I Came Across My Husband’s Signature at the Hospital, but When He Heard My Question, the Notary’s Face Changed

I stood in the hospital corridor and listened to my husband telling his mother that, if necessary, he would even deceive his own wife.

Outside, October rain beat fiercely against the windows. In my hand I held a small bag containing broth and a cottage-cheese cake prepared at home for Vera Nikolaevna. I gripped the bag’s handle so tightly that thin red marks appeared on my fingers. For twenty years I had done everything for this family, but behind that door I realized for the first time that perhaps I had never been a member of this family.

“Mother, are you sure?” Sergei’s voice was quiet but tense. “If Lyudmila finds out, she will complicate everything.”

“That is why she must not find out,” Vera Nikolaevna replied. “Sign in time, before the doctor comes.”

Then I realized that they were not alone behind the door. The rustling of papers was followed by a man’s calm voice.

“Here, here, and finally here,” the stranger said. “A signature on every page.”

I looked through the narrow gap in the door. Sergei was sitting beside the bed, holding a black pen. Beside him stood a tall man, taking documents from a leather bag. Vera Nikolaevna, leaning against the pillow, watched her son with such a satisfied expression, as if she had already achieved a long-awaited victory.

“Is all this for Kostya?” Sergei asked.

“You will receive it first, and then transfer it to him,” his mother said. “I cannot do it directly in his name. I do not trust Olga.”

Sergei put the pen on the paper.

“What should I tell Lyudmila?”

“Nothing. The less she knows, the better it will be for everyone.”

Something broke inside me. The sound of the rain suddenly seemed very far away. I heard only the click of the pen and my breathing, which was catching in my throat.

I knocked on the door.

Sergei jumped up immediately.

“Lyuda? You are here?”

“I came to see your mother,” I said, forcing a smile. “Am I disturbing you?”

The stranger nodded at me.

“Igor Semyonovich, notary.”

“Nice to meet you,” I answered, although the sharp smell of paint coming from his leather bag made me nauseous.

Sergei quickly gathered the papers.

“Mother simply had one matter to settle.”

“At the hospital?”

“She is ill, Lyuda,” Vera said sternly. “Can a person not even dispose of her property before death?”

“She can,” I said calmly. “I am simply interested in why you hid it from me.”

Sergei looked away. I knew this movement well. For twenty years he had always done this when he was lying.

A nurse came and placed Vera’s medicines down. She picked up the glass, but her hands were shaking so much that half the water spilled onto the blanket.

“Do not worry, Mother,” Sergei told her. “Everything will be as I promised you.”

These words frightened me more than they reassured me.

“What did you promise?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he answered quickly.

“Then why did all this look like a secret agreement?”

Vera Nikolaevna looked at me with a cold smile.

“You have always loved interfering in other people’s affairs.”

At that moment, for the first time, I did not feel shame. I felt only cold.

Sergei followed me into the corridor and closed the door behind him.

“My mother is in a serious condition,” he told me. “Now is not the time for a quarrel.”

“I am not going to quarrel. I want to know what you signed.”

“The transfer of the apartment and the country house.”

“To whom?”

He was silent for several seconds.

“To me. Then we will transfer it to Kostya.”

“Why did you not register it directly to Kostya?”

“Mother does not trust Olga.”

“And why do you not trust me?”

Sergei lowered his eyes.

“You have nothing to do with it.”

“That is exactly the problem, Sergei. I have been your wife for twenty years, and at every important decision I am left outside.”

He ran his hand through his hair.

“I will explain at home.”

“Explain it to me now.”

His face was tense, but the words seemed to have been prepared in advance.

“Mother asked me. I could not refuse her.”

“That is not all,” I said.

Sergei looked at me. For the first time that day, fear appeared in his eyes.

“What do you mean?”

“What are you hiding from me?”

He did not answer me. He only took his phone from his pocket and looked at the screen. At that very moment, Vera Nikolaevna’s frightened voice sounded from the ward:

“Sergei, do not tell her! It is not possible yet!”

My husband turned toward the door. I followed behind him, because I realized that now someone would finally say what the whole family had been trying to hide…

Sergei put his hand on the doorknob, but I stepped in front of him.

“Now no one will be able to tell me that nothing is happening.”

Vera Nikolaevna buried her face in the pillow. The blister pack of medicines on the table beside her bed was trembling.

