Part 4 — Twenty Minutes After My Son’s Funeral, I Saw My Husband with His Lover, but When He Looked at Me Through the Camera, His Face Suddenly Changed

The sentence continued to glow on the phone screen for several more seconds, then disappeared.

I could not breathe.

“There was no camera in Lucas’s room,” I said.

William looked at me slowly.

“That is what we thought.”

Nora turned the computer around.

“I’m checking the security of the old house. If a second camera existed, its recording may still be stored.”

We returned home at seven in the morning. The kitchen clock had stopped at twelve minutes past six. Probably the battery ran out then, when Garrett passed through the house for the last time.

Nora checked the walls, shelves, and toy boxes. In Lucas’s room, his small wooden train passed across the floor like thunder when her foot accidentally touched it.

“Here,” she said.

She took a small black device out from under the bed.

My hands went cold.

My father looked at the device.

“Was Garrett spying on his son?”

“Not only on his son,” Nora said. “This camera was pointed directly at the bed.”

We opened the recording that same morning.

Lucas appeared on the screen. He was sitting on the bed and talking to a plastic dinosaur. Garrett stood at the door. He was holding a small glass bottle.

“Dad, this medicine smells bad,” Lucas said.

“Drink it and go to sleep,” Garrett answered.

“I’ll wait for Mom.”

Garrett closed the door.

Then he picked up the phone. My calls appeared one after another on the screen.

One.

Two.

Up to ten.

Garrett looked at all of them and recorded a voice.

“If he drinks this, he won’t make it through the night. The doctors will think that his mother mixed up the dose. And I will be at the hotel.”

Then he handed the bottle to Lucas.

I put my hand on the screen.

“He recorded this himself…”

“Yes,” Nora said. “Because the camera had been installed by him.”

My father dialed Garrett’s number. He answered on the third call.

“Where are you?” William asked.

“Meredith, don’t do this.”

“Did Lucas know that the bottle was dangerous?”

Silence.

“It was an accident.”

“No,” my father said. “It was a decision.”

Garrett raised his voice.

“You cannot prove anything. The recording was obtained illegally.”

Nora leaned toward the phone.

“The camera was registered to your account. The recording was stored on your home’s secure server. That is exactly why it is admissible.”

Garrett stopped breathing.

“Meredith, I didn’t mean this.”

I closed my eyes. The last time I heard his voice was when Lucas was still alive and he was looking at my calls.

“You wanted me to be blamed in front of everyone,” I told him.

“I needed the money.”

“And my son?”

Garrett could not answer.

Nora called the police. Two hours later, cars stopped near the house. They found Garrett in the warehouse. It turned out he had been going there to burn the company’s old archives.

But he still did not know the worse news.

My father handed the investigators the accounts, the purchases of fake medicines, the hotel records, and the voice recording. Garrett’s lawyer refused to defend him that same evening.

“I defend defendants,” he told Garrett at the police station, “but not a man who planned his own son’s death in advance.”

Garrett lost control for the first time.

“William, you cannot dare to do this.”

My father did not even look toward him.

“I am doing nothing. I am simply no longer protecting you from your lies.”

The next day the investigators showed us the testimony in the hotel conference hall. There was a large screen there, and Garrett sat in front of it in handcuffs.

His own voice sounded in the room again.

“Meredith must not come in that night. If the child does not survive, I will say that she changed the medicine herself.”

Garrett lowered his head.

I looked at him and did not recognize the person with whom I had lived for eleven years.

“Turn it off,” he said.

“Those are your words,” I said.

“I was angry.”

“No. You were calm. That is exactly why this is terrible.”

He said nothing more.

The preliminary court hearing took place three weeks later. The judge denied his bail. The charges were long: fraud, distribution of fake medicines, an attempt to destroy evidence, and an intentional act connected with Lucas’s death.

I sat in the courtroom with my father. I held Captain in my hands. The copper bell tied to the toy elephant’s ear quietly touched my wrist.

Garrett looked at me once.

“Meredith, tell me that you forgive me.”

I shook my head.

“Forgiveness does not mean that I have to return to your life.”

“I will be left alone.”

“That is no longer my responsibility.”

I slowly took the things out of Lucas’s room. I put the dinosaurs into one box. I left his drawing on the windowsill: four yellow suns, a large blue house, and three people holding hands with one another.

My father asked why I was not taking it.

“Because this house was his dream,” I told him. “And now I have to learn to breathe in another place.”

A month later I rented a small apartment on the other side of the city. A bridge was visible from the window. In the morning buses passed over the bridge, and in the evening lights spread across the river.

I started working at the hospital again, only in another department. In the very first week, a frightened boy entered the children’s ward, wearing a plastic bracelet on his hand.

“Will you stay here?” he asked me.

“As long as you need me,” I answered.

That evening I realized for the first time that the answer was not a lie.

I could not save anyone from Lucas’s death. But I could make sure that the living were no longer allowed to leave one another alone.

Months passed.

The court sentenced Garrett to a long prison term. His company collapsed. The foundation was closed. Other people were arrested in the fake-medicine case as well. Elena gave testimony and handed the gold necklace over to the court.

I did not take it back.

One winter morning I went to the riverbank with my father. The first snow was falling. William was wearing an old hat and holding two paper cups in his hands.

“You still don’t want sugar?” he asked.

“Not anymore.”

“Lucas loved sweet things.”

“I know.”

We stood silently for a while.

“Dad, if I want to talk about him, does that mean I am not moving forward?”

William shook his head.

“No. It means that he is coming with you.”

That night, after returning home, I put Captain on the windowsill. The little copper bell was still hanging from his ear. Snow fell against the glass and moved the bell slightly.

I received the last letter from Garrett six months later. I recognized the handwriting, but I did not open the envelope. He had written only a few words: “I want you to listen to me at least once.”

I handed the letter to my father.

“Burn it?” he asked.

“No. Keep it.”

“Why?”

“So that I never forget again how much listening to him cost me.”

Then I sent Garrett one sentence.

“I have already heard everything I needed to hear.”

I closed the phone.

Before going to the hospital in the morning, I looked at Lucas’s drawing. The four yellow suns were still shining on the paper, even though outside the sky was white and cold.

Captain’s little bell rang once more.

This time no one died at home.

I simply closed the door and moved forward.