The notary adjusted his glasses and looked into the documents again. I watched his neat hands with well-groomed nails and thought of my mother’s hands—worked raw, always calloused, with broken nails. She never painted them. She used to say, “It would peel off at the dacha anyway.” At the dacha. That damned dacha.
“So, according to the will,” the notary’s voice was even, emotionless, like a newsreader announcing the weather, “the three-room apartment at 17 Stroiteley Street passes to Kirillovich Mikhail Sergeyevich…”
I heard Misha exhale loudly beside me. Of course. Of course it went to him.
“And the garden plot in the Rassvet gardening association,” the notary continued, “passes to Kirillovich Irina Sergeyevna.”
I stared at the wall behind the notary, where a portrait of some important lawyer hung in a frame. He had the same impassive eyes. The dacha. I had inherited the dacha. The very same dacha where I had spent every weekend for the last fifteen years. Where I had dug, weeded, whitewashed, painted, carried water from the well, while Misha was “studying,” “working,” “building his personal life.”
“There is, however, one detail,” the notary said, taking off his glasses and looking at us. “The garden plot is encumbered.”
“What kind of encumbrance?” I felt cold spread down my back.
“The plot has been pledged as collateral. To cover the debt of Mr. Kirillovich Mikhail Sergeyevich to the microfinance organization Quick Money. The amount owed, including interest, is one million two hundred thousand rubles.”
Silence. I could hear the clock ticking on the wall, the papers rustling under the notary’s fingers, Misha shifting in his chair.
“Mish?” I slowly turned to my brother.
He was staring at the floor. Forty-two years old, yet sitting there like a guilty schoolboy.
“Mishka, what does this mean?”
“Irk, well… it was temporary. I needed money for a business, you understand? I wanted to start my own thing, and the banks wouldn’t give me anything. So I… Mom agreed. She offered the dacha as collateral herself. She said it would go to me anyway.”
“Right. The apartment for dear brother, and the debts for me?” I couldn’t hold back and slammed my hand on the notary’s desk.
The notary did not even flinch. Apparently, he had seen worse in his line of work.
“I understand your emotions,” he said in the tone of a pediatrician calming a spoiled child, “but I ask you to remain calm. You have the right to refuse the inheritance. In that case, the dacha will pass to the next heir, that is, to your brother, and he will be responsible for the debts.”
I stood up. My legs were trembling.
“I need to step outside.”
It was cold outside, even though the calendar said it was the end of May. I leaned against the wall of the building and closed my eyes. Images rose before me: Mom in an old tracksuit, turning over the garden beds. Me beside her at seventeen, hauling watering cans. “Irochka, water the tomatoes, or they’ll dry out.” Eighteen, nineteen, twenty… Twenty-five. Thirty. Thirty-eight.
Every weekend. Every summer. While my friends went to the seaside, had picnics, dated men, I weeded Mom’s vegetable garden. “You’re so capable, Irochka. Not like Mishka—his hands grow from the wrong place.”
Mishka. For whom things were always “difficult,” “not working out,” “the circumstances weren’t right.” He lived with Mom until he was thirty-five, then got married and moved in with his wife. But he never gave up the apartment—“What if we separate someday? I need somewhere to lay my head.” Mom never objected. “Let the boy have a backup option.”
And I rented a one-room apartment on the outskirts. Because “you manage, Irochka, you’re strong.”
The door slammed. Misha came out after me.
“Ir, don’t get worked up. Let’s talk calmly.”
“What is there to talk about, Mish?” I opened my eyes. “You pledged the dacha. Decided to build your business at my expense? And Mom helped you? She pledged the dacha I raised with my own hands?”
“She wanted to help me!” he snapped. “You know how badly she wanted me to get on my feet.”
“And what, in your opinion, was I standing on? I worked myself to the bone at that dacha for twenty years! Every weekend, every summer! While you were ‘getting on your feet,’ I was digging garden beds!”
“Nobody forced you! You came yourself!”
“Because Mom needed help! And you were never around. You always had more important things to do.”
