Part 4 — They Banned a Six-Year-Old from Entering the Hospital, but the Receptionist’s Smile Immediately Disappeared at the Squeak of the Wheel

After the call from the bank, the same heavy silence that had fallen while listening to Mother’s recording descended over the room again.

Marika closed her eyes.

“I did not withdraw it,” she said.

The policeman put the phone to his ear.

“At exactly what time?”

Mother lay on the bed. Her voice was still weak, but it no longer disappeared beneath the oxygen mask.

“Only Irakli and I had access to the account,” she said. “But he was at the house this morning.”

“The bank confirmed that the money was transferred electronically,” the policeman answered. “The recipient is in another city.”

Irakli shouted from the corridor:

“I did nothing!”

“Then speak to a lawyer,” the policeman told him.

Irakli immediately demanded a telephone. A few minutes later an expensively dressed woman arrived, holding a leather bag and wearing an expression as if she had already prepared an answer for everyone.

“My client was helping a sick woman,” she said. “A child’s recording cannot be evidence in court.”

The policeman placed the red recorder on the table.

“The recording will undergo examination. We also have the glass, the messages, and the camera recording.”

The lawyer looked at Irakli.

“What camera recording?”

Irakli looked away.

At that moment I realized that he too had not known everything.

The policeman took us to the hospital’s small conference room. They turned on the recording from the house camera on the screen attached to the wall. The time showed two in the morning. Irakli entered the kitchen. He was holding a glass. Then he entered Mother’s room and locked the door from the inside.

The recording had no sound.

But a little later Irakli came out and called someone on the phone. He looked toward the camera and said:

“You will take everything in the morning. The woman will remember nothing.”

His own voice sounded in the room when the policeman also switched on the audio recording.

Irakli sat down on a chair.

“This… I did not say this.”

The lawyer closed her bag.

“Mr. Irakli, from this moment you will not oppose my advice. You will say nothing more.”

“You should be able to defend me!”

“I cannot defend a lie.”

That was the first moment when Irakli heard his own words from someone else. He raised his head, as if another man were standing in the room and that voice belonged precisely to him. Then he covered his face with his hands.

The policeman put handcuffs on him.

“You are under arrest for endangering the lives of children, fraud, and attempted violence.”

I did not celebrate this.

I stood beside Mother’s bed and thought only about how many nights Lia had slept in the cold while I was looking for the way.

The next morning the twins were transferred to a special unit. Luka wore a plastic bracelet on his little hand, while Lia had a transparent tube by her nose. The doctor told me that both would survive, but they would need several days of observation.

Mother stayed in the hospital for three more days.

When we finally returned home, the doors were no longer sealed with a police seal, but the house still seemed unfamiliar to me.

There was one glass on the kitchen table.

Empty.

Beside it lay Mother’s old wallet. Inside it remained only a bus ticket and my small, crumpled drawing. In the drawing we stood holding hands, four people, and above us I had drawn a yellow sun.

They had taken the things from Irakli’s room.

Only one nail remained on the wall.

That evening Mother told me:

“You will never again have to carry something so heavy alone.”

I sat beside her.

“Then why did you leave me?”

Mother’s face changed. She had probably feared this question most of all.

“Because I thought I could stop him with your help. I was wrong. I was very afraid. But this was never your fault.”

“Then it wasn’t my fault either that I took the cart?”

“No, Nino. Your only fault was that at six years old you became brave like adults.”

A few weeks later Mother began working in a small library. And I returned to school. The teacher placed my desk by the window so that every morning I could see the trees in the yard.

The twins recovered well.

Luka cried loudly when he was hungry. And Lia always sucked her left finger and clung to my shirt before sleep.

We moved to another city. Into a small apartment where the door had two locks and the window in the kitchen opened wide.

Mother checked the stove every evening.

And every night I went to the twins’ bed and listened to their breathing.

The first winter snow came. The white flakes crossed the same path in the yard along which I had once dragged the cart.

Luka and Lia did not yet know words, but they stood by the window and pressed their hands against the glass.

“It’s snow,” I told them.

Luka burst into laughter.

And Lia clung to Mother’s knee.

That day, when I returned from school, I found a letter on the table. My name was written on the envelope. The handwriting was Irakli’s.

Mother did not hide it.

“If you want, we can read it together,” she told me.

I opened the envelope.

Irakli wrote that he regretted it. He said he had not done everything for money. He asked me, when mentioning his name in court, to say that he had been afraid and was not a bad person.

At the end was one sentence: “Nino, you are the only one who can save me.”

I looked at these words for a long time.

Then I folded the paper into four.

“Won’t you write him an answer?” Mother asked.

“I already did.”

“What did you write?”

“Nothing.”

Mother nodded. For the first time I did not ask whether I was doing the right thing.

The trial took place several months later. I entered there only once, holding Mother’s hand. Irakli lowered his head when my voice sounded from the recording.

“He said that Mother was simply sleeping.”

At that moment he heard his own voice not from the telephone, but from me.

The judge heard all the evidence. Irakli’s guilt was proven. The children’s account was restored, the house documents remained in Mother’s name, and people were assigned to us who helped when Mother had difficulty working.

But the court’s decision was not the most important thing.

The most important thing was that after that day Mother no longer stayed silent.

She began working at a women’s support center and told the people who came there:

“If someone assures you that your fear is nothing, trust your own heart.”

And I arranged a small corner in the library. I put children’s books, pencils, and one old toy cart there.

Its wheel no longer squeaked.

One evening Lia put a doll in the cart and asked me to roll it around the room. I took hold of the handles, but stopped immediately.

Mother looked at me.

“Do you want me to take it?”

“No,” I said. “Now it is light.”

That small house key, on the brown strap, still hung around my neck. Only this time it no longer meant the house where fear awaited me. It meant the door that I myself had saved.

Outside, the first snow was still falling.

I pressed the key to my heart.

And I quietly closed the door.