The key wouldn’t work.
Inna stood on the fifth-floor landing with her suitcase at her feet, trying to understand what was wrong. The key slipped into the lock, but after that the metal hit something new—something foreign. She tried again. And again. No use.
She pressed the doorbell.
Footsteps sounded inside. The door opened a crack, held by a chain. In the narrow gap appeared Margarita Pavlovna’s face. Her mother-in-law looked at her the way people look at someone asking for spare change.
“You don’t live here anymore,” Margarita Pavlovna said. “My son dumped you.”
Inna stared at her in silence, then asked:
“What did you say?”
“Kirill decided everything. He changed the lock, and I came to support him. You’re always away—he’s tired. Pack your things and get out.”
The door slammed.
The click of the lock was loud—final.
Inna stood there staring at the door of her apartment. The one she paid for. The one whose documents were in her bag. Without looking away from the door, she pulled out her phone and dialed a number.
“Pyotr Nikolaevich? I need help. Immediately.”
Forty minutes later the lawyer arrived with the local police officer. Inna showed her paperwork—the purchase contract in her name, the registry extract. The officer nodded and wrote something down.
They went upstairs. Inna rang again. Margarita Pavlovna didn’t open right away—something rustled behind the door for about three minutes, then the chain scraped.
“What else do you need? I already told you—”
The officer held up his ID.
“Open the door. You are unlawfully inside someone else’s apartment.”
“Someone else’s? My son is registered here!”
“Registration doesn’t grant ownership,” Pyotr Nikolaevich said. “Open it voluntarily, or we’ll have it forced.”
Margarita Pavlovna tried to argue, but the officer cut in sharply:
“Open it now, or I’m calling a unit. Decide.”
With a grating sound, the chain slid off. The door swung wide.
The entryway smelled wrong—an overly sweet air freshener Inna had never bought. Her mother-in-law’s jacket hung on the rack; her slippers sat on the shelf. Inna walked into the room.
A sofa pillow was wrinkled—pink, covered in tiny flowers. Dirty dishes and scraps cluttered the table. Margarita Pavlovna had moved in. Settled. Made herself comfortable.
“Where’s Kirill?” Inna asked.
“At work,” her mother-in-law said, arms crossed. “He’ll come back and tell you himself.”
“Call him. Tell him to come.”
“I’m not bothering him!”
“Call him,” the officer repeated, “or we’ll contact him ourselves.”
Margarita Pavlovna pressed her lips together, pulled out her phone, and spoke in short, nervous bursts. She ended the call.
“He’ll be here in twenty minutes.”
Inna sat on the edge of the sofa. Margarita Pavlovna paced the room, muttering to herself, but saying nothing aloud. The silence pressed down. The officer stood near the door. Pyotr Nikolaevich flipped through papers.
Fifteen minutes later, a key turned in the lock.
Kirill came in pale, sweat on his forehead. His gaze darted between Inna, his mother, and the officer. He opened his mouth—then said nothing.
“Explain what’s going on,” Inna said quietly.
He swallowed and looked at his mother. Margarita Pavlovna stepped forward:
“Kirill is exhausted by your constant trips, you understand? You earn money while he sits here alone. It’s hard for a man when his wife makes more. You humiliate him with your business trips and your bakery. He works as a driver—modestly—while you keep proving who’s the boss!”
Inna didn’t take her eyes off Kirill.
“Is that true? Is that what you think?”
Silence. He licked his lips and rubbed his face with his palm.
“Mom… don’t.”
“What do you mean, ‘don’t’?” Margarita Pavlovna spun toward him. “Am I lying? You complained to me yourself—you said she doesn’t appreciate you!”
“Mom, please stop.”
“I won’t stop! Say it yourself—are you a man or not?”
Inna stood and stepped right up to Kirill. He backed away until his shoulders hit the wall.
“Kirill,” she said slowly, looking him in the eyes, “did you change the lock on my apartment?”
He stared at the floor.
“And you brought your mother here so she could speak for you?”
Silence.
“Kirill, you’re thirty-seven. Say one word.”
Nothing. Just heavy breathing and restless eyes.
“Leave him alone!” Margarita Pavlovna shoved herself between them. “Kirill, don’t listen to her! We’ll go now—you’ll live with me, and she can sit here alone with her money!”
