Chapter 8: The Weight of Thirty-Two Years
Vera Drăgan arrived at Cristina's office at two o'clock carrying a briefcase and the particular composure of a woman who has made a decision she cannot unmake and has chosen to be at peace with it.
She was sixty, perhaps, with silver hair and careful clothes and eyes that had seen a great deal and filed most of it away.
She sat across from me at the conference table and looked at my face for a long moment without speaking.
"You have her mouth," she said finally.
"Elena.
The way it sits when you're thinking."
"You knew her?"
"I met her three times.
Before the wedding, at the wedding, and once after." Vera set her hands on the table.
They were steady.
"The once after — Teodor brought her to dinner.
She was pregnant, though we didn't know it yet.
She was quieter than the first two times I'd met her.
I thought she was tired." A pause.
"Now I think she was frightened."
Cristina sat at the head of the table with a notepad.
"Mrs.
Drăgan.
You mentioned on the phone that you have correspondence from the relevant period."
"I have everything," Vera said.
She opened the briefcase.
"Teodor kept physical copies of everything.
He didn't trust digital records — he said paper was harder to hack." A small, tight sound that was almost a laugh.
"He was right about that.
It was also harder to destroy without someone noticing."
She began to set folders on the table.
Organized by year, labeled in her own handwriting.
"I started going through his study the night I left," she said.
"I've been at my sister's house.
I photographed everything before I took it.
I didn't want him to know what I had." She looked at Cristina.
"Is that legal?"
"You are a joint owner of the marital home," Cristina said.
"The documents were in a shared space.
Yes."
Vera nodded.
She opened the folder marked with the year of my birth.
"This is a letter from the clinic director.
Addressed to Teodor personally, not to the family." She slid it across.
"Read the third paragraph."
Cristina read it.
Her expression didn't change, but she picked up her pen.
I read it over Cristina's shoulder.
*As discussed, the registration has been completed under the mother's family name only.
The father's name has been omitted per your instruction.
The child has been transferred to the municipal care system.
I trust this concludes our arrangement satisfactorily.
The second payment will be expected by the end of the month.*
The second payment.
"He paid the clinic director," I said.
"Yes," Vera said.
"There are three more letters.
And the bank records showing the transfers." She set them on the table one by one.
"I found the property transfer documents as well.
The Vasile land.
It was transferred into a holding company Teodor controlled within six months of Elena's death." She paused.
"Within six months of your birth."
Cristina was writing steadily.
"This is sufficient for criminal referral," she said.
"This alone."
"There's more," Vera said.
"I found a letter he wrote but never sent.
To himself, almost — it reads like notes.
A record of what he'd done and why." She slid it across.
"He was meticulous.
He kept records of everything, even the things he should have burned." Another almost-laugh.
"I think he was proud of it.
I think he wanted, somewhere, to have proof that he had been clever."
I looked at the unsent letter.
Teodor's handwriting, neat and deliberate.
A man writing down his own crime because he believed he would never be caught.
"Thirty-two years," I said to Vera.
"You were married to him for thirty-two years."
"Yes."
"Did you know?
Any of it?"
She was quiet for a moment.
"I knew he was capable of things I didn't want to look at directly.
That is not the same as knowing." She met my eyes.
"But I suspected, after a while, that the story about the baby was not complete.
There were — inconsistencies.
Things he said that didn't quite match.
I told myself I was imagining it." A pause.
"I was not imagining it."
"Why now?" I said.
"Why, when you saw me?"
Vera looked at her hands on the table.
"Because you were sitting there holding Nico," she said quietly, "and the way he held onto you — I had seen that before.
I had seen Elena hold Luca's hand the same way, at that first dinner.
That particular grip, like letting go was not an option." She looked up.
"And I thought: this child has been holding on her whole life.
And my husband is the reason she had to."
The room was quiet.
"I'm sorry," Vera said.
"I know that doesn't change anything."
"It changes some things," I said.
She nodded.
She straightened the folders on the table with precise hands.
"Use everything," she said to Cristina.
"Whatever you need.
I will testify if it comes to that."
Cristina looked at the stack of documents.
"It may not need to come to that," she said.
"With this volume of evidence, I expect his lawyers will advise him to negotiate rather than face a criminal trial." She paused.
"But if he chooses to fight, we are ready."
My phone buzzed on the table.
Luca.
I picked it up.
*His lawyer called mine twenty minutes ago.
He wants a meeting.
Tomorrow morning.*
I showed it to Cristina.
She read it and set the phone down.
"Good," she said.
"That means he's seen what we filed this morning." She picked up her pen.
"He's already calculating."
"What do we do at the meeting?"
"You don't attend," she said.
"I attend.
You let me do my job." She looked at me steadily.
"Mara.
He is going to offer something.
He will make it sound generous.
He will frame it as protecting the family, protecting Luca, protecting you from a long and painful process." She paused.
"Whatever he offers tomorrow, it will not be enough.
Do you understand?"
"Yes," I said.
"Good." She closed her notepad.
"Go home.
Rest.
Let me handle tomorrow."
I stood.
Vera stood too.
We walked out into the corridor together, and for a moment we stood side by side without speaking — two women who had been, in very different ways, inside the same story for a very long time.
"He'll try to contact you," Vera said.
"Teodor.
He'll try to appeal to you directly, outside the legal process.
He'll say things about the family, about what this will do to Luca, about Nico." She paused.
"Don't take his calls."
"I won't," I said.
She nodded.
She put on her coat with careful movements.
"Elena would have liked you," she said.
"I think she would have been very proud."
She walked to the lift.
The doors closed.
I stood in the corridor for a moment.
Then I took the stairs down and stepped out into the afternoon, where the city was doing what cities do — moving, indifferent, full of people who had no idea that somewhere in a lawyer's office, thirty-two years of careful lies had just been stacked on a conference table and photographed.
My phone buzzed again.
Luca: *How did it go?*
I typed back: *Cristina says we're ready.*
Three dots.
Then: *Nico fell asleep finally.
He had your scarf.
I hope that's all right.*
I stopped walking.
I looked at the message.
I had left my scarf at Luca's house two days ago and hadn't thought about it since.
I typed: *It's all right.*
May you like
Then I put my phone in my pocket and walked home through the ordinary afternoon, thinking about a baby who had reached for me across a crowded room and held on, and a woman who had left me a box she was afraid to explain, and a man who had spent twenty-five years believing that burying something was the same as making it disappear.
Tomorrow, his lawyer would sit across from Cristina and begin to understand how wrong he had been.
