“He was our savior… Thanks to him I am alive…
I squeezed the bag with the folders inside and told myself it was the last time any of us told this lie.
The clash
After the funeral, we were left alone next to one of the stone columns of the cemetery. The wind blew my veil, the rain sticking my hair to my face.
“Tough day, huh?” my father said, hugging me. “But from here on out, it’ll be better.” There is a legacy left. We’ll start fresh.
His touch, which had brought me comfort before, was now causing me physical disgust.
I inhaled. Two scents were mixed in my memory – its cheap aftershave water and the smell of laboratory burning, ozone and melted plastic.
“Dad…” I whispered.
“Yes, dear?”
Do you remember that night in the lab?
I felt his body freeze.
“What… what are you saying?”
I leaned over to his ear so that no one else could hear:
It smelled like ozone. On smoke. It was so hot that the glass was bursting on its own. He pressed the lock button outside and heard her screaming your name before it exploded the core of the reactor.
He stepped back, his eyes widening.
“Klara…
I remember everything, Dad. I saw it through his eyes. I heard it through his ears. I read the papers you signed. I saw the bank statements.
His face turned pale to greenish.
He… he poisoned you! These pills… you’ve brainwashed you!
“No,” I said calmly. “The pills gave me his memory.” And the safe gave me the evidence.
He began to look for words, his hands waving:
“You don’t understand!” I was young, scared! They were pushing us! You have no idea what kind of world she was moving in! You have no right to judge me!
“On the contrary. I’m the only person who has a point. I live with the consequences of your choice of twenty-two years.
I looked him in the eye, not as a daughter, but as a judge.
You have his money. You have your health. But from today on, you will live with one thought: you do not know when I will call the prosecutor’s office. Today, in a year, in ten… you don’t know when someone’s going to knock on your door.
“You won’t…” he whispered. “You’re my daughter…”
“To a woman you left to burn to save yourself,” I said softly. “There is your blood in me.” And his memory. Trust me, this is a combination you don’t want to argue with.
I let him stand alone between the graves, grayer and older than I had seen him in the hospital.
After that
Julian’s house is now mine. That’s what the will says.
In the evening, I walk past the bedside table, open the bottom drawer and look at the small glass bottle with the blue pills. There’s half left.
Sometimes my fingers flinch towards her.
A part of me wants to continue taking the pills – to keep alive his voice, his love for Catherine, even his anger.
Another part wants to pour them into the toilet and watch them dissolve.
So far I’m not doing either.
Because I realized something:
Julian wanted to keep Catherine.
My father wanted to erase Catherine.
I stand in the middle.
With their memory and my own life.
I’m no longer just the girl who married to save her father.
I am the archive of truth.
The living hard drive of a love, a crime and a deal that should never have been signed.
And as I walk down the hallways of the house, I feel the rain outside slamming the windows.
I once believed it was raining for us.
Now I know:
The rain doesn’t cry.
We are the ones who need to cry the truth.
And my biggest release was a little blue pill, which I refused to drink.
