“Why did your mother come here? She’s not welcome,” my sister-in-law said. She had no idea that Olga would personally check the apartment that had been gifted to her before the wedding.
When Olga came home from work on Friday evening, a large travel bag was standing beside the hallway wardrobe. She recognized it immediately. Irina usually brought that bag whenever she came to visit them for holidays, but she had never before left it by their door without any warning.
Andrey came out of the kitchen and, from the expression on his wife’s face, immediately understood that the conversation was going to be unpleasant.
“I was just about to text you. Ira is going to stay with us for a few days. They’re tearing apart her bathroom, the water has been shut off, and it’s impossible to live there normally right now.”
Olga took off her jacket and hung it in the wardrobe.
“And why am I only finding out about this after her things are already in our apartment?”
“It was all decided today. She called and asked if she could stay until Tuesday, and I said yes. Why should she go from friend to friend looking for somewhere to sleep when she can stay with her brother?”
Irina came out of the living room. She had already changed into comfortable clothes and was tying her hair back with an elastic band.
“Ol, I’m not moving in forever. You can put up with me for four days somehow.”
Irina’s situation really was inconvenient. She lived in a small apartment, and once the bathroom renovation started, she had to either find somewhere else to stay for several days or return home only to sleep. Olga might easily have agreed if Andrey had called her beforehand.
But he had not.
“Next time, we discuss things like this first,” she told her husband. “Both of us.”
Andrey nodded with such relief that it seemed he considered the issue settled.
Irina clearly thought so too.
Irina Did Not Remain a Guest for Long
She had apparently kept the spare key since winter. At that time, Olga and Andrey had gone away for several days and asked Irina to stop by and check the apartment. After they returned, no one remembered to ask for the key back, and as Olga now discovered, Irina had simply let herself in with it.
On Saturday morning, Olga noticed that half the contents of the travel bag had already been unpacked. Cosmetics were lined up in the bathroom, a charger lay beside the sofa, and Irina had brought several blouses into the bedroom and was about to hang them in the wardrobe.
“Wait. Why are you putting those in here?” Olga asked.
“So they don’t get wrinkled. I’ll be packing them again in two days anyway.”
“Hang them in the hallway. There are empty hangers there.”
Irina looked displeased but did not argue. Andrey was making breakfast at the time and pretended that nothing unusual was happening.
Closer to noon, Olga’s mother called. Lidia Pavlovna lived nearby and wanted to stop by briefly to bring her daughter some homemade food and pick up a baking pan she had left there the previous week.
“Of course, come over,” Olga said. “We’re home.”
When her mother arrived, Andrey opened the door, greeted her, and carried the bag she had brought into the kitchen. Lidia Pavlovna took off her coat, hung it in the hallway, and only then noticed Irina.
“Oh, you’re here too? Hello.”
“Hello,” Irina replied without much enthusiasm.
Lidia Pavlovna went into the kitchen, placed the containers she had brought on the table, and asked Olga where her baking pan was.
Irina had been sitting in the living room with her phone the entire time, but a few minutes later she came into the kitchen too.
“Why did your mother come here? She’s not welcome,” Irina said.
At first, Lidia Pavlovna thought she had misheard.
“Excuse me?”
“I’m staying here for a few days because my apartment is being renovated. I’d like to at least get some peace and quiet, but there are already visitors first thing in the morning.”
Olga was so stunned that she did not immediately know how to respond. What shocked her most was not even the rudeness, but how casually Irina had said it.
“Ira, this is my mother.”
“I understand.”
Andrey set down the plate he had been about to put into the cupboard.
“Ira, that was out of line.”
“What exactly was out of line? I’m not throwing anyone out. I just asked whether it was really necessary to have a family gathering today of all days.”
Lidia Pavlovna picked up her handbag from the back of a chair.
“Olya, give me my baking pan and I’ll leave. I don’t want to bother you.”
“Mom, you’re not bothering anyone.”
“I’ll come another time.”
Olga took the pan from a lower kitchen cabinet and walked her mother to the door. Lidia Pavlovna put on her coat and even refused Olga’s offer to call a car for her.
When the door closed, Olga returned to the kitchen.
The Conversation Andrey Wanted to Postpone
“Irina, you’re packing your things this evening,” Olga said. “You’re sleeping somewhere else tonight.”
Andrey frowned.
“Wait. We agreed she could stay until Tuesday. Where is she supposed to go now?”
“You agreed. I wasn’t part of that conversation.”
“Ol, don’t start. She said something stupid. I already told her she was wrong.”
Irina crossed her arms over her chest.
