Part 4 — Nineteen Years Later, My Son-in-Law Quietly Fired Me, but His Face Changed When He Heard My Calm Answer

The phone almost fell from my hand.

Everyone in the room was looking at me.

“Who is it?” Martin asked.

I could not answer. I heard the voice again.

“Clara, do not tell them that I am here. Not yet.”

“Grandfather?” I barely said.

A short silence fell on the other side of the line.

“Child, you can still save your family.”

Martin leaned toward me.

“This is impossible. Arthur died twelve years ago.”

Edward reached his hand toward the phone.

“Give it to me.”

“No,” I said. “First I have to listen.”

That same day, at five in the evening, we went to a small clinic located on the outskirts of the city. The road was covered by rain. Raindrops struck one another on the windshield, and I could still hear the light tapping of the old pen that lay in my bag.

The room was on the third floor. A security guard stood by the door.

“The patient left this recording only for Clara,” the doctor told us.

Martin followed behind.

“I am a family member.”

“You cannot enter this room,” the doctor replied.

For the first time Martin lost control.

“Do you know whom you are talking to?”

“Yes,” the doctor said. “A man who did not even introduce himself to the patient by his own name.”

I entered the room.

An old man sat by the window. His hair had turned completely white, and his right hand trembled when he moved. But his eyes were the same. The eyes that, in childhood, told me that I must never shout louder than the noise of the factory.

“Grandfather.”

“You have grown,” he told me.

“You died.”

“That was the only way they could not reach you.”

I sat down beside his bed. Anger, relief, and hurt overwhelmed me at the same time.

“Who are ‘they’?”

Arthur lowered his eyes.

“The people who were planning the company’s bankruptcy and used my death. I lost my memory after the accident, but one nurse saved me. When I remembered everything, I already knew that there was only one way to protect you: to make you think that you were alone.”

“And during all these nineteen years you told me nothing?”

“There was a person beside you whom I could no longer trust. Your father, my son, had made an agreement with them.”

My heart tightened.

“Father?”

Arthur took a small wooden box from under the bed. It had one burned spot on top.

“This is the second piece of evidence. Your father’s accounts, transfers, and a recording in which he admits the agreement with Martin’s family.”

At that moment I realized that my dismissal had not been only Martin’s ambition. Someone bigger was driving him.

In the clinic corridor, the telephones began ringing all at once.

Edward opened the door.

“The police have arrived. Because of transfers from the company.”

Martin stood by the window and could not say a word.

“You promised me that she did not own the shares,” he told the lawyer.

The lawyer closed his bag.

“I promised you only that I would defend you within the limits of the law. And now you yourself told me that you fired Clara from the company by hiding her authority.”

“This conversation should not have been recorded.”

Edward put the phone on the table.

“That is exactly the problem. Everything was recorded.”

Martin looked toward me.

“Clara, let us make an agreement.”

“About what?”

“You will become chairwoman, and I will remain chief executive.”

“After the person who said that I should disappear with a cardboard box?”

“This is business.”

“No, Martin. This is fear.”

The police officer put handcuffs on him. I did not greet his arrest with joy. I felt only tiredness. The person who had protected his own lies for years was finally crushed by their very weight.

In the following weeks everything happened quickly. The financial audit confirmed that more than a million had been transferred to companies created by Martin. My father admitted his participation, but at the meeting that remained with us he could not look me in the eyes.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.

“I thought that if I stood on your side, my father would take everything away from me.”

“He had already taken my childhood away from me.”

That was the last conversation I had with him.

Three months later, Grandfather left the rehabilitation center. I arranged a small room in the old house for him, and put a wooden work desk by the window. In the mornings he read the factory accounts, while I spoke with the new employees.

The company was slowly changing. The warehouse supervisor laughed for the first time at a directors’ meeting. Nidia remained my right hand and every morning placed lemon tea on my desk.

One evening my seven-year-old daughter, Elene, entered Grandfather’s room and handed him a sheet of paper.

“I drew this for you,” she told him.

In the drawing, Grandfather, I, and she herself were standing in front of the factory. There was a sun above us, and in the corner a small box was drawn.

“Why did you draw this?” I asked.

“Because everything started over again from that box.”

My throat tightened.

“Were you afraid when they fired you from work?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Then why didn’t you cry?”

Grandfather answered for me:

“Because your mother knew when she should wait.”

The first snow came at the beginning of December. I woke early in the morning, opened the window, and heard the distant factory siren in the noise of the street. My silver pen lay on the table. Grandfather’s crown had already worn away, but the trace of his fingers could still be seen on it.

That same day I received a letter from Martin. It was from prison.

“I miss our family. If you change your statement, I will explain everything to you.”

I looked at the sheet for a long time.

Then I put it in the trash can.

Not because I wanted him to be punished. Simply, for the first time I was no longer obliged to continue proving my own truth to him.

In the evening Elene picked up my pen.

“Can I draw with this too?”

“No,” I laughed. “It still writes heavy stories.”

She carefully returned the pen to me.

Grandfather stood at the door and watched us.

“Now you can sign,” he told me.

“What?”

“Your life.”

Outside, snow was falling silently. In the room lay the silver pen, just as it had nineteen years before, when I thought that everything had ended.

This time the box was empty.

And I was no longer.