“Tamara Stepanovna, why is there someone else’s key in my lock?” I leaned my forehead against the cold door, feeling everything inside me turn to stone.
From behind the door came a loud crash, like a pot had been dropped, followed by a child’s shrill crying. The door opened just enough for the chain to stretch. In the crack appeared my mother-in-law’s swollen eye.
“Marina? You weren’t supposed to be back until tomorrow… Oh, well, we’re just, um… tidying up.”
“The key,” I repeated. My voice sounded robotic, not my own.
The chain clinked. The door swung open and I was hit by the heavy smell of fried fish and baby powder. In my hallway, where I was used to empty, spotless walls and a couple of my shoes on the shelf, now stood mountains of duffle bags. From the kitchen floated Larisa—Denis’s sister—wearing my silk robe, the one my father gave me. The robe was so tight on her hips that the belt looked like it was tying off a sausage.
“Oh, Marina’s here,” she didn’t even smile. “Denis said you wouldn’t mind. Our heating got shut off back home, the pipes burst, and I’ve got two little ones. What were we supposed to do, sleep at the train station?”
I walked into the living room. My bright sofa was covered with some scratchy, checkered blanket. There were cups with unfinished tea and slobbery bagels on the coffee table. Denis was sitting in the armchair, glued to his phone. He didn’t even bother to look up when I entered.
“Denis?” I stood right in front of him.
“Oh, don’t start, Marina,” he finally deigned to look at me. “They’re family. Just a week. Larisa is really struggling.”
“A week?” I slowly glanced around the room. “Then why are their things in my closet while mine are shoved into bags in the corner? And why is your mother sleeping in our bedroom?”
Tamara Stepanovna appeared behind me like a ghost.
“Marina, why are you being so prickly? It’s a big apartment, three rooms. Is it so hard to let us have a little corner? We’re family, after all.”
I looked at her. A tiny, wiry woman with a piercing gaze. She was the one who’d convinced me three years ago not to sell my grandmother’s apartment, back when Denis and I had just gotten married. “Keep it, dear, it’s your dowry. Somewhere to lay your head.” So I kept it. Used all my bonuses to renovate, made every inch perfect. And now, strangers’ children were running around what was supposed to be my fortress, sticky hands everywhere.
“Family asks permission before barging in,” I said. “Denis, I did not agree to this circus.”
“Circus?” Larisa shrieked so loudly my ears rang. “Mom, did you hear that? She called us a circus! Denis, just look at who you’re married to! A complete Nazi!”
“Alright,” I raised my hand. “Silence, everyone. You have two hours to pack your things and leave. Denis, you’ll help them.”
My mother-in-law’s face suddenly changed. Every trace of friendliness vanished like onion peels.
“You don’t get to boss us around here,” she hissed. “Denis is registered here, which means he has the right to have guests over. And he pays for this place, I know that!”
“My salary card is what pays for the apartment,” I stepped right up to her. “And Denis is only registered here temporarily—he doesn’t have any ownership. As the sole owner, I’m canceling his registration right now. Through the app.”
“You wouldn’t dare!” Denis jumped up, red spots flaring across his face. “Kicking your sister and her kids out at night?”
“I will. Your time starts now.”
I left the room, blood pounding in my ears. In the hallway, I stumbled upon Denis’s nephew trying to draw on my light-colored wallpaper with a marker. I took the marker from him in silence and locked myself in the bathroom.
My hands were cold. I looked in the mirror—a woman stared back at me, a woman who, for three years, had been considered a convenient, free add-on for salary and living space. No more.
I sat in the bathroom for about thirty minutes. I heard Denis yelling at his mother through the door, Larisa dramatically sobbing about her “brother being a doormat.” Tamara Stepanovna was the quietest—she was quickly whispering to her son, and there was steel in her voice.
When I came out, a sinister silence had settled over the apartment. The bags were still in the hallway. In the kitchen, my mother-in-law was calmly making cocoa for the kids.
“Marina, we’re not going anywhere,” Denis stood by the window, arms crossed. “It’s minus twenty outside. Larisa’s car won’t start. File a lawsuit if you want. By the time they make a decision, spring will be here.”
He looked at me defiantly. He knew I hated drama. He knew I always preferred to settle things peacefully. At work, they called me the “Iron Lady” because I could halt an entire shipment of pipes over a single microcrack, but at home, I was a doormat he walked all over for three years.
“So that’s how it’s going to be?” I nodded. “You want to go strictly by the law now?”
“Exactly,” he smirked. “The property is yours, but I have the right to live here. And the kids are little—they won’t be thrown out into the cold.”
I remembered how a year ago he insisted on installing a smart home system. Said it was for my safety while I was away on business trips. Leak sensors, and control of lights, heating, and locks from my phone. He set it all up himself, while I just paid the bills.
“Fine,” I said. “If it’s by the law, then so be it.”
I walked past them toward the door.
“Where are you going?” my mother-in-law shouted.
“To a friend’s. I’m not spending the night in this pigsty.”
I grabbed my travel suitcase, which I hadn’t even unpacked yet, and left, slamming the door behind me.
Outside, Chelyabinsk greeted me with its biting wind and the smell of factory smoke. I got into my Granta, warmed up the engine, and pulled out my phone.
“Hey, Ksyusha?” I called my friend who worked at our condo management company. “Remember you mentioned there were emergency repairs planned on our riser?”
