Part 4 — The Eight-Months-Pregnant Woman Was Hit by Her Husband, but the Smile Disappeared from His Face as Soon as the Elevator Doors Opened

Andrei went to the window, but Viktor’s companion immediately blocked his way.

“Do not approach the glass,” he told him.

“That car is not mine,” Andrei said quickly.

“That is exactly why it is dangerous,” Marika answered from the phone.

The law-enforcement officers entered the room. One of them restrained Andrei’s hands behind his back, while the other read him his rights. Andrei still tried to give orders.

“Call my lawyer!”

“We already called him,” Marika said calmly. “He refused to defend you until he finds out why his fee was transferred from a false account.”

Andrei looked toward me.

“Elene, all this can be fixed.”

I placed my hand on my belly.

“No, Andrei. Fixing begins when a person admits what he has done.”

“I got angry because of you.”

“You hit me.”

“You were hiding the truth from me.”

“You hit me.”

“I only wanted to protect the family.”

“You wanted to control me and the child.”

His voice broke off. The words with which he had silenced me for years now stood against him.

The law-enforcement officer played the recording from the tablet. Andrei’s own voice sounded in the room again.

“You are nobody.”

“The child is mine too.”

“If you resist me, I will take you both away from me.”

Andrei stared at the screen.

“I did not say that.”

Marika answered:

“The recording was made by your house. The camera server has already been handed over to the court.”

“It is edited.”

“Then will you also deny the result of the audio examination?” she asked. “Not a single foreign insertion was found in your voice.”

Andrei opened his mouth, but could not make a sound.

For the first time, he heard himself through someone else’s ears.

And he realized that he could not escape the man he had presented as a hero for three years.

The black car soon disappeared from the street. The law-enforcement officers established that it was registered in the name of a private security company, while the driver turned out to be Andrei’s former employee. He had the clinic’s address and my presumed delivery date. In the car were copies of my old medical records and the maternity bag.

Andrei had secretly taken this bag out of the house.

He thought that after the child’s birth I would be more vulnerable.

That night Father took me to a private clinic in the city. Viktor sat silently beside me the whole way. Only at the hospital entrance did he tell me:

“You will never again have to hide yourself.”

“I still do not know how to live without hiding.”

“Then you will learn slowly. I am going nowhere.”

At the clinic, the doctor checked my condition. The baby was not in danger, but my blood pressure was very high. When the nurse fastened a white medical bracelet around my wrist, its paper edge rubbed slightly against my skin.

I smiled anyway.

That night Andrei was arrested on charges of violence, document forgery, embezzlement, and attempted illegal removal of the child. His partners began leaving the company. The banks froze the accounts. His mother, who had called me a money hunter for years, no longer came to me.

I was not happy about his punishment, nor about his downfall.

I simply was no longer going to save him at the price of my own life.

Two weeks later, the court issued a temporary restraining order. Andrei sat in the courtroom and, for the first time, was not wearing a perfectly tailored suit. When the judge heard my testimony, he was looking at the floor.

I did not shout.

I said everything exactly.

The time of the blow.

The words.

The threats.

The recordings.

The secret transfers.

The forged agreement.

After the court, I returned home. My room was empty. Andrei’s clothes had been taken, but one thing remained on the top shelf of the wardrobe: the black watch he put on every morning. It lay there as if his hand were still supposed to return to take it.

I put the watch in a box and locked the wardrobe.

The kitchen frightened me most of all. A small scratch from the glass he had smashed that evening was still visible on the marble floor. I could replace the furniture. I could polish the floor too. But I did not want to erase that day.

I wanted to remember where I had come from.

Three months later, my son was born.

At six in the morning, when the first snow fell on the city, I laid little Luka on my chest. His fingers grasped my bracelet. Viktor stood by the window and cried silently.

“Father,” I said, “you can come closer.”

He came and kissed the child on the forehead.

“If he resembles your mother, he will be strong.”

“If he resembles you, he will be stubborn too.”

Viktor smiled.

“Stubbornness is sometimes another name for survival.”

Several weeks later, I moved into a small apartment located by the river. It was not a palace. We had only four chairs in the kitchen, and Luka’s plastic animals were arranged on the windowsill. In the morning I brewed coffee, dressed the baby, and went to work at a legal counseling center.

There I helped women who thought they had no way out of the house.

I often told them:

“The first step is not always big. Sometimes it is only one call.”

Sometimes it is only one sentence.

“It is not my fault.”

When Luka was six months old, he drew a house on the wall with colored pencils. Beside the house stood three people: me, him, and Viktor. Andrei was not there.

I looked at the drawing for a long time.

“Mother, this is you,” Luka told me, placing his little finger on the red figure.

“I know.”

“Why is there no door here?”

“Because we are already inside.”

That same evening I received a message from Andrei. It was not from prison. In the letter sent through his lawyer, it said that he had changed, that he wanted to see the child, and that our family could still be saved.

At the end he had written one sentence:

“You are my wife and your place is beside me.”

I read the letter several times.

Then I called Marika.

“Do I have to answer?”

“Only if you want to.”

I went to the window. Snow was falling on the river, and the street lamps were breaking apart in the water.

“I want to,” I said.

The message was short.

“I am no longer your wife. Luka is not your property. My address will not change, but my life has changed. Please do not contact me again.”

After sending it, I turned off the phone.

For the first time, I did not check whether he would answer.

For the first time, I did not feel fear.

I still had my mother’s silver pendant with me. Its little cover moved slightly when I rocked Luka. Inside it there was still the old photograph of Viktor and me, but now I placed another picture beside it: Luka and me, by the river, in the first snow.

I closed the pendant and hung it beside the baby’s crib.

In the morning Luka woke up. Everything outside the window was white.

I picked him up and went into the kitchen. In that kitchen, where earlier one blow had defined my whole life, the kettle was now hissing peacefully.

Luka rested his head on my shoulder.

And I left the door open.

This time I had nowhere to go—I was home.