Part 4 — I Met the Woman Who Disappeared Six Years Ago at the Airport, but at the Sight of the Children My Mother Stopped Smiling for the First Time

“Ethan, this is not only about the children. Your mother has stated in court that all your property should be temporarily frozen because you are psychologically unstable.”

For several seconds no one moved.

Then Salome put the phone into her pocket.

“They are waiting for your panic.”

“And if I don’t give it to them?”

“Then we will give them the truth.”

Below, Margaret was already standing at the hotel entrance. The sound of her heels was clearly heard in the lobby. Irakli followed beside her, holding the new folder as though everything were already finished.

There was a knock at the door.

“Open up, Ethan,” my mother’s voice sounded. “You are destroying yourself.”

Claire gathered the children into the corner.

“Can they take us away?”

“No,” I told him, although I did not yet know how I would fulfill that promise.

Salome opened the door.

Margaret entered the room and immediately looked toward the children. Her face was cold, but for the first time I noticed fear in her eyes.

“Stop all this,” she told me.

“You should have stopped it six years ago.”

Irakli put the folder on the table.

“Here are documents proving that Claire left on her own and that you renounced fatherhood.”

“With your signature?”

“With your signature.”

Salome put the memory card on the table.

“And this recording.”

The color disappeared from Margaret’s face.

“This was obtained illegally.”

“Perhaps,” Salome replied. “But then explain to us why Irakli says in the recording that he used an old signature sample.”

Irakli looked at my mother.

“I never said such a thing.”

Salome turned on the audio.

I heard my own mother’s voice in the room.

“If you come again, they will take the children away from you. I will do it easily.”

Claire lowered her head. Nico covered his ears with his hands.

Then Irakli’s voice sounded.

“I used the old sample, as you told me.”

Margaret struck the table with her hand.

“It is edited!”

“Then why don’t you sue the owner of the recording?” I asked.

She had no answer.

Irakli pushed his chair back.

“I will no longer participate in this case.”

My mother turned toward him.

“You cannot leave.”

“I already have.”

He took his ring from his pocket and placed it on the table.

“All the files in my office have been handed over to the investigator. The bank transfers, letters, audio, and dates of preparation of the document. I will no longer put myself against your son.”

My mother lost control for the first time.

“You worked with me for twenty-three years!”

“And for twenty-three years I thought I was protecting the family. Now I understand that I was protecting only one person.”

The police officers entered the room. One of them handed Margaret a document.

“You must come with us for questioning.”

“I was protecting my own son!”

“You are suspected of creating a forged document, making threats, and organizing financial fraud.”

Margaret looked toward me.

“Ethan, tell them this is a mistake.”

I looked into her eyes.

“I waited six years for you to tell the truth at least once.”

“I was protecting your family.”

“No. You were protecting your own power.”

Irakli stopped at the door. A new message arrived on his phone. He showed the screen to Salome. It was a notice from the bank: the freezing order on Margaret’s accounts had taken effect.

My mother saw the message and suddenly sat down as though strength had left her legs.

That night we went to the hospital because Claire had been dizzy for several hours. The doctor said it was from stress, but both of us knew that six years of fear could not disappear in one night.

In the morning my lawyer met with the police, a social-services representative, and a child-protection specialist. They spoke with Nico and Luka separately. The boys said that they trusted their mother, but wanted to stay with me because I had told them for the first time that I would not go anywhere.

The court made a temporary decision: the children would remain with Claire, and I would begin the procedure of legally acknowledging them. The DNA result confirmed what my heart already knew.

They were my children.

In the very first week, my company’s board of directors suspended all of my mother’s powers. The thirty-eight-million-dollar deal did not collapse, but I did not go to New York alone anymore. Claire sat beside me and read the documents while Nico and Luka built a house from wooden blocks in the hotel’s small sitting room.

One day Irakli arranged a new meeting in the investigator’s room.

A large speaker for the audio recording had been installed there. The police brought Margaret and her lawyer. My mother sat on the other side of the table. Her hair was perfectly combed, but her hands were clasped together so tightly that her fingers were trembling.

“Let’s listen once more,” said the investigator.

The recording was turned on.

“Ethan will not return to you.”

Margaret closed her eyes.

“If you come again, they will take the children away from you.”

Claire raised her head and looked at my mother.

“That is your voice.”

Margaret could not answer.

Then Irakli’s words about the old signature sounded.

Margaret hid her face in her hands.

For the first time I heard my own voice repeat her words. The recording ended and silence fell in the room.

“You said this,” I told her.

“I was trying to preserve the best life for you.”

“You stole my children from me.”

“Claire did not belong to your family.”

“The children did not belong to you either.”

Then she heard her own words through someone else’s mouth for the first time. And at that very moment she understood that she could no longer convince me that she had done all this because of love.

Several weeks later we emptied my mother’s house. No one lived there. Expensive furniture stood in the rooms, but the emptiness was stronger than any object.

On the shelf of my old office I left only one thing: the broken wheel of the blue suitcase. Claire could not repair it and threw the suitcase away, but she kept the little wheel in her pocket.

“Why are you keeping this?” she asked me.

“So I never forget how close you were to me and how late I saw you.”

“You did not lose us, Ethan.”

“But they made us lose each other.”

Three months later the court officially transferred the case against my mother to the prosecutor’s office. Irakli became a witness. Margaret was deprived of the right to manage the company, and all the accounts of our family foundation were taken over by an independent administrator.

I felt no joy about this story.

Only exhaustion.

Claire decided to move from the apartment to a small country house. There, in the mornings, we could see trees from the window, and the kitchen always smelled of cinnamon and toasted bread. I worked in the city three days a week and spent the rest of the time with the children.

Nico chose a soccer ball.

Luka loved drawing.

One evening Luka handed me a sheet of paper. Four people were drawn on it. One had large ears, one had yellow hair, and the two small figures had black dots on their eyebrows.

“This is us,” he told me.

“Why am I so tall?”

“Because you were gone for a long time and now you have to take up a lot of space.”

I laughed, and then went into the kitchen so the children would not see my tears.

In winter the first snow came. Nico woke me early in the morning. Luka held a small drawing in his hands, in which all four of us stood in the snow.

That same morning my mother wrote to me.

“Come at least once. I am still your mother.”

Salome told me that I could add the letter to the case materials. I looked at the screen for a long time.

Then I replied.

“You are my mother, but I am no longer the person whose life you control. I wish you to learn to remain alone with your choices.”

I wrote nothing else.

Claire stood at the door, holding the small wheel of the blue suitcase. It now lay on a wooden shelf together with the children’s drawings.

“Are you ready?” she asked me.

“For what?”

“To begin a new life.”

It was snowing outside. Nico and Luka ran in the yard, and their laughter filled the house.

I touched the wheel, then opened the door.

This time no one was losing us.