Part 4 — He wanted to buy my seat in the cinema hall for thirty thousand dollars, but Vincent Moretti turned pale after my answer

Luka’s second copy was supposed to go to my mother’s lawyer, but that night the lawyer turned off his phone.

Alvarez already knew the address.

We left the cinema at the same time. It was raining outside. Red neon letters on the asphalt broke apart and came together again, as if the city too could not decide whether to believe this story.

Moretti stood among the police.

His face no longer resembled the person shown in newspaper photographs.

“You cannot touch the lawyer,” he said.

“We are going to protect him,” Alvarez replied.

“He is my lawyer.”

“From this moment, he is not.”

Moretti took out his phone.

“Thomas, answer me. Right now.”

The call ended.

He called again.

Nobody answered the second time either.

Moretti looked toward me.

“You do not understand what you are doing.”

“All my life people told me exactly that when I was getting close to learning the truth.”

“Do you want money?”

“No.”

“Then what do you want?”

I remembered my mother’s face. Her small kitchen. The green cup whose handle was broken. That last morning she asked me whether I would return early in the evening.

“That no one else should die because of your silence.”

We found the light on at the lawyer’s office, but the door was open.

Alvarez took out her gun.

“Wait for me outside.”

“No.”

“Eva, that is an order.”

“I already waited once in my mother’s case. I will not wait a second time.”

Inside, everything was upside down. Books lay on the floor. The cabinet door had been torn off. Only one thing remained on the desk—my mother’s old wooden calendar.

Behind it we found a small key.

Moretti saw it and immediately turned pale.

“Where did you find that?”

“Do you know which door it belongs to?” I asked.

He chose silence.

We went down into the basement.

An iron cabinet stood against the wall. The key opened the door. Inside were folders, bank receipts, a list of names, and one small camera.

Alvarez switched on the camera.

In the recording my mother was sitting in that same basement. Her hair fell over her shoulders and her hands rested on her knees the way they did when she had been preparing for a long time to say something.

“Eva, if you ever see this, know that I did not want to leave you. I was protecting you. But if Vincent comes to you, do not try to save him. Sometimes a person must be led to the consequence of his own choice.”

In the video the door opened.

My mother looked behind the camera.

“Vincent, you should not have come.”

Moretti lowered his head.

The recording carried his young voice.

“I need only one signature, Nora.”

“You already have everything.”

“No. You still have a conscience.”

“That is exactly why I will not sign.”

Moretti’s hand appeared on the screen. He was holding a small metal object. After several seconds the camera fell to the floor, but the sound continued.

“Do not touch the car, Vincent.”

“Then do not force me.”

Then noise.

Then silence.

Moretti leaned against the wall.

“I do not remember this,” he said.

“But do you remember your voice?” I asked.

Alvarez rewound the recording and raised the volume.

“Then do not force me.”

Moretti was listening to his own words.

For the first time I understood what it means when a person cannot escape himself.

He did not fall to his knees. He did not cry. He simply sat down on a chair and covered his face with his hands.

“I only wanted to frighten her,” he said.

“My mother died.”

“Someone else damaged the brakes.”

“But you gave the order.”

Alvarez closed the folder.

“Vincent Moretti, you are under arrest for destruction of evidence connected with Nora Bennett’s death, extortion, and other crimes.”

He raised his head.

“Eva, tell her that it was not like that.”

For the first time there was no strength in his voice.

Only a plea.

I looked toward him.

“All my life I tried to convince people like you that my pain mattered. Now I am not going to convince anyone anymore.”

Alvarez put handcuffs on him.

When we left the basement, the rain had stopped.

Luka was still in the hospital. I went to him in the morning. He was standing by the window and had a cast on his arm. His face was bruised, but his eyes were alive.

“I had seen your film,” I told him.

“You saw it in the end after all.”

“I was sitting beside Moretti.”

Luka smiled weakly.

“That is why I chose that seat.”

“You knew I would be there?”

“I knew that if someone threatened you, you would still stay. You had been like that since childhood.”

“Why did you not tell me everything?”

He looked out the window.

“I was afraid the truth would kill your mother a second time.”

I sat down beside him.

“The lie hurt me longer.”

In a few weeks the city learned our story. The newspapers wrote about Moretti’s warehouses, hidden accounts, and the people who had remained silent for years. The trial began, but I did not attend every hearing.

For me, his punishment was no longer the main thing.

The main thing was that my mother’s name was spoken aloud again.

Luka slowly recovered. He filmed the second part of his film. This time the father no longer offered the son a gift. He simply stood at the door and listened for the first time.

And I began working at a new job—a small investigative bureau where I checked financial fraud. Every morning I took the subway. I held coffee in my left hand, a folder in my right, and no longer checked who was following me.

Three months later the first snow came.

Luka was visiting in my small apartment. He sat at the kitchen table and looked through my mother’s old photographs.

“Do you remember how afraid we were?” he asked.

“I remember.”

“Now?”

I went to the window. Children were making a snowman in the yard.

“Now I am afraid only that I will not get used to peace.”

Luka picked up my mother’s photograph.

“Peace also has to be learned.”

That same evening I received a letter from Moretti.

It was one page.

“Eva, I know that I do not deserve forgiveness. But I want you to know that I never hated your mother. I loved my own greed more than I loved her. If you ever want to see me, I will be ready after the trial.”

I read the letter to the end.

Then I folded it.

Luka asked me nothing.

“You will not answer?” he asked me at last.

“I will.”

On the back of the paper I wrote only one sentence: “Bearing the consequences of your actions is no longer my responsibility.”

I sent the letter back.

That night I opened the box of my mother’s belongings. At the very bottom lay the silver pen on which a small moon was engraved.

The very pen that I had found in the box in that cinema.

I placed it by the window.

In the morning the first ray of sunlight touched its metal moon and painted a small bright spot on the wall.

For the first time this light no longer resembled a sign of the past.

It resembled a road.

And I walked toward it.