Part 4 — Twelve Hours After Giving Birth, My Husband Hit Me, but His Face Changed When He Saw the Old Man Standing on the Threshold

My father had barely finished speaking when several telephones rang at the same time in the hospital corridor.

Davit raised his head.

His eyes were no longer angry.

They were frightened.

“No,” he whispered. “This is impossible.”

The investigator twisted his hands behind his back and led him out of the room. His voice could be heard farther and farther away in the corridor.

“Elena, please tell your father that I did not know what was in that file.”

I did not follow them.

That day, for the first time, I did not try to save Davit at the price of my own truth.

My father led me to the window. It was raining outside. The red light of an ambulance spread across the wet asphalt in the hospital yard.

“Is everything over?” I asked.

“No,” he told me. “But now you are no longer alone.”

The next morning Davit’s lawyer came. He was wearing a dark coat and holding tied-together documents in his hand.

“Mrs. Carter, my client claims that you provoked him.”

I listened silently.

“He says that the blow was accidental.”

My father placed a small device on the table.

“Then this recording should not be a problem.”

The lawyer looked at the device.

“What is this?”

“A copy of the hospital corridor camera recording,” I answered.

My father turned it on.

Davit’s voice sounded in the room again.

“Pay for the paternity test yourself. I’ll take the girls too. You and your bastard perish.”

Then the sound of a blow was heard.

Then my frightened breathing.

The lawyer lowered his eyes.

Davit’s own words, which several hours earlier had been power for him, now sounded like a foreign voice heard from outside. He himself heard how he threatened me, humiliated me, and said that he did not recognize my child.

“Did you obtain this recording illegally?” he asked.

“No,” my father said. “The hospital officially handed it over to the investigators.”

The lawyer thought for a long time.

“Under such conditions, I will no longer continue your defense.”

Davit called him by telephone.

“What do you mean, you will not continue?”

I could not hear the answer clearly, but the change in Davit’s face was enough. He slowly lowered the telephone.

That same evening my father brought me all the documents. The loans had indeed been taken out in my name. Davit had used my electronic signature and transferred the money to his own accounts.

On one sheet, even my address was written incorrectly.

“He could not even bother to do everything correctly,” I said.

“People who rely on the silence of others eventually collide with their own carelessness,” my father answered.

The court imposed pretrial detention on Davit. The investigation into the transfer of state secrets continued separately. Several weeks later it was established that he had not sent the files abroad, but his partner had used his password and stolen the data. Davit was still responsible, because he had knowingly given permission to enter the system.

On the day of the trial, he did not look toward me anymore.

The judge read the charges of violence, fraud, and leaving official data unprotected. Davit lowered his head.

I felt nothing that could be called revenge.

Only exhaustion.

And a strange calm.

As we left the courthouse, my father took my hand.

“Are you ready to return home?”

“Which home?” I asked.

Our old house had been sold by the bank because Davit’s debts were tied to it as well. The girls’ drawings remained in the rooms, and one photograph’s frame hung on the wall. When Davit took his things, he took everything except the photograph in which all five children were standing in the kindergarten.

I picked up the photograph.

The room behind me remained empty.

The small blue teddy bear that my father had brought to the hospital was in my bag. The silver thread was still wrapped tightly around one of its ears.

Three months later I changed cities.

My father rented me a small apartment near the coast, although he did not intend to pay the rent for me forever. He helped me only enough to get back on my feet.

I began working as an administrator at a children’s clinic.

In the mornings I woke four girls, prepared breakfast, and dressed the little one by the window. Before leaving for school, Nia always checked the door handle twice.

One evening she asked me:

“Mom, if we see Dad now, do we still have to be afraid?”

We were standing in the kitchen. Milk was warming on the stove, and the first frost of winter was gathering on the window.

“No,” I told her. “Fear is no longer the head of our house.”

“Then who is?”

I looked at the little boy, who already had dark blue eyes and was building a tower from wooden blocks on the floor.

“We are,” I answered. “All together.”

Nia hugged me.

That night the children spread sheets of paper in the living room and drew a new house. In the picture stood five small figures, and behind them one tall man—the grandfather. Davit was not there.

Nia looked at the drawing for a long time.

“We have not forgotten him, we simply no longer want him to be here,” she told me.

I could not answer. I only kissed her forehead.

Months later Davit sent me a letter from prison.

“Elena, I know that I did everything badly. When I get out, I want to see the children. I am still their father.”

I looked at the letter for a long time.

Then I called my father.

“What should I answer?”

“What you think in your heart,” he told me. “Not what you expect from him.”

I wrote to Davit:

“The children have the right to speak about you, but you no longer have the right to return to their lives by force. When they themselves wish it, and only then, a meeting will be possible according to the rules of the court and specialists. I will no longer cover up your crime, nor will I protect your peace.”

I wrote nothing more.

I received no answer.

The first snow came at the beginning of December. The children went out onto the balcony, and I held the little one in my arms. He looked up at the sky and spread his fingers, as if he wanted to catch the flakes.

After returning home, I put the blue teddy bear on the shelf. The silver thread was still wrapped around its ear. It was the only thing from that day that did not remind me of fear.

My father stood at the door and watched his grandchildren.

“What do you feel now?” he asked me.

Snow was silently falling outside the window. My cheek no longer hurt. The children were laughing. The smell of milk and cinnamon filled the room.

“For the first time, I feel that my life is mine,” I told him.

My father nodded.

On the shelf stood a small teddy bear, with blue eyes and an ear tied with silver thread.

This time I was hiding behind no one.

Not behind my child.

Not behind myself.

And for the first time, silence in the house no longer meant fear.