Part 4 — A Few Hours After the Burial, the Lawyer Knocked on My Door, and at His First Words My Face Froze

Rezo’s footsteps were clearly heard on the wooden floor. Each sound struck me in the heart.

Levan quickly took out his phone and looked at the screen.

“The police are on the way,” he told me. “I sent the recording directly.”

“What if they get here before us?”

“Then we will not open the door.”

Outside, Rezo lowered the handle.

“Elene, I know you are inside!” he shouted. “You are making this matter more complicated than necessary.”

The second man struck the door with his fist. The window glass shook.

I clung to the chest. In my palm I still held the small rusty key that Karl seemed to have sent me after his own life.

“He has everything,” I told Levan. “Why is he so afraid?”

“Because Karl left you not only property.”

Levan took the second disc and put it into the player.

Karl’s face appeared on the screen. He was sitting in bed, a dark blanket wrapped around his shoulders. His face showed the tiredness of death, but in his eyes there was still the same calm that I had seen during his last days.

“If Rezo came to the country house, it means he knows about the documents. But he does not know that the most important evidence is not here.”

Rezo struck the door again.

“Open up, Elene! Karl was a sick man. He could not make decisions correctly.”

I moved closer to the screen.

Karl continued:

“For years Rezo said that your mother’s death was an accident. That is a lie. That night I had a recorder hidden in the car. I did not know that it was working. The recording is now in the folder that Levan will bring you.”

Levan opened the old folder. Inside it he found a small voice recorder.

“This must be it,” he said.

The device had one button. Levan pressed it.

First the sound of an engine was heard. Then my mother’s frightened breathing.

“Rezo, stop! The child is in the car!”

Then a man’s voice was heard.

“The child will not receive anything anyway. If Irakli returns, I will destroy both of you.”

My mother screamed:

“You will not take him away from her!”

My knees gave way. Karl’s voice could not be heard. Only the screeching of tires, the terrible blow of metal, and then silence.

Outside, Rezo fell silent.

Levan turned off the recorder.

“This is enough,” he said.

“No,” I answered. “Not for me.”

On the screen, Karl lowered his head.

“Elene, now you must know everything. I did not abandon your mother. After that accident Rezo told your family that I had died too. I spent months in the hospital, and when I woke up, you had already been taken to another city. I was twenty then, poor and frightened. Years later I acquired money and power, but I did not dare intrude suddenly into your life. I only protected you from afar.”

Tears ran down my face.

“Did he live like this all those years?” I asked.

“With guilt,” Levan said. “And with love.”

Karl looked at the camera.

“You may think I came late. You will be right. But I was there on every difficult day in your life. When your university tuition was paid anonymously, it was me. When your employer wanted to fire you, I called him. When a card came to you on your birthday and had no signature, I wrote it.”

On the screen his fingers were trembling.

“I cannot change the past. The only thing I can do is no longer hide you in the future.”

At that moment the sound of a siren came from the street.

Rezo tried to escape, but police cars stopped behind the country house. Two officers moved toward him. His accompanying men immediately ran away, but other cars were already waiting on the road.

Rezo moved away from the door.

“Elene, think carefully!” he shouted. “This is a family matter!”

I opened the door.

Levan stopped me with his hand.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

Rezo stood on the threshold. For the first time I saw how old he had become. In Karl’s photographs he had always looked tall, strong, and self-confident. But now the collar of his coat was trembling.

“Your father was weak,” he told me. “That is why he could not protect you.”

“No,” I answered. “He tried for too long to leave the right to choose to me.”

“You do not know what you are doing.”

“For the first time, I do.”

The police officer put handcuffs on him. Rezo looked toward me.

“Karl is gone anyway.”

There was hope of victory in his words.

I nodded.

“He is gone. But in the end he still returned to me.”

Rezo heard his own voice the next day.

At the police station Levan played the recording. An investigator, Rezo, and his lawyer were sitting in the room. When my mother’s scream was heard, Rezo closed his eyes.

“This has been edited,” he said.

The lawyer looked toward him.

“Is that your voice?”

Rezo was silent.

“I am asking you, is that your voice?”

“I was only warning her.”

“Whom?”

“That woman.”

“Elene’s mother?”

Rezo bit his lips.

“All this happened twenty years ago.”

“And now you were again trying to take the evidence,” the lawyer told him. “That is already yesterday’s matter.”

Then, for the first time, Rezo heard his own words through another person’s mouth: “The child will not receive anything anyway.”

His face became gray.

“I did not want her death,” he whispered.

But no one in the room was looking for an excuse for him.

That same week Levan transferred all the documents to the court. Karl’s trust-management agreement came into force. A case was opened against Rezo for concealing my mother’s death and attempting to destroy evidence.

Karl’s company was completely unexpected for me. I knew nothing about its existence. The manager told me that Karl had left the directors clear instructions: I was not to become the face of the corporation if I did not wish to.

“He wanted your protection, not your use,” Levan told me.

I did not start working at the company. I only created a small fund for the hospice program where I had met Karl.

His house had not been sold.

I entered it for the first time three weeks after the burial. The sitting room was empty. The game boxes were no longer on the shelves. On the table only that little porcelain cup with the golden fish remained.

I took the cup in my hand.

The old brown tea stain near the handle was still visible.

That evening I sat beside Karl’s bed and for the first time said aloud what I had been unable to say at the burial.

“Father, you came very late.”

Only the ticking of the clock could be heard in the room.

“But you still came.”

Six months passed.

I moved from the small apartment to a quiet district of the city. In the mornings I worked at a hospice, and in the evenings I led a free support group for people who cared for sick people living alone.

Karl’s letter lay on my desk. Not in a frame, not under glass. Simply folded, in an accessible place, so that I could touch it at any time.

One morning my four-year-old niece, Mariam, entered the room and held out a drawing to me.

“This is you,” she told me.

In the drawing two people stood beside the lake. One wore a white T-shirt, and the other held a small key in his hand.

“Who is this man?” I asked.

“The one who brought you back home.”

The child’s words took my breath away.

Outside, the first snow was falling. Snowflakes landed on the windowsill and immediately melted.

That same evening I received an unknown letter. The address of Rezo’s lawyer was written on the envelope.

The letter said that Rezo expressed remorse and wanted to meet with me.

The last line said: “You are obliged to hear his side.”

I called Levan.

“Do you want us to answer?” he asked me.

I stood by the window. In my hand I still held the small rusty key.

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. I spent my whole life waiting for others to explain why they abandoned me. Now I no longer need their explanation.”

“Is this not cruelty?”

“No. This is a boundary.”

I tore up the letter and threw it into the trash bin. I did not want his hatred. Hatred still connected me to him.

And I was already free.

Several weeks later I returned to the country house by the lake. I had the floor repaired, cleaned the windows, and put a small table in the sitting room. I hung on the wall Karl’s only photograph in which he was young and smiling.

That day I wore the white T-shirt. The same one in which I became his wife. The stain was still visible, although I could no longer remember whether it was from tea or from the tears of that evening.

I placed the porcelain cup on the table.

The golden fish on its handle glittered in the sunlight.

The lake was visible from the window. The water was calm, as if after all these years it were hiding nothing for the first time.

I placed the key beside the cup.

I opened the door.

This time I was expecting no one.

And yet, for the first time in my life, I was truly at home.