Part 4 — Four months later, when she returned home, she found a strange woman’s shoes in the bedroom, while the smile suddenly disappeared from her husband’s face

At Irakli’s last words, Sandro’s face changed.

“What evidence?” I asked.

Irakli handed me the phone.

A recording of my voice was visible on the screen. It really was my voice, but not the words. In the recording I said that Niko was a burden to me and that I wanted to run away from home.

“This is fake,” I said.

“I know,” Irakli answered. “But the judge does not know yet.”

Sandro immediately took out his phone.

“I will call the lawyer.”

“You already did,” Elene said. “He told me that he is withdrawing from the case.”

Sandro stared at her.

“What does ‘withdrawing’ mean?”

“It means that he will no longer defend you.”

Sandro dialed the number, but after several seconds the call ended. He called again. Then a third time.

No one answered.

I was holding Niko’s hand. His fingers were cold.

“Mom, will we go home?”

“Yes, my son.”

“Really?”

“This time I will not go anywhere.”

Sandro blocked my way at the door.

“Clara, think. If you do this, you will destroy both of us.”

“No, Sandro. I am only doing what you yourself did.”

“We are a family.”

“A family does not hide a child.”

At that moment there was a heavy knock at the door. Sandro fell silent.

Two investigators and a woman from social services entered. They held documents in their hands. The smell of coffee, women’s perfume, and tense air mixed together in the room.

“Mr. Sandro, you must come with us,” one of the investigators said.

“On what charge?”

“Forgery, financial fraud, and the unlawful concealment of a child.”

Sandro looked toward me.

“Clara, tell them that this is a misunderstanding.”

For the first time I saw how small he looked without his words.

“This is not a misunderstanding,” I said. “This is the result of your decisions.”

Sandro extended his hand to the investigator, but the investigator put handcuffs on him only when he tried to resist. Elene stood by the wall and silently wiped away her tears.

“I did not know,” she repeated. “I did not know.”

Irakli looked toward her.

“The written transfers say something else.”

Elene lowered her eyes.

And I entered the kitchen with Niko. The two paper cups from the morning were still standing on the table. Coffee had dried in one, while only a white trace of milk remained in the other.

Niko sat down on a chair.

“Mom, why did Dad do this?”

There was no answer to this question that would not hurt a child.

“Sometimes adults make wrong choices because of fear,” I told him. “But their choices are never your fault.”

That same day the police photographed the kitchen, the bedroom, and the wall clock. The new toys I had bought for Niko were still packed in my bag. For four months I had kept a place for them.

In the evening, our old neighbor, Mrs. Marina, came. In her hands she held letters taken from my mailbox.

“Sandro hid these,” she told me. “Every week I saw him taking them.”

One of the letters was a court summons. The other was a warning from the bank.

If Marina had not brought the letters, Sandro probably really would have presented it convincingly as if I had abandoned the family.

The next day I went to court.

Sandro was already sitting in the corridor without a lawyer. His hands were clasped together. When he saw me, he stood up.

“This is your last chance,” he told me. “Withdraw the statement and everything will be returned to you.”

“What will be returned to me?”

“The house. The money. Our life.”

“Our life ended four months ago. I simply found out today.”

The judge first listened to the recording, then compared the forged signature with my genuine documents. Sandro’s voice was heard in the courtroom again:

“I will tell Clara that the child is at my mother’s.”

This time those words did not hurt me as they had at home.

When someone else hears your own voice, a lie cannot hide.

The judge left temporary custody of Niko with me, stopped the sale of the apartment, and transferred the case for investigation. Until the trial, Sandro was forbidden to approach me or Niko.

I did not wait for his defeat.

I was simply waiting for the correction of his decisions with my hands to stop.

Three weeks later we moved into a small rented apartment. A tram line was visible from the window. In the morning its sound woke me, and in the evening Niko drew with colored pencils on the kitchen floor.

On the first night he was afraid.

“Will they hide me here too?” he asked.

“No.”

“How do you know?”

I sat beside him.

“Because in this house every door opens from the inside.”

Niko drew a house on a sheet of paper. It had two yellow windows on the roof, and beside it was a small elephant with a bell hanging above its head.

“This is you,” he told me. “When you go far away, you can still hear me.”

Something caught in my throat.

“Always.”

Two months later I started working again. I designed stage sets at the city’s old theater. The job was small, the salary was less than what I had received before, but every day I entered home with my own key and was not afraid that I would see someone else’s shoes.

Niko was able to return to school. During the first month he asked the teacher every morning whether I would come. Then he no longer needed to.

One morning the first snow came.

Niko stood by the window and caught snowflakes on his palm. I prepared hot cocoa in the kitchen and put my small elephant-shaped thermos on the table.

The bell on its lid was still jingling.

I received a message on my phone. It was Sandro.

“Come, talk to me at least once. Everything can be started again.”

I looked at the screen for a long time.

Then I wrote him only four words:

“Start with yourself first.”

And I blocked the number.

That evening Niko pinned the drawing to the wall. There was no dark corridor, closed door, or strange shoes there anymore. There was only a small house, with two bright windows and an elephant standing by the door.

I put the thermos on the windowsill.

The wind moved the lid slightly and its small bell sounded.

This time the sound no longer resembled fear.

It resembled returning home.