Part 4 — My Husband Was Kicking Me Out of the House with His Lover, but at My Calm Reply, Both Stopped Smiling at the Same Time

David’s voice sounded louder than the car engine for several seconds.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Don’t go down there alone.”

The call ended.

Marcus immediately took out his telephone.

“Don’t believe David. He is saving himself.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you either.”

“Serafina, think. Whatever is in that basement, don’t drag the children into this scandal.”

Nora had already called the police. Several minutes later, two cars appeared at the corner of the street. My children got out of the back seat and ran toward me. Leo was still holding the small plastic dragon he used during the video game.

“Mom, who are these people?” Zuri asked.

I knelt down and hugged them both.

“They are people who will take care of our safety.”

Marcus stepped toward me.

“The children will stay with me.”

“Not today,” Nora said.

“You have no business in our family.”

“I am the woman who has already handed the recording and the financial documents over to the police.”

Marcus lost control for the first time. He struck the wooden doorframe with his fist. A thin splinter broke off the wooden surface and entered his finger.

“I did everything because of you!” he shouted at Sarah. “You told me she had nothing!”

Sarah froze.

“I only advised you how to protect the family.”

“You told me Elias would leave nothing!”

He uttered these words with his own mouth. Both of them fell silent.

The police officer played the audio recording once more. This time Marcus forced himself to listen to it to the end.

“We’ll make her sign everything we need.”

His voice returned to the veranda, already from a stranger, but it was still his.

Marcus covered his ears with his hands.

“I didn’t say it like that.”

“You did,” I said.

“I don’t remember.”

“I remember.”

Nora looked at me. “Now you can go inside the house.”

For seven years this house had seemed like a prison to me. I opened the door and for the first time thought that perhaps the prison was only because the key was in someone else’s hands.

A large photograph of Marcus hung in the living room. He was smiling there, holding a champagne glass in his hand. Below it, on the shelf, lay my only personal item — a small wooden compass made by the children. Leo drew its arrows, while Zuri surrounded them with circles of red paint. For seven years it had stood on the table, and Marcus had said more than once that it was “childish junk.”

That evening I took the compass.

In the bedroom, I found my closet almost empty. Sarah had already chosen what should be taken. The clothes packed into my bags lay on the bed, as if someone had sorted my life like goods returned from a store.

Marcus called me from the doorway.

“My lawyer says that the property was not acquired during the marriage, so fighting you may be possible.”

“It may be.”

“But we can make an agreement. Leave the house to me, and I won’t contest custody of the children.”

“This is not a negotiation. It is a threat.”

“You won’t be able to handle all this alone.”

“For seven years I handled everything alone beside you.”

The next day Nora brought me tickets for the trip to New York. Before we left, the police took Marcus and Sarah for questioning, while David hired his own lawyer and handed over all the financial documents.

Three days later he warned me that the key to the basement in Elias’s building stored not simply property, but old recordings.

“Marcus was only the executor,” David told me by telephone. “Sarah came up with the plan. She knew they could not touch your inheritance if they first portrayed you as incapacitated or financially dependent.”

“Why are you helping me?”

“Because for the first time I saw how far we had gone. And because my wife is no longer the woman with whom I created a family.”

He asked for a meeting.

In New York, on the lower floor of Elias’s building, an old elevator opened with a heavy iron door. The smell of dust, paper, and cold stone stood in the basement. I found a metal cabinet by the wall. The key was inserted into the back of the small wooden compass.

“Elias left this for you,” Nora said.

I turned the key in the lock.

Inside were letters, bank records, and a video recording. In the very first video, Sarah could be seen meeting Elias in his office. She asked how much he would leave for me and how it would be possible to “persuade” me to transfer the entire fortune into the children’s names.

In the second recording Marcus said that if he suddenly started the divorce, I would become emotionally confused and sign.

Everything was confirmed.

Sarah was charged with fraud and a property conspiracy. David chose cooperation and admitted part of the responsibility. The court temporarily restricted Marcus’s right to meet with the children, and then gave him a suspended sentence because he had tried to destroy some of the evidence. The house and all the joint property ultimately remained with me.

I was not happy about their punishment.

I simply no longer felt that saving them from the consequences of their decisions was my duty.

Six weeks later I moved out of the Atlanta house. I arranged a small, bright apartment on the seventh floor of the New York building. In the mornings I walked the children to school. In the afternoons I brought my consulting work into the large office, where the city rooftops could be seen through the window.

Leo found a robotics club with the neighboring children. Zuri drew every evening. Her favorite drawing was of four figures with a yellow sun drawn above their heads.

We met the first snow together.

Leo placed his hand on the window.

“Mom, can we stay here forever now?”

“If you want.”

“I want to.”

Zuri seized my hand.

“No one will call you a parasite here?”

My heart contracted, but I kept my voice calm.

“No, sweetheart. And if anyone calls you that, we won’t stay there anymore.”

Several months later I received a letter from Marcus. It was short. He wrote that he had become a changed person, that he missed the house, and that he wanted to start everything over for the children.

At the end he added: “You also know that once we loved each other.”

I sent him an answer in only one sentence.

“I may love the past, but I no longer want to return to it.”

Then I deleted the letter.

I placed the small wooden compass on my desk. The red-painted circles made by the children had worn off a little, but the arrows still showed the correct direction.

One morning Leo asked me why I kept it.

“Because for a long time I thought others had to show me the way,” I answered.

“And now?”

I went to the window. The city was white. Zuri called to me from the room with laughter.

“Now I know the way myself.”

I took the compass in my hand and for the first time it no longer seemed to me that it was pointing toward the past.

It was looking ahead.

And I went.