Part 4 — The Wife Hugged Another Man on the Dance Floor, But When I Took the Microphone, Her Smile Disappeared

Derek looked toward the exit, and then for the first time I saw how all the confidence with which he had deceived everyone for months fell from his face.

The police officers slowly came toward him.

“Derek Hayes?” one of them asked.

“This is a mistake,” he said. “I’ll call a lawyer.”

“I already did,” answered his lawyer, who, as it turned out, had been waiting outside the club. “And my advice is that you say nothing more.”

Derek looked at him.

“You’re on my side!”

“I was, until I found out that you had submitted forged documents to my firm.”

Claire stood against the wall. The lower part of her scarlet dress touched the floor, and the dark stain of spilled drink on it was slowly spreading.

“Jake,” she told me, “please don’t leave me in front of these people.”

I no longer had any desire to hide anything from her.

“You left me yourself a long time ago, Claire.”

Derek shouted:

“She is guilty too! She knew everything!”

Claire turned toward him.

“You told me you no longer had a wife!”

“And you believed me because you wanted my money and house!”

These words rang out clearly in the silence of the club.

Claire lowered her eyes.

I returned the microphone to the DJ. I no longer needed to prove anything before people. The recordings existed. The account movements existed. The hotel cameras existed. Now the truth was no longer only my pain; it had become evidence.

The police officers put handcuffs on Derek.

“Jake, I’ll explain!” he shouted.

“There is no need anymore.”

Claire held out her hand to me.

“You still love me, I know.”

There was glitter on her fingers. It was part of the ring I had given her on the first anniversary of our wedding.

“Maybe I loved you,” I told her. “But that no longer means I must follow your lies too.”

That night I left the club together with the lawyer. Tom followed silently behind me. Outside, the damp asphalt reflected the light of the poles, and the city looked as if nothing had happened.

It had.

In the morning Claire left me thirty-three calls. Then messages came.

“Talk to me.”

“Derek ruined everything.”

“I didn’t do it for you.”

The lawyer told me that Claire was trying to restore access to my cards and was spreading false information at the bank.

“She still thinks that she will bring you back through fear,” he said.

“I’m not afraid anymore.”

Two days later Claire came to my house. I did not want to open the door, but I could still hear her voice on the stairs.

“Jake, just five minutes!”

I played the recording that I had saved on my phone.

Her own voice sounded: “In the end he’ll leave me the house anyway.”

Claire fell silent in front of the door.

“Turn it off,” she said quietly.

“It is your voice.”

“I was angry then.”

“And I still trusted you then.”

“Can you forgive me?”

“Forgiveness is possible. Returning is not.”

She said nothing for a long time. I heard her breathing on the other side of the door, then her steps slowly moved away.

That same evening I emptied our bedroom upstairs. In the closet I found only one thing: a small copper lock that Claire had bought during our first trip from a row of locks hanging on an old bridge. I had scratched our initials onto it. Then we believed it was a sign of an eternal bond.

I held the lock in my hand for a long time.

Then I put it in the drawer.

For the first time, in the darkened rooms of the house, I was no longer waiting for her key.

Three months later the divorce was finalized. Derek was sentenced to imprisonment for financial fraud and document forgery. Claire admitted that she had planned to get money from me, but the evidence against her was so strong that the court ordered her only to repay the debt and the damages. I did not want her ruin, nor did I want revenge.

I simply no longer covered up the consequences of her choice.

I changed jobs. I started working at a small architectural studio by the river. In the morning I went by bicycle, bought bread at the same bakery on the way, and in the evenings drew houses by the window that I had once designed only for others.

Tom often came to see me.

“You still call this being alone?” he asked once.

“No,” I answered. “I call it peace.”

The first snow came at the beginning of December. That morning my niece, Nina, stayed with me. She spread a sheet of paper on the table and drew a house: two large windows, a small yard, and a door above which a yellow sun hung.

“This is your new house,” she told me.

“Why is no one here?”

Nina shrugged.

“Because whoever is going to come in must knock first.”

Her answer made me laugh.

Several weeks later Claire sent me her last message.

“I have broken off contact with Derek. Now I understand everything. If you ever give me another chance, I will be different.”

I looked at the screen for a long time. The old me would probably have written an answer, demanded an explanation, and tried to save her again.

But the old me remained in that club, at the moment when I heard my wife’s laughter by someone else’s ear.

I wrote only one sentence to her:

“I wish you to find a life that you no longer have to protect with lies.”

Then I deleted the message.

In the evening I opened the drawer and took out the copper lock. The initials could barely be read anymore. I ran my finger over its surface and realized that the object itself had not changed; only the meaning I gave it had changed.

I placed it on the windowsill.

Outside, snow was silently covering the yard. No one was waiting for me in the house anymore, and neither was I waiting for anyone because of whom I would lose myself.

The copper lock shone in the morning light.

This time, I held the door in my own hand.