Part 4 — At the Charity Evening My Older Sister Humiliated Me, but the Sight of My Place Made Her Smile Suddenly Disappear

Garik’s phone rang again, but this time he did not answer.

Messages came one after another on the screen. From the bank. From the company board. From the legal department.

Mira looked toward the door.

“The investigators have entered.”

Garik spread his hands.

“This is a misunderstanding. Serena, you cannot do this. My contract—”

“It has already been terminated,” Serena replied.

“One recording means nothing.”

“The video, audio recordings, bank transfers, and your assistant’s testimony together mean a lot.”

Garik took a step toward me.

“You do not know what you are doing.”

“I do,” I said. “For the first time, I know exactly.”

Two investigators appeared in the doorway. Behind them stood the company’s head of security. One of them handed Garik a document.

“Mr. Thorn, please sign the act suspending your authority and hand over your devices.”

Garik looked at the paper.

“I will not do this without my lawyer.”

His phone lit up again.

Mira looked at the screen and said calmly:

“Your lawyer no longer represents you.”

Garik froze.

“What does that mean?”

“He informed the board that he has a conflict of interest. His firm has been paid by your family’s company for the last two years.”

For the first time Garik could not answer anything.

Then he seemed to become the old Garik again and raised his voice.

“You will all regret this! I built half of this company!”

Serena moved in front of him.

“You managed the budget. Not the company.”

The investigator extended his hand.

Garik threw the devices onto the table. The golden watch flashed once more in the candlelight. It seemed strange to me that at that same moment the watch no longer had power. As if the time he had imposed on others for years had stopped for him.

Derek stood by the wall and looked at his hands.

“Caleb,” he said to me, “I am sorry.”

I turned toward him.

“Why?”

“Because I knew you had done nothing wrong. I was simply afraid of losing my job.”

“I was afraid too.”

“I know.”

“No,” I said. “You did not know. Whoever thinks only about his own salary cannot understand what it means to lose someone else’s heating money.”

Derek lowered his head.

The investigators began taking Garik out of the room. He stopped at the door and looked back.

“Serena, these were your enemies. In the end they will turn against you.”

“Perhaps,” she replied. “But today they stand on the children’s side.”

Garik’s voice could be heard in the corridor for a long time. He repeated his words as if he could still change them.

“I was only following procedure! I did not steal the money! It was an ordinary operational redistribution!”

Mira played the audio recording again.

Garik’s own voice sounded in the corridor:

“Divide the money into four accounts. One to Harbor House, one to the Northern Shelter, and two to the company that will have a new name.”

His voice returned in the room more clearly than when he himself had spoken.

Garik stopped.

For the first time he heard his own words from the outside.

The destruction that neither anger nor threats could hide appeared on his face.

Then the door closed.

Serena exhaled and sat down on the chair. She was still holding Nessa’s paper flower. One of the yellow petals had drooped slightly.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“I should be asking you that.”

“When I found out about the car brakes, I was not all right.”

“Now?”

I looked at the lights of Chicago through the window.

“Now at least I know that my fear did not exist only in my head.”

The next morning we went to Harbor House.

An old radiator rumbled in the building’s corridor. Children’s drawings hung on the walls. On one of them a house was drawn, with yellow light coming from its windows.

Nessa was waiting for me in the kitchen. She held a pencil and had drawn a small plan on the table.

“This is the plan of my house,” she told me. “Here will be a library. And here a staircase that will go up to the roof.”

“Why should you go up to the roof?”

“To look at the stars when Mother wants to sleep.”

Serena knelt beside her.

“You will not build your house alone, Nessa.”

“Who will help me?”

“Many people. Caleb among them.”

Nessa looked toward me.

“Are you an architect?”

“No. I check numbers.”

“Then you must arrange the numbers so the house does not get lost.”

Her words affected me more strongly than any official statement.

“I will arrange them,” I said.

Within several weeks, the company board began a full independent investigation. Garik was charged with financial fraud and attempting to destroy evidence. Derek testified and received a plea agreement. His guilt did not disappear, but for the first time he no longer hid behind his fear.

Harbor House received its money back.

The other shelters also received what had existed for years only in reports.

And Serena offered me a new job — leading the team auditing the fund for helping families.

“I have never been a supervisor,” I said.

“It is never too late for the first day.”

When my mother heard this, she opened the old kitchen window all the way. Winter was already coming, but cold air still entered the room.

“At least now you will have money to repair the window,” she told me.

“First we need to repair your roof.”

“First eat.”

That was her answer to every great event.

Three months later the first snow came. I arrived early in the morning at the new office. My desk stood by the window, and beside it I had propped up Nessa’s drawing. A small house, yellow windows, and large, crooked stars drawn above.

That day I received the last message from Garik.

“I want to talk to you. Everything was not as you think. You can understand my side. The meeting will be only ten minutes.”

I looked at the screen for a long time.

Earlier, I would have thought about such a message all night. I would have started justifying myself, probably would even have apologized to him for going too far.

Now I wrote only one reply.

“Your case already belongs to the people who should examine it. I am no longer the person who will take your consequences upon himself.”

My finger did not tremble when I sent it.

That same evening I went to Harbor House. Nessa was sitting on the stairs and coloring a new drawing.

“Look,” she told me. “This time I added a door to the house.”

“Good idea.”

“If there were no door, how would people enter?”

“Sometimes a door is also there so that whoever should enter can enter and whoever should not can remain outside.”

Nessa thought.

“Will Garik remain outside?”

I stopped.

“Some people choose for themselves which side to stand on.”

She added one more window to the drawing with a yellow pencil.

Nessa’s old paper flower was in my bag. Serena later had it brought to me. The yellow paper was slightly crumpled, one petal had drooped, but the flower was still standing.

When I returned home in the evening, I placed it beside my mother’s repaired window. Snow could be seen through the window. For the first time in years, wind was no longer entering the room.

My mother poured me tea.

“Is this flower still with you?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

I touched the yellow petal with my finger.

“Because sometimes the smallest gift reminds you what you must not stay silent for.”

Outside, the snow began falling more strongly. The city lights spread across the windowpane, while the paper flower moved slowly in the current of warm air.

This time the door was not locked.

But I was free.