“I don’t understand why I’m supposed to apologize at all. Andrey lives here too, and he has every right to invite his own sister.”
“To invite someone over as a guest, of course,” Olga replied. “But deciding for me that someone is going to live here for several days and informing me after the fact is another matter entirely.”
“What difference does it make whose name the apartment is in? You’re a family.”
That was when Olga realized Irina genuinely did not know who owned the apartment. During four years of marriage, she and Andrey had almost never discussed the subject in front of his relatives. He had moved in with Olga after the wedding, they had bought furniture together and shared ordinary household expenses, so from the outside it could easily have looked like the apartment belonged to both of them.
Olga looked at her husband.
“When you told Ira she could stay here, did you at least tell her that the apartment belongs to me?”
“Why would I?” Andrey wearily rubbed his face. “I never thought we’d end up arguing about who owns the place.”
“Neither did I. Until today.”
The conversation ended there, but Irina apparently learned nothing from it. After lunch, Olga saw her standing by the wardrobe. Her sister-in-law had cleared part of a shelf for herself and was moving Olga’s belongings higher up.
“I told you not to rearrange the wardrobe.”
Irina turned around.
“I’m not throwing anything away. I need somewhere to put my things.”
“You don’t anymore. You’re leaving today.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, is all this because of your mother? Nothing would have happened if she had simply avoided coming over for a few days.”
This time, even Andrey did not ask his wife to calm down.
Olga Decided to Check the Documents, Not the Family’s Version of Events
She went into the bedroom, opened the Gosuslugi government services portal, and requested an online property extract for the apartment. The document appeared in her account almost immediately. Naturally, there was nothing surprising in it: Olga was listed as the owner.
She also found the deed of gift among the apartment documents without much trouble. Her mother had gifted the apartment to her before the wedding, when Olga was not even married to Andrey yet.
A few minutes later, she returned to the kitchen with her phone.
“Andrey, Ira, let’s settle this once and never come back to it again.”
Irina sighed.
“What now? Are you going to show us documents?”
“Yes. Because you’ve said several times that Andrey can decide everything on his own. I am the owner of this apartment. Andrey lives here as my husband, and I have never intended to compete with him over square footage. But that does not mean you can arrive with a key, move in without discussing it with me, rearrange my belongings, and tell my mother when she is allowed to visit her own daughter.”
Olga opened the property extract and placed the phone face-up on the table.
“And it was my mother who gifted me this apartment. Before our wedding.”
Irina glanced at the screen.
“How was I supposed to know that?”
“Why did you need to know it in order to speak to someone respectfully?”
Irina did not have time to answer. Andrey finally spoke without his usual “let’s discuss this later.”
“Ira, pack your things.”
She turned sharply toward him.
“You too?”
“I was wrong to say yes without asking Olya first. But after that, you did the rest yourself. I’ll call you a car. Stay with a friend or go back home. You’ll figure something out until Tuesday.”
“Wonderful. Your own sister turns out to be the unwanted one.”
“Don’t twist it,” Andrey said. “Nobody asked you to leave yesterday. You were asked to leave after you started deciding whose mother was allowed to come here.”
Irina stared at her brother for several seconds as though expecting him to change his mind, then went to pack her bag.
Olga Made Sure to Take Back the Key
Forty minutes later, Irina stood dressed in the hallway. The travel bag was zipped up again, her clothes were packed, and her cosmetics had disappeared from the bathroom.
Olga remembered the key only when Irina was already reaching for the door handle.
“Leave the spare key, please.”
“You think I’m going to come back in the middle of the night?”
“I don’t think anything. That key was given to you for four days last winter.”
Irina removed it from her keyring and handed it to Olga.
Andrey walked his sister downstairs and helped her into the car he had ordered. When he returned, he stood in the kitchen for a long time before finally sitting opposite his wife.
“I should have asked you first.”
“You should have.”
“I thought four days was nothing.”
“Four days were nothing. Everything else was not.”
Andrey did not argue.
On Monday, Olga called a locksmith and asked him to replace the cylinder in the front-door lock. The old key had been in Irina’s possession for several months, and Olga had no intention of trying to find out whether she had ever made a copy.
She kept one new key for herself, gave the second to Andrey, and put the spare away with the rest of the household documents.
Her mother came over the following Sunday. For some reason, she called twice beforehand to make sure it was convenient for her to visit.
Andrey opened the door.
“Lidia Pavlovna, come in. Olya’s in the kitchen.”
She hesitated for a moment in the hallway, then took off her coat, hung it in the wardrobe, and went to see her daughter.
And no one ever asked again why she had come.