I Had to Put My Husband in His Place When, Six Months After Running Away, He Showed Up With His New Wife to Claim My Country House
Nina carried Dasha across the garden plot, her back aching so badly she wanted to sit down right there on one of the vegetable beds. Her daughter had her arms wrapped around Nina’s neck, her legs dangling uselessly—legs that had refused to obey her for three months now. After a severe illness that winter, when her temperature had stayed above forty degrees Celsius for a whole week, four-year-old Dasha’s legs had simply stopped working. The doctors said recovery was possible, but it would take time, exercise, fresh air, and patience. Nina had plenty of patience. Everything else was running out.
“Mom, put me over there where the bugs are,” Dasha asked.
Nina spread an old blanket between the garden beds, sat her daughter down, and tucked a pillow behind her. Dasha immediately began digging through the soil with her fingers, intently searching for worms.
Nina straightened up and looked over the property. Six hundred square meters inherited from her grandmother, a tiny house, a leaning fence, and a greenhouse with cracked glass. The ground had barely thawed, yet Nina already had boxes of seedlings all over the house—tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, eggplants.
She had calculated everything back in February. If she managed to grow a good crop, she could sell it at the local market near the train station. Elderly women sold vegetables there by the bucket, and nobody chased them away. It wouldn’t bring in millions, of course, but at least it would be something.
Because Nina had almost no money left.
Igor had left at the beginning of March.
It wasn’t exactly a bolt from the blue. He had started distancing himself while Dasha was still in the hospital. At first he came every other day, then every two days, and eventually he began calling instead of visiting. Nina was spending practically every hour beside her daughter’s hospital bed and didn’t pay much attention to her husband’s moods.
Then Dasha was discharged.
The little girl sat on the bed smiling, waiting for her father to pick her up and carry her to the car. Igor stood in the doorway of the hospital room looking at her as though someone had shown him a stranger’s child.
“So what, does she need a wheelchair now?” he asked Nina in the corridor.
“Temporarily. The doctor said that with proper rehabilitation, everything could come back within several months.”
“But it might not come back,” Igor clarified.
“It might not,” Nina repeated, because she had never been good at lying.
For two weeks afterward, Igor walked around the house looking as though he were the one in pain.
Nina rushed between Dasha’s exercises, cooking, and her remote job. She kept the books for a small company. The pay was poor, but at least it was something.
Igor went to work as usual, but once he came home, he seemed to switch off. He would sit down, stare at his phone, and say nothing.
“Could you do some exercises with her while I make dinner?” Nina asked him one day.
“What am I supposed to do with her?” Igor asked, bewildered. “She can’t walk.”
“You need to massage her legs and bend and straighten them, the way the doctor showed us.”
“I’m not a massage therapist,” he muttered, and walked into the other room.
The conversation Nina would remember most often happened on a Friday evening.
Dasha was already asleep. Nina had sat down to drink some tea when Igor placed his gym bag, stuffed with clothes, in front of her.
“Nina, I can’t do this anymore,” he said. “I didn’t sign up for a disabled child. I need positivity in my life.”
Nina held her mug and stared at the bag.
Blue. They had bought it together at Sportmaster three years earlier, when Igor had joined a gym and managed to keep going for exactly a month and a half.
“And where exactly are you going?” she asked so calmly that she surprised even herself.
“I’ll stay with Seryoga for a while. Then I’ll figure things out. I need to get myself together. This is all too hard.”
“Too hard for you,” Nina repeated.
“Well, what do you expect? I come home and it’s procedures all the time, crying, those exercises. There’s no normal life anymore. I’m thirty-five. I’m not ready to live like this.”
“And I’m thirty-three, so apparently I am?”
“You’re her mother. It’s natural for you,” Igor declared, nearly making Nina choke on her tea.
“And what exactly is natural for you, her father?”
“Look, don’t back me into a corner. I’m just being honest about how I feel. Better to leave now than wait until we start tearing each other apart and blaming each other for everything.”
And he left.
Nina finished her tea, washed the mug, and went to bed.
The next morning, Dasha asked where her father was.
Nina told her he had gone away for work.
Dasha nodded and asked for porridge.
A week later, Nina called Igor about money.
At first he didn’t answer. Then he called back and started explaining that things were difficult for him at the moment and that he would send something as soon as he sorted himself out.
“Igor, Dasha has outgrown her special shoes. She needs the next size. They cost twelve thousand rubles.”
