Part 4 — My Mother Spilled My Daughter’s Soup on the Floor and Threw Us Out of the House, But Dad’s Face Suddenly Changed

Those words from Father were still hanging in the room when Nika opened the document.

Then everything happened very quickly.

He looked through the papers one by one, took a photograph, and sent it to the police investigator.

“This contract is forged,” he said. “It says that Arthur borrowed one hundred thousand from a private lender and pledged the apartment as collateral. But look at the date.”

I bent over the paper.

The date belonged to the period when the apartment was already my property.

“That is impossible,” I said.

“That is exactly why it is important,” Nika replied. “Someone used your parents’ old documents to attach several debts to one property.”

Mother picked up her bag.

“We are not staying here anymore.”

Carla moved toward the door, but at that moment two investigators appeared outside.

“Elene, daughter of Arthur? Carla, daughter of Arthur?” one of them asked.

The color disappeared from Mother’s face.

Father grabbed the back of the armchair.

“Laura, tell them this is a misunderstanding.”

I looked at him.

Earlier, at such a moment, I would have done everything to save him. I would have shouted, lied, begged, and blamed myself, just so others would not see what kind of family we had.

But that day I was holding Sofia’s small hand.

“You have already told the truth, Father,” I answered. “Now listen to the others too.”

Mother looked at me.

“You will regret this. You will be alone.”

“I was alone when I lived in that house and still no one protected me.”

The investigators took Mother and Carla for questioning. Father remained there because, due to his age and health, he had to come with a lawyer.

He stopped at the door.

“I wanted to protect you.”

“Protection is not silence, Father.”

That same evening the bank officially stopped the sale of the apartment and collection of the loan. The next day Nika told me that the examination of the forged signature was complete.

“There is not a single real obligation against you,” he told me. “But the investigation against your mother and Carla will continue.”

They soon tried to regain control.

Mother made twenty-eight calls.

I did not answer the first one.

For the second she sent me a message: “Families do not behave this way.”

For the third: “Father’s heart will stop.”

Nika advised me to save all the messages.

“Do not try to calm her,” he told me. “Now she is running away from her own words.”

Three days later, at the police station, the investigator played the recording of my mother’s conversation. In the small room there were only Nika, me, and the black recorder lying on the table.

I heard my mother’s voice again:

“If we sell the apartment, we will all settle our debts. Laura will not understand anything.”

I was listening to my own mother, who was planning my life as if I were not a person but an obstacle.

My ears grew hot. But a strange calm settled in my heart.

It was her voice.

Her decision.

Her consequence.

Nika switched off the recorder.

“Do you want to leave?”

“No,” I told him. “I will listen to the end.”

Then Father’s voice was heard.

“This is going too far.”

And Mother’s reply was as clear as if she had said it yesterday:

“You stay quiet, as always.”

It was then that Father understood he could no longer hide his own silence. He finally admitted that he had helped Mother find the documents and knew about the fraudulent loan. His admission was attached to the investigation, although because of his age and state of health the court allowed him to remain at home.

Mother’s and Carla’s case continued for several months. The bank canceled the fraudulent loan, and the lender backed off because the property legally belonged to me. Mother was ordered to compensate the damage and received a suspended sentence, while Carla admitted the crime and was forced to sell her own apartment.

In the apartment she proudly showed to her friends, my money had also been invested for four years.

But on the day she handed over her keys, I was not there.

I did not want to see her fall.

I wanted her, for the first time, to feel the weight of her decisions.

One week later I entered my parents’ apartment to check the inventory. In the corridor there was still Sofia’s small stroller, which Father had left by the door on that cold day.

The rooms looked strangely empty.

Sofia’s bed was gone. In the kitchen cabinet only one broken cup remained. Under the sink I found the small plastic bowl into which Mother had poured her soup.

The bowl had been washed, but an orange stain remained on its edge.

I picked it up.

For the first time since that day, I wanted to cry.

Not because I was getting the house back.

Because all the warm memories of my childhood lived in that house, while now only things and lies remained there for me.

Within several weeks I arranged one room of the apartment for Sofia. I painted the walls light green, put a small wooden table by the window, and arranged her blocks on the shelf.

I rented out the remaining rooms. With the rent money we moved from the boarding house to a small, quiet apartment, where in the morning a warm smell rose from the neighbor’s bakery.

I no longer limited my work to urgent assignments. I started a permanent job at a publishing house in the city center. I went at eight in the morning, picked Sofia up from kindergarten at noon, and corrected stories at the kitchen table in the evening.

With my first salary I bought Sofia red rubber boots.

She placed them beside the bed and said to me:

“No one will spill my soup at our place now, right?”

I knelt in front of her.

“If anyone hurts you, I will always tell you the truth and always protect you.”

“Won’t Grandma come anymore?”

I was silent for a while.

“She may come. But you are not obliged to open the door for her.”

Sofia nodded, as if this were the simplest thing in the world.

Three months later the first snow came. It laid a white layer on the balcony railing, and Sofia drew a small house on the window with her finger.

That week Father sent me a letter.

“Laura, I know that I hurt you in many ways. Your mother says that if you stop speaking against us in court, everything can start over. I can no longer argue with her. I want you to come on Sunday.”

I held the letter in my hand for a long time.

Then I forwarded it to Nika.

“Do you have to answer?” he asked me.

“Yes.”

I wrote: “Father, I will tell the truth in court. I do not want revenge against you, but I will no longer lie for you either. A meeting will be possible only if no one threatens me anymore and you do not touch my daughter again.”

The reply came the next day.

“I understand.”

Only those two words.

I received the last message from Mother six months later.

“The apartment was still our home. You made all of this too complicated. If you want your family back, apologize.”

I put the phone on the table.

Sofia sat on the floor and was drawing a house with colored pencils. In front of the house were three figures: one big, one small, and one very small.

“Who are they?” I asked.

“Me, you, and our new life,” she answered.

I smiled.

I did not answer Mother.

In the evening I entered the kitchen of the old apartment. I took from the cabinet the small plastic bowl with the orange stain on its edge. Now I did not pour soup into it anymore. I kept Sofia’s colored pencils in it.

I placed the bowl on the windowsill.

Outside, snow was falling quietly, while inside Sofia was laughing.

For the first time, the house was truly mine.

And that night I did not open the door for anyone anymore.