Part 4 — After I retired, my family decided to move into my house, but the lawyer unfolded a sheet of paper and everyone’s smile disappeared

A few seconds before opening the first frame of the video, I called Sophie.

It was six twenty-nine in the evening.

“Do not open anything alone,” she told me. “Do not delete or forward the screen. I am coming right now.”

“The bank told me that supposedly I signed to secure the apartment.”

“I know. The bank has already sent me the document.”

“Would Mety do this?”

Sophie did not answer.

Sometimes silence is the most exact answer.

Nine minutes later the doorbell rang. Sophie entered, carrying her dark green bag. With her was a young investigator whom Nodari, the building manager, knew.

We opened the video together.

In the recording a room appeared that I did not recognize. On the wall hung a photograph of my old house, which I had had in the living room before the sale. Mety was sitting at the table. A document lay in front of him.

The camera was filming from the side.

Mety was saying to someone:

“If I tell Mom that we are using the apartment as security, she will not sign.”

Claire’s voice sounded:

“Then don’t tell her.”

“And if she finds out?”

“By then the house debt will be covered. Then she will act emotionally and forgive us again.”

In the next shot Claire moved the camera to the right. I was not there. My face, which appeared beside the document, had been cut from an old video.

Sophie stopped the video.

“This is editing,” the investigator said. “The audio and image of the video were recorded at different times.”

My body seemed to grow heavy.

Mety had not only entered my apartment. He had used my signature, my face, and my trust all at once.

The next morning we went to the bank. Mety’s lawyer, Givi, was waiting there, but it was clearly visible on his face that he too was learning everything for the first time.

“My client claimed that Mrs. Marina gave consent voluntarily,” he said.

Sophie placed the document in front of him.

“We spoke to your client only a minute ago. He said he had never seen the document.”

Givi called Mety.

“Mety, are you here?” he asked after listening for several seconds. “No, I cannot work like this. If you do not know where the document came from, I can no longer represent you.”

He ended the call.

“I am not going to testify against you,” Givi told me, “but I cannot defend this document. It puts you in a very bad position.”

That same day we went to the police.

Mety was already waiting for us there. Claire was standing with him. Mety’s eyes were red, but this time his anger no longer affected me.

“Mom, let us go home and talk it out,” he told me.

“This is no longer a matter of your home.”

“I did not know Claire had done this.”

Claire quickly turned her head.

“Do not lie in front of everyone. You told me everything was settled.”

“I thought you had only taken the key.”

“You signed it!”

“I signed nothing!”

The investigator played the audio of the video on the table.

Mety’s voice sounded in the room:

“Mom will forgive us anyway. This apartment is nothing to her.”

Mety lowered his head.

This was the first time he heard his own words from outside. Not in his thoughts, not in an argument with Claire, but in the middle of a room, before other people.

His face slowly fell apart.

“I only wanted to keep the family together,” he said.

“You did not want to keep the family together; you wanted to avoid my answer,” I replied.

In the end, an investigation began. Claire separately admitted that she had ordered the additional key. Mety was forced to say that the distribution of the video and the use of the document had not happened without his knowledge.

The court prohibited them from entering my apartment, granted the demand for repayment of the loan, and sent the forged-document case for investigation. I was not asking for their punishment out of revenge. I was simply no longer trying to save them from the consequences of their actions.

Three days later my apartment was empty.

They had taken away the folding baby bed. The boxes left in the wardrobe were gone too. Only a pink pencil lay on the floor by the wall.

I bent down and picked it up.

The small reading corner in the living room still stood there, but it no longer looked like a place someone could take away. My husband’s pocket watch lay on the oak shelf. Beside it was the ceramic rooster.

The rooster had one small scratch on its red comb. Claire had probably hit it while putting down the bag.

I touched it carefully.

For five months I had thought the secret was buying the apartment. In reality, the secret turned out to be that for the first time in my life I had the right to say “no.”

Three weeks later I started a new job at a small clinic in the city. I worked in administration four days a week, and in the evenings I walked in the park. In the mornings I opened the windows, made coffee, and no longer waited for anyone who would open my wardrobe with their own key.

Elene often came to visit.

One Sunday my nephew, Luka, drew our apartment on paper. He drew a small red rooster by the window, and beside it a woman holding a cup.

“Is this you?” I asked.

“Yes. You live peacefully here.”

“How do you know?”

“It shows on your face.”

These words affected me more strongly than all the court hearings.

Two months later I received a letter from Mety. Not a message. A real letter, folded and carefully placed in an envelope.

“Mom, now I understand that everything was not as I thought. I left Claire. I see the children twice a week. I want you to talk to me at least once.”

I sat at the table for a long time.

Earlier I would have answered such a letter immediately. I would have called. I would have come. I would have asked forgiveness even from the person who should have asked it from me.

This time I did not call Sophie.

I wrote the answer myself.

“Mety, you must put your life in order yourself. I can no longer sacrifice my peace to your decisions. If we ever need to talk, it will be possible only with respect for boundaries. You will not enter my home without asking again.”

I sent the letter by mail.

Several days later Mety came to the door. He did not enter. He only stood outside and waited for me.

I had installed a camera at the door.

“Mom, I know you can hear me,” he said. “I just want you to tell me at least once whether everything is over or not.”

I did not open the door.

I answered by phone:

“Everything ended as it should have ended. If we ever begin again, it will be only with the truth.”

He stood on the other side of the door for a long time.

Then I heard the sound of footsteps.

I did not follow.

The first snow came at the beginning of December. The park trees turned white. In the morning I made coffee, opened the window slightly, and the ray of sun fell again on the ceramic rooster standing on the shelf.

The scratch on its red comb was visible.

But the rooster was still standing.

This time in my home.

And I had locked the door from the inside.