“Twelve thousand for children’s shoes?” he exclaimed. “Where are you buying shoes like that?”
“They’re orthopedic shoes. Special ones. Ordinary shoes don’t work for her, and you know that.”
“I’ll see what I can do next week,” he promised.
There was no money the next week.
Or the week after that.
Nina checked their joint bank card, where they had kept their savings. There had been 180,000 rubles there, money they had been putting aside for Dasha’s kindergarten expenses and a summer vacation.
The balance showed 4,200 rubles.
At first Nina thought the banking app had frozen.
She restarted it and checked the transaction history.
Igor had withdrawn everything in a single transaction three days before leaving.
She called him.
He didn’t answer immediately.
“Well, what did you expect? It was our joint money,” he said instead of hello. “I need something to live on too. Or am I supposed to sleep on the street?”
“You withdrew 176,000 rubles and you’re asking what you’re supposed to live on?”
“Half that money was mine.”
“And the other half belonged to your daughter, by the way.”
“I’ll make it up later. This isn’t the time to start counting every penny,” Igor replied irritably before hanging up.
Nina sat on a stool for a minute.
Then she stood up and began packing for the country house.
There was absolutely no point in staying in a rented apartment that cost twenty-five thousand rubles a month. At the country house, at least she wouldn’t have to pay rent. Electricity was cheap at the rural rate, and there was land that might bring in some income.
In April, no more than five of the twelve houses in the Rassvet garden community were occupied. Most summer residents didn’t come until the May holidays.
Nina’s grandmother had died four years earlier. Nina had maintained the property as best she could. She and Igor had come on weekends, cut the grass, patched the roof.
Her grandmother had built the greenhouse back in the 1990s out of old window frames everyone seemed to be hauling away from some construction site in those days. Much of the glass was cracked, but the frame was still standing.
The neighbor on the right, Tamara Vasilyevna, saw Nina carrying Dasha on the very first day and immediately came to the fence.
“What’s wrong with the child? Her legs hurting?” she asked directly.
“She can’t walk yet after being sick,” Nina answered briefly.
“My late Petrovich spent three months walking along the walls after the hospital too. Then he got back on his feet,” Tamara Vasilyevna announced. “But tell me something—are you staying here alone, or is your husband coming?”
“Alone.”
Tamara Vasilyevna stood there for a moment, nodded, and went home.
Half an hour later, she returned with a pot of stewed potatoes and meat and a three-liter jar of fruit compote.
“Take it, and don’t argue. My husband’s dead, the children live in the city, and I can’t eat all this by myself,” she declared firmly. “You get yourselves settled. Tomorrow I’ll come over and show you where the good water comes from and which tap gives rusty water.”
Nina took the pot, thanked her, and barely held back her tears.
Dasha ate so eagerly that she asked for seconds, even though she normally spent half an hour picking at her food.
The days began to resemble one another, but not in a bad way.
In the morning Nina got Dasha up and did her leg exercises with her. They ate breakfast, then Nina carried her outside.
She spread out the blanket, gave her daughter a little shovel and a bowl, and Dasha played in the dirt while Nina worked in the garden.
After lunch came more exercises.
Then Nina sat down with her laptop and did the bookkeeping for her employer.
She earned thirty thousand rubles a month. It was enough for food and the bare necessities, as long as they were extremely careful.
By the May holidays, the community had come back to life.
Nina also got to know two neighbors she had previously done little more than greet across the fence.
On the left lived Gennady Palych and his wife Vera, both retirees, both strong and boisterous.
The first thing Gennady Palych did was walk around Nina’s property, inspect the greenhouse, and whistle.
“Who puts glass in like this? Chickens would laugh at it,” he concluded. “I’ve got some polycarbonate left over from my greenhouse. I can cover yours with it, if you don’t mind using somebody else’s leftover material.”
“Gennady Palych, I’ll pay you, just not now. When the harvest comes in—”
“What do you mean, pay me? Don’t make me laugh,” he waved her off. “It’s been lying in my shed for three years. I’ll be thanking you for clearing out the space. Tomka told me you’re here alone with the little one. We’ll start tomorrow morning.”
Tomka was what he called Tamara Vasilyevna, and she wasn’t offended in the slightest.
They had known each other for about twenty years, and Nina quickly realized that in this community, everyone knew almost everything about everyone else.
Gennady Palych repaired the greenhouse in two days, and Nina was finally able to plant the seedlings she had been growing since February.