“Hi, Marina. Yeah, they were supposed to start tomorrow—gotta change a shutoff valve in the attic. Why?”
“Start right now. You have my go-ahead as a board member. And Ksyusha… shut off the heat and water only in my apartment. Tell them there’s a suspected emergency, that I’m calling from a business trip, complaining about noise in the pipes.”
“Marina, are you sure? Your husband’s in there.”
“He’s not, Ksyusha. There are strangers who’ve taken over my apartment. Do it.”
Ten minutes later, I saw the emergency crew pull up to my building. I sat in my car and watched.
My phone screen lit up. Denis.
I ignored the call.
He called again. I ignored it again.
Then a message arrived: “They cut our water off. Everything. The radiators are cold. What the hell?”
I opened the smart home app. Denis thought I didn’t know how to use it. What a fool. I’m a quality control engineer—I read instructions before I even open the box.
I hit the “Cut power to apartment” button. Total blackout.
From my car, I saw the lights go out in my seventh-floor apartment.
A few minutes later, Larisa rushed out onto the balcony with a flashlight. She was yelling something down to the workers, but they just shrugged. In Chelyabinsk, at minus twenty, an apartment loses heat in just a couple of hours.
I felt strange. There was no satisfaction, no joy. Just a heaviness in my chest, like I’d become one of those defective pipes I used to send off for melting down.
A call from my mother-in-law.
“Marina! What are you doing?! We’re freezing in here! The kids are crying!”
“Tamara Stepanovna,” I said quietly but clearly. “There’s an emergency in the apartment. The HOA said the repairs will take a week. You can’t stay there—there’s no water, no heat, no electricity. So pack your things and take Larisa to your place. You’ve got a two-bedroom in Leninsky district, there’s enough room.”
“How dare you… I just had my renovations done! I have brand new wallpaper!” my mother-in-law shrieked, and suddenly everything became clear to me.
She didn’t want to bring her daughter to her place so they wouldn’t mess up her “fresh renovations.” My apartment was nothing but a free resource to them, one they didn’t mind using up.
“Goodbye.”
I turned off my phone and headed to the nearest hotel. It was going to be a long night.
In the morning, I arrived at the building with two sturdy guys from the security agency our factory had used for years. I had my registry extract and passport in hand.
Outside the building, my mother-in-law’s car was packed to the brim. Denis was running around the yard, desperately trying to call someone. When he saw me, he rushed over to the car.
“Do you even realize what you’ve done? Mom didn’t sleep all night! Larisa went to stay with a friend in Kopeysk, and the kids caught colds!”
I got out of the car, not even looking at him. The security guys stood behind me.
“Keys on the table, Denis,” I said. “And get out.”
“I’m not going anywhere! This is my home too!”
“Your home is where your conscience is,” I replied, turning to one of the guards. “Dmitry, come upstairs with me. We need to document the property damage.”
It was freezing in the apartment. My breath made visible puffs in the air. On the kitchen table lay the very tablecloth colored with markers and a pile of dirty dishes. Tamara Stepanovna was sitting on my couch in a fur coat, surrounded by her bags.
“So you came,” she rasped. “Happy now? You destroyed the family.”
“Greed destroyed this family,” I said, walking to the closet. My bags were shoved deep inside, some of them torn. “You decided that just because I was silent, I was spineless. You were wrong.”
“Marina, please, I’m sorry,” Denis suddenly changed his tone. He came over and tried to take my hand. “We crossed the line, yeah. It happens. Let’s just turn on the lights, warm up… Mom will leave today, I promise.”
I looked at his hand—the same one he hugged me with, and the same one he used to sign the agreement for his sister’s ‘temporary’ stay behind my back.
“No, Denis. There’s nothing to forgive. Yesterday you didn’t choose me. You chose their comfort at my expense. Now I choose myself.”
I waited until they carried out the last bag. At the door, my mother-in-law turned around and spat at my feet.
“Hope this dump brings you nothing but emptiness!” she hissed.
“It’ll finally be quiet here,” I replied. “And that’s worth much more.”
Once the door closed behind them, I called the locksmith. He changed the lock cylinder in fifteen minutes. Then I called Ksusha at the HOA.
“Turn it on,” I said.
The pipes shuddered and hot water started flowing. Light filled the hallway. I went to the kitchen and tossed the filthy tablecloth straight into the trash chute.
I took a faceted glass from the cupboard, poured myself some cold water, and drank it in one go. The apartment smelled of smoke and something unfamiliar, but a few hours of cleaning would fix that.
I sat down at my laptop and started searching for jobs in another city. Yekaterinburg caught my eye—they were looking for a head of the quality control department at a large holding. The salary was higher, and they offered accommodation.
I uploaded my resume. When I got to the marital status section, I started to type ‘divorced’, but then changed it to ‘in process’.
Then a message popped up from Denis: “I forgot my razor charger. Bring it to work tomorrow.”
I looked at his old charger, lying on the floor. I picked it up and threw it straight into the trash.
I typed out a message: “I’m filing for divorce tomorrow at ten. Your things are in a storage locker at the train station, and the key is under your mother’s doormat. Don’t contact me again.”
I hit send and immediately turned off my phone.
A tram rumbled by outside. I walked to the window and pressed my forehead against the glass. Chelyabinsk shimmered with lights, so harsh and cold. But for the first time in a long while, I felt warm.