Part 4 — My Wife Put On My Robe and Confessed the Secret of Our Marriage — Then I Saw Something on the Phone Screen and Turned to Stone

When Elene said these words, all color completely disappeared from Isabella’s face.

“His name is Miguel Rivera,” she said quietly.

I immediately understood that this name resembled a door locked inside her for a long time.

“Where has he been until now?”

“I don’t know,” Isabella answered me. “But if he has returned now, it will not be only because of the debts.”

Elene called the police, then contacted the investigator from the government agency. I, meanwhile, locked all the studio windows and transferred the recordings on the computer to three different memory devices.

Laura kept calling me.

For the first time I did not answer.

Nor the second time.

The third time I listened to her voice message.

“Niko, I swear, everything was different. I only wanted you to understand that she was destroying your life.”

Isabella looked at the phone.

“She still thinks she can get you back.”

“Maybe she herself no longer knows what she is doing.”

“People often know exactly what they are doing. They simply do not want to imagine the consequences.”

The next day Elene summoned us to the old courthouse. The smell of wet umbrellas stood in the corridor, and the clock hanging on the walls knocked loudly every minute.

Miguel was waiting for us there.

He was a medium-height, thin man with an old scar on his face. He held a brown folder in his hand.

“Isabella, you have to return home,” he said.

“This is my home.”

“This belongs to your husband.”

“My husband is standing here.”

Miguel looked toward me and smiled ironically.

“You don’t even know whom you are defending.”

I took one step forward.

“And you don’t know how much has been recorded.”

His smile disappeared.

Elene opened the folder.

“Miguel Rivera, there is evidence against you of appropriation of debt, forged signatures, and blackmail. It has also been confirmed that you tried, together with Laura, to discredit this marriage.”

“That is a lie.”

“Then listen to yourselves.”

Elene turned on the recording.

Miguel’s own voice sounded in the corridor, from a telephone call several hours earlier.

“If she does not return to me, I will reveal everything to Niko. First I will make her pay the debt, then I will destroy her documents.”

Miguel froze.

For the first time I saw his face through someone else’s eyes. A man who could not escape his own voice.

“It’s edited,” he said.

“You said the same thing about those videos,” I replied.

In the following minutes everything happened quickly. Investigators came. Miguel was handcuffed. Laura called a lawyer, but the lawyer refused her after hearing the recording.

“I didn’t know the matter would go this far,” Laura was saying on the phone.

“You brought it this far yourself,” I told her.

“Niko, please, listen to me just once.”

“I listened for two years to the voice of the woman for whom I was not enough. Now for the first time I hear my own voice.”

I ended the call.

When I returned home that evening, I left Isabella’s room door open. Her bed was almost empty. Only one thing lay on the pillow—the old blue robe, folded and dried cleanly.

A small piece of paper was attached to it.

“If you stay with me now, this choice must be yours.”

I stood in the doorway for a long time.

Then I took the robe and entered her room.

“Isabella,” I called.

She was standing by the window.

“What do you want?”

“To stay with you. Not for the documents. Not because of fear. Not because I once made a promise.”

“Then why?”

“Because when you are not home, this house is just walls.”

She lowered her eyes.

“I still have many things to resolve.”

“So do I.”

“You may change your mind tomorrow.”

“Maybe. But tomorrow’s decision must be made tomorrow. Today I want to be here.”

For several seconds we were silent.

Then she extended her hand toward me.

I went to her.

Three months later I began new work in the studio. I photographed people’s family stories, but now I looked at their faces differently. Before, I thought a photograph was only a matter of light and shadow. Now I knew that sometimes one look destroys an entire lie.

Isabella changed jobs. In the evenings she went to ceramics, and on Sundays she grew tomatoes on the small balcony. Every morning she did not add cinnamon to my coffee, because she still hated its smell.

One evening our seven-year-old neighbor girl, Nini, drew a picture for us. Two people were depicted, and between them was a large yellow house.

“This is you,” she said. “Do you really live together now?”

Isabella looked at me.

I smiled.

“Now we are learning how to live together without losing each other.”

Winter arrived. The first snow came at night, and in the morning it laid a white stripe across the balcony railing.

That day I received the last message from Laura.

“I have lost everything. Only you can help me. Come, let’s talk at least once as we did before.”

I looked at the screen for a long time.

Before, at such a time, I would leave immediately. I considered other people’s pain my own duty.

Now I wrote only one sentence:

“I can no longer return to that life. I wish you the strength to find a way to remain alone with your choices.”

Then I put the phone down.

Isabella was in the kitchen. She was wearing my old blue robe, its sleeves slightly short and its waist awkwardly fastened.

“You’re wearing my robe again,” I told her.

“No,” she answered me. “Now it is our robe.”

Outside the window, snow was falling silently.

I stood beside her, made coffee, and for the first time no longer cared who would believe us.

Some truths do not fit into documents.

They simply return home.