Tomatoes filled three rows. Peppers and eggplants took up two. She trained the cucumbers along a trellis by the wall.
Outside, she planted zucchini and pumpkins.
Vera brought over a bag of dill, parsley, and basil seeds.
“I’ve got seeds like a fool has candy wrappers. Every year I buy more and forget I already have them,” Vera laughed. “And people always buy herbs at the station market. They’re the first thing to sell.”
Nina planted every available patch of soil.
She put onions between the carrot rows and scattered radish seeds along the edges.
The property that had looked abandoned in April had become a model vegetable garden by the middle of May.
Dasha sat in the middle of it all and issued instructions.
“Mom, that tomato over there is leaning. Tie it up.”
“Dasha, that’s a pepper.”
“Fine, a pepper. It’s still leaning.”
At the end of May, Nina noticed Dasha pulling herself up with her arms, trying to stand whenever she thought her mother wasn’t watching.
Once Nina walked around the greenhouse and saw her daughter holding onto the edge of a garden bed, kneeling and rocking back and forth as she tried to put weight on her feet.
Nina turned away and quietly burst into tears over the zucchini bed.
Then she wiped her face, went back, and said as though nothing had happened:
“Dash, let’s exercise your legs. I think they’re feeling energetic today.”
“I tried by myself, but they’re still a little lazy,” her daughter replied seriously.
Tamara Vasilyevna came over every day.
Sometimes she brought a jar of jam, sometimes half a chicken, sometimes a bag of grain or cereal.
At first Nina protested, but eventually she realized the neighbor needed this just as much as Nina did.
Tamara Vasilyevna had lived alone since her husband died. Her children visited once every two weeks, and Dasha had become something like the granddaughter she had never had.
“As long as your hands are in the soil, your head stays right, Ninka,” the neighbor said one day while sitting on a bench as Dasha made her a daisy crown. “You did the right thing coming here. In the city, trapped between four walls, the child definitely wouldn’t have recovered.”
“Tamara Vasilyevna, do you actually know that, or are you just trying to make me feel better?” Nina smiled.
“I’ve lived in this community forty years. I know everything,” the neighbor replied seriously. “The Kuzmins’ grandson used to stutter. Spent two summers here and it disappeared. The Fedotovs’ grandmother was bedridden. Then she got up.”
“You should start seeing patients at the clinic.”
“They’d throw me out after one day for giving too much advice,” Tamara Vasilyevna grinned.
Dasha’s birthday was June tenth.
She was turning five, and a week before it she asked:
“Mom, is Daddy coming?”
Nina called Igor that evening.
He answered after the fifth ring. Music was playing in the background.
“Igor, Dasha’s birthday is in a week.”
“I remember.”
“She’s asking whether you’re coming.”
“Well, I’ll try. It’s hard for me to plan anything right now, but I’ll bring her something. A cake or a present.”
“She doesn’t need a cake. She needs her father. Even if it’s only for a couple of hours.”
“Nina, don’t pressure me. I said I’ll try.”
All week, Dasha collected dandelions along the edge of the property. Nina carried her to the fence where the biggest ones grew.
The girl wove them into crowns with such concentration that it seemed something terribly important depended on it.
By June tenth, she had made three crowns.
“This one is for Mom, this one is for Tamara Vasilyevna, and this one is for Daddy when he comes,” Dasha explained.
That morning, Nina set the table outside.
There was a tablecloth, plates, sliced snacks. Tamara Vasilyevna brought a raisin cake, and Vera fried pancakes and served them with condensed milk.
Dasha sat at the head of the table wearing a dandelion crown and looked completely happy.
Nina kept glancing at her phone all day.
By four o’clock Igor had neither arrived nor called.
Nina called him herself.
His phone was unavailable.
That evening, when Dasha was already falling asleep, a message arrived.
A photograph.
A swimming pool. A sun lounger. In one corner of the picture was a woman’s hand with brightly painted nails.
The caption read:
“Sorry, work stuff. I’ll bring the present later. Kisses to Dasha.”
Nina placed her phone face down and went to wash the dishes.
She dropped a plate.
For a moment she simply stood looking at the broken pieces.
Then she picked them up, threw them away, and finished washing everything else.
The next morning, Dasha put the remaining dandelion crown on Nina’s head.
“Mom, you’re the prettiest. And the best. I don’t need Daddy. I have you and Tamara Vasilyevna.”
“And Tamara Vasilyevna,” Nina agreed, adjusting the crown.
