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

A few hours after the burial, when the dust from Karl’s house still lay on the sleeves of my black dress, someone knocked on the door as if the last secret of my life were standing outside.

I was alone at home. On the kitchen table I had placed his cup, that little porcelain cup on whose handle a golden fish was painted. Karl always said that this cup would outlast him longer than every person who entered his house.

The bell rang a second time.

“Who is it?” I asked, although I was afraid of the answer.

“Mrs. Elene, I am Karl’s lawyer. I need to talk to you.”

I opened the door. On the threshold stood a man approximately over sixty, holding a dark wooden folder in his hand. His coat smelled of rain and old paper.

“I saw you at Karl’s funeral,” he told me. “But there I could not tell you anything.”

“What do you mean?”

He looked at me the way a doctor looks at a person to whom he has to tell bad news.

“Karl asked me to hide everything until his death. Today the waiting period ended.”

My heart contracted.

“What were you supposed to hide?”

The lawyer opened the folder, but took nothing out yet.

“Karl told me that you knew him only as a sick man. That was true, but it was not the full truth.”

It seemed as if the air disappeared from the room. I remembered Karl’s voice: “Elene, sometimes a person tells the greatest truth when he no longer has time to escape the consequences.” At the time I considered those words a sick man’s sad joke.

But now my hands froze.

I met Karl three months ago, through a hospice assistance program. Three times a week I cooked food for him, cleaned the house, and played board games with him in the evenings. He was about forty, had fourth-stage cancer, and lived completely alone.

One evening, while I was pouring tea, he suddenly told me:

“Marry me.”

The spoon fell from my hand.

“Karl, I barely know you.”

“You know me well enough to know that I am not asking this because of money or pity.”

“Why me?”

He looked at me for a long time.

“Because I have been waiting for you all my life, although you knew nothing about it.”

The next day a priest made us husband and wife in his sitting room. I wore a white T-shirt, the only white clothing I had in the closet. A small brown tea stain remained on Karl’s hand when the cup spilled while he was putting on the wedding ring. We both laughed.

Ten days later he died.

Now the lawyer stood before me.

“Karl left you a letter,” he said. “He told me to give it to you only after the burial.”

“Who was he really?”

“You will learn that from the letter. But please, do not read it alone.”

“He is already gone, Mr. Levan. What more can he take from me?”

Levan lowered his eyes.

“He may take more from you than you think.”

He held out a white envelope to me. My full name was written on the envelope in Karl’s handwriting. The letters trembled slightly, as if he had written every word in pain.

I read the first sentence and my breath caught: “Elene, our meeting was never accidental.”

At the second line my eyes grew blurred.

“I have known you all your life and watched you silently.”

“That is impossible,” I whispered.

Levan answered me nothing.

My knees gave way, but before I fell to the floor I saw how he opened the last section of the folder and took out an old, folded sheet from there. His fingers moved toward it…

Levan’s fingers touched the sheet, but immediately pulled back.

“Read the letter to the end first,” he told me.

It was difficult for me to get up from the floor. Karl’s words still stood dimly before my eyes: “If you are reading this, I have already said goodbye to you. Before you decide anything about me, know that I earned the truth for you.”

Then it said that many years ago Karl’s life had been saved by one man. Before dying, that man left him only one request: if anything happened to him, watch over his little daughter.

That little girl was me.

After my mother’s death, I remembered the birthday cards I received from an unknown person. The scholarship that allowed me to study at university. The job that appeared when I could no longer pay the rent.

Everything had been done by Karl.

“Why didn’t he tell me?” I asked.

“He was afraid you would consider his help an obligation,” Levan answered.

On the last page of the letter I found one instruction: at sunrise, go to the old country house by the lake. There is a wooden chest under the floor. Inside is the answer to the question I cannot explain to you by letter.

Levan took a small, rusted key from his pocket and placed it in my palm.

“I cannot go to that house now,” I said.

“Someone is already there,” he answered.

“Who?”

Levan’s phone rang. He looked at the screen and his face changed.

“It is Karl’s brother,” he said quietly. “He knows that the letter is with you…”

Levan’s phone rang again. The same number flashed on the screen, but he did not answer the call.

“We have to go to the country house,” he told me. “Right now.”

“Is Karl’s brother there?”

“If he got there before us, he may try to take the letter.”

At five o’clock at night we passed the outskirts of the city. Raindrops collided with one another on the car windshield, while Karl’s envelope lay on my lap. I touched its edges with my fingers, as if by touching the paper I could bring back his breathing.

The country house by the lake was almost collapsed when we found it. The wooden stairs creaked at every step. A small rusty nail was stuck in the window frame, with which they had probably fastened a curtain in childhood.

“Did he meet my mother here?” I asked.

Levan nodded.

“Now it is time to know everything.”

With his key we lifted the floorboard. Under it stood a wooden chest. The lock was so rusted that Levan had to turn the key twice.

When the chest opened, an old lavender smell came out. Inside lay photographs, bank documents, two video-recording discs, and a birth certificate.

My birth certificate.

But another name was written in the father’s field.

“This is Karl’s real name,” Levan said.

In the photograph I saw a young man. He had the same eyes and the same small scar on his left eyebrow. Only his hair was dark, and his face showed no trace of illness.

“Karl was actually Irakli Beridze,” Levan continued. “He is your biological father.”}]},{

The room spun.

“My mother told me that my father died in a car accident.”

“That was a lie. Irakli’s family forced your mother to hide the child. They did not want the inheritance to pass to an unknown woman and her child.”},{

Levan put the first disc into an old player. Karl’s voice sounded, hoarse but calm.

“Elene, if you are watching this, I can no longer protect you as I did before. The matters connected with your birth were not hidden by accident. My brother, Rezo, did everything so that you would not learn about my existence.”

Tears came from my eyes.

“Why did my mother abandon me?”

“She did not abandon you,” Levan said. “She was trying to escape. Rezo’s people drove her car off the road. Officially it was an accident, but Karl found the truth only years later.”},{

The second disc contained Karl’s last recording.

“I came close to you because before dying I wanted you, at least once, to know that your father was alive and stood beside you. The wedding was not my selfish wish. I wanted, for the first time in my life, to see your name together with my surname.”

Levan found another document under the birth certificate.

“This is a trust-management inheritance agreement. Everything passes into your name if Karl dies.”

Just then, outside, a car door slammed.

I went to the window. Rezo stood in front of the country house with two unknown men.

The phone rang. It was an unknown number.

“Elene,” Rezo said as soon as I answered, “you can still leave peacefully. If you opened the chest, it is already too late.”

Levan squeezed my hand.

“The recording was made,” he told me.

Rezo raised his head outside and looked directly at me.

“Then you will learn why Karl could never fully accept your protection,” he said, and moved toward the door of the country house…