Part 4 — Ten Minutes Before the Wedding, My Grandson Squeezed My Hand and Pointed at My Future Wife — The Smile Disappeared from Her Face

…I looked toward the door.

An elderly man stood behind the police, holding a folder of folded documents in his hands.

“I am Levan,” he said. “Dato’s father.”

Rebecca stepped back.

“What are you doing here?”

Levan looked at her and raised the folder.

“To say that my son told me everything. Before he tried to escape.”

The female police chief entered the room.

“Mrs. Rebecca, you are temporarily detained on suspicion of violence, fraud, and illegal misappropriation of funds.”

Rebecca stepped toward me.

“Giorgi, all of this can be fixed. Just tell them that Emily is lying.”

I was no longer looking for the woman I had thought I loved in her eyes.

“I can no longer help you lie.”

“You loved me.”

“Perhaps. But love without trust is only fear that you will remain alone.”

She pushed away the police officer’s hand.

“You cannot prove anything. The flash drive may have been altered.”

“That is why Levan came,” said the police chief.

Levan placed three documents on the table.

“Dato recorded all of this himself. Rebecca threatened him that if he did not transfer the money, she would have his brother arrested on a false case. He left copies at my house and sent them to the police beforehand.”

Rebecca’s lips froze.

“Where is Dato?”

“In the hospital,” Levan answered. “He took too much medicine because he thought you intended to kill him too.”

Anger and desperation appeared together on Rebecca’s face.

“He betrayed me.”

“No,” said Levan. “For the first time, he stopped living in fear of you.”

They put handcuffs on Rebecca.

When they led her out of the room, she turned toward me.

“Giorgi, you still have to hold the wedding. If you back out now, everyone will think you are weak.”

“No,” I answered. “Now, for the first time, I will be on my own side.”

She left.

The sound of her heels gradually disappeared in the corridor. Then I heard only Noah’s quiet breathing.

That same evening, in the hotel’s small waiting room, the police played us a recording of Rebecca’s conversation. She thought she was speaking only with Emily, but a hidden microphone in the security room had been working.

Her voice could be heard clearly in the recording.

“Giorgi will sign. He always has difficulty saying no when he loves someone.”

Then her laughter was heard.

“And if Emily stands in the way, I will put her to sleep once more. This time for a long time.”

Emily lowered her head.

And I watched the screen and heard myself there for the first time, in the recording from the previous day.

“Rebecca is a kind woman. Emily simply cannot accept the changes.”

That was my voice.

My confident, calm voice.

I realized that she was not the only one building her lies. I myself was laying the bricks every day, because seeing the truth was more painful.

That night we did not go home. Emily and Noah stayed in my hotel room. In the morning I entered the house together with the police officers.

The living room was empty.

Rebecca’s bags, dresses, and shoes had been taken away. Only one thing remained on the wall — our wedding invitation, which I had attached to the refrigerator with a magnet.

Below it stood Noah’s wooden toy train.

I picked it up. The paint had come off one wheel. A few minutes later I noticed a small golden object on the floor.

Noah’s train-shaped cufflink.

That morning, when I was straightening the child’s collar, the cufflink had accidentally come loose. He put it in his pocket so that I would not lose it. At the time I called it a simple trifle.

Now I understood how strangely life sometimes ties itself to its own signs.

The case against Rebecca continued for several months. At first she denied everything, then changed lawyers, and finally tried to reach an agreement with us.

Her first lawyer refused.

“Are you asking him for money?” he asked.

“No,” I answered.

“Then what are you asking for?”

“That she no longer contact us.”

The lawyer nodded.

“That will probably be the most difficult thing for her.”

Rebecca still managed to speak with me in the courthouse corridor. She was already standing in an ordinary dark coat, her hairstyle disheveled, but the same old insistence was still visible in her eyes.

“You can change your testimony,” she told me.

“No.”

“You destroyed our future.”

“You yourself killed our future on the night you hit Emily.”

“I did not want it to happen this way.”

“Desire does not cancel the result.”

She lowered her voice.

“You still love me.”

I looked at her for a long time.

“I loved you once. Now I choose my family.”

That was the last conversation we had face to face.

Several weeks later Dato left the hospital and gave a full statement to the investigation. He confirmed that Rebecca had transferred part of my mother’s insurance money, while from my company account she had supposedly invested money in foreign investments. In reality she needed the money to cover debts and maintain an expensive lifestyle.

The signatures planned for the wedding day were canceled. I left my house, because every room there reminded me of the lies invented by Rebecca.

Three months later I moved to a small town, into a two-story house located beside a river. In the mornings I brewed coffee myself. Four days a week I worked in a workshop where I made wooden toys. For the first time in years, I no longer checked my phone every five minutes.

Emily came to me on Sundays.

One morning Noah called me to the window.

Outside, the first snow was falling. Large flakes landed on the wooden railing of the yard and covered the small toy train arranged there.

“Grandpa, will we stay here now?” he asked me.

I knelt beside him.

“If you like it, yes.”

“Mommy won’t cry anymore?”

I looked at Emily. She lowered her eyes, but this time it was no longer to hide pain. It was as if she could breathe out calmly for the first time.

“We will all try so that no one remains alone anymore,” I told Noah.

He nodded and pushed the toy train deeper into the snow.

That evening I received a letter from Rebecca. It had been sent from prison. It contained a short text.

“Give me one chance. Everything will be different.”

I placed the letter on the kitchen table.

Emily did not ask me anything. She knew that I was not going to answer.

The next day Rebecca’s lawyer called me.

“My client says she wants to speak with you.”

“I have nothing left to say.”

“Perhaps this could be useful for both of you.”

“No. Silence is useful for me.”

I ended the call.

That same evening I folded the letter and put it into the fire. First the paper lost its edges, then its words.

I went to the window.

The little train could no longer be seen in the snow. But its track had still remained — two straight lines that went to the end of the yard.

I took the golden cufflink from my pocket and placed it on my palm. I still had to fasten it onto Noah. This time more tightly.

He called to me from the room.

“Grandpa, the train is lost!”

I smiled and opened the door.

“No, little man. It has simply gone onto a new road.”

Outside, snow was falling silently.

And for the first time I was no longer afraid of the road.

The golden train was still showing the way.