Family members of hit-and-run victim Maria Aguiar attended the arraignment of Laudalino Camara, 50, of Pawtucket last November. From left are Aguiar’s sister, Linda Arruda; her son, Brian; her sister, Maria Branco; and her husband, Jose.

The Providence Journal / Steve Szydlowski

SEEKONK — Brian Aguiar has been trying to fill some of the crushing void left by the sudden death of his mom, Maria Otilia Aguiar, eight months ago in a horrific hit-and-run accident.

The 16-year-old keeps the family’s paperwork in order. He helps his sister, Meghan, 11, with her homework and keeps an eye on his baby brother, Nicholas. Mostly, he’s doing his best to help his grieving father, Jose Aguiar.

“My mom used to do everything,” Brian says. “It’s tough. We were pretty independent at home before, but now I’m doing all the stuff she did, and with school and work, I’m just trying to keep up with everything.”

Brian’s aunt, Maria Branco, lives with her family across the street from the Aguiars and has also stepped in to help fill some of her sister’s roles.

Brian has always been mature and responsible, Branco says, and that’s to his parents’ credit. Maria and Jose Aguiar raised their children to be self-sufficient and hard-working. They didn’t spoil them and they didn’t hand out allowances.

But Maria Aguiar’s death has catapulted Brian into adulthood.

“He’s 16, but he’s 16 going on 23 or 25,” Branco says. “He’s trying to replace the mother in the house. This kid, he’s a hot ticket. These kids have matured, all of them. They were always independent. Now, they take care of themselves.”

Last month’s feast at St. Francis Xavier Church, in East Providence, was bittersweet for the devout family. Maria and Jose, a construction worker, met when Maria took a trip to Portugal to visit relatives, and they were married in the church. Parish activities have always been central to the family’s life.

After last year’s feast, Maria Aguiar talked with her son about the church’s rickety dunk tank. She urged Brian, an aspiring engineer with a summer job at an excavating company, to build the church a new one.

After her death, Brian got to work on the project as a way to honor his mom. He spent nearly all of his afternoons and evenings over the last six months designing and building the tank. He used $2,500 in money donated to the church’s CYO in his mom’s memory to purchase the steel, aluminum and fiberglass. This wouldn’t be your typical country-fair dunk tank booth.

“She always wanted me to do things to go above and beyond with everything,” Brian explains.

The tank was a big hit with parishioners. Brian, though, was too busy manning the chorizo grill to watch the dunks.

Branco says the feast was emotional for Jose Aguiar, who couldn’t ignore his wife’s absence from her usual post, with the ladies selling malasadas, Portuguese doughboys.

The two had a romance like something out of a book, Branco says. “He came here to marry her,” she says. “She was his first love, and he was her first.”

Adjusting to Maria’s death has been nearly impossible for Jose and the rest of the family.

“Every first thing for us and for him without her is hard,” Branco says. “Christmas, Mother’s Day… Nick turns 3 on July 28. We’re still going to celebrate, but to celebrate a child’s birthday without a mother is just wrong.”

MARIA BRANCO rushed to the accident scene that evening last Oct. 14 expecting to see her sister with bruises or, at worst, broken bones. “You have to sit down,” the emergency medical technician told Branco.

Why are they telling me to sit down? Branco thought.

“You have to sit down,” he repeated.

“Your sister didn’t make it.”

Branco immediately began looking for the vehicle that struck her sister. “Where’s the driver?” she demanded.

“He took off,” the EMT told her.

That’s when Branco saw her sister’s lifeless body. Maria Aguiar was four months shy of her 40th birthday.

Maria Aguiar and her then-10-year-old daughter had gone for a walk down their wooded Seekonk street that Sunday evening. Weekends were a much-needed break for Aguiar from her work as an insurance claims adjuster and her studies for a nursing degree. She was about to take the board exams and hoped to work in an emergency room trauma unit.

Meghan was on her bike, with her mother right behind her, when an SUV driven by Laudalino C. Camara, 51, of Pawtucket, allegedly struck Maria Aguiar head-on.

Camara has pleaded not guilty to charges, brought by Seekonk police, of motor-vehicle homicide and leaving the scene of the deadly accident. A motion on the case is scheduled for July 28.

Camara and his wife, Maria Camara, also face Rhode Island charges of insurance fraud, obtaining money under false pretenses and two counts of conspiracy, all related to their alleged scheme to later cover up the hit-and-run. The state attorney general’s office is still reviewing the case. The Camaras remain free on bail pending formal charging in Superior Court.

Jose and Brian Aguiar, Maria Branco and Aguiar’s other sister, Linda Arruda, have sat quietly and stone-faced during Laudalino Camara’s court appearances. Branco says the slow crawl of the judicial process has been agonizing.

“We just don’t want our sister to be forgotten,” Arruda, of Fall River, said after Camara’s January arraignment. “We don’t want her to be just a case number.”

Every day, the families struggle with their heartache and fury. The children, despite their aunt’s urging, don’t want to go on the family’s usual fishing or camping trips this summer, fearing the memories would be suffocating. Brian Aguiar says he and his family are taking things one day at a time.

“We’re still very angry, very angry,” says Branco, a North Providence teacher. “We just wish [Camara] would own up to it. This would be over for us if he would just tell us what happened.”

Maria Aguiar’s death has tested the family’s deep Catholic faith. While Brian says his nightly prayers definitely help, Branco says she finds little solace when others tell her that it was her sister’s time to die or that God needed her in heaven.

“People say the good die young. I think she was stolen from us,” Branco says. “My family says, ‘God needed her.’ But we are selfish. We needed her.”

The family visits Maria Aguiar’s gravestone at the Gate of Heaven cemetery in East Providence just about weekly. Brian designed the marker, a black stone with a sandblasted, three-dimensional image of the Holy Family. It was his first tribute to his mother.

His second, the dunk tank, while far less somber, would have thrilled his mother.

If Maria Aguiar was alive today, she’d tell Brian: “You can do anything if you put your mind to it,” Branco says.

Branco and her sister used to tell each other, “If I die, just make sure you take care of my kids.”

Branco is keeping her promise, dropping everything when the children need her. And she says she’s coping with Maria’s death the only way she knows how, by telling herself that her sister is just away at work.

Brian, who will be a senior at Seekonk High in the fall, says his dream is to attend MIT and become a mechanical engineer.

“I’m not saying I’m going to get in, but something tells me that I will,” Brian says. “That’s what my mom would have wanted.”

mwims@projo.com