Part 4 — Because of My Grandmother’s Property, My Parents Took Me to Court, but the Judge Read One Sheet and the Smile Disappeared from My Mother’s Face

The phone froze in my hand.

Davit immediately noticed my face.

“What happened?”

I showed him the message.

He read it and shook his head.

“Do not go anywhere alone.”

“I was not planning to.”

“We still have to go to the police.”

“If this person really has the second recording, it may be another piece of evidence against my parents.”

“It may also be a trap.”

His voice was calm, but he held the phone so tightly that his knuckles turned white.

At six in the evening we arrived at the old railway warehouse. Police officers were waiting for us in a car parked nearby. It was no longer raining, although water stood on the ground and reflected the lantern light like broken glass.

The warehouse’s iron door was half open.

Inside there was the smell of wet wood, dust, and rust.

“Mariam,” someone called from the darkness.

A man slowly came out. He was about sixty years old. He held a small memory card in his hand.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Irakli. I was Elene’s notary’s assistant.”

“Why did you not appear in court?”

“Because your father called me two weeks ago.”

Davit took one step forward.

“What did he ask you?”

Irakli took a folded paper from his pocket.

“He told me that if I revealed the existence of the recording, he would have my son lose his job. He already knew where my boy studied.”

An old chain hanging on the warehouse wall swayed in the wind and slowly struck the metal.

“Give me the recording,” I said.

“First you must know why it exists.”

He inserted the memory card into a small device. In a few seconds my father’s voice was heard.

“Mariam will be silent only if we make everyone believe that she cannot trust her mind. The doctor’s conclusion will be enough. Then the court will freeze the accounts and the money will come to us.”

Then my mother’s voice was heard.

“All her life she needed someone to make her feel special. Now Grandma is gone and cannot protect her.”

I lowered my eyes.

Hearing the words of my own parents turned out to be harder than what they had said in the courtroom. There they were playing a game. In this recording no one was watching.

Irakli turned off the sound.

“This recording was accidentally left on in their lawyer’s office. I made a copy and gave it to Elene. She told me that if anything happened to her, I should pass it to you.”

“Why now?” I asked.

“Because today the court disproved their first lie. Now they will do everything to make the second folder disappear.”

“The second folder?”

Irakli looked directly at me.

“Your parents also had a plan to sell your grandmother’s house. With the false conclusion they wanted control not only over the money, but over the house as well.”

The police officers entered the warehouse.

Irakli handed the memory card to them. That same night searches were carried out in my parents’ homes.

My father called me several times.

The first time he shouted.

“You destroyed your own family!”

The second time his voice changed.

“Mariam, let us forget everything.”

The third time he said quietly:

“We only needed help.”

I answered none of the calls.

Their lawyer contacted me the next morning. His voice was tired and embarrassed.

“I can no longer represent your parents.”

“Why?”

“They did not give me complete information. They presented a false document in court. I cannot continue participating in such a case.”

“Thank you for telling me.”

“Mrs. Mariam, they may offer you an agreement.”

“I know.”

“Do not sign anything until you read it.”

“I have been doing that all my life.”

Two weeks later my father was summoned to court as a witness. There he heard the recording to the end for the first time.

In the audio courtroom his voice returned from the walls.

“Mariam will be silent only if…”

When the recording ended, my father buried his head in his hands.

The judge asked him:

“Is this your voice?”

He did not answer for a long time.

“Yes.”

“In this conversation are you discussing the use of a false medical conclusion?”

“I… did not mean it that way.”

“But that is what you said.”

My father heard his own words for the first time as I had heard them. From the outside. Without concealment. On his face there immediately appeared that terrible clarity when a person realizes that he can no longer escape himself.

My mother even stopped coming to court. After the lawyer’s refusal, an investigation began against them for falsifying a document and misleading the court. In the end the money, the account, and my grandmother’s house remained in my name. They received not a single dollar.

But the clearest evidence for me was not on paper.

In my grandmother’s house, in her small bedroom, an empty chair stood beside the bed. By the window there was still her white cup, which had a small crack on the handle. And on the wall one photograph remained — Elene and me on the balcony, on the day of the first snow.

On the back of the photograph was written: “Mariam knows who she is.”

That sentence affected me more strongly than the court’s decision.

Three months later I changed cities. I moved to a small seaside town and founded a support fund for veterans’ families. Fulfilling my grandmother’s wish became a daily task, not a ceremonial promise.

In the mornings I went to a small office where three plants stood by the window and an old printer jammed on every second page. In the evenings children came whose parents were in military service. Sometimes I drew with them.

One day eight-year-old Luka drew a yellow mountain flower.

“This is for you,” he told me.

“Why yellow?”

“Because it looks like Grandma’s flower. And because yellow does not hide.”

I attached the picture to the wall.

I received the last message from my mother at the beginning of winter.

“Meet us. Father is ill. We do not want money. We simply need to get our family back.”

I looked at the screen for a long time.

Then I wrote:

“A family does not return to where the truth is sought only when the money runs out. I wish you peace, but I will no longer manage your lives.”

She did not write back.

The first snow came in December. On the windowsill of the office stood my grandmother’s old cup, and beside it the folded sheet on which the yellow flower had been drawn on the day of the court hearing. The corner of the paper was still folded, but now I no longer straightened it.

Some folds are not a sign of pain.

Some simply remind us that we survived.

I opened the window. Cold air entered and made the drawing of the flower flutter slightly.

For the first time in my life I was proving to no one who I was.

The yellow flower stood in the light.