Dividing Mom’s Millions!” Yegor snorted, staring at the closed living room door.
He and Sveta were sitting in the kitchen. Their mother, Elena Sergeyevna, had locked herself in there with the notary half an hour earlier.
“Keep your voice down,” Sveta said, nervously turning her phone over in her hands. “She’ll hear you.”
“Let her. Everything gets decided today anyway. Mom said it herself: ‘I’ll give everyone what they’re owed.’ Finally.”
Sveta winced.
“Not millions. She has this apartment, the country house, and a bank account. It’s not exactly a fortune, but…”
“But it’s better than nothing,” Yegor finished. “I have a loan payment due next month.”
“And I have the mortgage,” Sveta added. “It’s good she helps with that, at least. But it’s time for something bigger.”
“The main thing is that she doesn’t do anything stupid,” Yegor muttered. “With all those… homeless cat charities of hers. She’ll see one flea-bitten creature and leave everything to it.”
The living room door opened.
Elena Sergeyevna stepped out. Calm, upright, wearing a strict dress. Not sick. Not in the slightest.
“Children, come in. Pyotr Ivanovich is ready.”
The room was stuffy. The notary, a dry-looking man in glasses, sat at the head of the table. In front of him lay a single thick white envelope.
Yegor and Sveta sat down. Their mother sat across from them.
“Mommy,” Sveta began, switching on her “caring daughter” voice, “are you sure? We’re so worried…”
“Worried,” Elena Sergeyevna nodded. “I can see that.”
She looked at them for a long time. Studying them. Like an entomologist studying beetles pinned to a board.
“I called you here,” she began evenly, “because I’m tired.”
Yegor tensed.
“Tired of what, Mom? Do you need help? Should I take you to a sanatorium?”
“I’m tired of you.”
The words hung in the stuffy air.
“Mom!” Sveta said, offended.
“I’m tired of the way you wait. Wait for me to stumble. Wait for me to forget to turn off the gas. Wait for my legs to give out.”
“That’s slander!” Yegor jumped up.
“Sit down,” his mother ordered. “You call me on Sundays at exactly twelve. You have a reminder. ‘Mother. 5 minutes.’ Guess how I know? I saw your phone when you went to the bathroom.”
Yegor sat down, red-faced.
“And you, Sveta. You bring me fruit pastila, even though I’m not allowed to eat it because of my diabetes. And while I’m in the kitchen, you check whether Grandma’s earrings are still in place. Do you think I don’t see you wiping dust from the jewelry box with your finger?”
Sveta shrank into her shoulders.
“Neither of you sees a mother in me. You see a resource. An asset. Something to divide.”
She nodded to the notary.
“Pyotr Ivanovich.”
The notary picked up the thick envelope.
The children fell silent.
Their cheerful anticipation, their kitchen cynicism — it all collapsed. Only fear remained.
They expected the will to be read now. Expected that she really was sick after all.
Pyotr Ivanovich carefully slit the edge with a paper knife.
He pulled out… not a document.
He pulled out a stack of thin notebook pages, covered in tight handwriting.
Yegor and Sveta exchanged glances.
“‘Expense Notebook,’” the notary read from the top heading.
“What?” Yegor did not understand.
“This is not a will,” Elena Sergeyevna said calmly. “I’m not dying yet. To your disappointment.”
She looked at the notary.
“Read, Pyotr Ivanovich. From the very beginning.”
The notary cleared his throat.
“September first, two thousand five. Payment for Yegor’s English tutor. Fifty dollars.”
Yegor froze. He had been fifteen then.
“September third, two thousand five. New shoes for Sveta, ‘for the school disco.’ Forty dollars.”
Sveta turned pale. She had been twelve.
“January twentieth, two thousand six. Payment of Yegor’s debt. Smashed a shop window. One hundred and twenty dollars.”
“Mom, what is this?” Yegor whispered. “What are you doing?”
“Me?” Elena Sergeyevna smiled. “Nothing. I’m simply… calculating. I told you, you’ll receive what you’re owed. And to understand what you’re owed, we need to settle the balance.”
The notary continued impassively:
“May fifteenth, two thousand seven. Sveta’s trip to camp. Two hundred dollars.”
“September, two thousand eight. Yegor’s first year at university. Bribe for a mechanics exam credit. Three hundred dollars.”
“Sveta’s wedding. Restaurant. Two thousand dollars.”
“Yegor’s first car. Used Lada. Fifteen hundred dollars.”
“March, two thousand ten. Laptop for Sveta. ‘For studying.’ Six hundred dollars.”
