Part 4 — I Found My Wife in the Yard When I Returned Home After Four Years, but My Mother’s Smile Suddenly Lost Its Color

…a video that had been recorded four years earlier, in this yard.

Irakli turned on the tablet.

The old yard appeared on the screen. The footage was of low quality, and the camera stood in the corner of the house so that almost the entire garden could be seen. The timestamp showed July four years earlier.

I had already left for Canada then.

Teresa stood with her back to the camera. Paula stood in front of her, holding Elena’s documents in her hands.

“While Marcos is sending money, he must think that everything is in order,” Paula was saying.

“And what if Elena tells him something?”

“She will not dare. The doctor’s bills are with us. The house will also soon be mine.”

Elena appeared from the side. Her long hair was still tied up in her hands then. She was thin, but the first signs of illness were already visible.

“I will tell Marcos everything,” she said.

Teresa grabbed her by the arm.

“If you tell him, you will not receive treatment at all anymore. The money is with us.”

The video cut off.

No one in the room was breathing.

Paula struck the chair with her hand.

“This was obtained illegally!”

“The camera was part of the house’s security system,” Irakli answered. “You yourselves submitted part of it to the police when you filed the report against Marcos. We simply requested the entire recording as well.”

Teresa turned toward me.

“Son, it was not like that. We were simply trying to preserve the house.”

“The house that I bought?”

“For the family!”

“Without Elena?”

She could not answer.

Irakli spread the documents out in front of them.

“Using a signature through deception, misappropriation of funds, intentional interruption of medical assistance, and a false report. This is no longer a family argument.”

Paula took out her phone and called someone.

“David, come immediately. Everything is collapsing.”

Ten minutes later a man entered the room. I recognized him. It was the family lawyer, David Khutsishvili, whom I had known since childhood. It was his voice that had been recorded in yesterday’s threat.

“Marcos, let us talk calmly,” he said.

“I have already heard how you threatened me.”

David looked at Irakli.

“This is a legal misunderstanding.”

“Then explain it to the police,” Irakli answered.

At that very moment there was a knock at the door. Two investigators entered. They held a court order in their hands.

Teresa stepped back.

“You cannot enter my house.”

“This house has been temporarily seized,” one of the investigators said. “Restrictions have also been imposed on your and Paula’s accounts.”

Paula shouted:

“Marcos, tell them that you do not want this!”

I looked at her.

“I am only saying what I should have said four years ago. This is my wife’s money. It is my wife’s house. And both of you must answer for it.”

David suddenly leaned toward me.

“If you withdraw the report, I will return everything to you. We will sell the salon and the car, and the house will remain.”

“You have already sold your own trust,” I answered.

The investigators led Paula and Teresa out separately. The golden hummingbird was no longer around Teresa’s neck. It remained on the table, in the small box that my hands had chosen four years earlier.

Elena stood in the corridor. It was difficult for her to stand, but she did not sit down.

“What will happen now?” she asked.

“We will continue the treatment. No one will take the house from us. The rest will be decided by the law.”

That same evening we returned to the hospital. Doctor Nata wrote us a new plan. The necessary medicines had already been ordered. For the first time in eleven months, not tension but something peaceful entered Elena’s room.

But the story did not end there.

The next day we played the audio recording in Paula’s salon. This was done at the court’s request. There Teresa heard her own voice for the first time, saying to Elena: “If you tell him, you will not receive treatment at all anymore.”

Teresa looked at the screen.

“I do not speak like that,” she whispered.

“But you did speak like that,” I told her.

She closed her eyes. For years she had convinced everyone that she was strict only to save the family. Now she could no longer escape her own voice.

Paula began to cry.

“I did not know that she was so ill.”

Elena looked toward her.

“You saw me every day.”

Paula could not answer.

Three weeks later the court returned ownership of the house to Elena and me. The bank began returning the illegally transferred money. Paula’s salon closed because its rent had been paid with the money that belonged to Elena’s treatment.

Teresa avoided imprisonment only because she fully cooperated with the investigation and admitted the crime. I was not happy about this punishment for her. I simply was no longer going to save her from the consequences she herself had chosen.

David lost his lawyer’s status. The recording of his threat remained the main evidence in the case.

Elena’s hair slowly grew back. After returning from the hospital, every morning she sat by the window and watered the basil planted in a small pot. One day she told me:

“Do you remember why I no longer turned on the camera during video calls?”

“I thought you were tired.”

“I was afraid I would look into your eyes and you would understand everything.”

I sat beside her.

“I should have understood.”

“You were far away.”

“But you should not have been alone.”

She squeezed my hand.

“I am not anymore.”

Three months later Elena’s test results improved. I turned one room of the house into a small work office and started working as an engineer at a local enterprise. I no longer lived between time zones. In the morning I prepared coffee myself, and in the evening I accompanied Elena to the clinic.

The noisy luxury disappeared from the house. We sold the car and covered Elena’s rehabilitation expenses with that money. The new floor remained, but now Elena’s warm socks lay on it instead of Paula’s.

One December evening our little nephew, Niko, visited us. He spread a sheet of paper on the table. On it he had drawn a house, and beside it two people—one bald, the other with a large suitcase.

“Who is this?” I asked.

“This is Elena’s new hair,” he told me. “And this is you, returning home.”

Elena smiled.

That same night I received a message from Teresa.

“Marcos, come just once. I will explain everything to you. I am still your mother.”

For a long time I looked at the screen. Earlier I would have gone immediately after such a message. But now I understood that love does not always mean opening the door.

In response I wrote only one sentence:

“I will be able to listen to you at a meeting appointed by the court in the future, but you will not return to our house.”

Then I put the phone down.

Elena stood by the window. Her hair was already covered with thin, soft strands. She held the golden hummingbird in her hand. The court had returned the item to me, but she had given it back to me again.

“I do not want it around my neck anymore,” she told me.

“Then where shall we put it?”

She placed a small wooden box on the windowsill. She put the hummingbird inside, and beside it, Niko’s drawing.

The first snow was falling outside. There was no longer a new car in the yard. And no one was knocking on the windows anymore.

Elena took my hand.

“Marcos, you are home.”

I looked at the golden hummingbird, which in the light of the snow no longer looked like lost money for the first time.

It was simply a little bird.

And we were free.