Part 4 — I Found My Little Daughter Bald When I Returned from Work, and When I Asked for the Truth, Nikolai Lowered His Eyes

After Elena’s call, for the first time I did not sleep all night.

Dasha lay beside me. Her shaved head looked like a small moon on the pillow. Every time the sound of a car came into the room, I opened my eyes and looked at the door.

In the morning Elena came to the hotel.

She was holding a paper cup of coffee, but she did not bring it to her lips even once.

“The debt documents were checked with the notary,” she told me. “Three loans had been taken in your name. The money was transferred to Andrei’s account.”

“Why didn’t he tell me anything?”

Elena did not answer me immediately.

“Because he needed your signature. He accessed copies and files of your old identity documents. Probably from your work computer.”

I felt an emptiness in my stomach.

In that family, they had planned not only the humiliation of my child. They had taken a loan in my name in order to preserve the house and hide their own losses.

Andrei began calling at half past eight in the morning.

First he called ten times.

Then messages came.

“Come before it is too late.”

“Mother fainted.”

“You are destroying our family.”

“You will not be able to take Dasha so easily.”

Elena photographed all the messages and kept them in a folder.

“Do not answer,” she told me.

“I want to ask him how he was able to do it.”

“You will ask him that in court.”

Before the court began, we went to the police station. Galina, Irina, and Nikolai were already being held in separate rooms there. Andrei stood in the corridor and was reading something on his phone. When he saw me, he ran toward me.

“Natasha, listen to me for at least one minute.”

Elena stood in front of me.

“You cannot speak with my client without a lawyer.”

Andrei looked at her.

“This is our family matter.”

“It is not anymore,” I answered.

His face changed.

“You will regret this.”

“I already regret trusting you for so long.”

A policeman put his hand on Andrei’s shoulder and pushed him back. I looked at Dasha, who stood beside Elena and touched the red-stitched ear with her fingers.

Then we made them listen to their own words.

There was a large screen in the room. The recording began. Irina appeared, then Galina, then Nikolai. With every phrase their faces became heavier.

“She is a child, three years old. Who will believe her words?”

Irina lowered her eyes.

“I did not say it like that,” she said quietly.

Elena pointed toward the screen.

“That is your voice.”

“The recording could have been changed.”

The technician opened the laptop.

“The file has the time and sequence saved on the camera server. There are no traces of alteration.”

Then Nikolai’s voice sounded:

“Shave her hair. It will be more convincing this way.”

Nikolai raised his head. His face turned pale.

“I meant that you should talk to her.”

“That is not what appears in the recording,” the investigator said.

Galina spoke for the first time.

“I did not want to. Irina told me that we had to do it this way.”

Irina turned toward her.

“You took the razor yourself!”

“Because you told me to!”

“Both of you, be quiet!” Andrei shouted.

Everyone looked at him.

Elena turned on the second recording. Andrei’s voice could be heard there.

“When Natasha leaves, everything will remain with us.”

Andrei sat down on a chair.

For the first time he realized that his own words no longer belonged only to him. They had remained in the room, stood before everyone, and he could not take them back.

“Natasha…” he said.

I answered nothing.

The gold bracelet taken from the pawnshop finally confirmed that Irina had sold it. They paid Andrei’s debt with the money. An examination of the false signatures confirmed that the loan documents were not mine. Nikolai’s blow was also captured by the hotel camera, because after leaving the house the street cameras followed my car.

Several weeks later, the court decided to leave the child with me. Galina, Nikolai, and Irina were charged with violence against a child and fraud. The case against Andrei continued separately, because he had planned everything but until the last minute tried to blame it on others.

I did not celebrate his punishment.

I simply managed to breathe calmly for the first time.

We left Dasha’s room empty in that house. Only one small drawing remained on the wall — four figures, one of which had a large black cloud over it. In the corner of the drawing, the rabbit with the red-stitched ear was drawn.

“This is ours,” Dasha told me.

“Now it truly is ours.”

Three months later I rented a small apartment in a seaside city. In the morning I went to a new job, and in the evening I sorted pencils together with Dasha. She was still afraid of the loud closing of a door, but every week her hair grew a little longer.

One day, in May, we were standing on the balcony. The wind was no longer cold. Dasha raised her head and asked me:

“Mommy, was I a bad child?”

I bent down on my knees.

“No. Bad is the one who hurts you unjustly and then tells you that it is your fault.”

“Now no one will cut my hair anymore?”

“No one.”

She smiled and put her arms around me.

In the evening I received a letter from Andrei. Until the end of the trial, he contacted me not from prison, but through a lawyer. He wrote that he had made a mistake, that he missed his family, and that he was still a good father to Dasha.

At the end there was one sentence: “Give me permission to return.”

I stared at the screen for a long time.

Then I wrote back briefly: “We are not going back.”

That was all.

I put the phone down and went to the window. Dasha’s plush rabbit sat on the windowsill. One of its ears was still sewn with red thread, only now the stitching looked clean and firm.

Laughter could be heard from Dasha’s room. She was drawing a house on a sheet of paper, a house with windows, a balcony, and a large yellow sun on the door.

I stroked the rabbit.

Our whole story fit into that small red stitch: what had once been sewn onto us roughly, but which we finally strengthened ourselves.

Spring light entered through the window.

We were returning home.

Only this time — to our home.