Part 4 — On the Evening of My Engagement, I Saw Four Boys Repeating My Childhood Habit — and Their Mother’s Look Made My Mother Turn Pale

The steps on the stairs were heavy and fast. Elena put all four boys behind her. I locked the door and gripped the phone in my hand.

The lawyer managed to stand by the window.

“It isn’t the police,” he said. “They are your mother’s security guards.”

The doorbell rang.

Once.

A second time.

Then the door shook.

“Alex!” my mother’s voice sounded from the corridor. “You have to bring the children over to me. Right now.”

“Why?”

“Because I did all this to protect you.”

“You hid my children from me for seven years.”

“You followed that woman and destroyed the family.”

“I followed the letter written by you.”

Silence fell in the corridor.

My mother did not answer anymore.

The lawyer took out a small recorder and placed it on the table.

“All the calls were recorded,” he told me. “Let’s continue now as well.”

My mother spoke again.

“You yourself said that you would never forgive Elena.”

My voice sounded from the recorder.

I recognized it immediately. Seven years ago, in my father’s office, I was speaking.

“If Elena hid a child from me, I will never see her again.”

Then my mother’s voice.

“And what if she told you that the children do not exist at all?”

“Then I will have nothing to do with her.”

My own words froze in the room.

I had really said them.

But now, for the first time, I understood what had preceded those words. My mother had told me that Elena had given birth to the children by another man and was chasing my property. I was angry, I was blinded, but I still believed that I was making the decision myself.

Elena looked at the recorder.

“Why didn’t you show me this earlier?” she asked.

“I didn’t know either that my father had it.”

The lawyer checked the lock on the door.

“We have to go now. This recording and the documents must be taken to the prosecutor’s office.”

“And my mother?”

“She can no longer hide anything.”

This time the door did not shake again. The steps moved away. A few seconds later, the sound of a car engine came from the street.

My mother ran away.

But she could not take what she needed most—my fear.

That same night we went straight to the lawyer’s office. We met the police there as well. Elena requested the hospital record from seven years earlier. The record said that after giving birth she had been taken with the children to a women’s shelter outside the city. The transfer had been financed by my family foundation.

The next morning it became known that my mother and Vanessa’s father had for years used false statements, forged letters, and bank transfers. They wanted my marriage to Vanessa, because this way two companies would come under one control.

Vanessa herself called me.

“I didn’t know about the children,” she told me.

“But you knew that lies were being spread about Elena?”

She was silent for a long time.

“I knew your family was against her. I did not ask questions.”

“That is a choice too, Vanessa.”

She hung up crying.

Not a single guest came to the glass garden on the evening of the engagement. The white roses placed on the tables withered by morning. The ring remained in the same pocket where it had been the previous night.

Three days later I went to my mother’s house, but not to talk to her. Together with the lawyer, I had to take my things from the office.

There I saw for the first time the empty room where I had lived as a child. Only one photograph remained on the wall—my father, me, and my mother in a sunny yard. In the corner of the photograph a little boy was touching the back of his neck.

It was me.

But now the laughter of four little boys was no longer heard in that same room. Their shoes were no longer lined up in the corridor. Only one thing remained for me on the table: my grandfather’s compass cufflink, which had accidentally fallen that morning and left a small scratch on the wooden floor.

My mother called me in the evening.

“Alex, can we start everything over?”

“No, Mom.”

“I am your family.”

“Family is the one who tells you the truth when the truth is painful.”

“You will regret this.”

“Maybe. But I will no longer regret living in your lie.”

I did not wait for an answer.

Six weeks later Elena and the boys moved into a small, bright apartment in Brooklyn. I rented one room beside them, on the same street. I was no longer trying to return the lost seven years in one month. The children waited for me, but did not hurry me. This was the greatest gift they could give me.

In the mornings I walked the boys to school. Luka always held my right hand. Niko counted every red car on the road. Levan walked silently and collected small stones in his pocket. And every evening Davit asked me the same question.

“Will you stay today too?”

“Today too.”

One evening, at the end of March, we were sitting at the table. Outside, the first snow began to fall, so light that it seemed as if the city was carefully covering its noise.

Davit held out a sheet of paper to me.

A house was drawn on the paper. It had four small windows, and five people stood by the door. One of them had a small circle drawn on his hand.

“What is this?” I asked.

“Your compass,” he answered. “So you don’t get lost again.”

Elena looked at me from the kitchen. There was still fear in her eyes, but now trust stood beside it as well.

“Did you draw yourself too?” she asked.

“No,” Davit said. “He is at home.”

Several months later my mother sent me her last message.

“You can get half of the property back if you change your statement. We both know that family is more valuable than court.”

I looked at the screen for a long time.

Then I wrote only one sentence.

“Family is not the one for whom I give up the truth.”

I put down the phone.

That night all four boys lay on the floor in the living room and argued over the blanket. The kettle whistled in Elena’s kitchen. The last flakes of snow fell against the window.

The silver compass cufflink lay on the table. Its small needle pointed north, although for the first time in my life I no longer needed a direction.

Luka smiled in his sleep and brushed his hair back. The other three immediately repeated his movement.

I laughed quietly.

This time the road brought me home.