Part 4 — In the supermarket, my son pointed at an unknown woman and said that she had been playing in our bedroom — the woman’s smile disappeared

Only Giorgi and his accomplice knew the clinic’s address, but we still did not know whom we could trust there.

The police chief, Lasha, took the phone from me and read the message once again.

“We have sent cars,” he said. “You will stay here.”

“My husband is there.”

“That is exactly why you will not go.”

“If he reaches the doctor, they will destroy the evidence.”

Lasha looked at Salome.

“Is all of this recorded?”

“We have two recordings. Also forged signatures, statements of amounts, and camera data.”

“Then for the first time in your life,” Lasha said, “no one will force you to run away.”

I still could not rest. Leo stood beside me and held the red dinosaur as if all his strength were hidden in its small plastic body.

The first call from the clinic came twenty minutes later.

A doctor named Irakli said that Giorgi had indeed arrived, but when he saw the police cars, he fled through the back exit. He took the folder and the original of the certificate drawn up in my name.

“Who gave him this document?” I asked.

“Not me,” the doctor answered. “That document had been drawn up with my signature, but the signature was forged.”

Salome suddenly raised her head.

“Then he thought that the document was in his hands.”

“What do you mean?”

She took a small device from her bag.

“What Giorgi took from the clinic was a copy. The original is already with the police.”

Lasha narrowed his eyes.

“You prepared a copy in advance?”

“Three weeks ago, when I realized that he could kill me too.”

That night Giorgi was found on the outskirts of the city, near an abandoned parking lot. He was sitting in the car, holding the folder, and shouting at someone on the phone.

I listened to the recording later.

For the first time I heard his voice with my own ears, as if I were listening to a stranger’s.

“Nino will believe everyone when I tell her that she is sick.”

“Leo already knows that Mom will leave soon.”

“The house will become mine, and the money will be enough to begin a new life.”

In the room where I was listening to the recording, only the ticking of the clock could be heard.

Giorgi’s words had been spoken in my own house, but now they stood against him.

At the police station they seated him in front of me.

His face was tired. His hair was disheveled. Plastic restraints were on his hands.

“Nino, you understood all this incorrectly,” he said.

“I heard your voice.”

“The recording may have been edited.”

Salome put the folder on the table.

“Two cameras, four witnesses, bank transfers, and your doctor’s forged signature. What else will you call editing?”

For the first time Giorgi looked at her as at a person he could no longer control.

“I wanted to give you money.”

“You wanted to buy my silence.”

“Nino, I simply needed help.”

“It is not called help when you send your wife to a clinic by force and teach a child to get used to his mother’s disappearance.”

At the mention of Leo, he lowered his eyes.

“I am a father.”

“Fatherhood is not a word, Giorgi. It is a choice you make every day.”

At the first court hearing the judge issued Giorgi a protective order. Then the investigation of the financial case, the insurance-fraud case, and the examination of the forged documents began.

I did not attend his punishment.

That day I went with Leo to the riverside. For the first time in several weeks, I breathed calmly.

When I returned home, I opened the door to Giorgi’s study.

The room was empty.

Only pale strips of dust remained on the shelves. Leo’s drawing hung on the wall—three people holding hands, with a yellow sun above them. Giorgi’s face had been erased from the drawing, as if the child still could not decide whether to leave it there.

I found the red dinosaur under the bed.

Leo thought he had lost it.

It was still missing one leg. But now he was no longer afraid of it.

Three weeks later I sold the apartment. In every corner left there, Giorgi’s planned lies spoke to me. In the new house I arranged a small room for Leo. From the window one could see the yard, where white flowers opened in spring.

Salome began working at child-protection services. She often visited us and played board games with Leo, except that this time no one needed to hide them.

As for me, I found another job. I left early in the morning, picked Leo up in the evening, and every day found a new drawing in his bag.

One evening he asked me:

“Mom, will Dad go to prison?”

I was standing by the window. The first snow was falling outside.

“Maybe,” I told him. “The adults must decide that now.”

“Do you still love him?”

I could not find an answer to this question for a long time.

“I loved the person I thought he was. Now, together with you, I am learning how to live after the truth.”

Leo rested his head on my shoulder.

“I like the truth. It has no locked door.”

A few months later I received a letter from Giorgi. He sent it through a lawyer.

“Give me a chance to explain everything. At least for Leo. We are still a family.”

I read the letter several times. Then I wrote a reply.

“You will always be Leo’s father. But you cannot return to our life only because now you can no longer escape your own decisions. We will not wait for you anymore.”

It was the only letter I sent him.

That same evening Leo put the red dinosaur on the windowsill.

“Why are you putting it here?” I asked.

“So that he can see that the light is on in our house.”

“Who should see?”

He shrugged.

“Everyone who thought that no one would live here anymore.”

I went to the window. Snow was quietly covering the yard. I took the little dinosaur with one missing leg in my hand, and for the first time it did not seem to me that I was holding something incomplete.

Sometimes survival does not mean perfection.

Sometimes it means putting the remaining pieces together with your own hands.

And that night, for the first time, no one locked the door in our house.