“Ma’am,” the officer raised a hand, “don’t interfere. Let him answer.”
At last Kirill lifted his head. He tried to smile—weak, crooked.
“Inna, look… can we just talk calmly? I didn’t want it like this…”
“Did you change the lock or not?”
“Well… yes. But Mom advised it—said it would be better while we figure things out…”
“Figure out what?” Inna felt the cold spread inside her. “Figure out that this apartment is mine? That I dragged you along for five years while you went whining to your mother about how hard your life is?”
He went even paler.
“I didn’t whine…”
“Yes, you did!” Margarita Pavlovna snapped. “Don’t lie now!”
Inna turned slowly to her mother-in-law.
“You will pack your things and leave my apartment. Right now.”
“How can you say that? And Kirill?”
“Kirill too.”
“What?!” Margarita Pavlovna lunged forward, but the officer stepped between them.
“Inna, wait,” Kirill mumbled. “We can talk this through…”
“There’s nothing to talk through,” Inna said, and felt a strange calm settle over her. “You made your choice when you changed the lock. When you hid behind your mother’s skirt. You chose. Pack up.”
Margarita Pavlovna screamed for ten minutes—about injustice, about Inna destroying the family, about how she was “the mother” and had rights. Pyotr Nikolaevich patiently explained the law and the rights of the legal owner. The officer added that if she didn’t leave voluntarily, she would be removed.
Her mother-in-law threw her things into a bag with loud thuds, slammed closet doors. Kirill stood in the corner silent, twisting his phone in his hands. Inna sat on the sofa and stared out the window. Nothing tugged at her, nothing ached—only emptiness and relief.
Margarita Pavlovna appeared in the hallway with an overstuffed bag and turned back at the threshold.
“You’ll regret this! He’s a good man, and you never valued him!”
Inna looked up at her.
“A good man doesn’t hide behind someone else,” she said softly. “And he doesn’t change locks in someone else’s home. Leave.”
Her mother-in-law wanted to answer, but the officer nodded toward the door. She stomped out loudly.
Kirill packed a backpack—jacket, documents, charger. He came up to Inna and stopped a couple of steps away.
“Can I call you later?”
Inna studied him for a long moment. She saw what she hadn’t noticed before—weakness, childishness, the habit of dumping responsibility on anyone else as long as it wasn’t him.
“Call me when you grow up,” she said. “If that ever happens.”
He nodded, lowered his head, and left. From the landing, Margarita Pavlovna’s voice was already audible—explaining, justifying, making excuses. Inna closed the door and turned the key.
A new lock—one the locksmith installed while her mother-in-law packed.
She went into the room and threw the window wide open. Cold air rushed in, pushing out the cloying, artificial smell of that чужой air freshener. She gathered the dirty dishes from the table. She shoved the pink flowered pillow into a trash bag. She erased the traces of someone else’s presence methodically, calmly.
Pyotr Nikolaevich explained how to file for divorce and left her his contacts. When he left, Inna sat on the sofa and looked at the empty room.
Quiet. Clean. Hers.
She didn’t cry. She just sat there and understood that she’d spent five years with a man who never grew up—who waited for her to stop being strong instead of becoming support himself.
The next day she filed for divorce.
Kirill didn’t call. Margarita Pavlovna sent a message: “You’ll regret it. You’ll end up alone.” Inna deleted it without replying.
A week later she boxed up his things—the ones he hadn’t taken—and drove them to Margarita Pavlovna’s building. She left the boxes by the door, rang the bell, and walked away without waiting.
A month after that, Inna ran into Margarita Pavlovna’s former neighbor in a store. The woman told her eagerly: Kirill was living with his mother, sleeping on a folding cot in her tiny one-room apartment. They fought every day. Margarita Pavlovna complained to anyone who would listen that her son had turned into a freeloader, that she couldn’t get a moment’s peace, that he sat on his phone all day and did nothing around the house.
Inna listened and felt something light unfurl inside her—almost joyful. Not gloating. Just fairness. Margarita Pavlovna had dreamed of controlling someone else’s life, and instead she ended up stuck with a grown child on her neck—the very child she had raised that way.
Inna thanked the neighbor and walked on—to her car, to her apartment, to her life. A life where no one changed locks, no one resented her success, and no one hid behind someone else’s back.
She simply closed the door.
And it turned out to be easier than she ever thought.