Chapter 4 - Route Seventeen Was Still Running
Luis Parker met us at the transit depot at seven in the morning, not because I could enter the property safely but because the safety inspector had asked where the suspect vehicles were parked. I stayed in an accessible van across the street with Camille. The driver, a woman called Helen who worked for a different company, had checked my chair’s straps in front of me and asked whether the shoulder belt was comfortable. Those small, ordinary questions kept catching me off guard.
Luis stood by the fence speaking into his phone. He was a mechanic with grease set permanently into the lines of his hands. Sixteen months earlier, when I still worked in operations, he had complained that Walker Transit purchased too many vans and kept too few spare parts. I had agreed with him and approved a repair budget. Graham told me he would take care of the payment.
The inspector arrived and walked through the gate with company management. We did not pretend I could order a shutdown by standing on the sidewalk. Camille had sent the repair holds, the bank’s initial confirmation, and Luis’s signed account to the agencies responsible for the vehicles and the insurer. The hospital had arranged another approved transport for the dialysis passenger. The potentially unsafe van stayed behind the fence while inspectors examined it.
Luis came to our window afterward. “They’ve taken the active ones out of service for inspection. The rest of the fleet can run only after each van’s records and condition are checked.”
“Will the patients get their appointments?” I asked.
“The dispatchers are arranging backup companies. I’m helping them.”
For once, the answer contained an actual plan.
Camille drove me to meet Dani Ortiz’s daughter at the public library. Ruby was fourteen now, all sharp cheekbones and careful questions. She had her mother’s habit of pulling her sleeves over her palms. An aunt named Maribel sat with her. I had written letters after Dani’s funeral, but Graham said the family asked for privacy. Ruby had never received them.
“You’re June,” she said.
“Yes.”
“You were with my mom.”
“Yes.”
“Then why does everybody talk like she drove a bad van on purpose?”
“I don’t think she did.”
Ruby opened a worn spiral notebook. Inside, in Dani’s handwriting, were shift times and mileage totals. It was not a secret confession. It was the kind of record a driver kept because payroll had shorted her twice.
“Mom came home upset the week before the crash,” Ruby said. “She said the brake pedal felt soft, and somebody told her to stop complaining in front of passengers.”
“Who?” Camille asked.
“She didn’t say. She said it was ‘upstairs.’”
I remembered the service request in my calendar. I remembered Graham telling me the invoice was paid. For sixteen months I had remembered that conversation as proof I had done my job.
“I signed the purchase order,” I said. “I didn’t verify the parts arrived.”
Ruby stared at me. “You were in charge.”
“Yes. And I should have followed up.”
Maribel touched Ruby’s shoulder, but the girl pulled away. “Everybody keeps telling me they loved Mom. I need somebody to tell me why she had to drive that van.”
I looked at her directly. “I’m going to help find out. I won’t promise what the evidence will say.”
She considered that. “Okay. But don’t make me part of a publicity thing.”
“I won’t.”
Maribel told me about the last ordinary Saturday she and Dani had spent together. They had argued over whether a tomato plant needed a larger pot; Dani had insisted the plant was stubborn, not sick. That night she had cooked too much spaghetti and taken leftovers to a neighbor who could not leave her apartment. Maribel said she was tired of hearing people call her sister a martyr.
“She was supposed to complain about my cooking when we got old,” she said. “She was supposed to make Ruby embarrassed in front of her friends.”
I pictured Dani leaning on my office doorway, asking me why the company paid for banners before brake pads. I had smiled and told her to give me the invoice numbers. It was the ordinary woman I missed, not the smiling face Graham had printed on a donor poster.
Outside, Camille said I had handled the meeting well. I did not feel well. I felt like the person I used to be was standing on one side of the library door, demanding that I explain why I trusted my husband instead of checking the repair.
At my temporary hotel, an envelope waited at reception. The clerk said a courier had left it. Camille opened it with my permission. It contained a proposed statement from Graham’s public-relations firm: June Walker regrets that a personal misunderstanding disrupted a charity event. No wrongdoing occurred in connection with fleet maintenance. Attached was a release asking me to waive claims related to the accident and the party in exchange for continued housing support and medical expenses.
“That’s not even a serious offer,” Camille said.
“It is to somebody who thinks I have nowhere to live.”
We refused the proposal in writing. Then we asked the company board to preserve all records and communications concerning route seventeen. Graham had been barred from contacting me under temporary protective conditions after his first appearance, but his lawyer could make settlement proposals through mine. Camille noted the contact and the language; we would let the proper people assess it.
That night I dreamed of a brake pedal dropping to the floor. I woke clutching the blanket, my elbows burning beneath fresh dressings. Denise had given me information about trauma counseling, and for the first time I used the number. The counselor did not ask me to recount every detail. She taught me to identify five things I could see and reminded me I could stop talking at any time.
Before bed I sent Ruby a message through Maribel: The three flagged vans are off the road for inspection. I thought you should know.
May you like
Ruby replied an hour later. Thank you. Mom would ask about the other ones.
I looked at those words for a long time. A day earlier I had wanted a man punished. Now I wanted every driver and passenger to get home safely. The second wish was going to demand much more of me.
