Part 4 — My Pregnant Husband Abandoned Me on a Mountain Trail, but When He Demanded My Return, His Friend’s Face Suddenly Turned Pale

Adrian’s phone kept ringing while Ernesto was putting handcuffs on his wrists.

He was looking at the screen as if someone from there were going to save him.

The first call was from his lawyer.

“Do not answer,” Marco told him.

Adrian picked it up anyway.

“Where are you?” a stern voice sounded from the other side. “Why did I hear that the beneficiary of the insurance was changed in your records?”

Adrian fell silent.

“Tell me that this is not your voice.”

“I will explain.”

“No,” the lawyer replied. “I will not continue this conversation before I go to the police. You are no longer my client.”

The connection ended.

Adrian let the phone slip from his hand. It fell onto the wet ground and the screen cracked.

The rescuers brought the stretcher closer to me. Lucia was kneeling beside me. Dark earth and tiny ant fragments still clung to her hands.

“Nora, open your eyes,” she was telling me. “We can already hear the baby. We will take both of you home.”

“Adrian?”

“He will have to listen to his own choice.”

In the ambulance they put an oxygen mask on me. On the way I lost consciousness several times. Each time I heard the same thing: the baby’s heartbeat, the monitor’s even clicking, and the light clinking of the copper whistle hidden in my bag.

At the hospital Adrian and Marco were questioned in separate rooms. I was taken to the emergency department.

Four hours later the doctor told me that premature labor was beginning.

“The baby must be born now,” he said. “But the heartbeat is strong.”

“I cannot lose him.”

“You will not lose him. We will fight for both of you.”

In the morning my son was born.

I named him Luka.

He was small, red, and angry. His first cry turned out to be so strong that I began to cry too. Lucia stood beside my bed, wringing her hands.

“He is a fighter,” she told me.

“No,” I replied. “He simply came home.”

Three days later a lawyer came to my hospital room. Her name was Elene and she was holding a small wooden folder.

“All the business partners heard your recording,” she told me. “Adrian’s company signed it over, froze the bank accounts, and the employees gave testimony.”

“Marco?”

“He confessed to everything. He confirmed his participation in planning the crime.”

“Adrian?”

Elene looked toward the window.

“Today he listened to his own words for the first time.”

That same evening, before Adrian’s court hearing, I was at the police station. The doctors still did not allow me to stand for long, so I sat on a chair and watched the clock hanging on the wall.

They played the recording in the room.

“If you disappear, I will tell everyone that you were depressed.”

It was his voice.

Adrian sat on the other side of the table. He intertwined his fingers so tightly that the skin near his fingernails turned white.

The recording continued.

“She thinks she will handle this alone. Let us see how strong she is.”

Adrian raised his head.

“I did not say it like that.”

Elene raised the volume slightly.

“Your voice said it.”

“I was angry.”

“And therefore you planned her death?”

Adrian could not answer.

I watched him, and for the first time I no longer wanted to convince him that he could be a good person.

A person who cannot bear to hear his own words must get used not to making them disappear, but to enduring the consequences.

Several weeks later Adrian was charged with attempted murder, conspiracy, and insurance fraud. Marco testified and his sentence was reduced, although he did not escape prison.

I did not go to court against him out of revenge.

I went so that the truth would have a name for Luka.

When the judge announced the time for my testimony, the courtroom became quiet.

“Why did you return to that nest?” she asked me.

“Because I knew my husband would return. And I knew that sometimes nature protects more than a person does.”

Adrian lowered his head.

Lucia sat in the corner of the courtroom. Ernesto was beside her. Both listened to me silently.

That same day Adrian tried one last time to regain control.

He told me that if I changed my testimony, it would be possible to “preserve the family” for the child.

“Luka already has a family,” I replied.

“I am his father.”

“Biologically, no.”

Pain passed over his face, but this time I was no longer troubled about comforting him.

“Fatherhood is not that you carry the child by your surname. Fatherhood is that when it is cold, you do not leave the child in the car.”

He said nothing.

Months passed.

I changed cities and moved into a small apartment near the sea. In the morning I fed Luka, then worked part-time as an administrator at a children’s clinic. In the evenings I sat by the window and wrote reports while Luka played with wooden toys on the floor.

His first word was not “mother.”

He said “wind.”

It happened when I had the window open and the curtains were moving slowly.

Luka was interested in everything that made a sound. The doorbell, the lid of a pot, birds, and especially my old copper whistle.

One evening, when the first snow began to fall outside, he took it from the table.

“What is this?”

“Once it helped them find the way.”

“Did someone find you?”

“Yes.”

“Then did I find you?”

His question struck me in the heart.

“No, my little one. You brought me back.”

Several days later I received a letter from Adrian. It was short.

“Nora, I know I do not deserve forgiveness. But I want to see Luka at least once. I have changed.”

I put the letter on the kitchen table.

Luka was drawing there with pencils. On the sheet he had drawn a large red sun, and beneath it three people: me, himself, and Lucia. Beside them were small black dots, which he explained were ants.

I did not return to the letter.

I called Elene and told her that I did not agree to a meeting. Everything would be regulated by law, but Adrian would no longer have a place in my home.

“Is this refusal not cruelty?” I asked her.

“No,” Elene replied. “It is a boundary.”

That night I covered Luka with his blanket. He was breathing peacefully, and in his fist he was clutching a red pencil.

I went to the window.

Snow was forming a thin layer on my balcony. The copper whistle lay on the table. Its surface was scratched, but when I touched it with my finger, I remembered my grandfather’s voice again: “In the mountains, sometimes it is not a person but an object that carries a sound.”

Then I was waiting for help.

Now I was waiting for no one.

I put the whistle into a small wooden box, together with Luka’s drawing.

Snow was falling outside.

And for the first time I knew that I was home.