Part 4 — Six Years Later, When I Returned to the House My Parents Had Given, My Father Was Waiting for Me in the Yard, While My Daughter-in-Law Could Not Hide Her Sudden Pallor

When I heard the word “safe,” Dato immediately reached toward the phone.

I stepped back.

“Do not touch me.”

“Nika, listen before you call the police,” he said. “We can explain everything.”

“Six years of lies?”

Elena took out her phone and called someone.

“The lawyer should have arrived by now,” she whispered.

Natalia looked toward the door. My mother sat down on the chair and placed her hands in her lap. My father was still standing beside me. For the first time he no longer looked like an old man who was unable to resist.

Dato looked into my eyes.

“You do not know how much I have done for this family.”

“I know what you did with my money.”

“If it had not been for your money, this house would not exist at all.”

“That is exactly why I wanted my parents to live in it, not your mother-in-law.”

Elena shouted:

“We supported everyone!”

“Then why did you have my parents’ phone?”

No one could answer.

That same evening I called my lawyer, Irakli. He lived in the city and came in an hour. He held a leather bag whose clasp rattled with every movement.

At the sight of him, Dato headed toward the door.

“This is a family conversation. Your place is not here.”

Irakli took off his glasses.

“There are now signs of financial fraud and pressure on elderly people. My place is exactly here.”

Dato extended his hand to him.

“Let us talk separately.”

“No,” Irakli answered. “From this moment I will no longer have a private conversation with you.”

This was the first real blow for Dato.

At eight in the evening we went to the bank. My father came with me, while my mother stayed at home with Elena and Natalia. Before we got into the car, my father took my hand.

“If nothing is found in the safe, still do not regret that you came.”

“Why are you saying that?”

“Because I have already lost everything, except that you learned the truth.”

There was a smell of dampness and metal in the bank basement. Dato led us unwillingly. When he opened the safe door, inside were three folders, a memory card, and an envelope.

My name was written on the envelope.

The handwriting resembled my mother’s.

But the letter had been written by my father.

“Nika, if you are reading this, it means that they have already realized that they can no longer silence me.”

Six years ago my mother called the bank and confirmed that my transfers were being used entirely for their treatment. After that Dato hid all the statements in the house and threatened my parents that if they resisted, he would sell the house with a false power of attorney.

On the memory card they found a recording by the notary, in which Dato and Elena were arguing. They themselves mentioned the forged signatures and the loan.

“All of this will be enough,” Irakli said.

Dato struck the chair with his hand.

“Father, are you really going to send your own son to prison?”

My father answered calmly:

“You chose that path yourself, son.”

The next morning we went to the police. Dato still tried to regain control. He called me, cried, promised that he would return the money. Finally he threatened me that in court he would say that I had supposedly forced my parents to testify against him.

But this time his voice did not remain only in my phone.

Irakli recorded the call and handed it over to the police.

Dato’s and Elena’s accounts were frozen. A case over the false loan was opened, and they had to leave the house that same day. Natalia left with her daughter and took only one bag on the way.

Their rooms remained empty.

I opened the door of my parents’ old bedroom. On the bed lay one photograph of my mother, in which she was thirty years old and had her head resting on my father’s shoulder. By the window remained the narrow bed on which they had slept for months.

My father looked into the room.

“I thought I would never be able to return here.”

“Now this is your room again.”

“It was not ours, but a house given by you.”

“It was given to you. And now you must live as you wanted from the beginning.”

Several weeks later the investigation continued. Dato partially admitted the crime in order to lessen his punishment. Elena blamed everything on him. They sold part of their property to compensate for the damage, but returning my money was no longer the main part of this story.

The main thing was that my father no longer bent his back before strangers.

Three months later I returned to the house again. A new wooden bench stood in the yard. My mother was sitting there and watering the flowers, while my father was picking tomatoes in the small garden.

“Look, son, it is the first harvest,” he told me.

“Did you plant them?”

“Your brother did not plant them, if that is what you are asking.”

We both laughed.

The laughter was cautious, as if a foreign voice still frightened us in the house. But this was already the sound of happiness.

I did not leave my job, although I no longer needed to work eighty hours a week. I opened a small workshop on the outskirts of the city and began making wooden furniture. I made the first table for my parents. I carved their initials on it.

In winter my mother attached paper snowflakes to the window. Every morning my father went out onto the balcony and looked at the road, as if he needed reassurance that he was truly free.

One evening, five months later, I received a letter from Dato. Only one sentence was written:

“Could you talk to me at least once as a brother?”

I looked at the sheet for a long time.

Then I asked my father:

“Do you want me to answer?”

He shook his head.

“He is your brother. You must make the decision.”

I wrote an answer:

“I will be able to speak with you when you stop shifting responsibility onto others. Until then, do not come near my parents again.”

This was not cruelty.

It was the first boundary that I set for myself.

I sent the letter and opened the window. The first snow of winter was falling in the yard. White flakes fell onto the gravel path, the same path that my father used to sweep every day.

The old broom still stood in the corner. My father did not want to throw it away.

“Why do you keep it?” I asked.

He ran his hand over the handle.

“So that I remember where I lost myself.”

Then he leaned the broom against the wall and came inside.

This time his back was straight.

And I closed the door behind him.