Part 4 — While crying at my husband’s grave, I saw him alive, but when he asked me to return home, my hand involuntarily began to tremble

That same night the police locked all the exits of the clinic.

The sound of shoes was heard in the corridors. The doctors spoke quietly. The security officers checked the windows every few minutes.

Nicholas sat in the investigation room, while I stood opposite him.

“Who was that man?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

For six months every answer had begun like that.

He lowered his head.

“But now I will find him.”

“You are no longer alone.”

“That is exactly why I am afraid.”

At that moment an investigator entered the room, holding a new file.

“Matteo told us everything.”

Nicholas raised his head.

“That quickly?”

“When he listened to his own recording, he realized that no one could protect him. He says that the documents belong to your family’s old lawyer.”

“Lorenzo Bellini,” I said.

Nicholas looked at me.

“You know him?”

“He brought me your death certificate.”

A heavy silence fell in the room.

The investigator placed a sheet on the table.

“Lorenzo Bellini left the country that same day. But the bank accounts show that he returned to Chicago this morning.”

Nicholas tried to rise from the chair, but the handcuffs prevented him.

“Where is he?”

“In your house.”

My house.

The place where I had lived alone for six months. Where at night I checked the lock of every door. Where his photographs still hung on the walls because I had not managed to take them down.

“We have to go there,” I said.

“No,” the investigator answered. “You will stay here.”

“My documents are there.”

“And possibly a murderer.”

Nicholas placed his fingers on the table.

“Nora, promise me you will not go.”

“I lived without you for six months. Now you can no longer decide where I will go.”

“I am saying this to protect you.”

“And I am telling you, to protect you, that if you deceive me once more, this time I really will lose you.”

In the end the investigator allowed us to go to the house together, but only accompanied by protection.

At half past eleven at night our street was completely dark. Not a single light was burning in front of the house. The window of my bedroom was open.

“I locked it,” I whispered.

Nicholas clenched his hands.

“Do not enter the house.”

“This is my house.”

We opened the door.

There was a smell of dampness and dust in the hallway. Our wedding photograph hanging on the wall had been taken down. In its place only four small nails remained.

Files were scattered in the kitchen. My bank statements, copies of my identification, and marriage certificate were mixed together.

A sound came from the second room.

“At last you have come.”

Lorenzo Bellini stood by the window. He was a thin man over sixty, who had always had excessively well-groomed fingernails. Now he held an empty glass in one hand, while the other was hidden in his pocket.

Nicholas took a step forward.

“You do not have a weapon.”

“Couldn’t your brother teach you that too? Not every weapon is visible.”

“My wife is here.”

“That is exactly why I came.”

I stood in front of him.

“What do you call making my name disappear?”

Lorenzo smiled bitterly.

“Survival.”

“Whose survival?”

“Everyone who serves your family.”

“I never served your family.”

“But millions moved through the banks with your signature.”

“My signature was forged.”

“A court cannot always distinguish the truth.”

Nicholas placed a recorder on the table.

“But recordings do not need to distinguish.”

Lorenzo froze.

Nicholas pressed the button. Matteo’s voice sounded in the room again. Then Lorenzo’s voice, clear and calm:

“If Nicholas dies, the woman will sign everything. Grief is the best document.”

The glass fell from Lorenzo’s hand.

The glass shattered on the floor.

“This was recorded illegally,” he said.

“But it is your voice,” I answered.

For the first time he heard his own words from someone else. On his face appeared not astonishment, but old age. As if ten years had been added in one moment.

The police officers moved toward him.

“Hands on the table.”

Lorenzo tried to escape, but the investigator standing by the window blocked his way.

“The game is over.”

“You do not know whom you serve,” Lorenzo roared.

“No,” I said. “Now we know exactly whom you served.”

They found a safe hidden in his room. Inside were false death certificates, account keys, and all the documents drawn up in my name. Matteo’s testimony, the recording, and Nicholas’s signed statement tied the case together like a connected chain.

Three days later charges were officially brought against Matteo. Lorenzo was arrested as well. Their lawyers turned against each other, because each wanted to shift the responsibility onto the other.

Nicholas, meanwhile, cooperated with the investigation. He opened every account, named every person, and transferred the property of his organization to a victims’ fund.

I asked him once:

“Are you doing this so you can avoid prison?”

“No.”

“Then why?”

He looked at me for a long time.

“Because you should no longer live in the shadow of my lies.”

The trial ended months later. Nicholas was sentenced for illegal activity, although his term was reduced because of his cooperation. Matteo faced a severe sentence for the explosion, false documents, and attempted murder.

I did not sit behind him in the courtroom. Nicholas knew this.

“Will you come?” he asked before the first hearing.

“Once.”

“Why?”

“To make sure that all this is really over.”

After the hearing he called me from the glass room.

“Nora, can you wait for me?”

“No.”

When I said the answer, it did not hurt for the first time.

“Then what do I have left?” he asked.

“The truth.”

I hung up.

I gathered his things in one small room at home. A watch, several books, an old jacket, and our wedding photograph. I left the room empty, but did not lock the door.

His pillow was no longer in the bedroom. Morning light entered through the window. On the floor beside the bed I found the small bronze-lantern-shaped keychain that he had returned to me at the cemetery.

I picked up the keychain.

For the first time I did not think about what it meant to Nicholas.

I thought about what it meant to me.

Six months later I moved to Milwaukee. I lived in a small apartment, two streets from the river. In the mornings I worked at a children’s library and read books to children. In the evenings I placed a cup of tea on the windowsill and wrote the names of people who were starting their lives again.

My life slowly returned.

In the first weeks I checked the door lock ten times. Then I no longer checked it ten times. In the end I locked it only once.

In winter, a little girl from next door, Elene, gave me a drawing. In the drawing was a house with yellow windows and a small bronze lantern above the door.

“It looks like your house,” she said.

“My old house?”

“No. The new one. Like the house where no one is afraid.”

I attached the drawing to the refrigerator.

That very evening I received Nicholas’s letter. It bore the seal of the prison administration.

“Nora, I know I do not deserve to return. But if you ever can, come only once. I ask you for nothing except that you see me as I really am.”

I read the letter twice.

Then I wrote a reply.

“I have already seen you. Now for the first time I see myself.”

I wrote nothing more.

I sent the reply and opened the window. The first snow was falling outside. In the light of the streetlamps, the snowflakes descended slowly, as if the city were carefully covering old traces.

I hung the bronze-lantern-shaped keychain on the window handle. The wind moved it slightly, and a small metallic sound rang out.

This time the sound did not mean anyone’s return.

For the first time, my door opened for me.