My Mother Would Not Let Two Old Dogs Into My House, but at the Sight of Them Her Face Suddenly Went Pale

My mother opened the door as if outside stood not a person, but the past, which she had been avoiding for months.

Luna and Bruno slowly got out of the car. The small beagle carefully stepped onto the paving stones, then immediately pressed against the German shepherd. Bruno’s hind legs were trembling, but he held his head with dignity. The small copper key hanging from his collar jingled lightly with every step.

Mother stood frozen on the threshold.

“Levan, who are these?” she asked me.

“Luna and Bruno. They came with me today.”

Her gaze moved from the dogs to me. She held a cup of tea in her hand, and steam rose from it as if old, peaceful days still lived in the room.

“Both?”

“Both.”

“I did not ask for a dog.”

“I know.”

“Then why did you bring them?”

I had prepared an answer to this question in advance, but the words stuck in my throat. How was I to explain that every evening, when I called Mother, I felt an enormous, empty room in her voice? How was I to say that her being alone at home was no longer ordinary loneliness?

“Because they have each other,” I said at last. “And lately you have had no one.”

Mother’s face changed.

“I had your father.”

She said these words as if Father had merely gone into the other room and would soon return. But Father had been buried last autumn. Since then Mother had prepared two cups of tea every morning. She drank one, while leaving the other untouched by the window.

Luna suddenly whimpered in a low voice and looked at Mother. Then she placed her head on Bruno’s paw. This simple movement tightened my chest. At the shelter, Katerine had told me that their owner, an elderly woman named Elene, had died several weeks earlier. Luna and Bruno had lived together, and separating them was impossible.

“If you take one, the other watches the door all night,” Katerine told me that morning in the shelter’s long corridor. “They are not simply friends. They are each other’s last family.”

Now Mother stood at the door, while Luna curled up at her feet. Bruno barely reached her, and the copper key again touched the floor with a jingle.

Mother looked at the key.

The cup almost fell from her fingers.

“Where did you find this?” she asked in a whisper.

“It was on his collar.”

“Did Elene leave it?”

For the first time I felt that this name was not unfamiliar to Mother. Nor were the dogs unfamiliar to her. Mother took a step back and leaned against the door handle.

“Mother, did you know Elene?”

She did not answer me. Instead, she turned her gaze toward the small cabinet at the end of the corridor. Father’s old things were arranged there, including a red wooden box that she had never opened.

“They cannot come into the house,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because this house will soon no longer be mine.”

My heart felt a heavy blow.

“What does that mean?”

Mother pressed her lips together. Then she looked at Luna, who was trembling by her feet, and seemed finally to decide to tell me something.

“You do not know many things, Levan.”

“Then tell me.”

Mother opened the door wider. But at that moment a black car stopped in the yard. An unfamiliar woman got out of the car, holding a leather folder full of documents.

The color disappeared from Mother’s face.

The woman stepped onto the stairs and said calmly:

“Mrs. Marine, we have no time left. You must sign today…”

Mother reached toward the folder, and exactly then I noticed that a piece of white paper was hidden under Bruno’s collar. I reached toward it and……

…I touched the edge of the paper with my fingers, but Bruno suddenly raised his head and looked at the woman with a low, warning growl.

“Levan, do not touch it,” Mother said.

“Why? What is there?”

The unfamiliar woman pressed the folder to her chest.

“This is a family matter. You must not interfere with you.”

“This is my mother.”

“And precisely for that reason, you must trust her decision.”

Mother stood silently. Luna touched her ankles, while Bruno blocked the way. The room smelled of tea, dust, and old wood. For the first time I realized that Mother’s loneliness had not been only grief.

The woman looked at her watch.

“If you do not sign today, the deal will fall through.”

“What deal?” I asked.

Mother lowered her eyes.

“The sale of the house.”

My breath caught.

“Were you going to do this?”

“I can no longer stay in this house.”

“Why did you not tell me?”

“Because I had already burdened you enough.”

I took the paper from Bruno’s collar. It turned out to be a folded letter, and Mother’s name was written on it. The handwriting was unfamiliar, but in the last letters I noticed something familiar.

Mother saw the letter and sank into a chair.

“Elene,” she sighed.

The woman opened the folder.

“First sign the contract, then you may read any letter you want.”

Mother looked at the pen. I opened the letter, and as soon as I read the first line, Mother’s face changed and she gripped my wrist tightly.

“Read it aloud,” she told me.

But on the last page of the letter was written something that made every sound in the room disappear…

…On the last page of the letter it said: “Marine, if this letter has reached you, it means that I can no longer speak to you. I left Luna and Bruno for you because I know what it means to wake up in the morning and find an empty place beside you. They must bring peace into your life. But you still have to know the most important thing: no one has sold the house. Your signature on the documents is forged.”

My voice began to tremble at the last words.

Mother closed her eyes.

The unfamiliar woman immediately stepped forward.

“This is ridiculous. A letter is not a legal document.”

“But a forged signature is a crime,” I said.

“You are not a lawyer.”

“Neither are you the one who forces my mother to sign over the house.”

Mother took the letter from me and pressed it to her chest with both hands.

“Elene was my sister,” she said.

I looked at her, frozen.

“You never told me you had a sister.”

“Father did not know that she had contacted me again. We quarreled years ago. He thought I had betrayed his family. And out of pride I never turned back.”

Luna lay down beside Mother’s lap. Bruno placed his head on her knee. The copper key stuck to Mother’s hand.

“Elene knew about my illness,” Mother continued. “The doctor told me that I would need treatment and might not be able to cope alone for long. Elene told me to tell you. I promised, but I got scared.”

“What illness?”

Mother looked at me.

“I have a serious problem with my heart. I have to go to the clinic tomorrow. And I was going to leave the house to this woman because she told me I would receive the money for treatment only after the sale.”

The woman closed the folder, pale.

“You signed voluntarily.”

“I signed nothing,” Mother said.

I took an old recorder from Mother’s table. A small red light was blinking beside it.

“It was on,” I said.

The woman’s voice came from the recorder:

“If you do not sign, your son will leave you on the street. He has no time for you.”

Then Mother’s weak voice:

“I will not tell Levan. I do not want his life to change because of me.”

The recording stopped.

The woman’s face tightened.

“This is an illegal recording.”

“Perhaps,” I replied. “But now we are going to the police.”

Mother took my hand.

“First I have to go to the clinic.”

At that moment the telephone rang. It was the doctor’s number. He told me that Mother’s test results had worsened, and if she did not go today, it might already be too late for the operation.

Mother listened silently.

And I noticed the second sheet of Elene’s letter, hidden under the first sheet. Only one sentence was written on it: “Marine, tell Levan why you left your father’s funeral that night before he returned…”