Part 4 — They Mocked Me for Coming Alone to My Family’s Wedding, but When My Father Threw Me into the Fountain, His Smile Suddenly Disappeared

“Julia,” he said to me, “a different surname is listed in your marriage registration.”

I could not move.

“What does a different surname mean?”

Lorenzo handed the phone to Alessandro. The lawyer read the message, his face darkened, and he looked at Father.

“This registration was changed three years ago.”

Father immediately shouted:

“I did not touch it!”

“No one said that you touched it,” Alessandro replied.

“Then who did it?”

Lorenzo straightened the jacket draped over my shoulders. I was still wet, but I could no longer feel the cold.

“The witness in the clinic says that on the day of the wedding the documents were taken by another person,” he said. “And this person acted in the name of your family.”

Mother lowered her head.

I looked at her.

“Mother?”

Her hands trembled. The pearl necklace she had been clutching all evening was now almost completely hidden in her palm.

“Julia, I only wanted you to help Father.”

“Why did you change my marriage certificate?”

“I did not change it. I simply signed the documents Father gave me.”

“You signed them without reading them?”

“He told me it was for the company.”

Father turned toward her.

“Are you blaming me now?”

For the first time Mother did not lower her head anymore.

“I hid your mistakes my whole life.”

These words rang out more loudly than any music.

Sofia went to Mother.

“Mother, what did you do?”

Mother burst into tears.

“Julia’s marriage was not legally annulled. Only an incorrect surname was entered in the registration, so that Father would think that the assets connected with Lorenzo would remain under the family’s control.”

I looked at Lorenzo.

“Is our marriage still valid?”

“Yes,” he said immediately. “We are together, we are witnesses to each other, and all the amended records are confirmed. Someone simply changed your name so that your choice would become someone else’s property.”

Father tried to regain control again.

“All this is a misunderstanding. Julia will come home with me, we will talk calmly, and everything will be settled.”

“No,” I said.

One word.

For the first time, it was enough.

That same night Alessandro called the banks. The company’s accounts were temporarily frozen. The board of directors suspended Father’s authority, while the financial director admitted the very next morning that he had prepared false accounts for years.

Father walked from room to room and called everyone.

“Lawyer, you must stop this.”

“I can no longer stop you,” his lawyer answered on the phone. “I have already handed the documents in the case to the investigator.”

“You are my lawyer!”

“I was.”

For the first time Father heard his own voice through someone else’s mouth and fell silent.

The next day the investigator played the recording for him. The only sound in the room was the ticking of the table clock.

In the recording Father was saying:

“Julia will sign everything. She is my daughter and she will not refuse me.”

Father raised his head.

“I did not say that.”

The investigator switched off the recorder.

“That is your voice.”

“I meant something else.”

“Nothing else can be heard in the recording.”

Father sank into the chair. At that moment he understood for the first time that the words with which he had controlled others for years now stood against him.

I stood in the corner of the room. I said nothing.

He wanted my shouting. My crying. The return of the old Julia, who always explained, always forgave, and finally blamed herself.

But I was no longer that woman.

Several weeks later, my room on the second floor of our family house stood empty. Only one wooden hanger hung in the wardrobe. On the table I found the small piece of paper on which Grandmother had written to me in childhood: “If others block your way, build your own door.”

I hung the silver watch on the wall.

It was still four minutes ahead.

This time I did not correct it.

The trial continued for months. I did not attend every hearing. The lawyers went, gathered documents, and answered questions in my place. The court established that Father had illegally used my electronic signature, transferred the company’s money into personal accounts, and deceived the employees for years.

Mother made an agreement and began living separately from us. Sofia apologized to me not only for her silence, but also for always believing Father more easily.

One evening, four months later, she came to my new apartment.

I had moved to Milan, to a small quiet street. A tram line could be seen from the window. In the mornings Lorenzo made coffee, while I began working as a consultant for companies that checked financial fraud.

Sofia knocked on the door and held a small colorful bag in her hand.

“This is not for you,” she told me. “It is for your niece or nephew.”

“Is it a boy or a girl?”

“We do not know yet. But the drawing has already been made.”

She held out a sheet of paper to me. A small house with two windows and an open door was drawn on it.

“The child said that this is your new house,” Sofia said with a smile.

I attached the paper to the refrigerator.

“For the first time I feel that the door really belongs to me.”

Lorenzo came out of the kitchen.

“For the first time?”

“Now it is the first time I am saying it aloud.”

We were no longer trying to prove anything to anyone. On Sundays we went to the market, baked bread at home, and in the evenings sat by the window and listened to the sound of the tram bell.

One morning the first snow came.

Thin, almost invisible flakes were falling on the street. I opened the window, and cold air came in.

I received a message on my phone.

It was Father.

“Come to me. Let us talk just once. Nothing matters anymore. I am still your father.”

A second message came several minutes later.

“You can take everything back. I will even return the company to you. Just help me.”

I stared at the screen for a long time.

Lorenzo asked me nothing.

He knew that I had to arrive at this answer myself.

I wrote only one sentence:

“I will no longer help you preserve the life you built through my destruction.”

I delayed pressing send for several seconds.

Then I sent it.

No answer came.

That evening I took the watch down from the wall. The silver casing was warm, as if it had lain in the sun all day. I remembered the old habit—the watch was always four minutes ahead.

Lorenzo asked me:

“Will you correct it now?”

I smiled.

“No. Sometimes being ahead is not a bad thing.”

I went to the window. The snow was already leaving white traces on the street stones. When I fell into the fountain, I thought that my whole life had drowned there.

But I came out of the water alone.

And that watch was still going ahead.