Part 4 — My son brought his beloved home, but when I saw her, the serving spoon fell from my hand and Tyler suddenly fell silent

“And in the recording it was not my name that was heard, but Tyler’s name…”

The investigator put the phone on the table and played the recording.

First the sound of a car engine could be heard. Then Archil Kavtaradze’s voice sounded.

“If the boy goes to his mother, use Tyler. Tell him that Owen was going to attack him. We will turn the mother against her own son.”

For several seconds silence fell in the recording.

Then David Weil’s voice sounded, old, hoarse, and irritated.

“Tyler is only leverage. The woman has always loved him more than anything.”

Tyler raised his head.

“That voice…”

“It is my father,” Owen said.

The recording continued.

“Where are the documents?” Weil asked.

“I kept Morgan’s folder. If necessary, I will say in court that the mother is mentally unstable.”

The recording stopped.

Only the monotonous clicking of the apparatus could be heard in the room.

Kavtaradze called again. This time the investigator herself answered.

“Mr. Kavtaradze, we have evidence against you.”

“This is a misunderstanding,” he answered. “I am only defending the interests of my deceased client.”

“And why are you trying to come to the clinic now?”

“The boy is being held illegally.”

“The boy is the child kidnapped by your client twelve years ago. The conversation is over.”

The investigator hung up the phone.

Tyler sat down on the chair. He placed his hands on his knees and rubbed the same place with his thumbs.

“Mother, why did you tell me nothing about Owen?”

This was the question I avoided most.

“Because you were seven when he was taken. During the first months I waited every day for you to ask me when he would return. Then you stopped asking me. I thought that to save yourself you had to learn to live with his absence.”

“And I thought you did not want to talk about him.”

“I wanted to. It was simply that every time I felt as if I were losing him once again through words.”

Tyler stood up and embraced both of us.

It was the first time in twelve years that I had both my boys in my arms at the same time.

But the calm did not last long.

At six o’clock in the morning the police came to our house. Archil Kavtaradze stood in the yard, holding an umbrella and still trying to maintain the expression of a calm, respectable man.

“Mrs. Morgan, you are in an emotional state,” he told me. “This young man may not even be Owen.”

“The genetic result already exists.”

“One sheet of paper does not decide everything.”

“And the recording?”

His jaw tightened.

“The recording was obtained illegally.”

“Then explain to the judge in court why you were discussing using my son against me.”

For the first time Kavtaradze lowered his eyes.

After that his lawyer refused to cooperate with him. The police removed computers, documents, and a small wooden box from Weil’s house. In the box they found my old letters, which Weil had never sent to me. Among them was a sheet that Owen had drawn at the age of six: three people stood in front of a green house, and above them was the incorrectly written word “family.”

Kavtaradze planned to flee the country, but he was arrested at the airport. Weil was already dead, but the documents and recordings confirmed that he had kidnapped Owen, changed his name, and hidden him for years. The court sentenced Kavtaradze to imprisonment for complicity in the crime.

I was not present at that hearing until the end.

When the judge announced the decision, I went out into the corridor and stood by the window. Light snow was falling outside. Tyler stood beside me, while Owen was looking toward the city street for the first time as if he too could breathe freely there.

“Do you want to go back inside?” I asked.

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“For the first time I am sure that I do not need to see something anymore.”

Several weeks later I arranged a room for Owen at home. I put a new bed, a bookshelf, and a small table by the window in the room. I hung nothing on the wall. I did not yet know what he liked.

On the first night Owen sat on the edge of the bed and turned the old red hat in his hands.

“Why did you keep this?” he asked.

“Because it still had your scent.”

He brought the hat to his nose and smiled.

“It does not anymore.”

“I know.”

“But I still want it to be here.”

We hung the hat on the wall.

Tyler showed Owen around his college campus. They often argued about unimportant things: who would leave the dishes in the sink, who owned the right side of the sofa, which film they should watch in the evening. I listened to these arguments silently and realized that happiness does not always come with great noise.

Sometimes it comes in the angry voices of two grown boys from the kitchen.

And sometimes—in the fact that someone finally asks you where you keep the sugar.

Three months later I began working at the city library. In the mornings I turned on the book-return machine, opened the windows, and prepared an evening of reading fairy tales for children. For the first time in years, when I heard the sound of the alarm clock, fear no longer woke inside my heart.

Owen began drawing. One day he left a sheet of paper on the table. In the drawing was our house, and in front of it stood four people: me, Tyler, Owen, and a small black dog that we still did not have.

“Should we get a dog too?” I asked.

“We already have one in the drawing.”

“That is not a sufficient argument.”

“It is for me.”

That evening we decided to get a dog.

The first snow of winter came at the beginning of December. White flakes settled on the street lamps, while Owen stood in front of the house and tried to roll a snowball without gloves.

The telephone rang.

It was an unknown number.

“Do not answer,” Tyler told me.

But I knew who it would be.

It was not Kavtaradze’s mother. Nor a journalist. It was Kavtaradze himself, from the prison’s communal telephone.

“Mrs. Morgan, just one minute.”

“I am listening.”

“You also know that Weil did everything without me.”

“The recording says something else.”

“I can help you. Owen has not told you many things about his past. He may soon realize that he cannot live with you.”

I stood by the window. Owen was laughing in the snow, while Tyler was trying to wrap a scarf around him.

“You want me to be afraid again,” I told him.

“I am offering you the truth.”

“I have already received the truth. The rest is your consequence.”

“Think about it. One day Owen may blame you.”

“Then I will listen to him that day. But I will not live to help you anymore.”

I ended the call.

Tyler came in.

“Who was it?”

“A person who still thinks that everyone’s life revolves around him.”

“And what did you tell him?”

“That I no longer revolve.”

That night Owen took the red hat down from the wall and placed it on the windowsill. The edge sewn with yellow thread was still visible, only now a new stitch had appeared beside it—Owen himself had sewn it on, awkwardly, with thread of different colors.

“You do not like the old stitch?” I asked.

“I like it. It is just that it should also have a new part.”

Outside the window snow was falling silently.

I ran my hand over the hat.

This time it no longer preserved the past.

It was warming the child who had returned home.