“Katya, what are we supposed to eat, mice?” The accusatory question drifted from the unlit kitchen, cutting through the silence. Ekaterina sighed, toeing off her boots. A dull ache radiated up her left leg from a grueling shift. The shopping bag handles bit into her fingers, yet she carried it like a reluctant burden to the kitchen counter.
“Did you actually open the refrigerator?” she asked, her voice flat.
“I did,” Sergey replied, stepping out of the hallway. His worn sweatpants sagged at the knees, and his face was bathed in the glow of a mobile game. “There’s a flickering light and half a jar of crusty mustard.”
“I work until eight, Seryozha.”
“I work too,” he retorted.
Katya set the bag down and unpacked it: a block of cheap cheese, ten eggs, and cottage cheese. No meat. No dumplings.
Sergey grimaced. “Where is the actual food?”
“At the supermarket,” she replied, turning to wash her hands.
“I don’t understand the joke. Are you my wife or what?”
“I am your wife. And you are my husband. So, feed your husband,” she countered, meeting his gaze in the mirror. “Yesterday was the tenth. Payday. Where is your eighty-five thousand rubles?”
The dripping faucet sounded deafening. Sergey’s eyes darted away. “I transferred it to Mom. She needs to get her balcony enclosed.”
Katya turned, the towel slipping from her hands. “All eighty-five thousand?”
“The construction crew demanded an advance.”
A cold numbness settled in her chest. “Then you can dine on Tamara Pavlovna’s enclosed balcony,” she said, returning to fry her eggs. She paid the crippling monthly mortgage of forty-three thousand rubles. She paid the utilities. He had contributed to a balcony. When she sat down to eat her simple meal alone, Sergey stormed out, accusing her of having nothing sacred left.
The following evening, the scent of boiling sausage and fried onions filled the apartment. Tamara Pavlovna was holding court at the kitchen table.
“Good evening, Katya,” her mother-in-law purred, her eyes calculating. “I came to check on my starving son.” She gestured to a pot of clumped pasta resting on Katya’s pristine stove.
“Did he tell you the whole truth?” Katya asked, washing her hands.
“The truth is that a devoted wife cooks for her husband,” Tamara snapped.
“And a husband brings his salary into his home,” Katya replied, reaching for her cheese. “Does enclosing a balcony truly cost eighty-five thousand rubles?”
“Materials are expensive! You should show some respect. My son bought half this apartment. He renovated it!”
Katya let out a dry, bitter laugh. “He glued two rolls of wallpaper in the hallway. I pay the mortgage from my salary.”
Sergey shuffled into the kitchen, ladling pasta onto a plate, complaining she ruined his mother’s mood. Tamara Pavlovna huffed, purposely bumping Katya’s shoulder on her way out. “Eat your pasta, Seryozhenka, or this woman will starve you.”
They existed as ghosts after that, sharing space but no warmth. Until Friday evening, when Katya’s phone vibrated.
Charge: 1,250 rubles. Yandex.Eats.
Her joint account had been billed. A pizza delivery for Sergey. She instantly blocked the card.
When Katya stepped into the apartment, Sergey was watching television beside an empty pizza box.
“Was the pizza good?” Katya asked, tossing her keys down. “For fifteen hundred of my rubles, it should be a masterpiece.”
Sergey flinched. “I got sick of plain pasta. I’ll pay you back from my advance on the twenty-fifth.”
“No, you won’t.” Katya marched straight into their bedroom, reaching into the closet for the old shoebox. Their savings. The vacation fund for Turkey. It was supposed to hold exactly one hundred and twenty thousand rubles, saved over a year of frugality.
She lifted the lid. The box was practically weightless. Two five-hundred-ruble notes fluttered inside.
A knot tightened in her stomach. She carried the empty cardboard shell into the living room and tossed it beside him. It landed with a dull thud.
“Where is our one hundred and twenty thousand, Seryozha?”
The color drained from his face. “The crew needed more money,” he stammered. “They had to reinforce the concrete slab. I’ll take out a personal loan tomorrow, I swear!”
“So you plan to take out a loan to repay the money you stole from your own wife? And who repays that loan? Our shared budget?” Katya stared at him. Something inside her clicked firmly shut. The marriage was over. “Pack your things. Go live on your mother’s reinforced balcony. Tomorrow we visit a notary to legally divide this apartment, and then I am filing for divorce.”
Sergey sneered, crossing his arms like a petulant toddler. “I’m not going anywhere. Half of this is mine by law.”
Katya didn’t argue. She simply took her blankets and locked herself in the bedroom.
Early Saturday morning, while Sergey snored heavily on the living-room couch, Katya quietly gathered the cables, controllers, and white console of his gaming system. It had cost seventy-five thousand rubles. She packed it all into a heavy sports backpack and walked out into the biting January frost.
By ten o’clock, she was sitting across from a bored pawnshop clerk. He offered her forty-five thousand rubles. It was less than Sergey had stolen, but this wasn’t about the money. It was about exacting a precise measure of justice. She signed the paperwork, took the five red banknotes, and spent four thousand on beef steaks, cheese, and an expensive jar of face cream.
When she returned home, Sergey was frantic. “Where is my console?!” he bellowed, rushing toward her.
Katya calmly placed the groceries down and handed him the pawn ticket. “I needed money for meat.”
His eyes bulged with raw fury. “You had no right! That was my property!”
“And you stole our vacation savings. You took one hundred and twenty thousand; I took forty-five. Consider yourself lucky.”
He threatened her with the police. He called his mother on speakerphone, begging for backup. Tamara Pavlovna shrieked threats of lawsuits and police. Katya leaned closer to the microphone. “Tamara Pavlovna, if you come here, his clothes go into the stairwell. Pay off your son’s debts yourself.” She turned to Sergey. “Keys. Right now.”
Defeated by her stony calm, Sergey threw his key down and dragged his bag out the door.
The next morning, a locksmith installed a heavy, impenetrable new lock. Katya paid the man, brewed a cup of tea, and sat by the window watching the pure snow fall. Her phone lit up with missed calls and texts from her ex-family. She swiped them all away into the digital void. For the first time in three years, the unbroken silence of the apartment felt absolutely perfect.