Part 4 — In the Morsetti Palace, They Humiliated the Pregnant Maid, but the Old Man Sitting in the Carriage Suddenly Pointed at Me and Everyone Fell Silent

After Lorenzo’s words, such silence fell over the room that even the crackling of wood in the fireplace sounded like an alarm bell.

“What is Brody doing here?” I asked.

Lorenzo pulled the curtain aside.

“Probably because someone told him that you are no longer alone.”

The telephone rang again. This time it was the lawyer.

“Mr. Morsetti, the custody application has officially been filed. Brody claims that you are preventing him from having contact with his child.”

“He did not even remember the child on the day he left,” I said.

“I know, Nina. But the application says that you are unstable and that the Morsetti family is threatening you.”

Gable immediately raised her head.

“I do not agree to this,” she said.

Lorenzo looked at her coldly.

“You already disagree with very many things. Now wait for your lawyer.”

Gable grabbed her bag.

“Lorenzo, I served this family for twelve years.”

“You tortured my father for five years.”

“He could not speak!”

“Now he can.”

Giovanni closed his eyes. His fingers clasped the handle of the wheelchair. There was no fear on his face. Only tiredness.

Lorenzo called the police. I went to the window and looked at Brody.

He raised his hand, as if he were an old acquaintance and not the man who had left me pregnant together with debts.

“Nina!” he shouted from the yard. “I need five minutes!”

“You had three years,” I answered. “Five minutes is no longer enough for you.”

He rushed into the house before the guards could lock the door. Snow melted on his shoes and fell onto the wooden floor in black spots.

“It is our child,” he said.

“It was our child even when you disappeared at night.”

“I had no money.”

“But you had money for gambling.”

Brody looked at Lorenzo.

“You are turning her against me.”

“I am doing nothing,” Lorenzo replied. “She is speaking in her own name for the first time.”

Brody took a step toward me.

“Nina, let’s go. I have changed.”

My belly hardened and a wave of pain rose up to my waist. I grabbed the back of a chair.

“Call a doctor,” Giovanni said.

It was his second clear command. Everyone moved at once.

The ambulance cut through the blizzard. At the hospital, white walls, the sharp smell of disinfectant, and the doctors’ quick steps mixed together. Lorenzo did not leave my side. Brody remained in the corridor until the police took him in for questioning over forgery of the contract and a false statement.

Gable was arrested too. The recordings, the camera footage, and the false reports prepared with her signature proved sufficient. But that night I could not think about it.

“Nina, now you have to push,” the doctor told me.

I clenched my teeth.

“Lily, Mommy is here.”

A few minutes later, the baby’s first cry sounded in the room.

I cried.

Not because I was afraid. Because for the first time I realized that I was no longer trying to survive alone.

Lorenzo brought me a little girl wrapped in a pink swaddle.

“Lily,” I said.

Giovanni came to the hospital that morning. The doctors told him that it was too much exertion for him, but he did not nod. He brought the wheelchair up to my bed and looked at the baby for a long time.

I enclosed his hand in mine.

“You survived too, John.”

He smiled for the first time.

The next day Lorenzo summoned me to the lawyer’s office. A new contract lay on the table.

“My father transferred the house and his charitable foundation into your name,” he told me. “Not because you prepared food for him. Because he saw what kind of person you were when you expected nothing in return.”

I did not touch the contract.

“I do not want to owe anyone anything.”

“This is not a debt. It is a choice he made at the end of his life.”

Giovanni slowly raised his hand. He touched the pen lying on the table and slid it toward me.

“Choose,” he said.

I signed. Not because of wealth. I needed a safe home for Lily, and for the first time I was no longer ashamed to admit it.

Three weeks later, Brody’s recording was played in court. He sat beside me in the courtroom, but for the first time I was no longer looking at him.

The judge asked a question.

“Do you admit that you left Nina pregnant and in debt?”

Brody said quietly:

“Yes.”

Then he listened to the same words from the recording, with which he had told a friend that the child was “his problem.” His own voice returned to the courtroom.

Brody buried his head in his hands.

And I thought only how strange it is when a person hears his own cruelty for the first time through someone else’s ears.

He was no longer allowed to meet me except under conditions established by the court. Gable admitted her guilt. I did not choose the punishment. I was not glad about either of their falls.

I simply was no longer trying to save them for the first time.

My old room in the Morsetti house remained empty. In the wardrobe I found only one thing—a small brass bell that had hung beside Giovanni’s bed. It had three scratches on its handle. Every time he needed help, he placed his finger on it, although the sound could barely be heard.

I put it in my bag.

Two months later I opened a small kitchen in the center of town. Lorenzo offered me help from the foundation, but every day I stood at the oven myself. I prepared minestrone, garlic bread, and hot milk for those who had to spend the night on the street.

Lily sat at the counter and drew with colored pencils.

One day she handed me a drawing. In it, a woman, a little girl, and an old man stood before a pine-covered forest. Above them a large yellow sun was drawn.

“This is Grandpa Giovanni,” Lily told me.

“Yes.”

“Is he not sad anymore?”

I looked at the snowy street through the window.

“He is not.”

Giovanni died at the end of winter, peacefully, in his own home, beside an open window. Lorenzo told me that in his final days he often looked at the warming blanket I had given him.

Many powerful people came to his funeral. I stood in the back row with Lily and expected nothing from anyone.

Lorenzo stopped beside me.

“My father told me that you were his greatest asset.”

“I was never an asset.”

He lowered his head.

“I know. That is exactly why he trusted you.”

Months later I received a letter from Brody. This time it was written by hand. He said that he was undergoing treatment, that he understood everything, and that he wanted one more chance.

I read the letter to the end.

Then I wrote a reply.

“You can be Lily’s father if you learn responsibility. But you cannot return to my life. The door you left behind is no longer mine.”

I sent the letter and did not wait for an answer.

That evening the first snow began to fall. Lily stood at the window and pressed her palm against the glass.

I stirred soup in the kitchen. I took the little brass bell from my bag and placed it on the counter.

Its surface was warm from my hand.

Lily came up to me.

“Mom, why does this not ring anymore?”

I lightly touched the bell with my finger.

“Because now we all listen.”

Outside the window, snow fell silently on the city, while the little bell lying on the counter finally fell silent.

In the silence, for the first time I heard peace.