My Wife Locked My Daughter in the House, But When I Opened the Room Door, the Smile Disappeared from Her Face

When the emergency doctor tried to touch my daughter’s hand, Nino flinched as if she had seen that wooden pestle again. And at that moment I heard for the first time what delayed remorse sounds like in one’s own home.

It was Wednesday, seven in the evening. Two days earlier I had returned from a business trip earlier than Salome expected. She met me on the threshold, hugged me, and kissed me with such warmth, as if she had been waiting my whole life for my return.

“I missed you so much,” she told me. “Nino, come down, Dad is here!”

My fifteen-year-old daughter appeared in the hallway. The sleeves of her T-shirt were pulled down to her wrists, although it was hot in the house. She walked slowly and seemed to be protecting her left leg.

Salome ran toward her and wrapped both arms around her.

Nino froze.

No, she did not pull away. She did not shout either. Her whole body simply tensed, as if the hug were a noose.

“Tell Dad what we prepared for dinner,” Salome said cheerfully and kissed the top of her head.

“I’m not hungry,” Nino answered.

“Your dramas again,” Salome laughed.

Then she squeezed her shoulder.

Nino stepped backward so sharply that the copper vase on the table shook. And I saw how her face turned pale.

“Let go of her,” I told Salome.

Her smile disappeared for half a second. Then it returned.

“Giorgi, what is wrong with you? The child is simply tired.”

I took Nino into my study and locked the door. The old clock ticked in the room. I heard that sound so clearly, as if every second were being written against me.

“Why are you afraid to be alone with Salome?” I asked.

Nino looked at the floor.

“You will believe her anyway.”

“Who told you that I would not believe you?”

“You did yourself. Every time you called, she sat beside me and smiled. She told me that if I said anything, you would say I was imagining it because of my mother.”

Those four words fell into my heart more heavily than any wound: You will believe her anyway.

“Just show me what I need to know,” I said quietly.

First Nino raised her T-shirt sleeve. She had dark purple marks on her wrist. Then she extended her leg. Her ankle was swollen, and several old and new bruises mixed together near her knee.

My breath caught.

“Who did this to you?”

Nino began to cry, but did not make a sound.

I called the emergency services. Salome heard my voice on the phone and burst through the door so that the handle hit the wall.

“She fell,” she said immediately.

“What?”

“She fell on the stairs. Then she got angry and began resisting. You know how emotional she is after her mother’s death.”

“I haven’t eaten for three days,” Nino said quietly.

Salome looked at her.

“Nino, don’t make things up.”

“You gave me food only when I gave you the key.”

Silence fell in the room. Salome’s eyes hardened.

I asked only one question.

“Where is the key to Ana’s room?”

My first wife, Ana, had asked me before her death to leave her room to Nino. Letters, photographs, and a small wooden box that she had left only for Nino were kept there. The room had been locked for years. And Nino wore the key like a small copper medallion, on a thin chain.

Salome looked away.

“I don’t know.”

I went upstairs. I found the door half open.

The drawers lay on the floor. The jewelry box was empty. The letters had been scattered. The wooden box had disappeared from the shelf.

“I was tidying,” Salome told me from behind.

“You said you didn’t have the key.”

She began to cry, but not because of Nino. She was crying for herself.

At that moment a police officer appeared by the stairs. Nino stood beside him, pale, but this time there was no fear in her eyes.

“There is something else, Dad,” she told me.

“What?”

Nino looked toward Salome’s room.

“She took Mother’s wooden box there after I gave her the key.”

Salome shouted that Nino was lying. The police officer raised his hand and asked her not to touch anything.

But Nino said something after which everything acquired a completely different meaning.

“She was not interested in Mother’s jewelry,” she whispered. “She kept asking me where Mother had hidden the blue envelope…”

The police officer sealed the door to Salome’s room. It was nine at night, rain struck the windows, and I was straightening the gauze on Nino’s hand at the hospital.

“What is the blue envelope?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Mother told me that when I became very afraid, I should open her box. But Salome took the key from me.”

“How?”

Nino bit her lip.

“She told me that if I did not give it to her, she would call Dad and say that I had stolen money. Then she gave me no food for three days. Yesterday she took the pestle.”

I gripped the chair so tightly that my fingers turned white.

“Why didn’t you tell me anything?”

“Every time you called, she sat beside me. I was afraid you would leave again.”

The police officer entered the room and showed me a small object. It was my daughter’s copper medallion, and its chain had been broken in half.

“We found this in Salome’s bag,” he said. “But the box is empty.”

“Then where is the envelope?”

The police officer did not answer me. A phone rang in the hallway. The call was from Salome’s lawyer. He told me only one thing: if I did not leave the house by morning, Salome would say that I had been teaching my daughter to give false testimony.

That same night I returned to Ana’s room. I found one floorboard under the shelf raised. Nino found a small hidden note beneath it.

It said, in Ana’s handwriting, only this: “If you found this, turn on the device I left in the box.”

But the device was no longer in the room. Then I heard Salome shouting from below.

“Giorgi knows everything! You cannot allow the police to use it against me!”

I went down the stairs and saw Salome clutching a bag that the police officer was taking from her. A small black recorder fell out of the bag.

A red light was blinking on it.

And suddenly my own voice came from it…

My voice came from the recorder, hoarse and tired, as if a night from several years earlier had returned to the room.

“Ana, if you do not want to go to the doctor tomorrow, at least tell me what you found.”

Salome covered her face with her hand.

I leaned against the wall. This conversation had been recorded one week before Ana’s death. I had not known it existed.

Ana’s voice sounded in the recorder:

“Salome is looking for my documents. Before that she destroyed two families. She persuaded men that she could manage their property, and then transferred the money elsewhere.”

“Are you sure?” my voice could be heard.

“I have copies of the accounts, messages, and her real surname. Everything is in the blue envelope. If something happens to me, the envelope belongs to Nino. Let her open it after she turns eighteen, or if someone asks her for the room key.”

The recorder stopped.

Salome ran toward the door, but the police officer blocked her way.

“It is edited!” she shouted. “What can a dead woman prove?”

“The account will prove it,” I told her.

I lifted the floorboard and found a small blue envelope there. The paper trembled in my hand. Inside were the report of an investigator hired by Ana, several bank statements, and photographs.

In the photographs Salome appeared under another name. Various men of different ages stood beside her. All of them later went bankrupt. And on one statement there was a forged signature resembling mine.

Salome dropped to her knees.

“I simply needed money.”

“Is that why you beat my child?”

“She was not supposed to know about the envelope!”

Nino whispered at the door:

“I only wanted to protect Mother’s letters.”

The police officer handcuffed Salome. This time her face was genuine: tired, frightened, and completely alone.

But at that same moment a message arrived on my phone. The bank informed me that a large sum had already been transferred from my main account to another country. The transfer had been confirmed one hour earlier.

“That is impossible,” I said.

The police officer looked at the phone.

“If the money has already gone, she has an accomplice.”

Salome stopped crying for the first time.

She smiled at me.

“You still do not know whom you trust, Giorgi,” she said.

That night, when I thought I had already heard the most terrible thing, I unfolded the last page of Ana’s envelope. There was one name written there, a name I did not want to see at all…