Part 4 — At the Divorce Hearing, I Held a Baby in My Arms When My Husband Saw Her and His Confident Face Suddenly Turned to Stone

Marcus let the phone fall from his hand.

It fell onto the floor and the screen cracked.

“Who sent this?” he asked.

Nino did not answer. She first put the sealed envelope into her bag, and then picked up the phone.

“The file has already been submitted to the prosecutor’s office,” she said. “Now the child’s safety is the main thing for us.”

“My family could not have done this,” Marcus shook his head.

“Your family did everything,” I said. “You are simply learning it now.”

At those same moments calls came one after another to Marcus’s phone. First his legal adviser was calling. Then the company’s financial director. Finally security informed him that journalists were standing in front of the building.

Marcus walked around the room.

“This story must not get out.”

“It already has,” Nino answered.

“My company will be endangered.”

“Your company was endangered even more when you ordered employees to hide personal information.”

His lawyer closed the folder.

“Marcus, I am leaving this case.”

Marcus looked at him.

“What does ‘you are leaving’ mean?”

“It means that I can no longer defend a version whose falsity has already been confirmed by recordings.”

“You will not sign for me?”

“No.”

The lawyer looked toward me.

“Mrs. Hartwell, all the documents will be handed over to your side. The divorce signed today will no longer be a simple agreement. It will be the beginning of an investigation.”

In the courtroom, several hours later, Marcus heard his own voice for the first time.

The recording sounded clearly in the large hall.

“If she gives birth to the child, the divorce will no longer be simple.”

His father’s lawyer sat beside him, his hands crossed over one another.

“Leave her enough that she loses the desire to sue in court.”

Marcus lowered his eyes.

After the recording ended, the judge looked at him.

“Is that your voice?”

Marcus did not answer for a long time.

“Yes.”

That one word fell on the courtroom more heavily than the entire recording.

“And did you understand that the conversation was about a pregnant woman?”

Marcus bit his lips.

“Yes.”

“Then why did you claim that you knew nothing?”

He looked at me for the first time.

“I was afraid.”

I straightened Rose’s blanket.

“Fear may be an explanation. But it cannot erase what you did.”

The court left temporary custody with me. Marcus was allowed to see the child only in the presence of a specialist until the genetic and medical examinations were completed. And his father’s foundation was forbidden to take the child away.

That same evening Marcus stood alone in the room where our wedding photograph had hung.

The photograph was no longer on the wall.

I had taken it that morning, because only four small holes remained behind and in that room emptiness shouted more loudly than our arguments.

On the table remained Rose’s old wooden toy, which Marcus had once bought and never knew where it had disappeared. Beside it lay the wrapping of the small copper star that I had sewn onto the blanket.

Marcus picked it up.

For the first time his fingers touched an object that had existed in our child’s life without him.

Three weeks later Clarice gave testimony. She confirmed that Marcus’s father had ordered forged documents, but also said that Marcus had agreed to their use. The investigation opened the company’s secret accounts. Transfers, copies of the doctor’s file, and an attempt to bribe my lawyer were found there.

Marcus and his father were arrested not because I wanted it, but because their signatures and recordings spoke for themselves.

I felt no revenge against them.

Only exhaustion.

Six months later we moved to a seaside town. I rented a small apartment whose kitchen window showed fishermen’s boats every morning. I began working as an administrator at a school. The salary was far from billions, but at the end of the month I knew where every lari came from.

Rose learned to walk.

For the first time she took three steps from the kitchen door and came straight toward me.

I sat down on the floor, opened my arms, and cried.

“Come, little star.”

She was still wearing the blanket in whose corner I had sewn a small copper star. In the evenings that star shone warmly in the lamp light.

The doctors said that Rose would need treatment, but with timely monitoring she would be able to live a full life. Marcus also underwent an examination. It turned out that he had the same inherited condition, although he had never checked himself over the years.

One day Rose asked me:

“Where is Dad?”

She was still too young to understand the whole weight of the answer, but already old enough that I would not hide the truth from her.

“He is far away. He is learning how to be a father.”

“Will he come?”

“When he comes, you yourself will decide whether you want to see him.”

Rose nodded and picked up her colored pencils again.

In her drawing three people stood: me, herself, and a large yellow sun. Marcus was not there.

In the eighth month I received a letter from him.

Marcus wrote that he was undergoing treatment. He wrote that he was going to a psychologist. He wrote that for the first time he was listening to his own recordings and each time realized how easily he had turned love into control.

At the end there was one sentence:

“If you can ever, I want Rose to know that I have changed.”

I looked at the letter for a long time.

Then I wrote a reply.

“Change is not proved by words. If you are ever ready, do it for Rose and not for me. I will not wait for you anymore.”

I sent the letter.

The next day there was snow on the windowsill. It rarely snowed in the seaside town, so as soon as Rose woke up in the morning she rushed to the window.

“Mom, the sky has come down!”

I stood beside her.

Everything outside was white. The roofs, the boats, the street stones. For the first time in a long while I felt no fear when thinking about the future.

Rose wrapped herself in the blanket, and the copper star sewn onto its corner flashed in the light of the snow.

I touched it with my fingers.

That night, when leaving the house, I thought I was taking only a small object with me.

In reality, I was carrying my child’s entire future.

The star was still shining.