“My late Petrovich was exactly the same,” Tamara Vasilyevna unexpectedly commented as she walked over. “Promise, promise, promise—and then suddenly he had to go fishing. Although mine at least brought fish home.”
By July, Nina’s little business was gaining momentum.
The first herbs had been ready at the end of May, the radishes at the beginning of June, and by July the cucumbers and early tomatoes had ripened.
Twice a week Nina went to the market near the station. She woke at five in the morning, loaded boxes onto an old handcart, and dragged them a kilometer and a half to the train.
They gave her a spot on the far edge of the market, an inconvenient one, but Nina quickly figured something out.
If she displayed seedlings in little pots beside her vegetables, more customers stopped.
The seedlings came from extras—rooted tomato side shoots and pepper seedlings that hadn’t fit inside the greenhouse.
In June, Nina made twenty-two thousand rubles from the market.
Together with her bookkeeping salary, that made fifty-two thousand.
It was enough to live on if she counted every kopek.
It was barely enough for Dasha’s orthopedic shoes.
Over three months, Igor had transferred exactly ten thousand rubles, in two payments of five thousand each.
He no longer answered any of Nina’s calls about money. In messages, he always wrote the same thing:
“Things are difficult right now. We’ll sort it out later.”
“Nin, have you looked at your husband’s page lately?” Tamara Vasilyevna asked one evening, leaning against the fence.
“I don’t visit his page. I have enough ways to ruin my nerves already.”
“Well, you should look. He’s been taking pictures with some young woman for quite a while, judging by the dates. My Lidka showed me. That’s my daughter. She found them through mutual acquaintances.”
That evening, Nina opened Igor’s social media page.
The photographs went back to the end of January.
Which meant he had already been seeing this woman while Dasha was still in the hospital.
Her name was Kristina. She looked about twenty-five.
The captions under their photos read:
“Us.”
“Our morning.”
“Love.”
The most recent photo was the one with the swimming pool and sun lounger.
But in the full version, Nina could see that Kristina was sitting beside Igor, holding his hand.
Nina closed the laptop.
It was one thing to suspect.
It was another to see with her own eyes that her husband had been vacationing with another woman while Nina had spent sleepless nights beside their sick child’s bed.
“Well, that’s beyond shameless,” Tamara Vasilyevna concluded when Nina told her. “At least my husband had enough conscience not to show off his nonsense publicly. But this Igor of yours—he doesn’t have any brakes at all.”
“Tamara Vasilyevna, the only thing that matters to me right now is getting Dasha back on her feet. I’ll deal with Igor afterward.”
“That’s right,” the neighbor approved. “But file for child support. That advice comes from me personally, not from my Petrovich.”
In August, the thing Nina had been getting up at six every morning for finally happened.
Dasha stood up by herself.
Not leaning against a garden bed.
Not holding Nina’s hand.
She simply stood in the middle of the property, between the tomato beds.
She stayed upright for about ten seconds, swayed, and took a step.
One step across the grass.
Then another.
Then a third.
On the fourth, she sat down again and burst into tears.
“Mom, I’m walking,” she said through her tears. “My legs remembered.”
Nina sat down beside her right there on the ground and cried so hard that Tamara Vasilyevna came running over from the neighboring property, thinking something terrible had happened.
“She’s walking,” Nina said, pointing to her daughter.
Tamara Vasilyevna stood there, wiped her eyes with the edge of her apron, and said:
“There you go. And you were worried.”
As though it had always been inevitable.
By September, Dasha was walking almost confidently.
She still limped a little and tired quickly, but she was walking.
The doctor at the district clinic, whom Nina visited once a month, said her progress was excellent and that by winter the child would most likely be running.
In September, the garden was giving one final burst of produce.
Nina canned tomatoes in jars, sold them by the box, and gave them away to neighbors.
Tamara Vasilyevna received so many jars that she finally pleaded:
“Ninka, my cellar is about to burst. Enough!”
“Tamara Vasilyevna, you brought me a pot of potatoes in spring when I had only four thousand rubles to my name. You’ll have to endure it.”
“All right, two more jars. But those are the last ones,” the neighbor surrendered.
Nina brought Gennady Palych a bucket of cucumbers and two buckets of tomatoes as payment for repairing the greenhouse.
He complained that he didn’t need anything, but Vera accepted it all gratefully and later quietly told Nina:
“Don’t pay attention to him. He’s just embarrassed. He’s pleased that he was able to help. And we’ll preserve the vegetables. We’ve got an attic full of empty jars.”
