your father?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“He signs?”
“He’s deaf.”
“And you’ve spoken with your hands all your life.”
“Yes.”
He looked toward the room where his mother was resting. “You gave her a way to speak when I couldn’t hear her.”
“She already had a way,” I said. “You just didn’t know to look.”
He accepted the correction without anger.
That afternoon, Miriam Cho arrived and began a private assessment of Mrs. Moretti’s communication preferences. I waited outside. It mattered to me that someone else could confirm what I had seen, someone who was qualified and had no stake in whether I kept my job.
After forty minutes Miriam stepped out to speak with Luca.
“Your mother’s expressive signing is inconsistent because of motor limitations,” she said. “Her comprehension appears substantially better than her verbal output. I recommend supported communication, short sessions, breaks, and a qualified interpreter for important medical or legal decisions. A full evaluation should follow. She is not necessarily incapable of deciding where she lives.”
For the first time, I saw Luca smile without surprise or anger behind it.
Then Miriam added, “Your mother has asked me to tell you something about a recording.”
Luca straightened.
“She says she made a copy before the accident. Not on her own phone. On a device she borrowed at the Open Road office.”
“Where?”
“In an envelope addressed to the person she trusted most.”
“Who?” Luca asked.
Miriam looked down at her notes, then back up.
“According to her, the envelope was mailed to you the day before the crash.”
Luca stood very still.
“I never received it.”
Miriam’s expression tightened.
May you like
Mrs. Moretti had not only survived an attempted killing. She had tried to warn her son beforehand.
And someone had made sure he never heard her.
