After Eighteen Years of Work, I Was Driven Out of the House, but Three Days Later One Call Wiped the Smile from Justin’s Face

Twenty-one days after Christopher’s funeral, Justin brought me into the office and said to me in such a voice as if I had spent not eighteen years before him, but only one morning: “You must leave this house today.” The small brown envelope lying on his desk smelled of fresh paper and cold tobacco. When I touched it, my fingers froze.

“Justin, perhaps you have made a mistake,” I said. “I have worked in this house for eighteen years.”

He leaned back in his chair and adjusted the coffee-colored watch on his wrist.

“I know exactly how long you have been here. That is why I am telling you that it was enough.”

“Your father would not have done this. He would at least have spoken to me first.”

Justin smiled, but his eyes did not follow.

“Father is no longer here. Now I decide everything. There is one week’s pay in the envelope. Take your things and do not let me see you in the yard by sunset.”

There were four hundred dollars in the envelope. Eighteen years for four hundred dollars. I could not find an answer. I only looked at the old wooden clock hanging beside the door, whose ticking I had heard every morning during Christopher’s lifetime.

Christopher was no longer only my employer. When my daughter died, he did not say a single word that time healed everything. He simply sat beside me in the kitchen and remained silent for an entire hour. That day I felt for the first time that some people become family not by blood, but by looking at your pain without running away.

Justin, however, almost never appeared with his father. At the funeral I saw his expensive coat up close for the first time. Even when we stood beside the coffin, he was asking the notary where the house keys were kept.

In the evening I left my small room almost empty. I took a white kitchen apron, the old radio through whose crackling Christopher listened to the morning news, and a photograph he had given me on my birthday. On the back of the photograph he had written in his own hand: “Home is the place where they wait for your return.”

When I arrived home, I found half a bottle of milk and two eggs in the refrigerator. My nephew Lucas was sleeping in the next room. I had cared for him ever since his mother, my only child, was gone. For him, the job had not been only a job. It was food, rent, and a future.

Three days later, at ten eleven in the morning, the telephone rang. An unknown number appeared on the screen.

“Mrs. Helena?”

“Yes, who is speaking?”

“This is Samuel. I was Christopher Hale’s lawyer.”

I tried to stand up from the chair, but my knees would not obey me.

“Why are you calling me?”

For several seconds, silence fell on the other side of the line.

“Before I explain everything, I have to ask you one question. On the day Justin sent you away from the house, did he make you sign any document?”

The button for turning on the old radio was enclosed in my hand. I turned it unintentionally, and the room was instantly filled with crackling.

“No,” I answered. “I did not sign anything.”

Fear appeared in Samuel’s voice for the first time.

“Then, Helena, please sit down. Because Justin told you only what he wanted you to believe. But the real story began on the morning when his father signed the last document…”

The crackling of the radio sounded in the room as if someone invisible were breathing beside me. Lucas did not wake up. And I clung to every word of Samuel’s.

“What document are you talking about?”

“I cannot explain it over the phone. Come to my office this evening.”

“Justin said that all of his father’s property remained with him.”

“Justin said many things. But his words cannot change legality.”

At three o’clock I went to Samuel’s office. A black folder lay on the desk, and beside it was a small key. Samuel locked the door and pulled the curtains shut.

“Christopher knew that you would be in danger after his death,” he told me. “But that is not the main thing yet. He asked me for one thing: to reveal nothing until you came yourself.”

“What was I supposed to find out?”

Samuel placed his hand on the folder.

“Why he left Justin only one small box and provided for you and Lucas for your entire lives.”

My breath caught.

“Lucas? Christopher hardly knew him.”

“That is what you thought.”

At that moment someone knocked hard on the door. Samuel went pale and clenched the key in his fist.

“We are not expecting anyone,” he whispered.

The knocking sounded once again.

Samuel opened the folder, took out the first sheet, and said to me: “Helena, before you read this name, you should know that someone is very afraid that this paper might end up in your hands…”

Samuel held the first sheet out toward me. They were knocking on the door again, this time more quickly and angrily. His fingers were trembling, but he kept his voice firm.

“The last will and testament of Christopher Hale and the fund created during his lifetime,” I read aloud.

“Continue,” Samuel told me.

My name was written on the sheet. Helena Morel. Beside it were Lucas’s full name and date of birth.

“This is impossible,” I whispered. “I never asked him for anything.”

“He knew. That is precisely why he left it to you so that you would not need to ask.”

Samuel pointed to the last page of the document. Christopher’s signature stood there, together with the witnesses’ seals.

According to the will, the villa and the land adjoining it temporarily passed into my possession. I was to live there until the end of my life, while the income received from the property would be used for Lucas’s education and treatment. Justin was left only several family belongings, because Christopher had written directly: “My son refused me for years, and now he cannot claim the right to my life.”

I gripped the chair.

“Why did he not tell me all this?”

“He wanted to surprise you. The opening of the will was scheduled for thirty days after his funeral. And Justin drove you out on the twenty-first day.”

There was a blow on the door, and a security guard burst into the room.

“Mr. Samuel, Justin is here. He says he has the police with him.”

Just then Samuel took a second sheet from the black folder. It was an extract from a recording made by a camera hidden in the villa’s kitchen. Justin’s voice could be heard clearly on it: “If Helena leaves, no one will learn about the will. Father is dead, and no one can defend the signature.”

As I listened to the recording, a heaviness pressed on my heart. I pictured Justin’s face and understood for the first time that his confidence had not been strength, but fear.

The door opened. Justin entered together with a police officer.

“This woman is stealing my family documents,” he shouted.

Samuel calmly turned on the recording.

His own voice sounded in the room.

“If Helena leaves, no one will learn…”

Justin froze. The police officer looked at him, but no one arrested him yet. Just then Samuel’s telephone rang. He listened, went pale, and turned toward me.

“Helena, the bank is calling me. Justin has taken out a loan against the villa. It turns out that the house is already in danger of being sold…”