Emily returned home just before dawn.
The apartment was dark and silent.
She switched on the light in the entryway and froze.
The living room had been ransacked.
Drawers stood open.
Clothes and belongings were scattered across the floor.
The cabinet doors hung wide open.
Emily went into the bedroom.
The safe Daniel had bought three years earlier, insisting that “this would be safer,” was open.
The combination was his birth date.
Emily had asked him dozens of times to change it.
He never had.
She looked inside.
Empty.
The cash was gone.
The jewelry was gone.
Her grandmother’s ring.
Her mother’s chain.
The earrings her father had given her for her sixteenth birthday.
Everything had disappeared.
But the worst loss was the folder containing the apartment documents.
Emily slowly sank to the floor.
Her body began to tremble.
Still, she could not cry.
An enormous, frozen emptiness seemed to form inside her in an instant, as though someone had reached into her chest and pulled every feeling out by the roots.
She took out her phone and called a real-estate agent she knew.
“David, hi. I’m sorry it’s so early. Tell me, did Margaret Carter happen to contact you? Yes, my mother-in-law. About selling an apartment?”
There was a pause on the other end.
“Emily, don’t panic. She came by two days ago. Said she urgently needed a buyer. She told me that you and her son were separating and the apartment had to be sold quickly. But she didn’t have all the documents, so I sent her away.”
“Thank you.”
Emily ended the call.
She was still sitting on the floor with the phone pressed against her chest when the doorbell rang.
She did not move.
It rang again.
Finally, she got up and looked through the peephole.
Daniel stood outside with a bouquet in his hands.
Emily opened the door.
“Hi,” he said with a guilty smile. “Emily, can I come in? I’ve thought everything through. Maybe we should talk.”
He reached toward her as if to embrace her.
She stepped back.
“Why did you come here during the night?”
Daniel went still.
“During the night? I didn’t come here.”
“Then who turned the apartment upside down and emptied the safe?”
His face paled.
“I don’t know. Maybe… Mom?”
“Mom,” Emily repeated. “Of course. The same mother who has keys because you made her a duplicate without even asking me.”
Daniel lowered his head.
“Emily, I…”
“What?”
She looked straight into his eyes.
“Did you come to apologize? Or did your mother send you to negotiate again?”
Daniel remained silent.
Emily noticed him glance automatically toward the window, as though checking whether someone was watching from outside.
“I see,” she said. “Leave.”
“Emily, I really want to fix everything.”
“Then start with the basics. Return my money. Return all the jewelry. Return the apartment documents. Then tell your mother she will never cross the threshold of this home again.”
Daniel swallowed nervously.
“You know what state she’s in. She’s upset. Her heart…”
“And I,” Emily said, touching her chest, “have nothing left here. And that is because of you.”
She closed the door in his face and turned the lock.
Then she returned to the bedroom, sat on the edge of the bed, and shut her eyes.
When she opened them again, daylight filled the room.
Several hours must have passed.
She forced herself to stand, wash, and change clothes.
The decision had been made.
She was leaving.
But before she went, she wanted to find anything she might need later.
Emily began sorting through the few belongings her mother-in-law had left untouched.
At the back of the closet, behind several shoe boxes, she noticed an old cardboard box stuffed with children’s drawings.
She had never known Daniel kept it.
She pulled it out and opened it.
Inside were yellowed sheets of paper.
Airplanes, clouds, blue skies, and a man wearing a pilot’s uniform appeared in the drawings.
On the back of one sheet, a child had written:
“Dad is a pilot. When I grow up, I’ll fly far, far away too.”
On another:
“Mom said if I behave badly, she’ll send me back to the orphanage.”
A chill ran down Emily’s spine.
She kept searching through the papers.
Beneath them lay an old graph-paper notebook.
A child’s diary.
The entries had been written by a boy of about ten.
“Mom said I’m not really her son. She took me from a shelter. If I don’t obey her, she’ll send me back.”
Emily closed the notebook slowly.
Now so much became clear.
The fear.
The complete obedience.
The constant guilt.
Margaret had kept Daniel on a short leash for years, using the secret of his origin as a weapon.
And Daniel, terrified of losing the only woman he believed was his mother, had been willing to obey any order she gave.
Even if obeying meant betraying his wife.
The doorbell rang again.
Emily flinched.
She went to the door and looked through the peephole.
An unfamiliar woman stood in the hallway.
She was thin and worn-out, with dark circles beneath her eyes.
Yet something about her face felt strangely familiar.
There was an echo of Margaret’s features, though this woman looked older and far more exhausted.