Part 4 — My son pushed me down the stairs, I saw his face for the first time in years — and when I fixed my gaze on him, Andrei turned pale

“I have already sold the house…”

Andrei’s words hung in the room.

Someone knocked hard on the door.

“Police. Open the door.”

Andrei stepped back.

“Marika, if you say anything now, they will take Lev to a shelter.”

His last weapon was still the child.

I looked at Lev. He was hiding behind Natalia, but with his eyes he was looking only at me.

“Open the door, Andrei,” I said.

“You don’t understand what you are doing.”

“For the first time I know exactly what I am doing.”

The door opened. Two police officers entered, and behind them stood my lawyer, Elene. She held a brown folder in her hand, whose corner she had been clutching with her fingers the whole way.

“Mr. Andrei,” one police officer said, “we have several questions for you.”

“This is a family matter.”

“No,” Elene answered calmly. “This is forged medical records, forced medication exposure, illegal alienation of property, and concealment of a child’s origin.”

Andrei looked at her.

“You are my lawyer.”

“No longer.”

This was the first moment when Andrei lost control. He looked around the room, as if expecting help from someone. Natalia lost color.

“Andrei, tell them that we planned everything together.”

“It is not my fault now that you panicked.”

Natalia froze.

Then I realized that their love had not existed as I had thought even then. They needed each other only as long as the lie protected them both.

Elene placed the telephone on the table.

“Repeat it once more, Mr. Andrei.”

“What?”

She turned on the recording.

His own voice sounded in the room: “Seven years ago your body would not have endured a pregnancy… we wanted a family…”

Andrei raised his head.

“This was recorded illegally.”

“Perhaps,” Elene answered, “but it is your own voice.”

Natalia’s whisper sounded in the recording: “How long were you planning to hide it from her?”

Andrei sank into a chair.

For the first time he was hearing his own words through someone else’s ears.

And I was looking at my own house. Our family photograph still hung on the wall. For seven years I had thought that picture preserved my life. Now it was only evidence of how long I had looked at a lie with my eyes closed.

The police officer put handcuffs on Andrei.

“The house is sold,” he said. “You cannot do anything to me.”

Elene opened the folder.

“The sale agreement was registered this morning. But your wife’s consent is absent from the apartment owners’ registry. The signature is forged.”

Andrei looked at me.

“Marika, I was doing this for you.”

“No. You were doing this from me.”

He did not continue the word.

That same evening I went to the clinic. The doctor told me that I had not permanently lost my sight; there had always been a chance of its returning slowly, but the medicines I had received hindered the nerve’s recovery.

“Now everything will be corrected,” he told me.

“Not everything,” I answered. “But what remains, I will build myself.”

When I returned home, I found the door to Lev’s room open.

The bed was empty. Only a small wooden car lay on the pillow. And on the windowsill stood our photograph, except Lev had crossed out Andrei’s face on it with a pencil.

I picked up the music box from the floor. One wing of the copper bird was broken.

That night I hardly slept.

Three days later Natalia contacted me.

“Lev stayed with me,” she told me. “But he wants to talk to you.”

“I will come.”

The air in Natalia’s apartment was full of the strong smell of lavender. Lev was sitting by the window and turning the wooden car.

“Are you no longer my mother?” he asked.

I sat down in front of him.

“I raised you. For seven years I came into your room every night when you were afraid. No one can take that away from you.”

“But they say Natalia is my real mother.”

“Natalia is your birth mother. And I am the person who was in your life. These two things cannot take each other away.”

Lev lowered his head.

“Then why couldn’t you see me?”

The question took my breath away.

“Because I was ill and the adults made bad decisions. It is not your fault.”

“When I pushed you on the stairs, did you see me then?”

“Yes.”

“Did I hurt you very much?”

“The body—yes. But what hurt me most was that you too thought I did not love you.”

Lev came to me and put his arms around me. His hair touched my face. This time I did not draw back.

The case against Andrei continued for months. The court annulled the forged documents, stopped the sale of the house, and established that for years money had been transferred from my accounts to other people.

Natalia confessed to the crime and temporarily lost custody rights over Lev. She did not avoid imprisonment, but I did not ask the court for the strictest punishment against her.

I simply told the truth.

Andrei confessed to the crime. His lawyer was changed for the second time. He tried to contact me several times, but every letter went to Elene.

One of them said: “Give me a chance to explain everything to you.”

Elene asked me:

“Do you want us to send an answer?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“For seven years I listened to his explanations. Now I prefer silence.”

Six months later I moved to a small coastal town. There the sound of the sea reached the house, and in the morning the smell of damp stone came through the window. I began working part-time in a library. I arranged books, read aloud to children, and every day learned to look at the world anew.

The first snow came at the beginning of December.

Lev was with me that day. In the yard he made a small snowman and put my old wool hat on its head.

“Can you see well now?” he asked.

“Well enough to see your lie too.”

He smiled.

“And my drawing?”

He handed me a sheet of paper. On it were drawn the sea, a small house, and two people. A third figure stood slightly apart from them.

“Who is this?” I asked.

“Father,” he answered. “He is still there, but he no longer lives with us.”

I looked at the drawing for a long time.

At last Lev told me:

“You can leave when you want. I will no longer force you to stay.”

This time I took his hand.

“Now staying is my choice.”

In the evening I returned home alone. The music box stood by the window. The copper bird still had its broken wing, but I repaired the mechanism. I lifted the lid.

Three notes sounded.

Before, this sound reminded me of the house where I had lived with my eyes closed. Now it reminded me that even in the quietest room one can find one’s own truth.

Andrei’s last message appeared on the telephone: “It snowed today. I wish you were watching too.”

I looked at the screen for several seconds.

Then I deleted it.

I went to the window. Snow was falling outside. White flakes were reflected on the glass of the music box.

I could still see.

And this time my life was being written before my eyes.