Sara told me that she alone would decide our meetings, but two weeks later she stopped at my door crying and her hand trembled

That evening Sara knocked on my door as if inside there lived not a person, but her last hope.

It was eleven at night. In the kitchen, the switched-on pot was quietly bubbling, while on the window glass raindrops collided with one another. When I went to open the door, I first looked at the small screen and saw Sara. With wet hair, mascara running down her face, and something white in her hand.

Two weeks earlier she had told me that from then on she would decide the times of our meetings herself.

And for the first time, I obeyed.

I opened the door.

“May I come in?” she asked.

“I thought you needed space.”

Sara lowered her eyes. She squeezed the object clenched in her hand more tightly. I immediately noticed that her left wrist was irritated red, as if she had forcibly removed a watch or bracelet.

“I know what I told you,” she said quietly. “But now I don’t know whom I should go to.”

I stepped aside. She came in and went straight toward the sofa. Wet shoe marks remained on the wooden floor. I stood by the door and tried to tell my heart that this was only longing and not new chaos.

I had been seeing Sara for a year and a half. At first I saw her three or four times a week. We cooked together, watched films at her apartment, and sometimes drove outside the city by car and looked for unknown cafés along the way. Her laughter then filled the whole room.

Then everything slowly changed.

First she canceled one meeting.

“I’m very overloaded at work.”

Then a second.

“I need to be alone for a while.”

Then the Wednesday dinners disappeared, the weekend plans turned into uncertain “maybes,” while my messages remained unanswered for hours.

Once she called me at midnight and said she wanted to see me. I went to her from the other side of the city. When I arrived, no one opened the door for me. In the morning she wrote that she had fallen asleep on the way.

I still tried to justify her.

Two months ago, in the evening, I wrote to her by phone: “Shall we go somewhere on Saturday?” Twenty minutes later a reply came.

“You keep asking to meet me. You’re suffocating me. I need space.”

I looked at these words for a long time. Finally I wrote that I did not consider asking to meet once a month pressure.

“That is exactly the problem,” she replied. “You always want to discuss everything face to face.”

“Then tell me, what do you want from me?”

“Don’t ask me anymore when we will meet. When I want to, I will contact you myself.”

I agreed.

The first days were difficult, but on the seventh day I realized something strange: I no longer checked my phone every five minutes. I started going to the gym again, met friends, and took my old guitar out of the cupboard.

On the tenth day Sara wrote to me: “I miss you.”

An hour later I answered: “I miss you too. Shall we meet this week?”

“I have plans this weekend. Perhaps next week.”

For several seconds, three dots appeared on the screen, disappeared, and appeared again. Finally she wrote only one sentence: “I absolutely must talk to you.”

Now she was sitting on my sofa and crying.

“What happened?” I asked.

Sara raised her head.

“First promise me that you won’t throw me out.”

“That already depends on what you tell me.”

She opened her hands. I did not immediately understand what the white object was. Then I saw two faint lines in a small plastic window.

My breath caught.

“David, I’m pregnant.”

Only the quiet bubbling of the pot could be heard in the room.

“And why did you come to me now?”

She did not answer me. She put her phone on the sofa, and the screen lit up at that moment. A message had been sent by one name.

“Tell him that you remember everything. If not, I will come myself.”

Sara saw the message and her face changed. She reached toward the phone, but I bent down to take it faster. I brought my finger to the screen and was about to open the message…

…but Sara grabbed me by the wrist and stopped me with such force that her nails dug into my skin.

“Don’t open it,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because you won’t be able to withstand this.”

Her voice no longer resembled that of the woman who had been crying at my door a few minutes earlier. Now there was fear in it. Real, heavy fear. I put the phone on the table, but still could not take my eyes off it.

“Who is it?”

“No one.”

“‘No one’ doesn’t write threats.”

Sara tried to stand up, but she became dizzy and leaned against the back of the sofa. A drop of water rolled from her wet hair down her neck. I brought her a glass of water from the kitchen. It was an automatic movement, as if I were still the man who solved all her problems in the very first minute.

“Is the child mine?” I asked.

Sara brought the glass to her lips, but did not drink.

“I don’t know.”

Those three words fell in the room more heavily than the news of the pregnancy.

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“David, please, don’t shout at me.”

“I’m not shouting. I just want an answer.”

“During that period… everything was messed up for me.”

“During that period I came to your door at night when you called me. During that period you told me that I was following you too much. Who else was there?”

Sara closed her eyes. The old wooden kitchen clock of mine on the table struck twelve times. It was the clock my grandfather had left me; with every strike its cracked chime seemed to add one more question to the room.

“Marco,” Sara said at last.

The name was familiar. I had met him once at Sara’s workplace. Tall, always in a perfectly ironed shirt, and with a smile that never reached his eyes.

“Is Marco your colleague?”

“He was.”

“Why ‘was’?”

Sara looked at the phone. Another new message arrived.

“If you don’t tell him today, tomorrow I will go to his workplace.”

This time I took the phone. Sara no longer stopped me. The message was from Marco. Several more old messages were visible below.

“Tell him that I only had friendship with you.”

“You yourself asked me to hide you.”

