My son pushed me down the stairs, I saw his face for the first time in years — and when I fixed my gaze on him, Andrei turned pale

Six-year-old Lev pushed me from the stairs so hard that I covered eight marble steps with my back and fell onto the floor. From the blow, fire exploded behind my eyes, and then everything was covered by white light.

I lay motionless for several seconds. It was difficult to breathe. Then I saw the chandelier.

Not a shadow. Not a blurry spot. I could distinguish each glass pendant of the chandelier and see how they swayed above my head.

I had been completely blind for seven years. For seven years my world consisted of sounds, footsteps, smells, and touches. Andrei told me what the house was like, how Lev had grown, who had come to visit, and what color dress Natalia was wearing.

I believed everything.

I had no other choice.

But now I was looking at my own hands. I had a scratch on my right wrist, and a small spot of blood on my sleeve. Above, at the top of the stairs, Lev was standing. A six-year-old child whom I had considered my son all my life.

I extended my hand toward him.

“Lev, are you all right?”

He did not come down. He did not even tell me that I was hurt.

“Don’t touch me,” he answered coldly.

There was not fear in his voice, but irritation.

At that moment I realized that no one should know that I could see again.

Not yet.

I immediately closed my eyes and began searching for the floor with my hands. A few seconds later I heard Andrei’s quick footsteps.

“What happened, Marika?”

“I slipped,” I answered, deliberately making my voice tremble.

Andrei took my hand. His fingers were cold.

“Did you hit your head?”

“I don’t know. I still can’t see the light.”

In saying these words, I lied for the first time.

He led me to the room. Natalia brought me water. I saw her face and caught my breath. For seven years she had lived beside me as a kind widow who supposedly helped Andrei care for me.

But now I could see her eyes.

I could see Lev’s eyes too.

In the evening I stood for a long time in front of the family photograph while everyone thought I was sleeping in the armchair. In the photograph Andrei stood beside Natalia, and Lev was between them. Andrei’s hand was not on my shoulder. It was wrapped behind Natalia’s back.

Lev’s dark almond-shaped eyes belonged to Natalia. He had the same straight nose. The same slightly raised corner of his lips when he became angry.

I saw my own son’s face for the first time and found nothing of my own in it.

At half past ten at night, Natalia left Lev’s comb on the table. I pretended to be looking for a glass of water. I touched the comb with my fingers and carefully took two hairs. I put them in a small paper packet, and hid the packet under the old music box.

My mother had given me this box at my wedding. Inside, a small copper bird turned, and three sharp notes sounded every time it was opened. Andrei hated that sound, so no one had touched the box for years.

The next morning, at nine fifteen, a courier came to the back door of the kitchen. I was still walking with a cane.

“The package is for you, Mrs. Marika,” he told me.

“Please have me sign.”

I sent the packet to a laboratory without Andrei knowing anything.

When the door closed, I heard Natalia’s voice in the corridor.

“Who was it?”

“The person who brought the medicines,” I answered.

She was silent for several seconds.

“Marika, lately you have been asking too many questions.”

A warning was hidden in what she said.

That night I lay in bed with my eyes open and watched the shadows stopped on the ceiling. Andrei was breathing beside me. And Natalia was slowly walking in the corridor.

Three days later the telephone rang briefly. I had to read the answer alone, behind a locked door. A study number appeared on the screen. I opened the file.

On the very first page I saw one sentence that made my knees give way. Below it was another line, after reading which this story would no longer be only about Lev’s paternity.

At that moment the door handle moved from outside and Andrei’s voice sounded.

“Marika, why did you lock yourself in?”

Andrei’s fingers closed around the handle. I slid the telephone under the music box and sat on the bed.

“I’m just changing clothes,” I said.

“Open the door.”

“I can’t find the handle.”

Silence fell for several seconds. Then the door slowly opened. Andrei entered and his eyes immediately darted toward the table.

“Who called you?”

“No one.”

“Give me your hand.”

His voice was calm, but he squeezed my wrist so hard that my bone hurt. I lowered my head and whispered like a blind woman:

“Why are you hurting me?”

He released me immediately.

“It happened accidentally.”

In the evening Natalia entered Lev’s room. I heard their whispering from behind the door.

“Mother, she didn’t see, did she?”

“Quiet, Lev. Father will take care of everything.”

My heart rose into my throat. Andrei was their father, but the word “mother” turned out to be stronger evidence against Natalia.

At eleven at night I opened the file again. The research result clearly said that Lev was not my son. The next page showed that his biological father was Andrei.

But below was another note: according to my sample, the medical records about the procedure carried out seven years ago and the pregnancy did not match one another.

Meanwhile Andrei was standing in the corridor. Suddenly his telephone lit up. A message appeared on the screen: “If Marika finds out that the child’s birth record is forged, we will both lose everything.”

I was still looking at the screen when Andrei snatched the telephone from my hand.

“You can see already,” he said.

And Natalia entered the room…

Natalia rushed into the room and locked the door behind her. I saw her face from so close for the first time: her lips were trembling, but there were no tears in her eyes.

“How much did you read?” she asked.

“Enough.”

Andrei took the telephone in his hand.

“Marika, calm down. None of this is as you think.”

“Lev is not my son.”

At the sound of my voice, the small footsteps stopped in the corridor. Lev was standing at the door and listening to us.

Natalia lowered her eyes.

“He is my son,” she said.

The air disappeared from the room.

“And Andrei’s,” I added.

Andrei struck the table with his fist. The music box fell onto the floor and the copper bird began turning by itself. Three sharp notes sounded in the room.

“Seven years ago your body would not have endured a pregnancy,” he said. “The doctors told you that you would never be able to have a child. And we wanted a family.”

“Who was ‘we’?”

Natalia answered quietly:

“Andrei and me.”

The words struck me more strongly than the fall on the stairs.

Andrei moved toward me.

“At that time you were after surgery. Your optic nerve was damaged, and the doctors said that you might never see again. We told you that the child had developed in your body. You loved him. We only… preserved the family.”

“With a lie.”

“You are his mother because you raised him.”

“But both of you knew that he was not my son.”

Lev began to cry at the door.

“Mother, I am your son, aren’t I?”

Natalia looked toward him, but could not answer. For the first time the child saw how the only version of his world was collapsing.

I looked at the second document sent by the doctor. The research said that my loss of sight had not been caused by a post-birth injury. In the blood tests they found traces of the same sedative substance for years.

“What is this?” I asked.

Andrei turned pale.

“It is nothing.”

“You gave me for seven years a medicine that prevented my sight from recovering?”

Natalia raised her head.

“Andrei, you said that this was needed only at the beginning.”

Her one sentence was enough.

Andrei looked at her.

“Be quiet.”

“How long were you planning to hide it from her?” I asked.

He took a telephone from his pocket, but by that time my recording was already on. His confession, Natalia’s words, and Lev’s crying were recorded in one file.

Andrei stopped.

“Who were you calling before that?” I asked.

He did not answer.

Just then a new message arrived on my telephone. It had been sent by the lawyer to whom I had quietly forwarded all the documents in the morning.

“Mrs. Marika, the police are on their way. But there is one more issue: Andrei signed the house-sale document this morning. If we cannot stop it, in a few hours you will have nothing left.”

Andrei read the message from my face.

“You know nothing about that signature,” he whispered.

“Not yet.”

The sound of car brakes was heard outside. Lev clung to Natalia. Andrei looked toward the window and understood for the first time that in this house his words were no longer the law.

But before the door opened, he said one more thing that neither the police nor I knew.

“I have already sold the house…”