Part 4 — He Left Me Alone on a Rainy Road and Received a Call About My Disappearance an Hour Later — His Face Immediately Turned Pale

At Cole’s last words, Mason’s phone rang again.

This time the call was from Vanessa.

Mason watched the screen for several seconds.

“Don’t answer,” I told him.

“If I don’t answer, she will go to Natalie.”

“If you answer, she will understand that we know everything.”

Cole closed the folder.

“In either case, we have to hurry.”

Mason answered the call and turned on the speaker.

“Where are you?” Vanessa asked calmly.

“In the place where your lies ended.”

Silence fell on the other side.

“Are you with Claire?”

“You already know.”

“Mason, you have no idea what you are doing. The Quinns are not angry because of her. They want what she took from you.”

I clasped my small copper pendant. The sun’s tiny rays pierced my fingers.

“I took nothing,” I said.

Vanessa chuckled.

“You will explain that in court.”

“That is exactly where I will explain who edited the café camera recording,” Cole said.

Vanessa’s voice changed for the first time.

“You have nothing.”

“We have your voice,” I told her. “And your bank transfers.”

“Mason, she is lying to you. She worked with the Quinns from the beginning.”

Mason closed his eyes.

“Repeat that once more.”

“Claire worked with the Quinns. I saved you.”

Cole took out the recording and played Vanessa’s own voice to her: “When he throws her out, access to the company documents will remain with me.”

Vanessa fell silent.

Then she said quietly:

“This recording means nothing.”

“It means that I have already called your lawyer,” Mason answered.

“My lawyer?”

“Former lawyer,” he said. “He refused to defend you when he saw the copies of the transfers.”

The words seemed to hang in the air.

Mason gestured to Cole and we left the greenhouse. Two cars stood outside. Police officers sat in one, and Mason’s security sat in the other. For the first time that night I realized that the fear was not only mine. Vanessa’s plan had left him vulnerable too.

We found Natalie at the hospital. It was four in the morning. She had a scratch on her forehead, but she was not seriously injured. As soon as she saw me, she tried to rise from the bed.

“Why did you come alone?” she asked me.

I hugged her.

“I thought I had to be strong.”

“Strong people ask for help too.”

Mason stood at the door. For the first time he did not come close to me.

“Claire, I want five minutes.”

“No.”

He nodded.

“I deserve it.”

“Not five minutes. You deserve the truth.”

Cole placed another folder on the table. Inside were the company accounts, forged signatures, and transfers hidden by Vanessa. Several hours later the police found her in the old archive of the warehouse. She tried to escape, but the security cameras recorded her car.

When they made Vanessa listen to her own voice, in which she described the conspiracy against me, she collapsed into the chair.

“I did not say that,” she repeated.

They played the recording again.

“When he throws her out…”

Vanessa raised her head.

“Turn it off.”

“That is your voice,” the investigator told her.

“I was angry.”

“You had a calculated plan.”

I stood at the back of the room. I was no longer looking at Vanessa. I was looking at Mason, who was hearing his own decision for the first time through someone else’s voice: “Get out of the car.”

His words sounded as if they belonged to another man.

He looked toward me.

“I did not listen to you.”

“No,” I answered. “You pronounced the verdict from the beginning.”

“I can fix it.”

“Maybe someday you can forgive yourself. But I will not forget the night when you believed a photograph more than you believed me.”

Pain passed across his face, but I no longer wanted to soothe his pain.

Within several days, a case was opened against Vanessa and the Quinn group. The court froze their accounts. An independent inspection began at Mason’s company, while he publicly admitted that he had not properly carried out financial control.

I did not take money from him.

I did not keep the apology letter either.

My apartment, to which I had not managed to return that night, seemed strangely empty. On the floor in front of the closet lay only one item—my silver shoe, with a dried stain of mud. I had left the other somewhere on the road.

But the small copper sun was still hanging on my bag.

Three weeks later I moved to a new city with Natalie. I began working at a small publishing house. In the mornings I drank coffee by the window, and in the evenings I helped Natalie’s son, Lukas, draw.

One morning he drew a large yellow sun on a sheet of paper.

“This is you,” he told me.

“Why the sun?”

“Because you came out after the rain.”

I smiled.

The first snow came at the beginning of December. The city quietly turned white. On the way to work I saw my own reflection in the shop windows, and for the first time I did not want to prove to anyone that I was innocent.

In the second month Mason sent me one message.

“I am not asking you to return. I only want you to know that now I check every decision twice.”

I held the phone in my hand for a long time.

Then I wrote to him:

“I am glad that you are learning. But my life will no longer be a continuation of that lesson.”

He did not write back.

That was his most dignified act.

In spring, while sorting old things, I took the copper pendant off my bag. The small sun had fallen silent in the rain, but the scratches left on it could still be seen. That night its jingling frightened me. Now it reminded me that despite everything, I had not been completely lost from the road.

I tied the pendant to the handle of my new bag.

Then I opened the window.

The sun was rising over the city.

And this time I was waiting for no one.