Part 4 — For three years he told me that he would never walk again, but when his laughter returned home, it froze my husband in place

…“Tomorrow the keys are mine.”

I looked at the picture for a long time.

Then I looked at Luka.

His eyes were no longer the eyes of a sick man. Now there was only panic in them.

“Who is this?” I asked.

Luka did not answer me.

Eka took the phone from my hand and called the number. The call went through twice, then the man answered.

“Mrs. Beridze, we have little time,” he said. “The transfer of the house must be stopped by noon today, otherwise the new owner will enter.”

“Who are you?”

“A man to whom Luka owes money.”

Luka tried to stand up from the wheelchair and immediately stopped. Everyone in the room saw how he put one foot on the floor, then sat down again.

“Do not believe him,” he said. “This man is threatening me.”

“Did you transfer the house to him?” Eka asked.

“It was a temporary arrangement.”

“In my name?” I asked.

Luka pressed his lips together.

An answer was no longer needed.

The lawyer immediately called the court, the bank, and the real estate registry. Her voice was calm, but her fingers were tapping quickly on the table.

“The transfer has been stopped,” she said several minutes later. “However, the loans and the false power of attorney are already a criminal case.”

Luka took out his phone and called someone.

“David, stop everything. Now. No, I do not care about the money, just stop it!”

In response he received only loud silence.

“David already knows that you have lost everything,” Mariam said.

Luka turned toward her.

“You are on their side too?”

“I am no longer on your side,” she replied. “At last I took my own side.”

That was the first moment when Luka was left completely alone.

Then the investigators sealed his phone and laptop. A small red camera light blinked in the room. Luka was still trying to regain control.

“Nino, let us talk alone.”

“No.”

“We were together for three years.”

“I was in a lie written by you for three years.”

“I was sick.”

“No. You were afraid of the consequences.”

He tightened his jaw.

“If I end up in prison, it will be your fault.”

These words fell into the room like a heavy stone.

And for the first time I did not feel guilty.

“No, Luka. It was your choice.”

That same day he was taken to the police station. I did not go with him. Eka told me that the investigation would begin in several directions: forged documents, financial fraud, insurance deception, and deliberately arranging the accident.

Two weeks later an investigator called me and said that they had found Luka’s old recordings. One of them had been made in a hotel room, on the evening when he was meeting Mariam.

In the recording Luka said:

“Nino will not find out anything. She only needs to think that she can save me.”

I heard this voice in the courtroom.

Luka was sitting opposite me. He no longer needed a wheelchair, but while walking he held onto his lawyer’s arm. His face was tired and thin.

The recorder was turned on.

“She only needs to think that she can save me.”

Luka lowered his head.

The judge asked him:

“Is that your voice?”

He was silent for a long time.

“Yes.”

One word.

Spoken with his own mouth.

I looked at him and felt something strange: neither joy nor victory. Only emptiness, which at last was being filled by silence.

The trial lasted for months. Mariam testified to the investigation and admitted her own guilt. She lost her job, but cooperated and her punishment was reduced. Gela collected the documents and recordings to the end. The insurance company filed a lawsuit. And one morning Luka’s lawyer refused to meet with him.

“I can no longer lie in your name,” he told him.

Luka struck the chair with his hand.

“You are my defender!”

“I am a defender of the law. Not of your lies.”

That evening I entered the house alone.

His room was empty.

The bed had been removed. On the wall only a square bright mark remained, where his picture had hung for years. In the bottom drawer of the wardrobe I found the silver cane.

The wooden bead was no longer hanging from the handle.

I took out the small bead from my pocket, the one that had come with me when I escaped from the office that night. I put it back on the cane and leaned it against the wall.

For three years I thought that this object helped Luka walk.

In reality, it only weighed down my conscience.

Several weeks later the house was mine again. The bank canceled the false transactions. My salary no longer went to unknown accounts. For the first time in three years, I had money left at the end of the month.

With that money I rented a small apartment near the river, because every room in the old house was filled with Luka’s voice.

I began working at a children’s library. I read fairy tales to children, arranged a drawing corner, and every day saw how they believed in the world even when adults wanted to deceive it.

One morning a six-year-old girl, Ana, gave me a drawing.

“This is you,” she told me.

In the drawing a woman stood beside a house, holding a small wooden bead in her hand. The sun was rising beside her.

“Why do I have this?” I asked.

“Because you are no longer afraid.”

The child’s answer stayed with me all day.

Three months later the first snow came. I was walking along the riverbank when I received a message from Luka.

“Nino, I made a mistake. Mariam left me. I do not have a lawyer anymore either. Only you can help me. Come, talk to me at least once.”

I did not delete the message for a long time.

Not because I wanted to return.

Because I was learning not to hurry to repair someone else’s pain.

The second message came in the evening.

“You are my wife, after all.”

I wrote a reply:

“I was your wife. Now I am Nino.”

Then I blocked the number.

When I returned home, the cane was waiting by the door. In the new apartment I had left it only as decoration. The wooden bead was still hanging from the handle, but now seeing it no longer hurt me.

I opened the window.

Snow was falling outside. Children were running in the yard, and Ana’s drawing, brought home from the library, was attached to my refrigerator.

I touched the cane and held the bead between my fingers.

It was no longer a promise that I would save Luka.

It was a small, rough sign that in the end I had saved myself.

And for the first time in three years, I was completely alone at home—and this loneliness no longer frightened me.