Part 4 — After the Divorce, My Husband Rejected His Daughters and Said He Was Expecting a Son — But He Turned Pale After My Calm Answer

Andrei lowered the phone from his ear, but the clinic call was still continuing.

“Answer it,” I told him.

“I can’t.”

“In the morning you were able to do very many things.”

I took the phone instead of him.

“This is Elene Bondarenko.”

On the other side, a woman’s worried voice was heard.

“Mrs. Bondarenko, please come to the clinic today. While digitally transferring the old archive, we found a discrepancy in your case.”

“What kind of discrepancy?”

“The record contains the data of two different patients combined. This may concern a legal matter connected with your daughters.”

Andrei held out his hand to me.

“Give me the phone.”

I moved back.

“No.”

“Lena, this is my family.”

“They are my children too.”

For the first time throughout the whole day, that word occupied the space. Alina and Yulia were watching us from the car. Yulia’s fingers were still clutching the edge of that little card.

We went to the clinic.

The girls remained with the military employee in the waiting hall, where an aquarium stood against the wall. A small orange fish kept hitting the glass wall. I watched it and thought how many years we too had lived within borders drawn by someone else.

Dr. Kavtaradze turned on the computer in the archive room.

“This record is from 2009,” he said. “You came for a consultation for the first time then.”

“Because of pregnancy.”

“Yes. You had a complication and there was a risk that the child would not survive.”

Andrei was standing at the door.

“But the girls were born.”

“They were born. However, the field about the child’s paternity remained empty in the record. Then someone attached the second patient’s data to this case.”

Two lines appeared on the screen. The first was my name. The second was Andrei’s.

Kavtaradze continued:

“Andrei was here that same day, but not because of a fertility problem. He underwent emergency surgery after a severe infection. The doctor thoughtlessly wrote that having another biological child later would be unlikely. This was never a final conclusion of sterility.”

Andrei put his hand against the wall.

“So I may be their father?”

“It is possible. The old record can neither confirm nor deny it.”

I took another document from my bag.

“But this confirms it.”

Kavtaradze read the sheet and fell silent. It was a genetic assessment from my military service medical archive, which the hospital had conducted years ago when my life was in danger during one of the missions. Andrei had never asked why I needed that examination.

“Was a comparison made with the girls?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“And the result?”

I looked at Andrei.

“Alina and Yulia are my biological children. You are also their biological father.”

Complete silence fell in the room.

Andrei lowered his eyes. Tamara, who had been listening to every conversation until then, sank into a chair.

“My granddaughters…” she whispered.

“They were your granddaughters even when there was no son,” I told her.

Marina looked at Andrei.

“You never denied them until you were expecting a boy.”

“I just thought…”

“That was exactly the problem,” I interrupted. “You thought that love changed according to sex.”

At that moment a lawyer appeared at the clinic door. Andrei’s lawyer, Revaz, was breathing faster than usual.

“Andrei, we have to sign the statement. We must submit a request for a change of custody before they cross the border.”

I looked at the document.

“A change of custody?”

Andrei said confusedly:

“Just temporarily. Until everything is clarified.”

Revaz put the papers on the table.

“Taking the children abroad may be stopped by the court.”

I took the custody agreement from my bag and placed it in front of him.

“It has already been clarified. Your client voluntarily signed and confirmed in writing that because of my service, the girls would live with me.”

Revaz read the document.

“We did not take this into account.”

“Your client did not even read it.”

Andrei looked at me angrily.

“You use everything as a weapon.”

“No. I simply no longer allow someone else’s carelessness to fall upon my children.”

Revaz led Andrei aside. After a few seconds, their whispering turned into a loud argument.

“I will not sign this statement until the medical and legal issues are clarified,” the lawyer said. “In this form you will only harm yourself.”

Andrei froze.

That evening my phone rang again. This time the call was not from the clinic, but from the police investigative department. The identity of the person responsible for falsifying the archive had been revealed. The record had been altered eleven years earlier, several days before Tamara first began asking about the sex of her grandchild.

Tamara had not done everything, but she knew that the old record existed and deliberately hid it. She wanted Andrei to believe that the girls were his “lesser” family until a son appeared.

Andrei then heard his own voice.

In the investigation room, they played the recording of his statement from the morning. He was saying: “Lena will take the girls. I am going to have a son now.”

After the recording ended, only the ticking of the clock could be heard in the room.

“Did I say that?” he asked.

“Yes,” the investigator answered. “You did yourself.”

Andrei hid his head in his hands.

I stood right there, but I did not go to comfort him anymore.

Sometimes a person first learns their own truth when they hear it in the voices of others.

The next morning Marina’s test results arrived. She was truly pregnant, but it was still impossible to determine the baby’s sex. The doctor warned that at the early stage of pregnancy, a mistake was common.

No one had promised a son.

Marina demanded to meet Andrei alone.

I stayed in the corridor. Five minutes later the door opened.

“Lena,” Marina told me, “I am no longer going to live with him.”

“That is not my decision.”

“I know. I just wanted someone to know that I am not leaving because of a girl. I am leaving because of the man who gave my place to a not-yet-born child.”

Andrei remained alone in the room.

He no longer answered calls. Tamara left the clinic for home without even calling the girls. Several weeks later, the falsification of the archive became an official investigation, while the court imposed restrictive conditions on Andrei until it assessed the children’s safety.

I did not want revenge.

I simply wanted no one ever again to convince my children that they were insufficient.

One week later we went abroad.

The new city stood by the sea. In the mornings I took the girls to school, then went to military headquarters. On my desk there was always Yulia’s card—with a golden moon and seven crooked red stars.

Alina made a new friend and in the evenings painted ceramic cups in the kitchen. Yulia started swimming. At the first lesson she was afraid of the water, but she told the coach:

“If Mom goes far away and still comes back, I will be able to come back in the water too.”

Three months later the first snow came.

The four of us stood by the window—I, the girls, and our elderly neighbor, Mrs. Nino, whom Yulia had already begun calling “Snow Grandma.”

I received a letter from Andrei.

“Lena, I made a mistake. I want to talk to the girls. Maybe we can start everything again.”

I held the letter in my hands for a long time.

Then I answered calmly:

“The girls have the right to talk to you when they themselves wish. There is no need for you to return to me anymore. I am already home.”

I received no reply.

That evening Yulia placed the card on the windowsill. The wind opened the door slightly, and the card fell onto the floor. I bent down, picked it up, and straightened its folded corner.

The red star was still left outside.

This time I did not hide it anymore.

“I am already home.”