“Mother, you yourself told me that Lyuda must not know,” Sergei said.

“I was ill,” she sobbed. “And you are my son. You should have protected me.”

“From whom?” I asked. “From me?”

Sergei fell silent.

The notary, who was still in the room, awkwardly put his bag together.

“Madam, it would be better for you to speak with a lawyer separately.”

“That is exactly what I intend to do.”

I went into the corridor and found one number in my old phone. It was Marina, my former colleague and now a lawyer. I called her.

“Tell me, what did he sign?” she asked.

“I do not know. But something is not right.”

“Then find a copy of the document. And do not sign anything that Sergei offers you.”

At that very moment Sergei called me.

“Lyuda, let us go home. I will explain everything there.”

“I will not go alone.”

I saw irritation flash across his face.

“It is my family.”

“I am your family too.”

Marina quietly said to me over the phone:

“Return to the ward. Look at what was left on the table.”

I returned. Beside the bed, under the documents, I saw a folded sheet. Sergei noticed my movement and reached toward it, but I was faster. I picked up the sheet.

My name on the very first line froze me.

Then, at the bottom, I read one sentence that stopped my breathing…

The sheet slipped from my hand, but it did not fall to the floor. Sergei caught it in the air.

“Give it to me, Lyuda.”

“Why does it say here that I consent?”

“It is only a formal entry.”

“Without my signature?”

Silence fell over the room. Raindrops collided with one another on the window, while the silver clasp that had slipped from my hand fell to the floor with a clatter. My mother had given it to me for my birthday, and I had carried it on my bag for years. At that moment its small crescent shape struck my eye so clearly, as if I were looking into another world.

“Igor Semyonovich,” I said to the notary, “is this my consent?”

He looked at Sergei.

“Madam, I only certified the property-transfer document.”

“Which property?”

“The apartment and the country house. Sergei Vladimirovich is indicated as the owner.”

Vera Nikolaevna closed her eyes.

“Then I will transfer it to Kostya,” Sergei said. “Did I not explain it to you?”

“No. You told me it was for Kostya. You hid from me that you were first registering it in your own name.”

“Because I had no other way.”

At that moment Marina entered the ward. Drops of water ran from her umbrella onto the floor, and she held a small recorder in her hand.

“You had a way, Sergei,” she said. “It simply was not beneficial to you.”

Sergei stepped back.

“Who are you?”

“Lyudmila’s lawyer.”

“I did not ask for a lawyer.”

“Now you have one.”

Marina put the recorder on the table and switched it on. Sergei’s voice sounded in the room, clear and cold.

“If you do not sign today, the bank will take the house from you. And I will no longer be able to promise you anything.”

Vera Nikolaevna exhaled heavily. Sergei’s face changed.

His voice continued in the recording:

“We will tell Lyudmila that everything remains with Kostya. Then I will sell the apartment and pay off the debts. Mother will not understand what happened anyway.”

The recorder stopped.

I looked at Sergei.

“What debts were you talking about?”

He opened his mouth, but could not say a word.

Marina placed a second document on the table.

“Bank statements. During the last six months, hundreds of thousands were transferred from your husband’s account to gambling platforms. This transfer of property was planned for its sale, not to help Kostya.”

“This is illegal,” the notary said quietly.

“I only signed,” Vera whispered. “He told me that if I did not do it, they would collect the debt from me and leave me on the street.”

Sergei turned toward his mother.

“Mother, you did not want it to be this way.”

“I wanted you to protect my house,” she replied. “But you used my fear.”

Sergei came over to me.

“Lyuda, I swear, everything will be fixed. I simply needed time.”

“Not time. You needed a new lie.”

Marina took out her phone.

“I have already sent the request to cancel the documents. I have also handed the recording over to the police.”

Sergei froze.

“To the police?”

“Yes.”

At that moment his phone rang. The bank’s number was visible on the screen. He did not answer. The call repeated a second time, then a third.

Marina stood by the window and quietly told me:

“This is only the beginning. The bank has found something else now.”

“What?”

She held the screen out to me. There was one message there, whose last line froze my blood: my signature was recorded as guarantor for Sergei’s debts, although I had never seen such a document.

Sergei looked at my face and realized that I had already read everything.

“Lyuda, listen to me…”

But this time I no longer listened to him. Because heavy footsteps were approaching in the corridor, and someone said at the door:

“Madam, we must find out how your signature ended up on this document…”