Part 4 — At the Wedding, My Husband Refused to Kiss Me, but His Grandmother’s Diary Silenced His Mother in a Strange Way

Nikolai’s hand froze around the sheet.

Marina immediately lunged toward him.

“This document should not have been here.”

“It should have been exactly here,” he replied.

Taras stood in front of me.

“Continue.”

Nikolai took a deep breath.

“The buyer was Archil Beridze. He was the person with whom your father, David Yavorskaya, conducted business twenty-six years ago.”

Taras rubbed his forehead.

“My father died in a car accident.”

“That is what you were told,” Nikolai said. “But Elena knew that several days before his death David had told Archil Beridze that he would no longer surrender his share of the enterprise.”

Marina’s voice faltered.

“That is an old story.”

“Old stories do not disappear when new contracts are built on top of them,” I said.

Nikolai took a small memory card from the folder and placed it on the table.

“Elena gave me this recording one week before her death. She said that if Marina tried to sell, Taras had to hear it.”

Taras turned on the device. First a rustling sounded in the room, then a woman’s weak voice.

“Taras, if you are hearing this, I am not asking you to believe my words. Only listen with your own ears.”

Elena’s voice fell silent for a while.

Then another recording began. It was the voice of a young Marina, clear and cold.

“David can no longer resist. If the enterprise is not transferred to me, Archil will publish everything.”

A man’s voice answered:

“You said that David’s death was an accident.”

“And so it will remain, if you sign.”

The recording stopped.

Taras sank into the chair. His fingers gripped the edge of the table so tightly that his nails turned white.

Marina pressed herself against the wall.

“That is not my voice.”

Nikolai said calmly:

“The examination confirmed it. It is your voice.”

“Elena deceived me.”

“Elena chose silence for twenty-six years to protect her grandson,” I said. “But in the end she realized that silence was no longer protection.”

Taras looked at his mother.

“Did you kill my father?”

Marina opened her mouth, but found no answer.

“I did everything for you.”

“No,” he said. “You chose a life for me and then forced me to say thank you.”

The sound of cars came from outside. Nikolai looked toward the curtain.

“The police have arrived.”

Marina reached toward the door.

“Taras, if you let them question me now, you will lose everything too.”

“I have already lost it,” he replied. “I just thought I was standing beside you.”

Marina went out, but stopped at the door.

“Kira, you planned all of this.”

“No. I only refused to participate in your lies.”

Two investigators entered. They put handcuffs on Marina. She neither resisted nor cried. She only looked at Taras, as if waiting for him to save her in the end.

Taras looked away.

That same night Nikolai told me that the underground archive in the old vineyard still existed. We went there in the morning.

The vineyard house smelled of damp earth and wood. Under the stairs, behind a removed plank, we found an iron box. Taras remembered the code when he read Elena’s entry a second time.

It was the day when, as a child, he first told his mother: “I will decide for myself who I will be.”

Inside the box lay a letter written in my father’s hand, forged contracts, bank statements, and a photograph in which Marina stood together with Archil Beridze on the same night that David’s car went off the road.

Taras looked at the photograph for a long time.

“Why didn’t Grandmother show me all this earlier?”

“Because she thought the truth would take your childhood away from you,” I said.

“And you? Why did you help me?”

“Because Elena did not ask me for help. She told me never to make decisions in your place.”

Three weeks later the case was sent to court. Marina and Archil Beridze were charged with fraud, forgery of documents, and concealing an old case. The sale of the enterprise was canceled.

Taras himself began talking to me about divorce.

“That day I was not a husband,” he told me in the small café where we had first met. “I was only a frightened boy who repeated other people’s words.”

“I married a man who should have had his own choice,” I replied. “Not a person who demands forgiveness from me before he begins to change.”

He nodded.

“Then you can leave.”

“I know.”

And for the first time he did not ask me to stay.

The next day I returned to the hotel room to collect my things. Not a single rose petal remained on the bed. On the table lay only the card on which was written: “The Yavorskaya Family.”

I did not take it with me.

I put only the blue diary in my bag and kept the small paper boat in my pocket.

Four months later I changed cities. I began working at a small architectural studio in a seaside town. In the morning I opened the window, made coffee, and straightened the plans attached to the wall.

For the first time, my life belonged to no one.

Taras called me once a week, but only about work. He no longer managed the enterprise alone; according to Elena’s will, he created a council together with the employees. He informed everyone about the decisions that were made.

One day, at the end of autumn, a little girl knocked on the door. It was my niece, Nina. She held a drawing in her hand.

“Aunt Kira, I drew this for you.”

In the drawing stood a small house, and in front of the house was a woman holding a blue boat.

“Why a boat?” I asked.

“Because boats go where they are released.”

I smiled.

“Who told you that?”

“Your diary.”

That evening I received a message from Taras.

“I sold the house. I did not keep my mother’s things. I kept only Grandmother’s chair. If you ever can, I want you to return. This time I am asking you for nothing, I just want you to know that I have learned.”

I looked at the screen for a long time.

Then I calmly wrote back:

“I am glad that you have begun to learn. But I am not returning to the place where I had to lose myself.”

He wrote me only one word.

“I understand.”

It was our first sincere conversation.

On the first morning of winter I placed the blue diary on the windowsill. Beside it stood the paper boat. The little silver boat that Elena had left in her final entry and that had led my life from a strange family to myself.

The first snow was falling outside.

I closed the diary.

And for the first time I set the boat afloat.