“Anna, where on earth are you? We’ve been standing outside your door with our suitcases for an hour!” Aunt Valya shouted angrily into the phone.
“Anna, where are you, anyway? We’ve been standing outside your door for an hour!” Aunt Valya shouted angrily into the phone.
Anna set her cup of coffee on the table and calmly looked out the window of her new apartment. Beyond the glass stretched a neighborhood unfamiliar to her relatives — quiet, green, and far from their usual routes.
“Outside which door?” she asked calmly.
“Yours! Katya and I came, brought our suitcases, and some man opened the door and said his family lives there!”
Anna smirked, taking a sip of fragrant coffee.
“That’s because I sold that apartment eight months ago.”
There was silence on the line for several seconds. Then came a deep sigh.
“What do you mean, sold it? Where do you live now? Why didn’t you warn us?”
“Did you warn me you were coming?” Anna replied gently.
Anna had always been considered the convenient person in the family. After moving to the regional center, she bought a two-room apartment near the train station, and her relatives quickly appreciated its location.
At first, everything seemed harmless. Aunt Valya and her daughter Katya would stay for a couple of days during trips to see doctors.
“Annushka, you don’t mind, do you?” her aunt would ask, already standing in the doorway with suitcases. “It’s only for two days. Spending money on a hotel would be foolish.”
Then cousins from her father’s side started coming, along with acquaintances of relatives and even distant family members Anna barely knew.
“Hi, I’m Seryoga, remember me?” a twenty-five-year-old guy once smiled. “We last saw each other at your wedding. Aunt Valya gave me your address and said you wouldn’t mind.”
Guests rarely asked permission in advance. Usually, she received a message like:
“We’ve already bought tickets. Meet us tomorrow evening.”
Anna gave in. She bought groceries, washed bed linens, asked for time off work to hand over the keys. Her boss had already begun giving her sideways looks because of her frequent absences.
Gradually, her apartment came to be seen by the relatives as a family hotel. In many people’s phone contacts, she was saved as “Anna-Station.”
Aunt Valya abused this privilege the most. She could open the refrigerator and complain:
“Yogurts again! Is there no normal food at all?”
Or she would start clearing space in the wardrobe for her own things, carelessly pushing aside Anna’s neatly folded clothes.
“You don’t need so much space all to yourself anyway,” she liked to repeat. “When you get married, then you can start being greedy.”
Anna smiled, but inside, her irritation kept growing stronger.
The breaking point came after the May holidays. Anna returned from work, dreaming of a hot bath and silence. But already from the stairwell, she heard loud voices coming from her apartment.
She opened the door and froze. Suitcases and bags stood in the hallway, the smell of borscht drifted from the kitchen, and five guests had settled in the living room. Aunt Valya had decided to organize a family gathering and had given out Anna’s address to relatives without warning.
Pots were boiling in the kitchen, someone else’s laundry was drying in the bathroom, and in the bedroom, her cousin was already unpacking things into the wardrobe.
“Anya’s here!” Aunt Valya announced cheerfully. “We tidied up a bit and put things in order. Your fridge was completely empty!”
“Aunt Valya, you could have at least called…”
“Why? We’re family!” her aunt waved it off. “We won’t stay long, just a week. Lyudochka came from the Urals, we haven’t seen each other in ages!”
That night, Anna slept on a folding bed in the kitchen. She lay there, listening to snoring from her own bedroom, unable to fall asleep for a long time.
She suddenly realized that she no longer felt like the mistress of her own home. Every vacation, every weekend, and even an ordinary evening could be ruined by an unexpected visit. Her life no longer belonged to her, but to an endless stream of relatives.
For the first time, she wanted to disappear from the entire family’s field of vision.
A few months later, Anna was offered a good job in another district of the city. It was a department head position with a decent salary — exactly what she had dreamed of for the past few years.
The office was far from her old apartment, so she began thinking about moving. At first, the idea seemed temporary, but the more she thought about it, the more attractive the chance to start over became.
“You know, Mom, I’m selling the apartment,” she admitted to her mother over a cup of tea.
“Tired of the guests?” her mother asked knowingly.
“I want to live my own life. In my own home. Where no one rummages through my closets or teaches me how to live properly.”
Anna sold the apartment quickly — its location near the station played its part. With the money, she bought a small but cozy apartment in a new residential complex on the other side of the city and moved without telling anyone.
She gave her new address only to her mother, after she had already unpacked the last boxes.
“Please don’t tell anyone,” she asked, hugging her mother at the doorway. “Not even Valya.”
“Is it really that bad?” her mother asked sadly.
“I just want to live peacefully. I don’t want any guests at all. Well, except you, Mom.”
Her mother simply nodded with understanding and hugged her daughter tighter.
Eight months later, Aunt Valya and her daughter Katya decided to come to the city for a few days. They needed to undergo a medical examination at the regional hospital.
As usual, they did not warn anyone in advance. In their minds, Anya’s apartment was always available.
Standing by the old apartment with heavy suitcases, soaked by the rain that had begun to fall, her aunt called Anna. Katya shifted nervously from one foot to the other, holding the bags.
When it turned out that the apartment had long been sold, a real scandal began.
“You were obligated to warn us!” Aunt Valentina screamed into the phone. “How could you do this to your own family?”
“Why should I have warned you?” Anna replied calmly. “You never warned me about your visits.”
“We were counting on staying with you! We have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow!”
“And I wasn’t counting on turning my life into a hotel again.”
Her aunt showered her with accusations: ungrateful, heartless, forgot her family, traitor.
But for the first time, Anna did not justify herself and did not feel guilty.
“You used my kindness for so many years and never once asked whether it was convenient for me. Good luck finding a hotel.”
After those words, she calmly ended the call and switched off her phone.
For several weeks, the relatives actively discussed what she had done. Her mother’s phone rang nonstop with calls from outraged family members.
“She’s completely out of control!” Aunt Valya complained to anyone willing to listen. “She left her own aunt and cousin out on the street! We had to spend the night in a hotel, can you imagine?”
Some supported Aunt Valya, calling Anna selfish. Others, especially the younger generation, admitted that Anna had long had the right to live as she wished.
“She did the right thing,” said her cousin Mikhail. “How long can people keep sitting on her neck? She has her own life.”
Attempts to find out her new address through her mother led nowhere. The woman kept her daughter’s secret.
“I don’t know where she lives,” she answered every question. “Some new district, far from the center.”
A month later, Uncle Viktor called. He needed to come to a conference.
“Anya, hi! Listen, I need somewhere to stay for three days…”
“Sorry, Uncle Vitya, that won’t work. Book a hotel. There are plenty of good options in the center.”
“But we’re close family…”
“That’s exactly why I’m asking you to understand me. All the best.”
And that was where the conversation ended. For the first time, without long explanations or guilt.
A year passed. One evening, Anna sat on the balcony of her new apartment with a glass of wine, looking at the city lights. In the distance, the roofs of new buildings could be seen, and below, a cozy courtyard murmured quietly.
Her phone no longer exploded with messages about sudden arrivals. Her relatives gradually got used to solving their own problems, booking hotels, or making arrangements with other acquaintances.
Sometimes she met with the family on holidays — on neutral ground, in restaurants or at her mother’s place. Their relationships became more restrained, but more honest.
“Are you happy?” her mother once asked when she came to visit by invitation.
“Yes, Mom. For the first time in many years — yes.”
And every time Anna closed the door of her apartment in the evening, she felt the same thing: peace and freedom, which she had missed so much all those previous years.