Part 4 — When Margaret was suffocating an unconscious patient lying in a hospital with a pillow, someone suddenly shouted beyond the door

After Emily’s message, everyone in the room moved at once.

Mason picked up the phone.

“We must record this number.”

“She says she is alive,” I said.

“Someone may have stolen her number.”

“But the text says something that only she knew.”

Ethan suddenly grabbed the phone.

“This is a trap.”

Mason seized him by the wrist.

“Do not touch the item.”

“This is my wife’s phone!”

“Now it is evidence.”

Ethan turned toward the door, but two police officers stepped in front of him.

Margaret stood by the wall and stared at the handcuffs.

“Emily is dead,” she whispered.

“If she is dead, then why were you frightened?” I asked.

She raised her head.

“You know nothing.”

“Then tell me.”

For the first time Margaret could not find an answer.

Mason saved the call record in the phone and looked at me.

“Claire, we will take you from here to a secure department. Your husband will no longer be able to approach you.”

“And Emily?”

“I will send a group to find her.”

Ethan smiled bitterly.

“You believe an unknown message?”

Mason leaned toward him.

“You yourself said that Emily died by suicide. Now you know exactly that the message is a trap. Why?”

Ethan’s smile disappeared.

That night I was taken from my hospital room under escort. In the corridor, the white lights went out and came on one after another. My broken silver hair clip remained on the bedside table.

I looked back at it.

I could not take it.

For the first time in my life, leaving something behind did not mean losing.

The next morning the police found Emily near an old monastery. She was truly alive. She had lived under another name for three years in a small mountain village because she considered escaping from Ethan’s family the only way.

When she entered my room, she held a black umbrella. Her hair was cut short, and the same scar as in the photograph could be seen on her cheek.

“Forgive me for not contacting you earlier,” she told me.

“Did you think I could not protect you?”

“I thought they would harm you as they had harmed me.”

When I heard her voice, I did not feel anger. I felt only weariness.

“Did you know Ethan would act like this?”

“I knew his mother would do anything. But Ethan chose to stand beside her.”

Emily sent me an audio recording that had been kept in an old device for years. In the recording Ethan was telling his mother:

“Emily’s death was enough. We only need to frighten Claire.”

Then Margaret’s voice could be heard:

“If you stop even once, everyone will find out what you did.”

Ethan denied this recording immediately. Then in the courtroom the judge read the conclusion of the voice examination.

Ethan was sitting several meters from me.

For the first time I heard his words through someone else’s mouth.

“We only need to frighten Claire.”

“Emily’s death was enough.”

His face slowly changed. It was as if he understood for the first time that these phrases came from him and that he could no longer erase them.

The lawyer whispered something into his ear.

Ethan shook his head.

“I will not confess.”

“I will not continue this anymore,” the lawyer told him.

“What?”

“You have three witnesses, a video recording, an audio recording, and financial evidence. I can no longer defend a lie.”

Margaret looked toward her son.

“You are abandoning me too?”

Ethan answered nothing.

The court sentenced both of them to imprisonment. Margaret for attempted murder and covering up the old case, and Ethan for murder, attempted murder, and financial fraud.

When I left the courthouse, I felt neither joy nor revenge.

Only that for the first time I could breathe freely.

Six weeks later I did not return home from the hospital. Ethan’s house no longer looked like home to me. I sold the apartment and moved to a small coastal town where the sound of the sea woke me in the mornings and the neighbors did not know my past.

In the physical-therapy room I stood every day on the same small wooden step.

In the first week I took three steps.

In the second week, five.

In the third week I leaned the cane against the wall and walked independently.

Emily worked nearby, in the town library. We met every Friday. Sometimes we talked. Sometimes we simply drank tea in silence.

One evening she asked me:

“Do you still dream about the balcony?”

“Sometimes.”

“And what do you do in the dream?”

“This time I lock the door.”

Several months later I began working in a small pastry shop. In the mornings there was the smell of cinnamon, and in the evenings raindrops gathered on the windows. My hands still hurt, but I could knead dough.

One morning my six-year-old neighbor girl, Nina, came to me and gave me a drawing. In the drawing there was a house, an open window, and a woman holding a small silver moon.

“This is you,” she told me.

“Why do I have the moon in my hand?”

“So that you do not get lost in the night.”

I hung the drawing on the kitchen wall.

That same week I received a letter from Ethan. It bore a prison stamp. Only several sentences were written.

“Claire, now I understand that everything began with my mother. I was only her son and had no choice. Please, listen to me at least once.”

I read the letter to the end.

Then I wrote a reply.

“You always had a choice. You simply did not do what was safe for me.”

Then I did not send the letter.

I folded it and put it in the trash bin.

That night Emily called me.

“Did he write to you again?”

“Yes.”

“Did you answer?”

“No.”

“Was it difficult?”

I stood by the window. The sea shone black, while my old hair clip lay on the table. After I returned from the hospital, the security officer sent it to me in a small box. The broken moon was in two pieces, but I kept both pieces.

“It was difficult,” I answered. “But I no longer need his conviction that I am not a bad person.”

The next day I took it to a craftsman. He repaired the hair clip, but the crack still remained.

And I no longer wanted to hide the crack.

I put the clip back in my hair and went to the shore. The wind was blowing strongly. After several steps my hair fell across my face, but this time I did not stop.

I sat on a small stone by the sea and looked into the distance.

Margaret’s hands no longer touched me.

Ethan’s voice no longer interrupted my sleep.

The lie of Emily’s death was finished too.

And I was alive.

The broken moon-shaped clip shone in the sunlight.

And for the first time, it no longer reminded me of that night.

It reminded me that to survive, sometimes you simply have to let the door go behind you.