Part 4 — They Did Not Pay My Mother Her Salary, and I Went to Her Boss at Noon — and When He Saw the Sheet, He Lost Color

The money was transferred to a children’s shelter account, and Rory Carter was the signatory on the account.

For several seconds nobody moved.

I heard only my name and Mother’s fingers, which were gripping my arm more and more strongly.

“This is impossible,” she said.

Vincent put the phone to his ear.

“Who opened the account?”

The woman’s voice trembled.

“The documents contain the mother’s details, but the minor beneficiary is Rory Carter. If the money is not returned, legally it will seem that he receives the entire amount.”

David smiled for the first time.

“You see?” he said. “This is no longer my problem.”

Vincent looked at him.

“You still do not understand that you recorded yourself.”

“I proved nothing.”

“You proved every word.”

The police officers entered the office. One handcuffed David, the other took the folder. David did not resist. He only looked at Mother, as if even at the last moment he expected her to become frightened and step back.

“If you drag me into this,” he told her, “your child will never live peacefully again.”

Mother stepped in front of me.

“We have not lived peacefully for a long time already.”

This was the first time Mother answered him without pronouncing his name.

David was taken away.

Vincent’s lawyer immediately called several numbers. On one call he shook his head.

“The bank cannot return the money until the recipient is confirmed.”

“What kind of recipient?” Mother asked.

“Your son’s name is on the account. Whoever did this left you a legal trap.”

Vincent pulled out a chair for me.

“Rory, have you written your name anywhere for anyone?”

I thought.

“On a kindergarten sheet.”

“More?”

“Sometimes Mother wrote my name on the lunch box.”

Mother suddenly remembered.

“Three weeks ago David asked me for a copy of the birth certificate. He said he needed it for the employees’ insurance.”

The air in the room grew heavy.

“You gave it to him?” Vincent asked.

Mother lowered her head.

“At that time I thought I would keep my job.”

Vincent closed his eyes, as if locking the anger inside.

“Using the document for fraud is enough. But we still have to return the money so that Rory’s name is removed from this matter.”

At that moment the chief investigator of the police entered. He held a phone in his hand.

“The bank received another notification,” he said. “The transfer is still moving. The money has already gone to a third account.”

“Whose account?” Vincent asked.

The investigator looked at the screen.

“In David’s wife’s name.”

David stopped in the corridor.

“This is impossible.”

The investigator turned to him.

“Was your wife’s account used?”

“I did nothing.”

“Then you will explain this in court.”

David looked at Vincent.

“You had planned all this.”

“No,” Vincent answered. “You planned it. I only turned on the light.”

Then the investigator asked for the speaker. The recording sounded through the whole office once again.

“If Carter leaves, everyone else will be silent too.”

David’s own voice returned from the walls.

He listened.

“If we frighten the child, the woman will be silent.”

David covered his ears with his hands.

“Turn it off!”

But the recording had already ended. Everyone there had heard his words, and now nobody could help him present himself as the victim.

The next day Mother and I went to the police station. A warm radiator hummed in the corridor, while the folded work-hours sheet still lay in the pocket of my red hoodie.

Mother said for the first time:

“You do not have to carry it anymore.”

“Why?”

“Because now everything will end.”

I took out the sheet. Its edges were crushed, and there was an ink stain on one corner.

“If I had not brought it, who would have found out?”

Mother looked at me for a long time.

“Probably no one.”

In three weeks David’s case went to court. At first he denied everything. Then he said that the recording had been edited. Finally, his lawyer refused to defend him when the bank confirmed the money transfers and the forgery of the signatures.

David heard his own voice once again in the courtroom.

This time the judge played the recording.

“If you want your salary, wait one more week.”

David sat on the chair and looked at his own hands.

“If we frighten the child, the woman will be silent.”

He raised his head.

“I did not say it like that.”

The lawyer, who was no longer his lawyer, answered quietly:

“That is your voice.”

For the first time David heard what his cruelty sounded like in another person’s ears. He no longer resembled a strong man. He only resembled a tired man whom nobody could save from his own words.

The court sentenced him to imprisonment for fraud, misappropriation of salaries, forgery of documents, and threats. His restaurant closed. The employees’ money was gradually returned, while the account that had been opened in my name was canceled by court decision.

Mother received the entire amount.

The first thing she did was not rent a new house, but go to the store to buy bread. When she returned, she brought two loaves of bread, butter, eggs, and a small cake with purple sugar stars on it.

“We have dinner today,” she told me.

I looked at the cake.

“Twice?”

Mother laughed and cried.

“Twice.”

Several weeks later I saw the bistro office empty. The smell of dust came in through the window. The clock had been removed from the wall, but its small hole still remained. Mother’s old apron lay in the corridor, and in its front pocket there was one paper napkin.

I did not leave the work-hours sheet there anymore.

I took it home.

Months passed.

We moved to another neighborhood, where buses traveled more quietly in the morning and the smell of mint came from the neighbor’s window. Mother began working at a new bakery, but now she checked the work hours every day and received her salary every Friday.

I went to kindergarten. The teacher asked me to draw the person who was brave for me.

I drew Mother.

She held a sheet in her hand, but there were no numbers on the sheet anymore. I drew only a door that was open.

One morning the first snow came. Mother was making coffee in the kitchen, while I stood by the window and watched the flakes sitting on the streetlamp.

The telephone rang.

Mother looked at the screen and said nothing.

It was David.

Then a message came.

“Meet me for only five minutes. I will explain everything.”

Mother put the phone on the table.

“You won’t answer?” I asked.

She looked out the window.

“No.”

“Because you hate him?”

Mother shook her head.

“No. Because saving him is no longer my business.”

She said these words calmly. As if a door locked inside her for a long time had finally opened from within.

That evening I took the work-hours sheet out of the old box. The red hoodie was already small for me, its sleeves rising above my wrists, but the hoodie’s pocket still existed.

The sheet was no longer crumpled. Mother put it in a transparent folder and wrote my name on it.

When the snow outside grew stronger, I placed the folder on the windowsill. The purple stars were still visible on the white sheet.

That night the smell of bread stood in the house.

And for the first time I realized that some stories end not when you receive an answer, but when you no longer need anyone to believe you.

I did not draw the last star on the sheet anymore.

We had dinner that night.