Part 4 — In the Concert Corridor, Everyone Turned Against Goldie’s Father Over His Daughter, but One Sentence from the Girl Silenced the Hall and Made Her Father Go Pale

Nika’s words were still hanging in the air when the school’s main door opened forcefully.

Two men stood outside. One held a leather bag in his hand, and the other held a folded document.

“Nika Beridze?” the first one asked.

Nika stepped in front of Goldie.

“Who are you?”

“We are lawyers. We have a temporary court order.”

The principal carefully took a step forward.

“This is a school. You cannot take the child here.”

“We are not going to take the child,” the man said. “We are only requesting the medical records.”

Nika looked at the document and smiled bitterly.

“You never had the records.”

“Now we will.”

Goldie grabbed her father’s hand.

“Don’t give them to them.”

“I won’t.”

Nika took out his phone and called his lawyer.

“Lasha, they are here.”

The answer came several seconds later.

“Don’t open the folder. Not a single sheet. I am on my way.”

“They have an order.”

“The order concerns the records. Not the mother’s personal letter and not the voice recording. Call the police.”

Nika closed his eyes.

“If the police come, everything will be revealed.”

“That is exactly why they must come.”

The call ended.

Nika stood motionless for several seconds. Then he took a small memory card from the red pouch and handed it to the principal.

“This is a copy. It has already been sent to two places.”

The male lawyer immediately tensed.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that this time you will not be able to erase it.”

The woman accompanying him, who had been standing silently until then, spoke for the first time.

“Nika, think. If you publish this, your daughter will have to go to court.”

“She has lived for nine years with the truth you were hiding from her.”

“We only made a mistake.”

“Was replacing the sample a mistake? The money transfer? Hiding the mother’s death?”

The woman’s face changed.

Nika turned on the recording on his phone.

The woman’s old voice rang through the corridor: “The child’s father cannot prove anything. The mother will be gone in a few weeks.”

Then a man’s voice: “Replace the sample and the case will be closed.”

Everyone heard their own words.

The lawyer froze.

The woman lost color.

Goldie looked at her father.

“Were these the people?”

“Yes.”

“Did Mother know?”

“She knew. That is why she recorded everything.”

The police arrived soon. They took the documents, made a copy of the recording, and led both lawyers into a separate room. They no longer shouted. They no longer threatened.

Only the woman kept repeating:

“It happened years ago.”

The police officer answered calmly:

“But the crime was revealed only now.”

That same night the clinic director called Nika.

“We can reach an agreement,” he told him. “We will pay money too.”

“My mother’s life had no price.”

“Then you will see each other in court.”

“That is exactly where I will see you.”

Nika ended the call.

Goldie sat in the empty music room. By the window her long hair lay on the floor and covered her white costume.

“Dad,” she said, “if I could have saved Mother, why couldn’t I?”

Nika knelt beside her.

“Because you did not abandon her. They separated us.”

“Then why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

“Because I could not take your childhood away from you. I wanted you first simply to live.”

Goldie thought for a long time.

“Can I cut it now?”

Nika’s eyes lit up, but he did not nod.

“Now you can do everything you want.”

Three days later Goldie went to a hairdresser for the first time. She asked me to sit beside her. Before the hair was cut, Nika opened the red pouch and carefully placed a thin braid inside it.

“We will not throw this away,” Goldie said.

“No,” Nika answered. “This is your mother’s last piece of evidence.”

The sound of the first cut of the scissors was very small.

But Nika still began to cry.

Goldie looked into the mirror, and for the first time her face was not hidden by hair.

Two months later the court established that the clinic employees had deliberately changed medical samples and concealed treatment necessary for the patient’s life. The director was deprived of his license. Two employees were arrested.

Nika was not happy about their punishment.

One day he told me:

“I only wanted Goldie to stop feeling as if her mother’s death were her fault.”

Goldie did not choose a new school. She stayed in the same class. Only now she ran freely during physical education.

Her hair reached her shoulders.

Every Friday she went to a children’s clinic and met the girls who were undergoing treatment. She gave part of her cut hair to a charity foundation, and kept part of it in a small glass box.

She wrote one sentence on the box: “It is my choice.”

Nika left his job. He opened a small workshop where he made wooden clips. He carved a sun on each one.

A photograph from Goldie’s childhood stood on his desk. In the photograph, a girl sat with a huge braid, holding one wooden clip in her hand.

Three months later Nika was called again.

The former director of the clinic had sent a letter.

“I want to explain everything to you personally. Please come to a meeting.”

Nika read the letter and put it in a drawer.

Goldie asked him:

“Will you go?”

“No.”

“You don’t want to hear?”

Nika smiled calmly.

“I listened to them for nine years. Now it is time for my silence.”

That evening I went to their house. Autumn rain could be seen through the window. Goldie’s small glass box stood on the table. Beside it was the red cloth pouch.

Goldie opened the pouch and took out the last old wooden clip. It was broken, exactly on the evening when we first learned the truth.

“I will repair this,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because a broken thing is not always meant to be thrown away.”

Nika looked at her.

“And a person?”

Goldie enclosed the clip in her palm.

“A person can start again.”

Raindrops ran down the window. There was no longer heavy hair in the house that pressed against the chairs and hindered childish steps. There was no longer fear that someone would open the door and take away the past.

Only a small wooden sun remained.

Goldie placed it on the shelf.

And for the first time no one told her how long she had to leave it there.