Part 4 — When My Mother-in-Law Hit My Little Daughter in Front of Everyone, My Husband Lowered His Eyes and I Was Afraid for the First Time

After Marina’s last words, the room fell silent as if all the windows had closed at once.

Luka jumped up.

“This is a family matter. There is no need to bring a notary here.”

“On the contrary,” Marina replied. “Now it is precisely a notary that we need.”

Wendy waved her hand at him.

“Do not exaggerate. This is merely a property matter.”

“The property matter became the reason for taking the child away,” I told her.

Luka took out his phone and called someone.

“Mother, tell her to stop.”

Wendy turned her head.

“You should stop her yourself.”

At that moment Luka saw for the first time that his mother was no longer protecting him. Wendy was thinking only about her own house, her own money, and her own plan.

The notary came an hour later. He carried a wooden-colored bag and a thin golden pen, on whose top a small ship was engraved. He placed the document on the table.

“This is an additional statement drawn up by Wendy Morrison three weeks ago,” he said. “Its coming into force depended on certain conditions.”

Luka’s voice failed him.

“What conditions?”

The notary looked at the document.

“If Luka sought a divorce from his wife, or attempted to restrict Jessie’s parental rights, his share of the property would pass into an independent fund to be used for Fiona’s education.”

Wendy’s face went pale.

“You were not supposed to read that.”

“You yourself gave it to me to read,” the notary replied.

Luka collapsed into the chair.

I stared at the document.

Wendy’s entire plan had turned against her. She was afraid of Luka losing the money, while Luka was afraid of his mother’s inheritance. Therefore they were trying to blame me and get Fiona into their hands in such a way that I would appear to be the initiator of the divorce.

Marina closed the remaining documents.

“We are now beginning two cases: protecting the child’s safety and investigating financial fraud.”

Luka raised his head.

“Jessie, please. I did not know Mother would go this far.”

“You knew she was planning something.”

“But I wanted to return to you.”

“Returning and admitting a mistake are not the same thing.”

He covered his face with his hands.

That same evening his lawyer refused the case.

“You concealed important information from me,” Dato told Luka. “I cannot represent a person who hid a conspiracy against the child’s safety.”

“You are my lawyer!”

“I am not anymore.”

The next day, at nine in the morning, the recording was officially heard at the police station. There was a metal table in the small room, and a lamp flickered every few seconds.

Wendy’s and Luka’s own words became evidence against them there.

When Luka said in the recording, “Just make Jessie leave us,” he lowered his eyes.

The judge stopped the audio.

“Mr. Luka, is that your voice?”

He was silent for a long time.

“Yes.”

“And what did you mean?”

Luka heard his own voice from the outside for the first time. It sounded so helpless that his shoulders drooped.

“I wanted to avoid an argument.”

“Protecting your child is not avoiding an argument,” the judge said.

That day Wendy lost the right to see Fiona. Luka could meet her only under supervision until the investigation was completed. The bank stopped his suspicious transfers, while the money placed in the fund remained protected in Fiona’s name.

The hardest thing of all was returning home.

Several days later the apartment was empty. Luka had taken away most of his belongings. In Fiona’s room only the bed, a wooden duck, and one photograph hanging on the wall remained.

In the photograph the three of us stood by the sea. Fiona was still a baby then. Luka was holding her and smiling.

I took the photograph down from the wall.

That same evening Fiona opened her little bag. She took the yellow sunflower clip from the inside pocket and fastened it in her hair.

“Grandmother won’t come anymore?” she asked.

I knelt down.

“Now only people who will never frighten you will be with you.”

“Father too?”

This question took me the longest to answer.

“Father can change if he truly wants to. But it is not your responsibility to change him.”

Fiona rested her head on my shoulder.

“You shouldn’t cry either.”

“I am crying now because I did not cry for a very long time.”

Several weeks later we moved to a new city. It was a small apartment on the fourth floor, and from the kitchen window the bus stop could be seen. In the morning I made coffee, tied Fiona’s shoes, and we left the house on foot.

I started a new job at a children’s library. There children laughed loudly, pencils fell onto the floor, and no one asked me to apologize for someone else’s rudeness.

Fiona drew a sunflower on the library wall. The sun on the paper was very large, and there was not enough yellow color for the petals.

“This is you,” she told me.

“Me?”

“Yes. Because you light the way.”

In the first week of winter, snow came. When I opened the window in the morning, I found the street white. Fiona went into the yard in little boots and counted each footprint.

Luka came once, together with a supervisor. Fiona looked at him, but did not hold out her arms. Luka saw this and did not force anything.

“I know that I lost you,” he told me at the yard gate.

“You chose silence yourself.”

“Could you ever forgive me?”

“Forgiveness is possible. Returning is not.”

He lowered his head.

Months later I received his last message. It said that the investigation against Wendy had been completed, she had been ordered to compensate the financial damage, and Luka himself was undergoing mandatory counseling. At the end he added only one sentence:

“If we ever become a family again, please do not close the door completely.”

I looked at the screen for a long time.

Then I answered:

“I am not closing the door out of revenge. It is simply that now peace lives in my home.”

I sent the message and put the phone aside.

That evening I brushed Fiona’s hair. She held out the yellow sunflower clip to me.

“Should I wear this tomorrow too?”

“If you want.”

“I want to. It is my sunflower.”

I fastened the clip in her hair. Snow fell silently by the window, while a small lamp shone in the room.

For a long time I thought that family was a place where you had to give yourself up so that others could have peace.

Now I knew that family is the place where a child does not have to hide her face.

Fiona enclosed my hand in her small hands.

And I straightened the yellow sunflower in her hair.

This time it did not shift to the side.