The unknown man immediately ended the call.
Julian wrote down the number.
“Who was it?” I asked.
“I do not know yet. But it was a threat.”
That night I could not sleep. The sound of wheeled stretchers could be heard in the hospital corridor, while the monitor clicked once every few seconds. My leg hurt, but what disturbed me more was the thought that my family was still trying to control the situation.
In the morning Father called ten times.
I did not answer the first nine calls.
I answered the tenth.
“Mariana, do not go to the notary. We can settle everything.”
“How?”
“We will return the money to the buyers.”
“With which money?”
Father fell silent.
“Fernanda’s wedding will be postponed, but it will not be a tragedy.”
“In your opinion, was selling my apartment not a tragedy?”
“We are family.”
“Family asks for help. Family does not sell someone else’s house.”
He lowered his voice.
“If you appear in court, you will destroy everyone.”
“I did not destroy anything. You built all of this on lies yourselves.”
I hung up.
Ten minutes later Julian told me that their lawyer wanted to meet him. We met in a small café in the city center. The lawyer, Dato Beridze, was a man around fifty who held an old leather bag.
“I was defending myself against them until I understood the full picture,” he said.
“What have you understood now?”
He took a folder from the bag.
“They told me that Mariana had given the apartment as a gift. When I saw the document, I realized that they had hidden important information from me as well.”
Julian slid the paper toward him.
“This changes your defense position.”
Dato looked at the document and lowered his head.
“I will not be an accomplice in such a case. I will end my representation today.”
Father, Fernanda, and Mother learned this news that same day.
Fernanda called me.
“Even the lawyer abandoned Father? Are you satisfied?”
“No.”
“Then why do you not stop the case?”
“Because this is no longer only my apartment. Ricardo and Elena’s savings must also be returned.”
“You care about them and destroy your own sister.”
“I am not destroying you. I am simply no longer protecting you from the consequences.”
Three days later the police summoned the family for questioning. They sat together in one room, where a clock on the wall ticked loudly.
The investigator first played my father’s voice message.
“We sold your apartment. You were having surgery and we had no other way.”
My father lowered his head.
Then Fernanda’s voice message was heard.
“We chose to sell your apartment.”
Fernanda covered her face with her hands.
“That was not said the way it sounds now.”
The investigator answered:
“It sounds exactly as you said it.”
For the first time Father listened to his own voice from the outside. His face became gray. It was as if he understood then that the words he said easily at home sounded in a foreign room as evidence of a crime.
Carla decided to cooperate. She admitted that my mother had given her the photograph of my signature, and that she had altered the file from Fernanda’s computer. Father convinced her that everything would be settled “within the family” at the notary’s office.
The case reached court.
The judge declared the sale invalid and left the apartment as my property. Ricardo and Elena’s money was returned from a special account, while my family was tasked with finding the remaining amount. All the advance payments for Fernanda’s wedding were lost. Not a single guest came on the day that no longer took place.
I was not happy about it.
When I returned from court, I opened the apartment door for the first time in three months. The rooms were empty. In the living room only one thing had remained: a small copper bookmark that I myself had bought with my first salary. A small relief of a mountain was engraved on it.
It was lying on the floor together with a book.
I picked it up and closed it in my palm.
No one was waiting for me here anymore.
But this no longer frightened me for the first time.
Six weeks later I walked independently through the corridor again. Instead of the hospital, I was standing in my apartment’s kitchen and making coffee. My back still hurt, so I moved slowly in the mornings. I returned to work part-time and taught new employees how to recognize an altered seal, a doubled signature, and an inconspicuous replacement of a page.
One evening Ricardo and Elena came.
Elena was holding a small potted flower.
“You returned our savings to us,” she told me.
“No, the procedure returned them to you.”
Ricardo smiled.
“You started the procedure when you still could not get out of bed.”
After they left, I stood at the door for a long time.
I no longer had the family I had thought I had.
But I already had the truth.
Three months later the first snow of winter came. My little nephew, Luka, stayed with me together with his mother, because his parents were with lawyers. He drew a house on a sheet of paper that had large windows.
“Is this your new house?” he asked.
“It is the old house.”
“Then why are you alone?”
The child’s question struck me in the heart more deeply than any words in court.
“Because sometimes it is better to remain alone at home than to live with people who open the door silently.”
Luka did not understand my answer. He drew a window, then added the sun beside it.
“Now no one will come in silently anymore,” he said.
“No one anymore.”
Father sent me the last letter two months later. He wrote that Fernanda was still talking about me, Mother was nervous, and he wanted “the old family back.” At the end there was one sentence: “We all make mistakes.”
I read the letter to the end.
Then I wrote a reply.
“A mistake is when a person gets a date wrong by accident. But you planned my helplessness, stole my signature, and destroyed someone else’s life. I am not going back. I wish you to learn to bear the consequences of your actions.”
I sent the letter and put the phone aside.
That evening I was checking documents for work. A new notebook lay on the table. On the first page I attached Luka’s drawn house. Beside it I placed the small copper bookmark that I had found in the empty apartment.
The mountain engraved on it shone in the light of the lamp.
My family was gone.
My house remained.
And this time the key was only in my hand.
Missed the beginning?
