Part 4 — They Called My Dress Shameful at the Wedding, but When a Guest Asked One Question, My Mother-in-Law’s Smile Changed

After Zhanna’s words, for the first time I felt that there was no floor under my feet.

“The address of my apartment?” I repeated.

“Yes. And it says that the property is encumbered as collateral.”

Igor looked at his mother.

“Tell me you did not do this.”

Raisa answered, but the words became mixed together.

“I only needed the money temporarily. The wedding had already begun. I wanted good for everyone.”

“For everyone?” I asked. “With my signature, my house, and my workshop?”

She lowered her head.

Alina stood by the wall. The lower part of the white dress touched the floor, and the silver beads no longer shone.

“Mother, you told me that Marina had helped us herself,” she said.

Raisa closed her eyes.

“There was no other way.”

Zhanna put the phone on the table.

“There was always a way. You simply chose the one where the weakest person had to pay.”

That same night an employee of the bank called. His voice was calm, almost indifferent, but every word struck me in the heart.

“Mrs. Marina, the application made out in your name has been approved in the system. If you deny the signature, you must appear at the branch immediately.”

“I will not acknowledge this.”

“Then please come with a lawyer.”

Igor held out his hand to me.

“Marin, I will help you.”

“Why didn’t you help me until now?”

He lowered his hand.

“My mother told me you agreed.”

“And you believed her, because asking me was harder for you than lying was for her.”

In the morning we went to my workshop in Zhanna’s car. Milky morning light entered through the small basement windows. The scissors, measuring tape, and an unfinished dress without a sleeve still lay on the table.

I found the door lock damaged.

Inside, everything was upside down. Drawers had been pulled out, fabrics were scattered on the floor, and the mirror hanging on the wall was cracked.

Only one thing was missing.

My seal, which I used on all official papers.

“It was here,” I said.

Zhanna, kneeling on the floor, picked up a small piece of metal.

“It is from the lock.”

At that very moment Igor called me.

“Mother is no longer at home,” he said.

“Where did she go?”

“I don’t know. But she took a bag and passport from her room.”

“Are you looking for her?”

After a long silence he answered me:

“No. I am going to the police.”

It was the first decision he had made for me and not to protect his mother.

At the bank, an expert compared the signature with my genuine signatures. It took half a day. At last he arranged the papers in front of me.

“This signature was copied,” he said. “The person who did it knew your real signature well, but had never seen your hand while working.”

Then Zhanna took one more thing out of the folder: a small memory card.

“I took this from the workshop camera,” she said. “You had the camera hidden behind the mirror. You probably did not know.”

The recording showed Raisa entering the workshop two days earlier. Beside her stood Igor’s childhood friend, Nodari, who had worked with bank documents for years.

“You knew?” I asked Igor when the recording ended.

“I only knew that Mother was collecting some documents. I thought she was asking you for money. I did not know they would forge the signature.”

“But you did not ask me.”

“I was afraid.”

His answer strangely calmed me. Not because I forgave him, but because he told the truth for the first time.

Raisa was found at the bus station that same day. She was holding a suitcase, and my seal was inside it.

When I entered the interrogation, she was sitting in a small room. She no longer looked like the woman who gave everyone orders at the wedding.

“Marina, I did not want to destroy your family.”

“It was not the forged document in my name that destroyed the family, but your silence.”

“I will return the money.”

“Money is not the only thing you took.”

She looked away from me.

“Then what did I make you lose?”

“I forgot how to defend myself.”

In the end, the loan was canceled because the examination confirmed the forgery. Nodari admitted that Raisa had promised him money. The encumbrance on the apartment was canceled. The case reached court, and Raisa was sentenced to a suspended punishment, a fine, and compensation for the damage to me. Alina could not give testimony and trembled with her whole body, but she still told the truth.

Igor left the house.

Not because I asked him to.

He said that first he had to learn how to live without his mother’s shadow. For several months we lived separately, then we completed the divorce peacefully. We no longer blamed each other. Sometimes peace begins precisely when you stop trying to make decisions instead of someone else.

Three months later Zhanna brought me a new sign for my workshop. I moved from the basement to the first floor. I hired two new seamstresses and created a small collection of wedding dresses.

On the first day I put a sign on the door: “Marina’s Workshop — Sewing According to Your Desire.”

Alina often visited me. One evening she took the hand of a little girl. The girl was holding colored pencils.

“Aunt Marina, may I draw here?” the child asked.

“Of course.”

She drew on the paper a woman wearing a long green dress. The woman had a small pair of scissors in her hand.

“This is you,” the girl said.

“Why do I have scissors?”

“So that no one cuts your dress anymore.”

Alina’s eyes filled with tears.

“Mother is sending you a letter,” she told me. “She says that she regrets it.”

I did not open the letter.

“You can take it.”

“You don’t want to know what she writes?”

“I know that she needs my forgiveness now. And I no longer want to save anyone at the price of my peace.”

The next day Igor called me.

“May I talk to you?”

“You may.”

“I want us to start everything over.”

I was standing by the window. The first snow was falling in the street and settling silently on the roofs of the cars.

“You cannot start over where you left the truth behind at the end,” I said.

“So I have no chance left?”

“You have a chance to become the kind of person whose being beside them will no longer frighten anyone. But you must walk this path without me.”

He said nothing for a long time.

“Goodbye, Marin.”

“Goodbye, Igor.”

I ended the conversation and looked at the drawing lying on the table.

The little girl had colored the handle of the scissors yellow. And I took out my real scissors, the ones whose handle had the first letters of my name engraved on it.

Now they no longer lay in my bag, as if I were ready to flee.

I hung them on the wall, under the new sign.

And for the first time in my life, I no longer needed to hide myself.