Part 4 — My Mother-in-Law Sold the House and Demanded the Keys to My Apartment, but My Answer Erased Her Smile for the First Time

Carla’s voice fell silent for several seconds. Car horns could be heard on the other side of the phone.

“What document?” I asked.

Mauricio immediately lost color.

“Ana, don’t listen.”

“Tell me,” I said to Carla.

“He took out a loan in my name. He made me sign a blank sheet, as if it were a work form. When I realized how he had used it, it was already too late.”

Elene looked at Mauricio.

“What did you do?”

“This is a family matter,” he shouted.

Levan calmly took the phone.

“It is not anymore. Now this is a legal matter.”

Mauricio leaned toward me.

“Ana, please. Everything will be fixed.”

I looked into his eyes. For the first time in eight years, I was no longer trying to justify myself to him.

“No, Mauricio. You simply want me to fix the consequences again.”

That same morning, Levan called the relevant agency. Carla sent the documents, bank messages, and correspondence electronically, in which Mauricio threatened her that if she went to the police, he would put all the blame on me.

Mauricio began walking around the room. The wooden floor creaked with every step.

“Mother, why did you sell the house?”

Elene looked at him in bewilderment.

“You told me your wife would transfer the apartment to us.”

“I said she would arrange it.”

“You told me the signature was almost obtained already!”

“Be quiet!”

Their shouting collided with one another. I sat on the chair and looked at the keys lying on the table. They were the old keys to my apartment, with a small copper-colored charm on which my mother had had a little window of the house cut out when I was a child. For years it had hung from my bag and quietly struck against the metal with every step.

Levan saved the camera recordings onto a flash drive.

“Mrs. Ana, all of this will be submitted to the court. But before that, your husband must leave the house.”

Mauricio raised his head.

“This is my house too.”

“No,” I told him. “You only lived here.”

He stopped.

Levan played the recording in the same room where we were standing. Mauricio’s own voice sounded:

“She will forgive me everything anyway.”

In the recording Carla was laughing. Then Mauricio’s voice could be heard saying that I was too guilty, too conscientious, and too frightened to dare to leave.

Mauricio lowered his head.

For the first time he heard his words not as a victor, but as a stranger who was listening to his own cruelty.

“I didn’t mean it that way,” he whispered.

“But that is what you said,” I answered.

By noon his lawyer arrived. The man opened the folder, read two sheets, and immediately closed it.

“I will no longer participate in this case,” he announced.

Mauricio looked at him in astonishment.

“What does that mean?”

“You concealed the loan documents and the false signature. I cannot defend this.”

Mauricio struck the wall with his fist. Our wedding photograph in its frame shook.

I took the photograph down.

We were both smiling. In that picture we still believed that love was not only a promise, but responsibility as well.

Mauricio packed his bag. Almost nothing remained in his room except one open drawer and an old shirt thrown on the floor, whose collar had already become worn.

Elene stood at the door.

“Where will we go now?” she asked me.

I had no answer for her. Her house had been sold, and the money had disappeared into Mauricio’s debts. But I could no longer save her life on the ruins of my own life.

“The lawyer will help you,” I said calmly.

Elene lowered her head.

That evening, when the door closed behind them, silence fell over the house for the first time. Not the silence created by suspicion. Real silence.

Two weeks later, the court issued a temporary order. Mauricio was forbidden to approach me. Carla gave an official statement. He admitted the betrayal, forgery, and attempted financial fraud. The case continued for months, but I no longer waited for someone to live in my place.

When I left the court, Carla was waiting for me by the stairs.

“I’m sorry,” she told me.

“You are not responsible for his choice.”

“But I believed him too.”

“Now we both know what kind of man he was.”

She nodded, and for the first time I saw that her eyes were tired too. No hostility remained between us. Only two women stood there whom one man had tried to use against each other.

Three months later I moved into a new apartment in the Americana neighborhood. The walls were still empty. In the morning I heard the bells of trolleybuses through the window, and in the kitchen I turned on the small coffee maker my mother had given me.

I began working at a legal company. At first I was afraid every day that I would not be able to do something. Then I realized that life had taught me to solve other people’s problems during eight years.

In the evenings my nephew, Luka, would visit me. Once he drew a house for me on the floor with colored pencils.

“Is this yours?” I asked.

“Ours,” he answered. “The door is big here so bad people cannot come in.”

I laughed, but my eyes filled with tears.

Mauricio wrote to me for the first time after three months.

“Come, let’s talk. Mother misses you too. Everything could have been different.”

I looked at the message for a long time. Then I sent only one reply.

“I wish you would find peace with your choices. I am not going to return to your life.”

He called again. I did not answer.

The next day another message arrived.

“You are still my wife.”

I turned off the phone.

The divorce was finally approved six months later. When I left the courthouse, the first snow was falling. Snowflakes landed on black umbrellas and turned into little silver points in the light of the streetlamps.

My mother told me that she was proud of me.

“You got back not an apartment, but yourself.”

I smiled.

When I returned home, I put the old keys on the table. The small copper window still hung on my charm. Earlier its sound frightened me, because it reminded me of Mauricio’s footsteps.

Now, when I moved the key slightly, only the door of my home sounded.

I locked the door.

And for the first time, that sound resembled freedom.