Part 4 — I Saw My Former Wife on the Road with Two Infants, and My Fiancée Threw Money at Her Feet and Suddenly Turned Pale

When I heard Gela’s name, I held the phone to my ear for several seconds and could not speak.

“Doctor, who requested this recording?”

“The investigator in your case. This morning. But we have already handed the copy over to the police.”

“To the police?”

“Elena contacted us yesterday. She had prepared everything in advance.”

Maria was standing by the window. For the first time, there was no confidence on her face anymore.

“Did Elena file a complaint with the police?” she asked.

“Not only Elena.”

Maria turned toward me.

“Andria, listen. I acted badly, but because I did not want to lose you.”

“You stole my life.”

“I gave it back to you!”

“No. You took away my choice.”

At that moment Gela called my phone. I turned on the speaker.

“Andria, you should know that I made the recording,” he said. “At first I helped Maria because of the money. Then I realized that the matter had gone much further. She told me that no one should know about Elena’s pregnancy.”

Maria moved toward the door.

“Turn it off!”

“Why?” I asked. “Your words are being heard for the first time as they actually sounded.”

Gela continued:

“The payment statements, the original versions of the files in the photographs, and the camera recording were handed over to the police. The recording in which Maria gives money to the hotel employee has already been restored.”

Maria covered her face with her hands.

“Gela, be quiet.”

“For one year you told me that Andria would never find out. Now he has found out.”

After the call ended, such silence fell over the house that every tick of the wall clock sounded like a separate blow.

The next morning the police summoned Maria and Gela for questioning. They were not arrested that same day. First the documents had to be verified, the statements compared, and where the money had gone had to be determined completely.

But Maria had already lost control.

She called the lawyer.

“Everything must be destroyed,” she told him.

The lawyer answered calmly:

“I will not take part in destroying evidence of crimes.”

“I will pay you.”

“Your money is no longer worth the risk you are offering me.”

He ended the call.

It was then that Maria realized for the first time that the people around her were leaving one after another.

Three days later, at the preliminary court hearing, Elena, Gela, Maria, and I found ourselves in the same room. The recording was played on the screen fixed to the wall.

Maria stood there where she was sitting now.

Her old face could be seen on the screen, confident and calm.

“First the photographs must appear, then the money,” she was saying. “Andria will sign everything himself.”

No one in the room moved.

I could also hear my own voice when I said in the recording:

“Elena, I am no longer interested in your explanation.”

You said these words one year ago, but for the first time I heard how cruel they sounded.

Elena lowered her head. I looked toward her.

“Forgive me,” I said.

She did not answer me immediately.

“I am not asking for your forgiveness, Andria. I only want the children not to have to carry our mistakes.”

The court decided that the case against Maria should continue. Gela admitted his participation and began cooperating with the investigation. He returned part of the money obtained illegally, and the court took the rest from his property.

Maria was convicted several months later of fraud and falsifying evidence. Gela’s sentence was reduced because he himself provided the investigation with the main materials, although he did not completely escape imprisonment.

I did not meet all this with joy.

Justice did not resemble revenge.

It simply opened a door where air had not entered for a long time.

The hardest moment came after the trial. I went to Elena’s old apartment to take the children’s things. There were two small beds in the room, and between them a cardboard box in which the children’s clothes were arranged.

Only one photograph remained on the wall. Elena and I were standing on our wedding day, but the middle of the photograph had been folded. My face was almost no longer visible.

On the table lay the twenty dollars that Maria had thrown on the road and Elena had later picked up.

“Why did you keep it?” I asked.

“So that I would not forget how low a person can fall when he cannot see another person’s pain.”

“What will you do with it now?”

Elena looked at the banknote.

“You take it.”

“I don’t want it.”

“Then turn it into something the children can use.”

Six weeks later we received the final paternity result.

Luka and Niko were my children.

Elena read the document by the window. The morning sun stood in the room, and soft blocks lay on the wooden floor for the children.

“Do you want me to be their father?” I asked.

Elena looked at me for a long time.

“I want you to prove every day that you deserve it.”

“I will prove it.”

“Not with words.”

“I know.”

In the first months I took only small steps. In the morning I prepared the bottles. I took the children to the doctor. I knew which one fell asleep on the left side and which one cried when the light in the room was too bright.

Luka loved listening to music.

And Niko put everything into his mouth, including my glasses.

Elena began working at a small bakery. I stayed with the children four days a week and worked the other days in a garage, where I was learning to repair old cars. Life was no longer as beautiful as Maria had promised me.

It became more real.

Three months later I moved to another neighborhood. I put a small wooden crib beneath the window. On the wall hung a sun drawn by Luka, and on Niko’s drawing there were two large, uneven circles.

“What is this?” I asked Niko.

“You and me.”

“Who is the second circle?”

He thought.

“Mother. I drew you very big.”

Elena smiled from the kitchen.

The first snow came at the end of November. I brought the children to the window and pressed both of their hands against the glass. The marks of their fingers appeared after several seconds and slowly disappeared.

That evening Maria sent me a letter.

“I want to talk to you. Now I understand everything. I made a mistake. Perhaps you could come at least once.”

I read the letter several times.

Then I wrote a short reply:

“I am no longer going to return to your life. The law will decide whether you have the right to meet the children, not me. And I will not return to the place where truth had a price.”

After sending it, I turned off the phone.

I did not feel victory.

Only peace.

A year later Elena put the old twenty-dollar banknote in a frame and hung it in the children’s room. Under it was a small inscription: “No one needs charity when they have the truth.”

Luka once asked me:

“Father, why is this money on the wall?”

I knelt in front of him.

“Because sometimes people look at another person only from the outside.”

“And inside?”

“Inside there is always more of a story.”

Niko touched the banknote with his finger.

“Did we have a story too?”

“Yes.”

“A bad one?”

Elena took my hand.

“A very difficult one.”

I smiled at the children.

“But now our story is here.”

Outside the window, snow was still falling. The framed twenty dollars hung quietly on the wall, like a small sign left from an old shame.

I no longer looked at it.

I looked at the children.

This time the road was no longer empty.