The woman at the door did not raise her voice. That frightened Nika more than shouting would have. She carried a folder and asked whether Miloš was inside. Nika said he was not. After the afternoon rehearsal, he had stayed only ten minutes, drunk coffee, and left for an alleged meeting with a producer. Only then did the singer notice the visitor's wedding ring.
Her name was Sonja. Miloš was her husband. Money had been disappearing from their joint account for months, and he had finally admitted buying expensive gifts for a woman he was seeing. Sonja placed a printed photograph of Nika performing on the table. She had circled a necklace and two bracelets.
Nika felt sick. Miloš had told her he was divorced and merely finishing the paperwork for the apartment. He had never bought her anything more expensive than flowers. The necklace in the photograph was borrowed from a stylist, one bracelet was her mother's, and the other came from a market. When she said so, Sonja's face hardened.
"That's what I would say too," she replied.
A few years earlier, Nika would have taken out her own jewelry and handed it over just to end the unpleasant scene. This time, she brought her phone. She called the stylist in front of Sonja, showed the messages about the loan and the receipt for the costume. She was not proving she was a perfect person. She was proving one thing she could verify.
Sonja sat down. From her folder, she took a list of payments. It contained company names neither recognized. Nika recognized one email address: Miloš had used it to offer to finance her album. It turned out he had made the same promise to several performers, using money he moved between accounts.
They did not try to untangle the entire case themselves. They kept the documents and sought professional help. When Miloš called Nika, his first question was why she had humiliated his wife. Nika interrupted and told him Sonja had just heard that sentence on speakerphone. Silence followed at the other end.
They did not become friends. There was too much hurt for a cinematic embrace. Still, Sonja apologized for coming to claim someone else's belongings, and Nika apologized for accepting the divorce story without checking. They parted with the same number of possessions they had when they met.
At her next performance, Nika wore only her mother's bracelet. When she introduced the first song, her voice trembled but did not stop. Sonja was not in the audience. She did not need to be.