Part 4 — My Girlfriend Told Me That Her Friend Had First Been Lying in My Bed, but When the Door Opened Vanessa’s Smile Disappeared

When we arrived at Adrian’s apartment, it was ten in the morning. The entrance hall smelled of coffee and wet coats. Two investigators stood at the door, while Vanessa was huddled against the wall.

Adrian came out of the room.

A lawyer was already with him.

“Clara, this is all a misunderstanding,” he said.

His voice was still calm, but he was gripping the keys so tightly in his right hand that his fingers had turned white.

“I have filed a report against you,” he added. “You attacked Vanessa and took my things.”

The lawyer intervened immediately.

“My client will say nothing more about this.”

“Then you will listen too,” I told him.

Investigator Lasha opened the bag and placed a small device on the table.

“The recording has already been confirmed,” he said. “The old file is from your mother’s house. Comparing the voices matched Adrian’s voice.”

Adrian smiled, but the smile did not reach his eyes.

“It is edited.”

“The court will determine that,” Lasha replied. “However, the things found in your bedroom say something else.”

The lawyer looked at the device and shook his head.

“Adrian, say nothing else.”

“I have done nothing!” he shouted.

At that very moment the recording began to play.

His own voice sounded through the room.

“If Clara leaves, the house will remain with us. The account is in her name, but I can forge the signature. Vanessa, you simply have to continue behaving like her.”

Vanessa raised her head.

Adrian turned toward the door.

“That is not my voice.”

“It is your voice,” Vanessa said.

For the first time she was not crying.

“I recorded everything that night when I realized that he was obsessed not with me, but with Clara’s life.”

Adrian moved toward her.

Lasha blocked his way.

“Step back.”

“Vanessa, you will go to prison too,” Adrian whispered. “You will not be able to speak against me.”

“I know,” she answered. “But this time I will no longer hide in your shadow.”

The lawyer closed the folder.

“I no longer represent you in this case. You deliberately lied to me about the facts.”

Adrian’s face changed.

“What are you doing?”

“What I should have done from the beginning.”

Lasha put handcuffs on him. It was not a moment of victory. It was simply that the air long accumulated in the room began to move.

Adrian looked at me.

“Clara, you will not survive without this.”

I looked toward him.

“You always told me that because you were afraid I would leave you.”

He said nothing more.

That same day the investigators told me that the recording was only the beginning. An additional document was found in the files of Mother’s case: a call made on the night of my father’s death, which had never entered the official report.

Adrian had made the call.

He was eighteen then and told my father that Mother was going to go to the police. Then he came to the house. It was precisely his fingerprints that were found on the old tape recorder.

Adrian thought he would erase everything.

But Mother had a habit: she never kept the most important things in obvious places. The tape recorder was found in the bottom drawer of her sewing machine, under a box full of cotton threads.

I learned this story from the investigator and felt strangely calm. As if Mother, fifteen years late, was finally returning her own voice to me.

Adrian was placed in temporary detention. Vanessa gave testimony to the investigators and admitted her own involvement as well. Punishment awaited her, but for the first time she herself chose the truth.

In the evening I returned home alone.

The bed in the bedroom was empty. The sheets were folded again, and on top stood the little mug with the image of the yellow sun. For some reason Adrian had not taken it. Or he simply had not understood that it was important to me.

I picked up the mug.

There was a small crack on the handle.

I did not cry that night. I only opened the window and aired out the room. The lavender smell slowly disappeared.

Three weeks later I moved with Elena to a seaside town. I rented a small apartment where I could hear the sound of waves in the morning. I began working in a children’s library in the neighboring building.

On the very first day a girl asked me:

“Can one always return here?”

“If the door is open, yes,” I answered.

She smiled at me and hugged the book to her chest.

Vanessa wrote to me once a week. At first I did not answer. Then one day I sent her a short letter.

“Truth does not forgive everything, but it allows a person not to live in a lie anymore.”

She sent me only one word: “I know.”

Months later I testified in court. Adrian sat in the courtroom and no longer resembled the man who had been able to control my fears. When they played his own voice for him, he buried his head in his hands.

“Did I say this?” he asked.

Lasha answered:

“Yes. You did.”

For the first time Adrian heard his own words the way I had heard them for years.

I no longer wanted to humiliate him. I did not need revenge either. I simply was no longer going to protect him from the consequences he himself had created.

Five months later Elena told me that the court had sentenced Adrian to imprisonment, while Vanessa had received a suspended sentence and community service.

Vanessa came to the library.

She held a small child’s drawing in her hand.

“This is for you,” she told me.

There were three people in the drawing. But there was a wall between them, while on the left a woman standing alone held a yellow sun in her hand.

“Did you draw it?” I asked.

“No. One of the children I help did.”

I looked at the drawing.

“He drew it correctly.”

Vanessa lowered her head.

“Will you ever be able to forgive me?”

“Maybe. But forgiveness does not mean returning.”

She understood this.

On the first morning of winter I received a letter from Adrian. He wrote that he had changed, that we should start everything again, and that my life without him would be empty.

I held the sheet in my hands for a long time.

Then I folded it and put it in the trash bin.

Not because his words no longer hurt me. Because pain was no longer the owner of my house.

That evening, after returning from the library, I placed the mug with the image of the yellow sun on the windowsill. Outside, the first snow was falling. The small crack on the handle was filling with white light.

Elena handed me tea.

“Do you still keep it?”

I looked at the mug.

“Now it no longer reminds me of them.”

“What does it remind you of?”

I closed the window and listened to the sound of the snow.

“That no one has given my place away. I simply returned by myself.”

The yellow sun lit up on the window.

And this time there was only one mug in the house.