Artyom waited until everyone had left.
The room fell silent.
The moon was asleep.
Leo was snoring nearby.
It was starting to snow outside the window.
“Why didn’t you tell my family who you were?” he asked.
I looked at the children.
In two small faces, for which she endured too much.
“Because you asked for it,” I replied. “Because it was more convenient for you to be underestimated rather than respected.”
He lowered his head.
Continued.
“And because I’m partly to blame too. I thought that if I stayed silent, they would leave us alone. But silence doesn’t stop anyone. It only teaches others that they can be hurt without consequences.”
She started to cry.
Very restrained.
Almost masculine, as they say.
But that didn’t make me feel any better.
Tears don’t always solve things.
Sometimes, they simply confirm that everything is already broken.
The hospital’s lawyer arrived in the morning.
Then my colleague.
Then, the president of the court.
The news had not yet been made public, but it was impossible to hide it for long.
Too many witnesses.
A cruelty that is too absurd.
My title sounds far too pompous for such a petty case of domestic violence.
Everyone wanted to act quickly.
Security personnel have increased their presence in the room.
An additional access control was installed on the door.
The nurse brought me tea in a paper cup.
It had cooled down a while ago, but I still had it in my hands.
Sometimes you need heat, but not for your body.
To feel that you are still here.
That you were not erased.
Later I discovered that Veronica was the first to confess it.
Not out of conscience.
Out of fear.
He said it was his mother who made it all up.
That she simply went with her.
I thought that later on I would officially “change my mind”.
This word was the most terrible.
As if a child were a matter of pressure.
As if motherhood could be rewritten by someone else’s stubbornness.
As if one woman’s pain gave her the right to enter another woman’s room and decide the baby’s fate.
Galina Petrovna was released on bail.
The investigation progressed rapidly.
They had a video.
There were signs.
There was a coup.
There were documents.
There was intent.
That was enough.
But for me, the most important thing didn’t happen during the interrogation.
And not in the police corridor.
The main event occurred on the afternoon of the third day.
Artyom collected his mother’s things from our apartment.
