Part 4 — My Ex Asked Me to Kiss Her in Front of Everyone, but After My Answer, the Smile Suddenly Disappeared from Her Face

“If you do not come by evening, everything will be published with Owen’s signatures…”

I read the message a second time and then realized that for the first time throughout the entire night I was not afraid.

I was angry.

Natalie stood beside me, while Victor gathered the documents spread out on the table.

“Where is my father?” I asked.

“At St. Mark’s Hospital,” Victor replied. “But going there may be a mistake. The police are already waiting for your testimony.”

“Then that is exactly where I will go.”

Natalie gripped my wrist.

“Owen, it could be a trap.”

“For eight months we have been living in traps. At least once we have to find out who was setting them.”

We arrived at the hospital at twelve noon. A sharp smell of disinfectant stood in the corridor, and beside the wall my father, Leonard Bennett, was sitting in an armchair. His face was pale, and adhesive tape and a blood-pressure monitor were wrapped around his arm.

Two police officers were standing beside him.

“Owen,” he said.

There was no anger in his voice. Only exhaustion.

“They told me that you used my signatures.”

“Who told you?”

My father looked at Victor.

“He did.”

Victor stepped forward.

“Leonard, now you must tell the whole truth.”

My father lowered his eyes.

“Victor told me that you were stealing money. He told me that Natalie’s return was a step being used against you. I… believed him.”

Natalie’s voice trembled.

“You frightened me.”

“I know.”

“You told me that if I stayed with Owen, he would lose everything.”

“I know.”

“And you still forgave yourself?”

My father put his hands on his knees.

“Not every day.”

The police officer stepped forward.

“Mr. Bennett, can you confirm that these signatures are not yours?”

My father looked at the documents.

“Yes.”

Victor extended the memory card toward me.

“And this recording proves that someone edited Owen’s voice.”

We listened to the recording in a small conference room at the hospital. This time a sound expert was also sitting at the computer. He enlarged the waves on the screen and showed us each cut.

“Here the breathing stops,” he said. “Then the word has been inserted artificially. Here too. And here.”

Natalie was sitting on a chair, holding the little paper sun she had cut from the cake box.

I suddenly realized how long she must have carried that piece of paper. Probably because that night she could not bring me the truth and left only this.

“Dad,” I said, “why did you believe Victor?”

Leonard looked toward me.

“Because I was afraid you would not be able to keep your studio. Victor told me that if I did not sign against you, creditors would destroy your life. Then I heard your voice and thought that you had already given up too.”

Victor was standing at the door. The police officer put handcuffs on him.

“Are you saying that the money was transferred to his account?” the officer asked.

“Every transfer is confirmed,” Victor said. “But my assistant was involved.”

“Where is the assistant?”

Victor lost his composure for the first time.

“I can’t reach him.”

This was his last attempt to regain control. But that same evening the assistant himself appeared at the police station and handed over his phone. It contained messages in which Victor threatened Natalie, cut my voice, and supplied my father with forged documents.

Two days later Victor’s lawyer refused to continue the case.

“I cannot defend a man who lied even to his own clients,” he told journalists on the courthouse steps.

I was not there. The courthouse did not become a place of victory for me. There I only wanted, at least once, not to hide from my own truth anymore.

A week later Natalie asked me to enter the listening room with her. The forged recording was still in the computer there.

“Turn it on,” I said.

“Are you sure?”

“This time I want to hear it with my own ears.”

In the recording, my artificially assembled voice said: “Your door is closed forever.”

Natalie lowered her eyes.

“I left the city with those words.”

“And I thought you no longer wanted me.”

“We both turned someone else’s lie into our own truth.”

I listened to the recording again. This time I could clearly hear its falseness: between each word, breathing stopped unnaturally.

“Do you understand now?” Natalie asked.

“Now I understand how many things I did not ask you.”

She held out her hand. I looked at it and did not take it immediately.

“Love cannot return only because someone separated us,” I said.

“I know.”

“We have to learn to choose each other from the beginning.”

Natalie nodded.

In the evening my father called me and for the first time did not tell me what I had to do.

“Will you forgive me?” he asked.

“Not today. But maybe someday.”

“That is enough too.”

The next morning a police seal was affixed to the door of my studio. I went inside and saw that my work desk had been emptied. They had taken the microphone, only straight strips of dust remained on the shelves, and one object lay on the windowsill—the little paper sun drawn by Natalie.

The room was empty.

But for the first time emptiness no longer looked like an ending.

Three weeks later I rented a new studio in the northern part of the city. The walls were white, the floor was wooden, and morning trains could be seen from the window. I recorded my first audiobook for a woman who had used her own voice for years only for others.

Natalie came every Tuesday. She stuck illustrations on the wall, and we started everything again—from choosing coffee to difficult questions.

One evening she asked me:

“Do you still wear blue when you’re nervous?”

“Now I choose it deliberately.”

“Was that a lie too?”

“No. I’m just admitting it for the first time.”

She smiled.

Months later, in December, the first snow came. We were sitting in the small kitchen when Natalie drew a new sun on paper. This time the rays were even.

“This is better,” I said.

“Because now my hands are no longer trembling.”

My father came to the studio once a month. We did not talk much. Instead, one day he brought me the old microphone, which the police had no longer kept as evidence.

“This is yours,” he said.

“It was ours.”

“Now let it be yours.”

The court found Victor guilty of fraud and blackmail. His assistant testified. The loans taken in my father’s name were canceled, and no one took my studio away.

Natalie did not accept the new job she received from Portland. Not because she stayed for me. Because she opened her own small studio and, for the first time, made a choice without fear.

One morning, almost a year later, a message came to my phone from an unknown number.

“Now I understand everything. I know that I lost you. If you can ever, talk to me.”

It was not Victor’s number. Nor was it my father’s.

It was Natalie’s number.

She came into the room and stopped at the door.

“You don’t want to answer?” she asked.

I looked at the message once more.

“I do.”

“What will you answer?”

“What I should have said then.”

Natalie waited for me silently.

I typed: “I was never against you. But returning now is not enough only because of the truth. If you want to be with me, this time both of us must choose each other every day.”

A few minutes later, a reply came.

“Then let’s begin today.”

I opened the door.

A little paper sun lay on the windowsill. On the first evening Natalie had partly hidden it in the envelope because she did not dare to tell the truth. Now morning light fell on its rays.

I picked it up and attached it to the studio wall.

This time no one left.