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

“Mom, look! That is the woman who plays in our bedroom when you are at work!” — my five-year-old son said these words loudly while about twenty people stood at the supermarket checkout.

It was an ordinary Tuesday, four o’clock in the afternoon. There was milk, bread, and Leo’s favorite cinnamon buns in the basket. He himself was sitting in the cart and swinging his legs. A few seconds earlier he had been humming something, then he suddenly fell silent.

He gripped my sleeve so tightly that his fingernails dug into my skin.

“Mom, look,” he repeated, pointing at a young woman standing by the bakery shelf. “It’s her.”

The woman was standing with her back to us. She was wearing a short black dress, holding a small basket, and seeming to choose bread. But her shoulders were too tense. It was as if she could hear our conversation.

My heart rose into my throat.

I had been Giorgi’s wife for ten years. We had lived in one house for ten years. I went to work in the mornings, while Giorgi often said that he worked from home. Bringing Leo home from school, preparing dinner, and bathing him in the evening were mainly his responsibility.

Suddenly I saw everything differently: our half-closed bedroom door, the strange scent of a woman’s perfume left on the bed, Giorgi’s quiet phone calls during the last months, and the way he used to wash his hands as soon as he came home.

“What game do you play?” I asked Leo, trying not to let my voice tremble.

“The game where I am the king, and she is the queen. Dad laughs sometimes.”

My breath caught.

The woman slowly turned around. She was about thirty. The color had drained from her face. First she looked at Leo, then at me, and finally at the wedding ring on the finger of my left hand.

“You… are Nino’s wife?” she asked me.

“I am Nino. Who are you?”

Her lips opened, but she made no sound.

“Mom, her name is Salome,” Leo interrupted. “Dad told her that she must not tell you.”

I gripped the cart handle so tightly that the edge of the plastic cut into my palm.

“Dad told you this?” I asked the child.

Leo nodded.

Salome put the basket on the floor.

“We cannot talk here,” she said quietly. “If you want to know the truth, come to the café next to the old theater at seven this evening.”

“Are you having an affair with my husband?”

For a moment such pain appeared in her eyes that she was afraid of the answer.

“It is much worse than you think.”

At that moment my phone rang. Giorgi’s name lit up on the screen. Salome saw the number and stepped back in fright.

“Do not answer,” she whispered to me. “Please, not now.”

But the call had already ended. Immediately a message arrived: “Do not go home until I call you.”

Leo looked at the phone from my hand.

“Mom, will Dad be angry?”

I could no longer answer. Salome took a dark green folder from her bag and hugged it to her chest.

“You must see this,” she said. “But first you must promise me that you will not return home alone.”

“We can go to the café together, if you want. I will explain everything there.”

She put the folder on the table and reached toward the lock…

Salome’s fingers touched the folder’s small metal lock, but at that very moment the café door opened. The man who entered took off a black hat and looked straight at our table.

Salome immediately closed the folder.

“We have to leave,” she told me.

“Who is he?”

“Giorgi’s friend. Or so he calls himself.”

The man first nodded to Salome, then took out his phone. It seemed he was taking a photograph. I grabbed Leo’s hand and followed behind Salome. We went through the kitchen to the café’s back exit. There was an old metal door there, whose handle turned out to be greasy and cold.

A fine rain was falling outside.

“Get into the car,” Salome told me.

“I do not know you.”

“But you know my name, you know my address, and you know that I was in your house. Now you have to decide whether you trust the person from whom you received a warning not to return home.”

Her words pierced my heart like a knife.

Salome started the small gray car. I put Leo in the back seat. On the way I did not look back even once, although I saw a black car in the mirror several times.

“Where are you taking us?” I asked.

“To my aunt’s. She lives on the other side of the city. There are cameras there and the neighbors know one another.”

“Are you and Giorgi lovers?”

Salome tightened both hands around the steering wheel.

“No.”

“Then why were you in my house?”

She postponed the answer for several seconds.

“Because Giorgi hired me.”

Cold spread through my heart.

“For what?”

“At first to look after the child. Then my task changed.”

“Were you Leo’s nanny?”

“No. They had to make you believe that.”

Leo was listening silently from the back seat. In his hand he held his red plastic dinosaur, which was missing one leg. He had had this toy since he was three and carried it everywhere.

“Salome, were you there then too, when Dad locked the door?” he asked.

Salome looked in the mirror.

“Which day, Leo?”

“The day Mom was sleeping in the room and Dad told me to be quiet.”

The air in the car grew heavy.

“I was not sleeping,” I said. “That day I was at work.”

Leo tilted his head to the side.

