Part 4 — Two days before my brother’s wedding, my mother forbade me from coming, and when she read my reply, April’s smile disappeared

As soon as April read that message, she opened the room door and ran into the corridor. Her white jacket caught on the door handle, and her pearl necklace turned sideways on her neck.

“April!” Emiliano shouted.

She did not stop.

The sound of car tires was heard in the estate yard. Two police officers and a woman holding a folder were climbing the stone steps.

My mother ran to the window.

“Did she really call the police?”

“Who called them?” my father asked.

Nikoloz looked at the phone lying on the table.

“April. She thought that if she filed the first complaint herself, you would be accused.”

I was sitting on the chair. My knees were trembling, but inside a strange calm was overpowering me. For the first time in four days, I no longer had to shout my own innocence.

The lawyer, Sandro, called me by phone.

“Do not explain anything alone. I am already on my way.”

“Sandro, the letter was sent in my name.”

“I know. The owner brought the original to us. The signature does not match your banking documents. Now the main thing is the video.”

The police officers entered the hall.

“Who is Valeria Mendes?”

I raised my hand.

“I am.”

“Did you submit the request for a refund and then threaten the owner?”

“No.”

April came back inside. Her face had gone pale, but her voice was still firm.

“She is a liar. She fooled the whole family.”

Nikoloz turned on the computer.

“We have video.”

The estate’s reception hall appeared on the monitor. The timestamp was two in the morning, the same night when the letter was sent. April entered through the door. She was holding an envelope. My mother came behind her.

“You have to leave it here,” my mother was saying.

“If tomorrow she tells everyone that the money is hers, this will finish it,” April answered.

“But the signature?”

“I copied it from her old bank form. No one will notice.”

On the screen I saw my own name at the bottom of that letter. It was strange. Until then my name had been a home to me. Now it had turned into a weapon in someone else’s hands.

April looked at the monitor and seemed to hear her own words from the mouth of a stranger for the first time.

“I… did not mean it that way.”

Emiliano slowly approached.

“You said that everything was Valeria’s fault.”

“You believed it too.”

“I wanted to believe it.”

There was such emptiness in his voice that I felt pity for him. Not because he had acted correctly, but because now, for the first time, he saw the price of his decisions.

The police officer asked April to hand over her phone.

“I will do nothing without a lawyer.”

“Do you already have a lawyer?” Sandro asked, entering the hall at that moment.

April called someone. After several seconds another crack appeared on her face.

“He is not coming,” she whispered.

“Who?” Emiliano asked.

“My lawyer. He said that he would no longer get involved in the case.”

Sandro calmly explained that the video, audio, file history, and bank documents together were enough to begin an investigation. The police took April and my mother away for questioning. My father followed them, but stopped at the door.

“Valeria, we did not want it to turn out this way.”

“But you made it happen this way.”

He lowered his head.

“We will return the money to you.”

“The money is no longer the main thing.”

“Then what do you want?”

I could not answer immediately. For years I had thought that I wanted my family to see my importance. At that moment I understood that I no longer wanted to prove anything to them.

“I want you to stop calling me to save you from your lies.”

My father lowered his eyes and left.

Several hours later the investigator called me. He told me that the originals of the processed files had been found on April’s phone, while on my mother’s phone there was a plan for sending the same texts. Sofia also gave testimony and confirmed that April had told her a false story.

The strangest thing was that my family did not give me a single apology that evening.

Only Emiliano wrote to me.

“I do not know how to begin.”

I looked at the phone for a long time and did not answer.

The next day I returned home. I put the bag in the living room and took out the box of childhood things. Inside were old photographs, my father’s workshop’s small measuring tape, and the copper key.

I placed the key in my palm.

All these years I had thought it was the door to the past. Now I understood that only I could open the door.

I had almost no money left for my future apartment, but the process of returning the estate money had begun. Sandro told me that a settlement without court was possible if April and my mother officially admitted the forgery and agreed to compensation.

I was not asking for them to be punished.

I simply was no longer going to take responsibility for them upon myself.

Three weeks later Emiliano came to my door. He held a small cardboard box. His hair was disheveled, and for the first time since childhood he looked as if he did not know where to hide his hands.

“May I come in?”

“For five minutes.”

He entered and put the box on the table. Inside were wedding photographs. The estate looked beautiful. White flowers, candles, and volcanoes seen from a distance.

“Why did you bring me these photographs?”

“Because you should have been there.”

“But I was not.”

“I know.”

He sat down. For five minutes he said nothing.

Then he said:

“I was not against you. I simply wanted my wedding to survive very much.”

“You saved the wedding by excluding me.”

“Now I know.”

“No, Emiliano. Now you see the result. You should have known when I first told you that these messages were not mine.”

His eyes filled with tears.

“Could you ever forgive me?”

“Maybe. But forgiveness does not mean returning.”

He nodded. It was the most sincere answer he could receive.

Months passed.

I rented a small apartment in another part of the city. In the mornings I worked at a logistics company, and in the evenings I sat by the kitchen window and saved money again for a future apartment.

Mateo introduced a new habit: every Friday he brought a small bouquet home. At first he chose the flowers randomly, but then he already knew that I liked white chrysanthemums.

Sofia often called me. One day her five-year-old son, Luka, came to me and drew a house on a sheet of paper. The house had a large red door.

“This is yours,” he told me.

“Why is the door red?”

“So that everyone can see it.”

The child’s answer made me laugh. For the first time in a long while I laughed without feeling guilty.

In the first week of winter snow came to the city. A thin white layer settled on the windowsill. I placed my father’s copper key on the table, and beside it the new apartment contract.

That same evening Emiliano wrote to me once more.

“April has left. Mother cries every day. Father says that perhaps we can start everything again. Come home on Sunday. We are still a family.”

I read the message to the end.

Then I wrote a short reply.

“Family is not the place where they put your name on someone else’s lies. I am not coming anymore.”

Mateo asked me whether I was all right.

“Yes,” I answered. “Now I really am.”

I put the phone on the table and boiled water in the kitchen. I went to the window. Outside, snow was quietly falling over the yard, while the key to my new home grew warm in my hand.

Once I thought that surviving meant opening every old door again.

Now I knew that sometimes surviving means finally closing your own door.

The copper key no longer shone in the snow.

But in my hand, for the first time, it was no longer an object from the past.

It was mine.