Part 4 — The Doctor Gave My Children Ten Days to Live, and a Destitute Woman Appeared at the Gate—and My Guard Suddenly Began to Turn Pale

Crosby is already in the house…

Prescott drew his weapon, but I seized his hand.

“No one goes in alone to the children.”

“Mr. Mercer, the southern sensors are turned off.”

“Then turn on the alarm for the entire house.”

In the following minutes the phones began ringing at the same time. Security scattered from room to room. Images appeared and disappeared on the cameras. The palace, which had been a fortress to me for years, suddenly turned into a trap.

Mara looked toward the children’s room.

“They have to leave here.”

“We cannot move them. Jonah can barely breathe.”

“Then we have to start here.”

I looked at Doctor Yates.

“Prepare the transplant.”

He stepped back.

“You will need another team for that.”

“Then call them.”

“No one can come in without my permission.”

“I no longer need your permission.”

Prescott took out a second phone.

“I have already contacted the city children’s clinic. Their team is on the way.”

Yates covered his face with his hands.

“You do not understand what you are doing. If the children do not survive, this whole affair will still be blamed on you.”

Mara looked at him sternly.

“And what will you say if the children survive?”

He did not answer.

A few minutes later the security team found Crosby in the southern corridor. He was holding a phone and standing by the door lock. When I entered the room, he put on his usual calm smile.

“Adrian, this is all a misunderstanding.”

“You entered my house through a secret entrance.”

“I used a flaw in your security system.”

“You reached my children’s room.”

“I wanted to help them.”

I went closer to him.

“Help does not look like a threat.”

Prescott placed his phone in front of him and played the recording. Crosby’s own voice sounded:

“If the children die, Adrian will have no choice. He will sell the shares, sign the fund over, and I will take everything back.”

Crosby froze.

His voice continued to circle through the room. First he looked at the phone, then at his own hands, as if he could not believe that these words had really come from him.

“It is edited,” he whispered.

“You said it yourself,” Prescott replied.

“Adrian, listen to me. I was only trying to protect your business.”

“At the price of my children’s deaths?”

He could not find an answer.

At that moment Doctor Yates entered as well. He was holding his medical bag, but he no longer looked strong and confident. He took a phone from his left pocket and handed it to Crosby.

“We had an agreement,” he told him.

Crosby turned his face away.

“Shut up.”

Everything became clear.

Doctor Yates had been deliberately giving the children treatment that worsened their condition. And Crosby had been waiting for me to lose my strength and sign over the property.

Prescott called the police.

“Both of them stay here,” I said.

“You will regret this,” Crosby told me.

“Probably. But for the first time you will have to carry the consequences of your own decisions.”

The police arrived ten minutes later. Yates did not resist. Crosby, meanwhile, kept repeating that everything was his wife’s fault.

His voice sounded in the children’s room.

Blythe woke up.

Mara sat beside her bed and took her hand.

“Don’t be afraid, little one.”

Blythe opened her tired eyes.

“Who are you?”

Mara pressed her lips together so as not to cry.

“A person who was always beside you, just from far away.”

Blythe looked at the old copper pin attached to Mara’s fingers.

“It is a beautiful moon.”

“I kept it for you.”

“Is it mine now?”

Mara nodded.

“Now it is yours.”

The emergency team arrived. The children were taken to the clinic. The transplant began at night.

Mara and I sat in the hospital corridor. White strips of light spread across the floor. Beside her lay the small cloth bag with which she had first come to my gate.

“Why didn’t you come earlier?” I asked.

“Because Genevieve paid me to leave. Then Crosby’s people frightened me. When I learned that the children were dying, I had nothing left to lose.”

“Did you hate her?”

“No. Genevieve loved me. She was simply afraid.”

In the morning the doctor opened the door.

“The transplant worked. It is still too early for a final conclusion, but both children are responding.”

I stood up, although I could not find the words.

Mara lowered her eyes.

Three weeks later Jonah got out of bed for the first time. Blythe held out her hand to him.

“Let’s go together.”

“Together,” Jonah replied.

I followed behind them, and for the first time in a long while the sound of my steps no longer resembled a funeral procession.

An investigation began against Crosby and Yates. Their records, transfers, and camera footage proved sufficient. Crosby changed lawyers twice. The third time, his lawyer refused to continue the case at all.

One day in court Crosby heard his own voice once again. The recording was played in the same room where he had previously ruled everyone.

“If the children die, Adrian will have no choice.”

Crosby lowered his head.

I did not look toward him.

In the following months my house changed. I installed new cameras on the southern wall, but armed guards no longer stood at the children’s door. Mara received a small room whose window looked out onto the old pear tree in the garden.

Jonah still collected stones. Blythe drew every day. In one drawing there were four people: me, Jonah, Blythe, and Mara. A yellow sun was drawn above them, although it was snowing outside that day.

“Why isn’t Mom here?” I asked carefully.

Blythe put down the pencil.

“She is.”

“Where?”

“Where we remember her.”

Mara lowered her eyes. And I understood that knowing the truth did not take love away from the children. They simply gave love more room.

Six months later the first snow came to Chicago. When Jonah returned from school, he built a small snowman on the stairs. Blythe put an old hat on its head.

I went to my new job at seven every morning. I sold part of my company and used the money to create a foundation for children’s rare diseases. For the first time in my life I was no longer using money to hide my fear.

Mara worked at the clinic. Three times a week she went to the children, spoke with other parents, and told them that sometimes, to find an answer, you have to go beyond even the most protected walls.

One evening my old phone lit up. It was a message from Crosby.

“I have lost everything. Only you can change the situation. Come and let us talk.”

For several minutes I looked at the screen.

Then I deleted it.

A second message arrived.

“We were once like brothers.”

This time I wrote a reply.

“I will no longer save you from the consequences.”

I blocked the phone.

That night I entered the children’s room. Jonah was asleep, while a sheet of paper lay beside Blythe’s pillow. There was a new drawing on it: four hands clasped together.

A small copper pin hung on the door—the one Mara had worn on the collar of her dress that day. Blythe had hung it there herself because she said the moon protected the door.

Outside the window, snow was falling silently.

I touched the pin.

This time it was no longer a sign of a lost past.

It had become the key to the house.