Part 4 — I Found My Wife Who Had Unexpectedly Returned to Her Homeland in a Frozen Apartment, and at the Sight of My Mother the Lawyer Stopped Keeping Silent

“Because this man who sent it to you should be dead…”

Irakli’s words hung in the room.

I looked at the photograph. Alexander Morel seemed younger than fifty, but he had in his eyes the strange calm that I recognized in my own face as well. He stood beside Jessie. In their hands they held a small copper thermometer.

“Where did you get this photograph?” I asked.

“It came with the message.”

“Then I’m going to the station.”

“You can’t go alone.”

“I won’t. But whether the person who sent this is still alive or someone else is playing a game, I need to know the answer.”

In the morning we went to the police. Detective Maia Kakabadze placed the camera recordings, bank statements, and telephone conversation into one folder.

“Where are Jessie and Stephanie?” she asked me.

“On the top floor of the Marina Hotel in Miami.”

“We have already sent officers.”

The telephone rang.

It was my mother.

“Luka, please listen to me,” she said. For the first time, the confident woman no longer sounded in her voice.

“I’m listening.”

“We made a mistake.”

“A mistake is transferring money incorrectly. You left Wendy and the baby in a frozen apartment.”

“I didn’t want it to turn out this way.”

“But this is exactly how it turned out.”

Stephanie shouted from behind her:

“Tell him that we were suffering too!”

“Why didn’t you come back?” I asked.

My mother fell silent.

That silence said everything.

Maia put the telephone on speaker.

“Mrs. Jessie, I am Detective Kakabadze. I ask you not to leave the hotel.”

“You can’t do this!” Stephanie shouted.

“We already have,” Maia replied.

The call ended.

A few minutes later, the hotel manager handed the police the cameras. The footage showed them packing suitcases bought with the money I had transferred. Stephanie was holding my credit card. My mother was laughing.

Then they heard their own words.

The police played the video in the room. Jessie’s voice sounded:

“Luka will believe us anyway. I controlled him all his life.”

Then Stephanie’s voice:

“If Wendy dies, everything will remain with Luka, but we will stay with him anyway. He cannot live without us.”

Jessie stood motionless in front of the screen.

“I didn’t say that,” she whispered.

Maia pressed a finger on the remote.

“That is your voice.”

Jessie covered her ears with her hands.

“Turn it off.”

“You said it yourself,” I told her.

She turned toward me.

“Luka, I raised you.”

“And in return you sentenced my wife and child to hunger.”

“I needed the money.”

“Everyone needs something. That does not cancel the choice.”

That same evening Maia called me and told me that a new document had been found in Alexander Morel’s case. His death had been considered an accident, but the car’s braking system had been deliberately damaged. The case had never been investigated because Jessie had told the police then that Alexander was a stranger to her.

The next day I went to the old station; Irakli and Maia followed me from a distance. Only one old man was waiting for me on the platform. He held a brown leather bag in his hand.

“Luka?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“I am Niko. I was your father’s lawyer.”

After his account, everything fell into place. Alexander ended his relationship with Jessie when he learned that she lived on someone else’s money and hid the existence of the child from him for her own purposes. Alexander left a fund for me in his will, but after his death Jessie hid the documents and told everyone that Alexander had died in an accident in a foreign country.

“Why now?” I asked.

Niko took a sealed folder from the bag.

“Because the fund was expiring. And because your child’s life was put in danger.”

In the folder were a genetic conclusion, the will, and a letter from Alexander.

“If you ever read this, know that I did not live to find you. But your existence was the most real thing for me.”

I could not read the letter to the end. I stood on the platform and felt, for the first time in my life, longing for my father.

The following weeks were noisy. The bank returned my funds to me. A case was opened against Jessie and Stephanie for fraud, misappropriation of funds, and deliberately putting Wendy and the baby in danger. Their lawyer wanted a meeting.

“Your family members are asking for a deal,” Irakli told me.

“What are they offering me?”

“An apology, if you do not testify against them.”

I shook my head.

“I’m not doing this for the court. I’m doing it so that another Wendy does not wake up in a room cold as ice.”

On the day of the hearing, Jessie saw me for the first time as people look at a stranger.

“Luka, give me at least one chance.”

“You had a chance when you heard the baby crying and turned off the heating.”

She lowered her eyes.

But Stephanie was still trying to be angry.

“Everything happened because of you! You were abandoning us, you were hiding money from us!”

I said nothing.

The judge listened to the recordings. He listened to the doctor’s testimony. He listened to the bank documents. And the cameras showed what they say better than any words.

On the day of the verdict, Jessie began rubbing her hands on her lap and intertwined her fingers the way she had in childhood, when she wanted to punish me. But this time I was no longer sitting in front of her to guess her mood.

I stood beside Wendy.

Our child was already well. We named him Noah.

As we left the courthouse, I took Wendy’s hand.

“Are you free?” she asked me.

“I think, for the first time.”

Three months later we rented a small house on the northern side of the city. In the morning Wendy made tea in the kitchen, while I looked for Noah’s socks, which always disappeared in the same place.

I left my old job. I was no longer interested in the Singapore contract. I joined a public foundation that helped young parents with food, doctors, and temporary housing. Every Thursday I arranged boxes in the warehouse.

One day a little girl asked me:

“Why do you work here?”

I told her:

“Because sometimes a family is created not by blood, but by who protects you.”

Noah began drawing. His papers were scattered everywhere. Once he drew a house with yellow windows. Beside the window, an object marked with a small red line stood.

“What is this?” I asked.

“A thermometer,” he answered. “So that nobody is cold in the house anymore.”

That evening I looked at the drawing for a long time.

I transferred part of my father’s fund into Wendy’s name. With the remaining money we opened a small clinic in the district where young mothers needed help the most. We wrote one word on the clinic’s door: “Warmth.”

Jessie sent me a letter from prison.

“Luka, I am still your mother. Despite everything, can you talk to me?”

I read the letter to the end. Then I showed it to Wendy.

“Will you write her an answer?” she asked me.

“Yes.”

On the paper I wrote only one sentence: “I am no longer going to survive the consequences of your decisions.”

I did not ask for an apology. Nor did I feel revenge.

I simply closed the door.

On the first day of winter, snow fell. I put Noah’s red hat on him and took him outside into the yard. He spread out his arms and chased the snowflakes with laughter.

When I returned home, I opened the box of old things. Inside lay the small copper thermometer that I had taken from my pocket in that frozen apartment. The red liquid was still stopped at the lower mark.

Now I placed it on the shelf, beside Noah’s drawing.

Once it showed me how cold a house could become.

Now every morning it reminds me that we filled it with warmth.

Noah called to me from a distance:

“Dad, come!”

I smiled and ran toward him.

No one was cold in the house anymore.