Misha was silent for a moment, then said more quietly:
“Listen, let’s do this. You refuse the inheritance, the dacha passes to me. You help pay off the debts, I’ll sell the apartment, pay you everything back, and there’ll be some left over—we’ll split it fifty-fifty. That’s fair, isn’t it?”
I laughed. The laugh came out hysterical, and I was frightened by the sound myself.
“Help pay off the debts?! Fair?”
“Well, what else can we do? I need money. I have another loan, and my wife has a mortgage. And you’ll get something too. It’s not like I’d leave you with nothing.”
“How noble.”
He winced.
“Why are you so angry? I didn’t do it on purpose. The business didn’t work out, circumstances happened. You think this is pleasant for me?”
I looked at my brother and suddenly realized I barely knew him. This middle-aged man with a receding hairline and a tired face—who was he? Once, we had played together. He had carried me on his back and defended me from the boys in the courtyard. Then something changed. Or maybe it had never been there at all. Maybe I had simply invented a closeness that did not exist.
“You know what, Mish,” I said, suddenly regretting that I had quit smoking. “I’m not going to accept the inheritance.”
He exhaled with relief.
“That’s my smart girl. So we’ve agreed…”
“We haven’t agreed. I’m refusing the inheritance. The dacha goes to you, along with the debt. Deal with it yourself.”
“What do you mean, myself? I just explained—I’ll sell the apartment…”
“Then sell it. Just don’t offer me anything. It’s your debt, your problem. You’re a grown man. Clean up the consequences of your own decisions yourself.”
“Irka, what are you doing? We’re family!”
“Family,” I drew on the cigarette, the smoke burning my lungs. “You know, Mish, I was family my whole life. I was the obedient daughter, the reliable sister. I helped Mom because you couldn’t. I sat at the dacha while you were ‘building a career.’ I never started my own family, because when could I, if every weekend was the garden? And you were always somewhere off to the side. But Mom loved you more. That’s a fact.”
“That’s not true…”
“It is, Mish. You know it is. The boy, the only son, the heir to the family name. And I was just Irka—the one who would cope, who would help, who would not let anyone down. And it’s fine. I’m not holding a grudge. But I’m not going to clean up your problems anymore.”
I turned and walked toward the bus stop. Misha called after me, but I did not turn around.
It took a week to formalize my refusal of the inheritance. Misha called every day—first persuading me, then threatening me, then whining about how his wife didn’t understand him, how the banks were demanding payment, how everything was terrible. I listened to his voice through the phone and felt a strange calm. For the first time in many years, I was doing something not for someone else, but for myself. I was not helping, not offering my shoulder, not “understanding the situation.”
“You’re selfish,” Misha said during our last conversation. “All your life, you only thought about yourself.”
I silently hung up. Then I blocked his number.
He sold the apartment two months later. I found out by chance, from a neighbor who wrote to me on social media. “Some people came to look at it. Your brother says he sold it. Where will you move?”
I was not moving anywhere. I continued renting my one-room apartment on the outskirts, going to work, meeting my friends once a month. Life flowed as usual, except that breathing had suddenly become easier. As if someone had taken off a backpack I had carried for so many years that I had stopped noticing its weight.
In September, I received a message from an unfamiliar number: “Irka, I need money. Can you lend me at least fifty thousand? I’ll pay you back later. Misha.”
I deleted the message without answering.
In October, another one came: “Are you really not going to help? I’m your brother. I’m in debt again. They’re threatening me.”
I blocked that number too.
In winter, I quit my job. Just like that, without a backup plan, without a strategy. My colleagues tapped their fingers against their temples: “At your age, you won’t find a new job.” Maybe. But I suddenly realized I did not want to live until retirement doing something I disliked.
I had savings—the very savings I had been putting aside “for a rainy day.” The rainy day never came. Mom died in the hospital, quickly, within a week. Her insurance covered the operation. The funeral was paid for with joint money from Misha and me, although I paid two-thirds. The dacha did not need my money—it had turned into a debt. Why had I been saving?
