Part 4 — On Christmas Eve, he called me from the hospital and told me he would not be able to come to work in the morning — Killian lost color

…I recognized the voice immediately.

Rose.

He pronounced my name as if for three years he had waited every day for me to appear before him at least once not in an apron and with a lowered gaze, but with my own name.

“Mara!” he called again. “Killian, open the door. I am with the police.”

Killian looked at the basement door.

“Is the police really with him?” I asked.

Nolan took the phone in his hand.

“Two cars are standing in the yard. But one police unit is already on the way. These are private security people.”

“Darren made them look like police,” I said.

Killian put the notebook into his coat.

“How do you know?”

“Because Darren always acted in other people’s names.”

The lock sounded from above.

Killian moved toward me and said to me in a low voice:

“Where is the rear exit?”

“Behind the wine storage room.”

“Go.”

“No.”

“That is an order.”

“For three years I hid in your house. Today I am no longer going to hide.”

His eyes hardened.

“They may kill you there.”

“They already tried today. Next time I will be more careful.”

Nolan lowered a metal lever hidden in the basement wall. The shelf moved aside and a narrow passage appeared. Cold air came in from there. My fingers found the sewing box again.

The sound of a door breaking came from above.

“We have no more time,” Nolan said.

Killian went ahead, but I grabbed him by the arm.

“First we must release the recording.”

“Where?”

“Through the house’s old sound system. It will be heard in every room.”

“If we do this, we will not be able to go back.”

“There is nothing left for us to go back to.”

Nolan connected the device to the old amplifier. I entered the code with the numbers written inside the sewing box, on a small piece of cloth sewn by my mother. The code was not money, nor a date. It was my mother’s birthday.

The device beeped.

The door opened upstairs.

Darren’s voice sounded.

“Killian, I know you are here. Mara Danelia was collecting evidence against you. She is the daughter of your father’s murderer. You cannot trust her.”

Killian looked at me.

“That was his plan,” I said. “He turned my past into a weapon.”

Nolan pressed the button of the sound system.

The sound of the old recording spread through the whole house.

“Alex, we cannot take the book away…”

Everything upstairs fell silent.

Then my father’s voice sounded.

“Your son must know.”

Darren’s voice spread from room to room.

“Neither son must know anything. If you have the recording, both families will collapse.”

For several seconds only the hiss of the device could be heard.

Then Darren shouted:

“Turn this off!”

Killian went up the stairs. Nolan and I followed behind him.

Four men stood in the great hall. Two really were private security employees. The third was a young policeman holding empty handcuffs. Darren stood beside him, wearing on his face the smile he always put on when he considered other people’s fate already decided.

“Killian,” he said, “you are listening to the words of a sick woman.”

“No,” Killian answered. “I heard your words.”

Darren’s smile disappeared.

“The recording is falsified.”

Nolan raised his phone.

“It is already saved in three different places. The recording is accompanied by the notebook, bank transfers, and camera footage.”

Darren looked at me.

“You will lose everything. This house, your job, money. Who will need a murderer’s daughter?”

For the first time I did not lower my head.

“I never asked you to respect my identity. I only wanted my father’s death not to remain a lie.”

Killian approached Darren by one step.

“Did you kill my father?”

Darren did not answer.

“Answer me.”

“I did not lay a hand on him.”

“But you gave the order.”

Darren looked at the young policeman.

“Arrest them.”

The policeman took out his phone. An official message was already visible on the screen saying that the false order sent through him had been canceled.

“Mr. Darren,” he said, “you must come with us.”

Darren stepped back.

“You do not know whom you serve.”

“Now I do,” the policeman answered.

They took Darren away then.

Not with noise. Not with shouting. They simply put handcuffs on his hands and the door closed behind him.

But the hardest moment of that night was still ahead.

Nolan turned on a large screen in the room. A recording from the hospital camera appeared on it. I was lying on the pavement. Two men were looking through my bag. One said to the other:

“The boss said, look in the box.”

I closed my eyes. I already knew these words, but hearing them in another person’s voice was something else. Killian was looking at the screen as if he were seeing my fall for the first time.

“I thought they were looking only for the recording,” he said.

“They were also looking for my mother’s code,” I answered.

“And for three years I did not even realize that you were in danger every day.”

“You never once asked why I never left the house on Christmas Eve.”

His face tightened.

“Now I am asking.”

I went to the window. Snow was falling in the yard. For years I had cleaned everything from this house, but I had never cleaned Killian’s silence.

“Because my father disappeared on Christmas Eve. My mother believed that he would return precisely that night.”

Killian lowered his head.

The next day, at nine in the morning, calls began from the city prosecutor’s office. Darren’s accounts were frozen. Searches were carried out in the harbor warehouses. Rose was arrested that same morning, because the cameras showed him giving the attackers my description.

Killian’s lawyer advised him to keep his distance from me.

“If you leave her in the house, they will name you as a witness,” Nolan told him.

Killian answered calmly:

“She is not a witness, but an injured party.”

“And the main figure in your father’s case.”

“Then for the first time I will treat her as a person who has the right to choose.”

That same day he opened the door of my room. The room was small. A folded apron lay on the bed, and on the wall hung my duty schedule written out by months. I left only one thing on the windowsill — the copper sewing box.

Killian stopped on the threshold.

“Are you leaving?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“I do not know yet.”

“You can stay here. In another room. Under other conditions.”

“It is still your house.”

“It may no longer be.”

“It may become one for the first time.”

He looked at me for a long time.

“I do not know how to fix this.”

“It is impossible to fix everything.”

“Then what can I do?”

“Do not call me a servant anymore when you know my name.”

Killian nodded.

One week later we found my father’s grave. Darren had hidden his body in an underground room beneath an old warehouse. The trial had not yet ended, but I went there anyway. Killian stood beside me, several steps away.

Snow was melting on the gravestone.

“Do you want me to come closer?” he asked.

“No.”

He stopped.

“All right.”

For the first time I felt that he had truly accepted my answer.

Three months later I rented a small apartment in Cambridge. During the day I worked in the kitchen of a nursing home, and in the evenings I studied book restoration. For the first time in my life I no longer looked at the clock in order to arrive on time at someone else’s house.

On Sundays letters came from Killian. At first I did not open them. Then I realized that not reading the letters was still living around him. Finally I read only one.

“Darren’s trial will take place in June. I created a foundation in my father’s name. We will return the money to the families of the people from whom he took it. If you ever want, I will help you manage the foundation. If not, I will accept that too.”

I did not send a reply.

In June a small boy, Luka, whom I tutored in the evenings, drew a house on paper. The house had three windows and a small bird by the door.

“Is this you?” I asked.

“No,” he told me. “This is the house where you are no longer afraid at last.”

His words turned in my head all night.

Several weeks later Killian unexpectedly came to my door. In his hand he held the old duty schedule.

“This remained in the room,” he said.

“You can throw it away.”

“I could not.”

“Why?”

“Because every time I look at it, I realize how much I failed to see.”

I put my hand on the door handle.

“Killian, you do not need to save me.”

“I know.”

“Nor to bring me back.”

“I know.”

“Then why did you come?”

He thought for a long time before answering.

“To ask whether you are all right.”

For the first time I smiled in a way that meant neither hiding nor politeness.

“Now I am all right.”

He nodded.

“Then good night, Mara.”

“Good night, Killian.”

I closed the door.

I did not run away.

I simply chose for the first time where I wanted to stay.

That evening I placed the copper sewing box on the windowsill. The small image of the bird glittered in the streetlight. Into the box I put my mother’s needle, my father’s piece of code, and a new key.

The key was to my house.

The bird returned home.