“No, Mom. You were at home. You were very sick. Dad said that in the morning you no longer remembered.”

Salome braked sharply. The phone in her bag rang. She looked at the call and the color drained from her face.

“Is it Giorgi?” I asked.

“No. It is a lawyer.”

“Why is his lawyer calling you?”

“Because tonight everything may end.”

As soon as we arrived at her aunt’s house, Salome locked the door, drew the curtains, and placed a small voice recorder in the room. Then she opened the folder.

On the very first page my name was written. Beside it was my signature, which I had never written.

“What is this?”

“Your consent to the sale of the house.”

“I was not planning to sell the house.”

“I know.”

Salome took out the second sheet. It was a letter dismissing me from my job. On the third sheet the stamp of a psychiatric clinic could be seen.

“Giorgi stated that you have a nervous breakdown, become aggressive, and pose a danger to the child.”

I laughed. Briefly, involuntarily.

“This is impossible.”

“That is why I called you. For three weeks I have been watching your house from outside. Giorgi hired me, but when I understood what he was preparing, I stopped remaining on his side.”

“What was he preparing?”

Salome put her finger on the small memory card hidden at the bottom of the folder.

“The recording is here. From your own bedroom.”

Leo put his dinosaur on the table.

“Mom, Dad said that when you see the video, no one will believe you anymore.”

At once a car door slammed outside.

Salome switched off the recorder and went to the window. Giorgi’s car stood at the end of the street.

“He found us,” she whispered.

Three heavy blows sounded on the door.

“Nino, open the door!” It was Giorgi’s voice. “You have no idea what condition you are in.”

I stood in front of Leo.

Salome put the memory card into my hand.

“Now you have to decide whether we watch the video together or call the police.”

They knocked on the door once again. This time the lock moved. I held the card between my fingers and reached toward the device…

I inserted the memory card into the device. The screen lit up and Giorgi’s face appeared.

The recording had been filmed from our bedroom. My gray bag lay on the bed, while a blue lamp blinked by the wall. Giorgi and an unknown man were sitting in the room.

“You will take her to the clinic tomorrow morning,” the man was saying. “If she resists, you will call the neighbors and say that she cannot control herself.”

“Nino notices everything,” Giorgi answered. “That is why we have to get ahead of her.”

My hands grew cold.

Salome appeared on the screen. She was holding a folder.

“How will you get the signature?” she asked in that recording.

“First I will give her a sedative. Then I will tell her that she signed it herself. If she refuses, the doctor’s conclusion will be enough.”

Leo exhaled louder than I did.

“Dad made me take medicine that day,” he said. “He told me to give some to Mom too.”

I dropped to my knees in front of him.

“You are not guilty, darling.”

“But I hid it from Mom.”

“Because you were afraid.”

Tears ran from Salome’s eyes. She stopped the recording and took out a new document from the folder.

“There is one more thing you must look at.”

A large sum was written on the paper beside Giorgi’s name. It was the amount the insurance company was to pay after my “sudden death.”

Silence fell over the room.

“Death?” I barely said.

“He had life insurance taken out on you,” Salome said. “You did not know, because your signature on the documents was forged.”

There was another knock on the door.

“Nino, do not trust Salome!” Giorgi shouted. “She is asking you for money!”

I walked toward the door, but Salome caught my hand.

“Listen to this first.”

The recording continued. Giorgi’s voice sounded clearer.

“Turn the child against his mother little by little. Tell him that Mom is sick and will leave soon. When the house is mine, Leo will stay with me too.”

Something shattered in my heart.

Giorgi was not only trying to get rid of me at home. He was also preparing our son to accept my disappearance as something normal.

Salome called the police. Ten minutes later the sound of cars was heard in the yard. Panic appeared in Giorgi’s voice for the first time.

“Nino, I love you! Open the door and I will explain everything!”

“I have already understood,” I answered.

Silence fell behind the door for several seconds.

Then Giorgi began speaking quietly, almost calmly.

“If you do this, you will never see your son again.”

Salome looked toward me.

“He still does not know that we have a second recording too.”

“A second recording?”

She opened a small file hidden on the back of the memory card. The date appeared on the screen—the night when Giorgi said he was on a business trip.

The recording started.

The first voice was mine. But then Giorgi said a phrase in the room that froze my blood.

“Tomorrow morning, if everything goes well, we will arrange Nino’s accident so that the child is there too…”

Salome immediately stopped the recording.

A police siren approached outside, but Giorgi had already escaped through the back door.

A message that arrived on his phone showed us where he was going—to the city clinic, where a doctor was preparing a false report for him.

And the most frightening thing was that only Giorgi and his accomplice knew the clinic’s address…