In the middle of September, while Nina was picking the last tomatoes and calculating whether their supplies would last until spring, an unfamiliar car stopped outside the gate.
A white Camry, polished as though it had just left the car wash.
Igor got out.
And behind him came Kristina.
In person, she looked smaller than she had in the photographs—slender, wearing jeans and a leather jacket, her hair carefully styled.
Nina stood holding a bucket of tomatoes in one hand and pruning shears in the other.
“Hi,” Igor said as though he had visited yesterday. “Not bad here.”
“Hello,” Nina replied. “What do you want?”
“We need to talk like adults,” Igor said, leaning against the fence and folding his arms. “This is Kristina. We’re together.”
“I know.”
“Well, good. Then that makes things easier. Nina, here’s the situation. Kristina and I have decided to settle down seriously. She needs an apartment because she’s got her own situation going on. And you and I have marital property that needs to be divided.”
“What marital property?” Nina asked, genuinely confused. “We rented our apartment. The car is registered to you. This country house belonged to my grandmother and was inherited by me.”
Kristina, who had remained silent until then, suddenly spoke.
“We consulted someone. Under Article 37 of the Family Code, if during a marriage investments are made using jointly owned marital funds and those investments significantly increase the value of one spouse’s property, that property may be recognized as joint marital property. You have a greenhouse here, a fence, a roof.”
Nina looked at her in such astonishment that she put the bucket down.
“The greenhouse is made from my grandmother’s window frames from the 1990s. The fence has been leaning since Yeltsin was president. And Gennady Palych, the retired man next door, patched the roof in exchange for a bucket of cucumbers.”
“Don’t exaggerate,” Igor frowned. “I invested plenty of my money here.”
“What money, Igor? In four years, you came here twelve times and painted one wall. And I bought the paint.”
“That’s not what we’re talking about. We need to sell the property and divide the money,” Igor said, straightening and looking directly at her. “The land here is valuable. Six hundred square meters in a place like this is worth almost two million rubles now. That would be enough for my down payment.”
Nina heard the door of the house slam behind her. She turned. Dasha stood on the porch, holding the railing. She had come outside by herself after hearing voices. “Daddy,” Dasha said. Igor looked at his daughter. Then at her legs.
“Oh. You’re walking already,” he observed, as though discussing a tomato seedling rather than his own child.
“She’s walking,” Nina confirmed. “Somehow we managed without your positivity.”
“Nina, let’s not make a scene in front of the child,” Igor said more quietly. “We came here to discuss business, not argue. The property needs to be sold. That’s a fact. And you’ll be receiving a letter from my lawyer soon.”
“What lawyer? You don’t have money for your daughter, but you managed to find money for a lawyer?”
“My finances are my business,” Igor snapped.
Kristina stood a little to the side, scrolling through her phone and pretending not to be particularly interested.’
But Nina could see that she was listening to every word.
“By the way,” Kristina said, raising her eyes from the phone, “we aren’t bad people. The country house is simply an asset, and assets need to be divided fairly. You can live wherever you want, but Igor needs to start a new life.”
A woman Nina was seeing in person for the first time was standing on Nina’s grandmother’s property explaining that Nina could live wherever she wanted.
With a five-year-old child who had only started walking a month earlier.
Nina didn’t have time to answer.
Tamara Vasilyevna’s voice came from behind the fence.
“And what kind of meeting are we having over here?”
The neighbor was already coming through her gate and heading directly toward Nina’s property.
Gennady Palych appeared behind her. Apparently he had noticed the unfamiliar car as well.
“Tamara Vasilyevna, these are my affairs. I’ll handle it,” Nina began.
“Your affairs are your affairs, but strangers wandering around somebody else’s property becomes a matter of public order,” Tamara Vasilyevna declared sharply before turning to Igor. “And who exactly might you be, young man?”
“I’m Nina’s husband,” Igor replied.
“Former husband,” Tamara Vasilyevna corrected him. “The one who abandoned his wife with a sick child in March and transferred ten thousand rubles in six months. Don’t look so surprised. Everybody knows everything around here. This isn’t the city.”
Gennady Palych walked over silently, stopped beside the greenhouse he himself had repaired, and folded his arms.
“If I understood correctly, you’re planning to sell this property?” he asked Igor.
“That’s none of your business,” Igor snapped.