I bought a ticket to Kaliningrad. I had never been there. I simply poked my finger at a map and thought, “Why not?”
On the train, I looked out the window at the passing landscapes and thought about Mom. Was I angry with her? Probably. She could have divided the apartment equally. She could have not pledged the dacha. She could have said to Misha at least once: “Deal with it yourself. You’re an adult.” But she never said it. Until the end, she played the role of savior to an eternal child.
And I played the role of the convenient daughter.
But now the performance was over.
In Kaliningrad, I rented a room by the sea. A small one, on the top floor of an old German house. From the window, I could see the bay. In the mornings, I drank coffee, looked at the water, and thought I needed to find a job. Then I thought there was no rush. Then I simply drank my coffee.
The landlady, Vera Pavlovna, turned out to be a talkative woman of about seventy. She often came by to drink tea and chat. I did not mind. I liked that she talked about everything under the sun, did not pry into my soul, and did not ask uncomfortable questions.
One day she asked:
“Do you have family? Children, a husband?”
“No. I had a brother, but we don’t speak anymore.”
“You had a falling-out?”
“Something like that.”
“You know,” Vera Pavlovna said, pouring tea, “I didn’t speak to my sister for twenty years. She believed I had to take care of our mother because I wasn’t married, while she had children and a family. So I took care of her. Five years. Mother died, and the apartment went to my sister. ‘The children need housing,’ she said. And you know, at first I was terribly angry. Then I let it go. I thought: why do I need this anger? It eats away at me, not at her.”
“And did you forgive her?”
“I didn’t forgive her. I simply stopped spending my strength on it. My sister and I saw each other once after that, at her husband’s funeral. We greeted each other like strangers. And you know, I felt neither pain nor joy. Just emptiness. The relationship had died, and that’s normal. Not every bond is meant to last forever.”
I drank my tea and thought that Vera Pavlovna was right. I was not angry with Misha. Well, almost not angry. I was simply tired of being part of a system where I was loved for my usefulness, while he was loved just because.
In spring, I got a job at a small publishing house. They printed local history books and travel guides. The pay was modest, but it was enough for me. My boss, a young woman with three children, once said to me:
“Ira, you’re so calm. As if nothing has power over you.”
I smiled. If only she knew how many years I had been under the power of circumstances, other people’s expectations, family conditioning. “Irochka, help.” “Ira, you’ll manage.” “Irka, well, you understand.”
Now I understood something else: I owed nothing to anyone. And that was an incredible freedom.
Sometimes, as I was falling asleep, I thought about Misha. I wondered how he was doing. Had he paid off his debts? Found work? I did not know and, it seemed, did not want to know. He was an adult. Let him deal with it himself.
And I was living. For the first time, simply living—without plans to save someone, help someone, meet someone’s expectations. I bought myself a new coat, bright blue, even though Mom had always said dark colors suited me better. I got a cat, a red-haired, shameless creature who slept on my pillow and demanded attention.
One evening, I received a message from Misha’s wife: “Ira, we got divorced. Misha is to blame for everything himself, I know that. I just wanted you to know—he regrets it. He would really like to talk to you.”
I looked at the phone screen, then at the cat, who was sleeping peacefully with his paws stretched out. I typed a reply: “Thank you for writing. But we have nothing to talk about. I hope both of you sort out your problems. Take care of yourself.”
I sent it. Turned off the phone. Sat by the window with a cup of tea.
Outside, the sea was roaring. Somewhere, a thousand kilometers away, was the city of my childhood, the courtyard where Mishka and I had played, the home that now belonged to strangers. The dacha where someone else was now watering the garden beds. Mom, who never understood that love is not measured in sacrifices.
And I was here. In a new city, in a new life that I had built myself. Without an inheritance, without the past, without obligations.
The cat yawned, rolled over, and placed his paw on my hand. I scratched him behind the ear, and he began to purr.
“Well then, Ryzhik,” I said aloud. “Shall we live for ourselves?”
He purred in response, and in that purring was all the wisdom I needed.