Part 4 — After the Birth of Three Children, the Doctor Declared My Wife Poisoned, and the Smile of the Woman Standing Beside Me Suddenly Disappeared

The message was still flashing on the screen when noise came from the lower floor of the hospital.

Someone forced open the security door.

Alexi led me to the window. Two black cars stood below. Three men got out of them. One held a phone in his hand, and the other held a box of documents.

“Who are these people?” I asked.

“People who were helping Vanessa,” Alexi said. “And they probably want to take away the evidence now.”

Vanessa stood up.

“I did not call them.”

“But they know about the safe,” I said.

“Mason, listen to me. The safe is in your old office. There is nothing there that will not put you in danger.”

“That is for me to decide now.”

Then Doctor Bennett opened the door.

“Your wife is waiting for you. You may enter only for a few minutes.”

Mariam was lying on the intensive-care bed. Her face was pale, an oxygen tube was at her lips, and three different machine wires were attached to her wrist. But her eyes were open.

I bent down beside her.

“I’m here.”

Her fingers moved barely.

“The children?”

“All three are fine. Luka is crying loudly. Niko does not open his eyes. And Elene is annoying everyone.”

A tear appeared in the corner of Mariam’s eye.

“Open the safe,” she whispered.

“What is inside?”

“The truth. And a recording.”

“Whose recording?”

Mariam closed her eyes.

“Yours.”

Those words frightened me more than Vanessa’s confession.

We arrived at the old office at two o’clock at night. The building was no longer registered in the name of my first company, but a rusty sign still hung at the entrance, which I had nailed up myself twenty-five years earlier. The safe was built into the wall, behind a bookshelf.

Vanessa had already been handed over to the police, but her lawyer was waiting for us in the building. He blocked the door.

“You cannot open this safe without my client’s permission.”

Alexi handed him a folder.

“I have an emergency court order.”

The lawyer read it, then shook his head.

“I am no longer participating in this case. I received one call from you, and that is already enough.”

“Why?” I asked.

In response, he held out his phone to me.

It was a recording.

First Vanessa’s voice could be heard.

“Mason will sign. Mariam will not be able to resist.”

Then my voice was heard.

“If anything happens to the company, all of Vanessa’s accounts must be checked. I trust her completely.”

Hearing my words from my own mouth struck me as if someone in the room had hit me. Months earlier I had said this phrase at an ordinary meeting. I trusted Vanessa. So much that I opened every door for her.

The recording continued.

Vanessa was saying:

“His trust is the easiest key.”

Silence fell over the room.

The lawyer lowered his eyes.

“I did not hear this,” he said. “But now I understand.”

We opened the safe.

Inside lay Mariam’s passport, several bank statements, a small memory card, and a folded sheet on which, in my handwriting, was written: “If you are reading this, it is already too late to lie to yourself.”

Mariam’s voice was recorded on the memory card.

“Mason, if you are listening to this recording, Vanessa has already gone too far. She called me three months ago and told me that your company’s debts had been covered by her. Then she demanded that I tell you as if I were preparing something against you. I did not believe her. Therefore she obtained my old medical records and tried to forge your signature.”

Mariam coughed in the recording.

“The main thing is that money did not disappear from your company’s accounts. That money had been going to other companies for years. All of them were in the name of your father’s old partner, Richard Vale. Vanessa was not acting alone.”

Vanessa’s surname was Vale.

Her father was Richard Vale.

The man who filed a lawsuit against me during my first major contract and then mysteriously disappeared.

Mariam’s voice sounded:

“Your father had lost everything because of him. Now he is using your company to reclaim an old debt. Vanessa is only the daughter carrying out orders received from her father.”

There was another file on the memory card. It showed Richard giving Vanessa a small white cup.

“Mariam must be silenced,” Richard was saying. “Mason will sign the documents when he thinks he is losing his family.”

At that moment Vanessa received a call from the police. Alexi turned on the phone’s speaker.

“Where is Father?” she asked.

Vanessa’s voice could be heard from the other side.

“If you have come this far, Mason, you already know that everything is over.”

“No, Vanessa. Only now has the truth begun.”

“You lost me anyway.”

“No. You left on the day you made Mariam’s life the price.”

She said nothing for several seconds.

Then for the first time I heard her begin to cry.

Mariam returned home six weeks later.

By that time Vanessa and her father had been arrested. The court returned the company accounts to me, the forged agreements were canceled, and the hospital records became the main evidence in the case. Vanessa’s lawyer gave testimony. He said that he refused to help Vanessa at the moment he heard the recording.

I was not happy about their defeat in court.

I simply no longer tried to protect them from the consequences they had chosen themselves.

The hardest morning came when I entered Mariam’s room in the old house. The bed was empty. On the windowsill lay her silver hair clip. The one on which traces of the toxin had been found.

I did not touch the clip.

I only looked at it for a long time.

Eight months later we opened a small family center in the southern part of Atlanta. Mariam provided free medical consultations there to young mothers. I converted the old warehouse into a rehabilitation space for children.

Luka was already clinging to the walls.

Niko left colored pencils everywhere.

And every evening Elene asked me:

“Dad, will you stay home today too?”

“Today too,” I answered.

One morning the first snow began. The children went to the window. Elene drew our family on paper: four large figures, three small children, and the sun above the house.

“Why is there no night here?” I asked.

“Because the night has already passed,” she answered.

That same day I received a message from Vanessa on my phone.

“I met you only once. I want to explain to you.”

I looked at the screen for a long time.

Then I wrote a reply.

“I have already heard your explanation. Now my family needs peace.”

And I deleted the number.

In the evening Mariam picked up the hair clip.

“Did you want to throw this away?” she asked.

“No. I simply no longer want that night to define our life.”

She fastened the clip to my shirt.

“Then wear it for a new reason.”

Outside the window, snow was quietly falling on the street. Three children were running around the room, Mariam was laughing, and for the first time in a long while I was no longer waiting for the door to open, a new call, or another traitor.

The silver clip was worn close to my heart.

The night was over.