Part 4 — The Husband Who Abandoned Her During Pregnancy Walked Into the Maternity Ward Smiling, but His Hand Suddenly Stopped When He Saw the Doctor’s Face

Mariam played the voice message.

A hoarse woman’s voice sounded:

“I am Salome. Adrian and Evelyn took my child away from me three years ago already. If you have their letters, please do not delete anything.”

Everyone in the room fell silent.

Adrian stopped the step he had taken toward the door.

“This is a lie.”

The police officer placed a hand on his shoulder.

“You will explain this to the investigator now.”

“Nino,” Adrian turned toward me, “I swear, I do not know Salome.”

I looked at the baby. He was sleeping peacefully, his cheek pressed beneath my heartbeat.

“You swore that even when you were emptying my accounts,” I told him.

Mariam spread my folder open on the table. Inside were transfers, electronic letters, false company contracts, and the recording in which Evelyn spoke about my giving up custody.

Evelyn took a phone out of her bag.

“I will call my lawyer.”

“We already called him,” Mariam replied. “He said he was no longer participating in this case.”

Evelyn’s fingers froze on the screen.

It was the first minute when the victorious expression disappeared from her face.

Adrian wanted to remain beside my bed, but the police officer held him by the arm.

“He is my child,” he said.

“Now everyone knows that,” I answered. “But fatherhood is responsibility, not a seat in court.”

He had no answer.

Adrian’s voice could still be heard in the corridor. This time it was no longer confident.

“Mother, tell her that you fixed everything.”

And for the first time Evelyn could not tell him that she would fix it.

That same night Mariam arranged the documents left in the small hospital room. The blanket embroidered with the yellow sun lay on the edge of the bed. I put beside it the empty gift box sent by Adrian, and then I realized that in reality I had received nothing from him.

The next day the calls did not stop.

The board of directors of Adrian’s company convened an emergency meeting. The bank froze his accounts. An inspection of Evelyn’s charity foundation began, because it was precisely there that the money used to finance the cancellation of my treatment and insurance was passing.

Adrian still tried to regain control.

He told Mariam:

“I need to speak with Nino personally.”

“She is not obliged to speak with you,” Mariam replied.

“She is my wife.”

“No. She is your ex-wife and the mother of your child. Your actions created the difference.”

Three days later Adrian requested a video call. Mariam allowed it only on the condition that the conversation would be recorded.

Adrian appeared on the screen. For the first time I saw him in the house where I no longer lived. The shelves behind him were empty, and there was only one glass on the table.

“Nino, I behaved badly,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe I went too far.”

Mariam played the recording.

Adrian’s old voice sounded: “When she reaches desperation, she will give up custody of the child herself.”

Adrian froze on the screen.

These were his own words. Not someone else’s interpretation. Not my accusation. His voice, his tone, his coldness.

“I did not say that,” he said quietly.

“You did,” I answered.

“I was angry.”

“And I was pregnant.”

He lowered his eyes.

“Nino, I will return everything.”

“The money?”

“Everything.”

“The lost nights cannot be returned. Nor the fear when I came to the hospital alone and did not know whether tomorrow I would pay the rent or buy medicine.”

For the first time he was listening to himself through someone else’s eyes.

Mariam ended the call.

In the following weeks the case expanded. Salome handed over her documents to us. Two more women wrote to us. Everywhere the same scheme repeated: a fake job, a sudden debt, intimidation, threats involving custody of children.

Adrian’s company lost employees. The partners terminated the contracts. Evelyn tried to take several valuable things out of the house, but bank representatives stopped her.

I was not happy about their downfall.

I simply was not trying to save them anymore for the first time.

Three months later the court issued a temporary decision. Custody of my child remained with me. Adrian was given the right to see him only under supervision until the financial and medical fraud case was completed.

In the courthouse corridor he stood beside me. In his hand he held a small paper bag containing a toy for the child.

“May I speak with you alone at least once?” he asked.

“About what?”

“About starting over.”

I looked at him.

“I have already started.”

He lowered the bag.

“You should not be able to do this so easily.”

“It was not easy. You are simply no longer the center of my life.”

The first snow could be seen through the corridor window.

Six months later I moved to another city. I rented a small apartment on a bright street, where the smell of bread rose in the mornings. Four days a week I worked checking financial documents, and in the evenings I bathed my son and sat on the kitchen floor while he scattered colored pencils everywhere.

Luka began to walk.

The first word he said clearly was “Mama.”

I was standing in the kitchen, holding a small cup in my hand, and I burst into such tears that he himself became frightened.

“No, my dear,” I told him and hugged him. “These are tears of happiness.”

One evening he drew a large yellow circle on a sheet of paper. He added short rays around it and stuck the sheet to the refrigerator.

“What is this?” I asked.

“The sun,” he answered.

His drawing resembled the yellow sun that I embroidered on the baby’s blanket that night when I was still afraid that I would survive nothing.

Adrian sent his last letter at the beginning of winter.

“I now understand what I lost. Please give me the opportunity to be part of your family.”

I looked at the screen for a long time.

Then I calmly wrote to him:

“Luka’s paternity has already been proven. Trust does not return by a court decision. You will have a place in his life only when you stop running from your own responsibility. I am not going to return to you.”

I sent the letter and put the phone aside.

That night I entered Luka’s room. He was sleeping. The blanket embroidered with the yellow sun was wrapped around his shoulders.

Outside the window, snow was falling silently.

I sat beside his bed and touched the corner of the blanket with my fingers.

Then I realized that I had embroidered that sun not only for the child, but for myself too.

In the darkness, the little sun still shone.