Part 4 — Ten Years Later, an Unknown Woman Came to My Daughter’s Grave, and My Hands Began to Tremble at the Sight of One Envelope

Revaz immediately recognized his own voice.

“If the child is born, I will destroy Andro’s life.”

Silence fell in the room.

For the first time I saw not confidence on his face, but fear.

“This is edited,” he said.

Maia placed the phone on the table.

“The recording is directly from Elene’s device. The time, date, and location are saved.”

Andro’s lawyer, who entered the room at that moment, took the memory card.

“Mr. Revaz, say nothing more.”

“Are you taking a stand against me?”

“I am not taking a stand against the law. Against you, I will speak only if necessary.”

Revaz extended his hand to him.

“Money will settle all this.”

The lawyer did not shake his hand.

“I am ending my representation of you.”

These words affected Revaz more strongly than the recording. He looked around the room, as if all the walls had suddenly begun speaking against him.

Before going to the police, Andro tried to approach Luka.

“I know you do not want to talk to me now.”

Luka stood in front of him, holding Elene’s birthday card in his hand.

“I don’t know whether I want to,” he said. “But I want to know why you never came.”

Andro lowered his head.

“Because I thought there was no place for me in your life. Now I know that was a lie. But you are not obliged to suddenly call me father.”

Luka’s eyes filled with tears.

“Then just be Andro.”

Andro smiled for the first time. That smile resembled Elene’s.

That same night we went to the police. Elene’s recording, the letter, the hospital copy, and Revaz’s documents were officially accepted. The investigator told me that a case would be opened against Revaz for threats, document forgery, and intimidating a witness.

But Revaz was still trying to regain control.

“Marine, if you file a complaint, Elene’s name will be heard everywhere. People will say that she hid her child.”

I looked at him.

“You created my daughter’s silence. She herself reclaimed her voice.”

Revaz turned his head away.

Several days later, at the preliminary court hearing, he heard his own words in full for the first time. In the recording, his voice was calm and cold.

“Elene will not be able to prove to anyone that this child is Andro’s. If she dies, everything will be over.”

Revaz grabbed the chair.

“I did not say it like that.”

The judge looked at him.

“Mr. Revaz, the recording is in your voice. Are you denying your own words?”

He could not answer.

I did not celebrate his misfortune. I only felt tired. For ten years I had thought Elene’s death was the only tragedy. Now I understood how many people had lived in the ruins of that lie.

When we returned home, I found Luka’s room door open. An old baseball glove lay on the bed, and Elene’s photograph was on the table. The photograph had been removed from its frame, and one sentence was written on the back: “Tell Father that I miss him too.”

Luka did not see that note. I could not tell him immediately.

I showed it to Andro.

He looked at the photograph for a long time.

“Did she know that I would come?”

“She probably knew that you would find a way at least once.”

Andro pressed the photograph to his heart.

Six months later, the court sentenced Revaz to imprisonment. He did not admit guilt to the end. He said that he had protected his son and that Elene was an “unstable girl.” But the recordings, documents, and Maia’s testimony confirmed everything.

Maia hugged me on the courthouse steps that day.

“I fulfilled Elene’s promise.”

“Late, but you fulfilled it.”

“Sometimes late truth is still the only way for someone to begin surviving.”

Andro no longer met Luka every day. Both of them were learning this slowly. In the first month they only walked on Sundays. In the second month Luka sent him his mathematics homework. In the third month Andro stayed for dinner for the first time and awkwardly asked where the spoons were kept.

Luka laughed.

“Even fathers don’t know everything?”

“Apparently not.”

Luka still called him Andro. That word was no longer pain for me. It was a small bridge of trust that the two of them were building with their own hands.

Eight months later I began renting a small apartment on the other side of the city. I worked there in a library, drank coffee by the window in the morning, and checked Luka’s homework in the evening. Elene’s photograph hung on the wall, and beneath it was a drawing by Luka of three figures: me, him, and Andro.

Above them he had drawn a small sun.

“This is Elene,” Luka told me.

“The sun?”

“No. The person who watches over us from above.”

The first snow came in December. I was baking an apple pie in the kitchen, while Luka was drawing a road on the window with his finger. Andro knocked on the door, holding three cups of hot chocolate.

“One for you, one for Luka, and one for Elene,” he said.

“But Elene isn’t here?”

“I know. But her cup still has to be there.”

That evening, for the first time, no one tried to repair the past. We simply sat and breathed.

Several weeks later I received a letter from Revaz. It was from prison. He wrote that he felt remorse and wanted to speak to Luka at least once.

I read the letter to the end.

Then I asked Luka.

“Do you want to answer?”

He thought for a long time.

“No. Maybe someday. Not now.”

I nodded.

“Then so it will be.”

I did not keep the letter in a drawer. I tore it up and put it in the trash. It was not revenge. I simply was no longer trying to save someone from the consequences of his own choice.

That evening I took Elene’s old bag out of the closet. Its leather surface had dried, while the small copper star still hung from the handle. Luka picked it up.

“Did Mother really believe that stars showed lost people the way?”

“She did.”

“Then we will not get lost anymore.”

Outside the window, snow was falling silently onto the street. I straightened the star with my fingers and, for the first time in ten years, folded Elene’s letter without fear.

Luka turned off the light.

The small copper star still shone in the darkness.

In the end, we lit the way ourselves.