“Don’t you dare put everything on me.”

My stomach hurt. I slowly put the phone down.

“How long has this been going on?”

“About four months.”

Four months. Exactly when our Wednesday dinners disappeared.

“And what was I?”

Tears came to Sara’s eyes again.

“I felt safe with you.”

“Safe? When you avoided meeting me so you could be with someone else?”

“I didn’t want to lose you.”

“So you left me waiting?”

She lowered her head.

“Marco was married. He told me he would divorce his wife. Then he began threatening me. When I tried to end everything, he told me that he would send our correspondence to you.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I was ashamed.”

“The shame was not only yours. You dragged my life into this lie.”

Sara put her hand on her stomach.

“I want you to help me.”

“What does help mean?”

“Come with me to the doctor. Let’s find out the child’s paternity. If it turns out to be yours, I will end everything and we will start again.”

Her proposal was so cold and practical, as if she were offering someone dismissal from a job.

“And if it doesn’t turn out to be mine?”

Sara answered me, but at that moment the doorbell rang.

Once.

A second time.

Then a man’s voice sounded from outside.

“Sara, I know you’re here. Open the door.”

Sara looked at me, pale.

“Don’t open it.”

“Is that Marco?”

She nodded.

The handle on the other side of the door slowly went down. And only then did I notice that the pregnancy test was no longer in Sara’s hand. It lay on the floor, and beneath it there was a small folded paper.

“What is this?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Then why are you afraid?”

Marco shouted from outside the door:

“David, if you don’t know whose house you live in, you will find out now. Sara hasn’t told you everything.”

I looked at the lock. Sara was leaning against the wall, while Marco’s voice was drawing closer in the corridor.

I picked up the paper and opened its folded edge. On the very first line my name was written, and beneath it a date that my memory recognized immediately…

…it was the night when Sara called me and said she wanted to come to me.

The paper turned out to be a doctor’s laboratory result. It said that the pregnancy was approximately fourteen weeks along. Beneath it, another sheet was attached — the preliminary result of a genetic examination.

I still did not dare to read it.

“What does it say?” Sara asked me.

“You should know.”

“I know, but I cannot say it aloud.”

Marco was banging on the door again.

“Sara! Tell him that this child is mine!”

Silence fell over the room.

Sara closed her eyes. From her face disappeared the last hope that she could hide the lie one more time.

I straightened the paper and read aloud:

“According to the results, the DNA correspondence with the fetus’s presumed father is eighty-nine point nine percent.”

Sara began to cry.

“This is not a complete answer,” she said. “The doctor told me that additional testing was necessary.”

“But it is enough for me to understand: this child is not mine.”

“David…”

“No. Now you will listen to me.”

The door lock shook again. Marco was swearing outside, but his voice already sounded like fear.

“She was lying to both of you,” he shouted. “Sara was using the pregnancy story for both of you!”

Sara covered her face with her hands.

“I didn’t know how to get out of all this.”

“There was always a way out. You could have told the truth.”

“I was afraid.”

“Was I supposed to be afraid too? You decided that my peace should be the price of your hiding.”

Sara raised her head.

“Marco told me that if I left him, he would distribute my private photos at work. Then he learned that I was pregnant and said the child had to be yours, because you would be easier for him to convince.”

I listened to her words and felt the last place inside me where I had kept excuses for her falling apart.

“And what were you planning?”

Sara did not answer for a long time.

“I wanted you to stay with me until the child was born. Then… then we would see.”

“So you wanted to leave fatherhood to me while you were trying to escape from Marco?”

“I don’t know.”

“You knew very well.”

At that moment Marco struck the door with his fist. The lock cracked. I took the phone and was about to call the police, but Sara suddenly said to me:

“Don’t call. He knows where my parents live.”

“This is no longer only your threat. Now my home is also in danger.”

Marco fell silent in the corridor. After several seconds his voice became calmer.

“David, listen. Don’t trust Sara. She has a recording that will be used against you. She says that you beat and threatened her.”

Sara’s face became like stone.

“That is a lie.”

“Then why did she say it into my phone?” Marco shouted.

I looked at Sara.

Her answer did not come immediately.

That was worse than an answer.

“I once told him that you were angry,” she said at last. “I wanted him to leave me alone. I didn’t think he would use it.”

At that moment everything became clear. Sara had used my name to protect herself from Marco, and Marco had saved it as a recording.

I did not open the door. I called the police, and asked Sara to sit in the center of the room and not hold on to anything.

We heard Marco leave, but before leaving he placed a small memory card by the door.

“This will not end here,” he said. “In the morning they will find out at your workplace what kind of man you are.”

The police came, they did not find Marco that night, and Sara was taken to a friend. Before she left, she turned around at the door.

“I really loved you.”

“Maybe. But love that uses a person for lies is no longer a safe place for me.”

She left.

And I picked up the memory card from the floor. There was one file on it, created on the same night when Sara told me that I frightened her.

Before opening the file, the phone rang. An unknown number appeared on the screen. I answered.

“David,” said a woman’s hoarse voice, “I am Marco’s wife. I want to meet you. Because you still don’t know whom that Sara was deceiving…”