Part 4 — A Vagabond Asked Me to Marry Him Because He Had One Month Left — and My Lawyer’s Face Changed When Reading the Letter

Marina hung up the telephone and immediately dialed a second number.

“Investigator, the records are gone, but we have audio, a written statement, and financial documents. We need action now.”

I stood at the window and watched Victor.

He did not call me.

He simply stood and waited for me to become afraid.

Marina lowered the blinds.

“You will leave from here through the back door.”

“I will not run anymore.”

“Sara, this is no longer a game.”

“It was not a game for me either from the day Lari told me not to open the door.”

She lowered her eyes for a moment.

“Then today you must decide whether you will fight to the end or not.”

“I have already decided.”

Marina sent all the files to the investigator. In ten minutes my telephone filled with calls. The bank was calling me. The company’s supervisory board. Lari’s doctor was calling again, but this time there was no fear in his voice.

“Victor’s assistant called me,” the doctor told me. “He asked me to say that Lari died naturally. I refused.”

“Where are the records?”

“There is a duplicate copy in the hospital archive. Victor deleted only the main system.”

Marina smiled at me.

“Sometimes people believe in their power so much that they forget the small copies.”

That evening Victor finally called me.

“Your lawyer is lying to you,” he said.

“Why didn’t you tell me this before Lari’s funeral?”

“Because at that time you could still behave normally.”

“What does behaving normally mean?”

“Sign away your refusal of his property and everything will be over.”

“Are you saying that Lari left me nothing?”

“He could not protect his own life, Sara. What will you protect?”

I recorded these words.

“Will you say anything else?”

“Yes. If you do not give me the documents, I will say against you that you planned the marriage for money.”

“And I will say that you planned his death.”

The line went dead.

The next day the police searched Victor’s office. I was not there. Marina told me that Victor denied everything and repeated that I wanted to obtain his brother’s property.

But that same evening happened what I had expected most and feared most.

The investigator played Lari’s recording for Victor.

A voice recorder stood in the room, while I watched through the glass.

Lari’s voice sounded:

“Victor, if you are hearing this recording, you already know Sara. You knew that my poisoning had to happen slowly. You knew that you were paying the doctor. And you knew that you had prepared a car for me on the day of the audit.”

Victor raised his head.

“This is fake.”

The investigator turned off the sound.

“The examination confirmed that it is your brother’s voice.”

“He was expecting death. He could have blamed anything on me.”

“But then you yourself said that you paid the doctor.”

Victor fell silent.

“I did not say that.”

The investigator played my recording.

“If you do not give me the documents, I will say against you that you planned the marriage for money.”

Victor’s face became gray.

He heard his own voice.

For the first time he understood that his enemy was not standing in the room. Only his words were standing there.

“This is not pressure,” he said.

“It is a threat,” the investigator replied.

That night Victor’s lawyer called Marina.

“My client is ready for an agreement.”

“No,” Marina told him.

“He can settle everything quickly.”

“He has already settled everything. Simply against himself.”

Victor was charged with attempted poisoning, financial fraud, destruction of evidence, and threats. Lari’s doctor testified. The real records were retrieved from the hospital archive. And the audit confirmed that millions had been disappearing for years.

I did not attend every hearing in court.

Sometimes sitting in the empty courtroom hurt me more than Lari’s hospice room.

Victor asked for bail.

The judge refused him.

When he was led out of the courtroom, he looked toward me.

“You will regret this,” he told me.

I did not nod.

“I already regret it.”

“What?”

“That I did not believe your brother sooner.”

Several weeks later I saw Lari’s apartment. Everyone thought it had been empty for years, but Marina discovered that Victor had also taken things out of it.

Only one chair, a bookshelf, and a small wooden box remained in the room.

Lari’s old wristwatch lay in the box.

Its plastic glass was cracked, but it was still working.

Tick-tock.

Tick-tock.

There was no bed in the bedroom. On the wall only one photograph remained—Lari young, in a clean shirt, with his brother standing beside him. Both were smiling, but Lari’s hand lay on his brother’s shoulder as if he still believed him.

I did not take the photograph.

I took only the watch.

Three months later I moved to another district of the city. I did not change jobs, but I used another entrance to the metro.

In the mornings I no longer carried two coffees.

I bought only one.

Once, at the end of February, I visited my niece, Nina. She was sitting on the floor and drawing with colored pencils.

“Who is this?” I asked.

“You.”

“Why did you draw me like this?”

“Because now you are not afraid alone.”

In her little drawing I was standing, holding a round watch in my hand, and beside me there was a large yellow sun.

“Where is Lari?” I asked.

Nina put down the pencil.

“Is he in the sky?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then you will draw him beside you.”

She added a little man to the paper. He was holding a cup of black coffee in his hand.

That evening Victor’s lawyer sent me a final letter.

“My client asks you to renounce the inheritance. In exchange, he will no longer mention your name in court.”

I read the letter twice.

Then I forwarded it to Marina.

“Shall we send a reply?” she asked me.

“Yes.”

“What will you write?”

“Only one sentence.”

“I no longer live in the life whose return you are offering me.”

Marina sent the reply.

The next day a message came from Victor’s number.

“Lari did not die because of you. You were simply his last mistake.”

This time I did not reply.

I turned off the telephone and opened the window.

The first snow was falling outside.

I placed Lari’s watch on the kitchen shelf. Its cracked plastic glass reflected the street light.

The watch was still ticking.

But now this sound no longer resembled death.

It reminded me that the time I had spent saving someone else had finally remained for me too.

I began living as Lari’s widow.

But for the first time, without him, I regained myself.

And the watch kept going.