Part 4 — I helped an injured man in an abandoned building, but after my six words, the smile disappeared from his face

The call from Mara’s number stopped every sound in the room.

The investigator switched the phone to speaker mode.

“Who are you?” he asked.

For several seconds, only breathing could be heard on the line.

“If you want Hannah to remain alive, Nicholas must appear at the old ferry terminal by ten in the morning.”

Nicholas tried to get up from the bed.

“No,” I said.

“This is my business.”

“Now it is my life too.”

The woman’s voice sounded from the phone again.

“And let him come alone.”

The call ended.

The investigator put the phone on the table.

“This may be a trap.”

“Of course it is a trap,” Nicholas said. “But they know that I will go anyway.”

Security officers took positions in the hospital corridor. Adrian’s people had been arrested at the harbor, but we still did not have the main answer: was Mara alive, or was someone using her name?

Nicholas’s lawyer, Elliot, rushed in at eight in the morning. He held a heavy leather bag in his hand.

“Nick, going to the terminal is suicide.”

“Then let the police go.”

“The police are already going. But you must not be there.”

“My daughter is there.”

Elliot looked toward me.

“Hannah, please convince him.”

“For the first time in my life I met my father,” I said. “Now I cannot convince him to go alone.”

Elliot slowly inhaled.

“Then I am coming too.”

Law enforcement officers made a plan. Nicholas would be bait, while I would remain in a protected car. But when we arrived at the old ferry terminal, everything was simpler and more brutal than we had thought.

The harbor was submerged in the morning fog. Puddles of water shone on the concrete floor. A woman was sitting on an iron bench by the wall.

She was wearing sunglasses.

Nicholas recognized her immediately.

“Mara.”

The woman stood up.

It was my mother.

Time seemed to turn back. The same eyes. The same slightly tilted head. Only her hair was completely white.

I got out of the car.

“Mother?”

Mara covered her mouth with her hands.

“Hannah.”

Nicholas took a step toward her, but his leg was still weak.

“You are alive.”

“And you came very late,” she replied.

There was anger in her voice, but beneath it was hidden such exhaustion that I felt guilty for her pain.

“I was told that you had died,” Nicholas said.

“I was convinced that Adrian had had you killed. Then he stole my child and convinced me that you hated me.”

“Why didn’t you come back?”

Mara smiled bitterly.

“Because then they would have killed Hannah too.”

At that moment applause sounded from the back of the warehouse.

Adrian came out.

Two armed men stood beside him. He no longer had the confidence of the previous night. His jacket was disordered, and sweat shone on his face.

“It is a family meeting,” he said. “It is a pity that it will not last long.”

The police officers were still in concealed positions. Adrian did not know this.

“You did everything?” I asked.

“Everything?” He lowered his head. “Nicholas built the business, and I cleaned up the dirt. When his daughter appeared, I realized that I had found his weak spot.”

“Did you take my certificate too?”

“That patient had no chance of survival. You simply turned out to be a convenient target.”

Elliot took a small recorder from the bag.

“Say it once more.”

Adrian looked at him.

“What?”

Elliot pressed the button.

Adrian’s voice sounded through the terminal, exactly as it had a few minutes earlier.

“Nicholas built the business, and I cleaned up the dirt. When his daughter appeared, I realized that I had found his weak spot.”

Adrian heard his own words from someone else’s mouth for the first time.

His face changed.

“This is illegal.”

“You recorded your own confession yourself,” Elliot said.

Adrian reached toward the weapon.

The next moment police officers appeared from every side.

“Hands on your head!”

One man dropped his weapon. The other knelt. Adrian stood motionless for several seconds, as if he were still trying to change reality.

Then they put handcuffs on him.

I stood beside him as he was leaving.

“Hannah,” he told me, “you know nothing about this world. Nicholas will use your life again.”

“No,” I answered. “For the first time he told me the truth.”

Adrian chuckled.

“The truth always comes late.”

“But it still comes.”

The trial took place several months later. Adrian was charged with kidnapping, attempted murder, extortion, and falsifying my case. Nicholas handed over all the financial records to the investigators. His organization fell apart. Several people were arrested, and several were released in exchange for testimony.

Nicholas sat in the courtroom that day when Adrian heard his own confession for the second time.

The recording was played.

“I found his weak spot.”

Adrian lowered his head.

Nicholas looked at him only once and then turned his face toward me.

There was no victory in his eyes.

Only exhaustion.

When I returned home, his old mansion was empty. Most of the pictures hanging on the walls had been removed. On the upper floor I found a small room where childhood things were arranged.

There was a cardboard box there.

Inside the box was a photograph of my mother, and beside it a small wooden boat. A date was written on the boat—my birthday.

Nicholas stopped in the doorway.

“I made one every year,” he told me. “I thought that someday I would return to you.”

“Why didn’t you throw them away?”

“Fathers do not throw away hope.”

For the first time I allowed him to hug me.

His body was still weak. But in that embrace, twenty-seven lost years slowly melted.

Weeks passed.

I took the medical examination again. This time nobody helped me, but Nicholas was waiting for me outside the courthouse when I received the result.

My certificate was returned to me.

Mara began living in a small apartment from which the harbor could be seen. I went to her every week. At first we could not find what to say to each other. Then we slowly began.

She told me how she used to sing in childhood when I thought I was only sleeping quietly. I told her how I used to repeat one strange phrase whose meaning I had never understood.

“You are still my boy.”

Mara lowered her eyes.

“Nicholas’s mother told me this on the night we learned of your birth. I left these words in your memory so that someday, if you met him, you would recognize him.”

Nicholas was sitting in the living room and listening to them.

The first snow came outside.

I now work in a small clinic. In the morning I make coffee, check patients’ pulses, and place a childhood photograph of Hannah on my desk. Beside the photograph is my child’s drawing—Nicholas’s grandchild, as he calls himself, even though he is only five years old.

Nicholas began walking to the harbor again, but he no longer has his old affairs. Now he has created a free medical fund for sailors. He says that at least once he must build something that no one will destroy out of fear.

Adrian sent me a letter at last.

“You can change everything. Tell your father that this was not personal between us. I was only trying to survive.”

I read the letter to the end.

Then I folded it and put it in the trash can.

Nicholas asked me whether I intended to send a reply.

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“For the first time I am.”

He nodded. He said nothing more.

That night I stayed in my mother’s old apartment. I arranged her things by the window. I took the medallion in my hand. Its chain was still broken, but now I kept it in a special small glass box.

Nicholas offered me a new chain.

I refused.

“Why?”

“Because it is a sign. Some things can break and still bring you home.”

Outside, snow gathered on the windowsill. Streetlight fell on the medallion and a small crescent appeared on its worn surface.

That night, for the first time, I was no longer afraid that the past would open the door for me.

The door was already open.

And the medallion was no longer lost to anyone.