“Actually, it is. I’m the chairman of this garden association, and I have every document for every property filed away. This plot is registered to Nina Sergeyevna Voronova. She inherited it from her grandmother in 2021. Your marriage was registered in 2019. Property received by one spouse through inheritance is not subject to division. That’s Article 36 of the same Family Code your companion was quoting. Period.”
“We’ll see about that. We’re talking about improvements paid for with marital funds,” Igor insisted.
“What improvements, my friend?” Gennady Palych actually laughed. “Show me one receipt. One invoice. One photograph of you doing anything around here. I’ve watched you for four years. You came here with a phone in one hand and a sandwich in the other. You grilled kebabs—and even then, Nina was the one who marinated the meat.”
Kristina tugged Igor by the arm.
“Let’s go. There’s no point talking to these people. We’ll settle everything in court.”
“Court is perfectly fine,” Tamara Vasilyevna nodded. “But remember, sweetheart, this entire community can testify. We know who repaired the roof, who covered the greenhouse, and who fed the child while her daddy was sunbathing at a resort. We’ll all come. Every last one of us. My late Petrovich used to say that shamelessness is a second kind of happiness—but only until your first court hearing.”
Igor jerked his shoulder away, turned around, and walked toward the car.
Kristina hurried after him.
At the gate, Igor turned back and shouted:
“Nina, you’re going to regret not settling this peacefully!”
“Igor, my daughter can walk. I’m not going to waste my life regretting anything else,” Nina replied.
The car drove away.
Tamara Vasilyevna watched it disappear and turned toward Nina.
“Don’t be afraid. He isn’t going to win anything. I once went to court against my husband’s relatives over a house, so I know how these things work. They don’t have a single document. And Article 37, the one they’re trying to scare you with, requires proof that the property’s value increased substantially. Let them try proving that painting one wall doubled the value of the land.”
“Tamara Vasilyevna, what if he starts demanding Dasha through the courts? You know, saying he’s her father and has rights?” Nina’s voice had gone hoarse.
“With ten thousand rubles in six months?” Gennady Palych snorted. “Any court is going to look at him and ask, ‘Daddy, where’s the child support?’ Instead of being afraid, file for child support officially. Tomorrow I’ll give you the number of a good lawyer who works with our association. He charges three thousand for a consultation.”
Dasha was still standing on the porch.
Nina walked over, picked her up out of habit even though her daughter could now walk by herself, and carried her inside.
“Mom, did Daddy come for the tomatoes?” Dasha asked.
“Something like that.”
“Did you give him any?”
“No.”
“Good,” her daughter approved. “He didn’t come to my birthday.”
That evening, Nina stepped onto the porch.
A light was on at Tamara Vasilyevna’s house. Beyond the fence, Gennady Palych and Vera were quietly talking about something.
Dasha was asleep, hugging a stuffed rabbit Tamara Vasilyevna had given her because, according to the neighbor, it had “been sitting uselessly in the closet gathering dust for three years, and maybe the child could use it.”
Nina’s phone lay on the table.
There was a message from Igor:
“I’m serious about court. And I did pay you child support, so stop lying.”
Ten thousand rubles in six months.
Nina switched off the phone.
The last tomatoes were still growing in the garden bed, green and needing more time to ripen.
Tamara Vasilyevna had taught Nina to put them in a cardboard box with newspaper so they would turn red by October.
Nina covered the garden bed with plastic to protect it from frost and went to check the greenhouse.
The polycarbonate Gennady Palych had brought over was still straight and solid.
The next morning she needed to see the lawyer.
Then she needed to go to the market.
Then she needed to pick Dasha up from Tamara Vasilyevna’s house, because the neighbor had volunteered to watch her.
Nina closed the greenhouse, went inside, and took out the notebook where she recorded her expenses and income.
Over the summer and the beginning of autumn, she had earned 138,000 rubles at the market.
Together with her bookkeeping work, the total came to 318,000 rubles over six months.
Minus living expenses.
Minus Dasha’s shoes.
Minus electricity.
Minus seeds and fertilizer for the next season.
There were sixty-one thousand rubles left in her account.
It wasn’t much.
But the bookkeeping work wouldn’t disappear during winter, and the cellar was filled to the ceiling with jars of preserved vegetables.
Nina closed the notebook, turned off the light, and went to bed.
Tomorrow morning, Dasha would want to walk to the garden bed by herself.
They would only have to put on her orthopedic shoes first.
The new ones.
The ones Nina had paid for with the money she earned during her very first month selling vegetables at the market.