“July, two thousand twelve. Last-minute vacation package for Yegor. ‘Needed to unwind.’ One thousand dollars.”
“January, two thousand fifteen. Purchasing the ‘right connections’ for Yegor to get a ‘job.’ Two thousand dollars.”
The list went on and on.
Every sum they had pulled out of her over the years. Every “help.” Every “Mom, please understand my situation.”
Elena Sergeyevna had written down everything.
“Sveta’s abortion at a private clinic. Seven hundred dollars,” the notary read without emotion.
Sveta cried out and covered her face with her hands.
“Enough! Shut up!”
“Covering Yegor’s card debt. Three thousand dollars.”
“Mom!” Yegor roared. “Stop this circus! You’re humiliating us!”
“I’m humiliating you?” Elena Sergeyevna raised an eyebrow. “I’m simply reading a list of your achievements. Paid for with my money.”
She stood up.
“Pyotr Ivanovich, thank you. You may leave it here.”
The notary carefully folded the pages back into the envelope and placed it in the center of the table.
He stood, nodded, and left the room. Quietly, like a shadow.
Yegor and Sveta sat there, crushed.
“Why…” Sveta raised her red eyes. “Why did you do this?”
“That, my dear, was Act One. Accounting.”
Elena Sergeyevna walked over to the sideboard. She took out… two more envelopes. Thin ones.
She returned to the table.
“And now — Act Two.”
She placed one envelope in front of Yegor. The second in front of Sveta.
“Open them.”
Silence.
The thin white envelopes lay on the polished wood. They seemed heavier than cast-iron weights.
Sveta’s hands trembled. She stared at her envelope but did not touch it.
Yegor looked at his mother. His face flushed in blotches.
“I won’t,” he forced out. “I won’t take part in this… this masquerade.”
“Are you afraid?” Elena Sergeyevna asked calmly.
“I have nothing to be afraid of!” Yegor shouted. “You’re the one who should be afraid! Afraid of being left alone!”
“I am already alone. I was alone when your father left. I was alone when you, Yegor, got yourself into debt, and you, Sveta, cried over your married man. I was a mutual-aid fund. An ATM. But I was always alone.”
Sveta sobbed.
“Mommy, how can you? We love you! This list… this was… this was your duty! You’re a mother!”
“Duty,” Elena Sergeyevna nodded. “Yes. My duty was to raise you. To give you an education. To help you stand on your own feet.”
She looked around the living room.
“I did that. Yegor is thirty-four. Sveta is thirty-one. You are adults. But you are not standing on your own feet.”
She looked at her son.
“You are standing on my neck. And swinging your legs.”
“That’s a lie!” Yegor slammed his fist on the table. The envelope jumped. “I have a job!”
“You have the appearance of a job. A ‘project manager’ without a single project. I know what you asked me for last month for ‘business development.’ You were gambling again.”
Yegor choked on air. He had not known she knew.
“And you, Sveta?” her mother turned to her daughter. “Your husband who sits at home? Your mortgage that I pay?”
“Oleg is going through temporary difficulties!” Sveta shouted.
“For the third year,” her mother cut her off. “He is simply lazy. And you indulge him. And both of you live at my expense.”
She pointed at the envelopes again.
“You came here to divide things. You were cheerful. ‘Dividing Mom’s millions.’ So go ahead. Divide them.”
“What’s inside?” Sveta whispered. “Is it… a bill? Do you want us to return… everything on that list?”
Her eyes widened in horror.
Yegor laughed nervously.
“Oh, come on! Where would we get that kind of money? She’s mocking us!”
He looked at his mother.
“Have you decided to throw us out? Take away the apartment?”
Elena Sergeyevna remained silent. She simply looked at them. And that silence was more frightening than any criticism.
There was no anger in it. No resentment.
There was finality. Like a surgeon deciding to amputate.
“You believed that I owed you,” she said quietly. “That I owed you because I gave birth to you. Because you exist.”
She picked up the first thick envelope from the table, the one with the list.
“I have paid my debts,” she tapped it. “With interest. Bribes. Abortions. Smashed cars. I paid for everything.”
“And now,” her voice turned icy, “let’s see what is owed to you.”
Yegor looked at his envelope. Suddenly he understood.
“There’s nothing in there, is there?” he said hoarsely. “You decided to… zero us out? Leave us with nothing?”
“And what do you have, Yegor?” his mother asked. “Without me? The apartment you live in? Mine. The car? Mine. Even the food in your refrigerator is mine.”
“You… you can’t do this,” Sveta babbled, clutching her chest. “We have… children. Your grandchildren!”
“Grandchildren,” Elena Sergeyevna smirked. “Whom you bring once a month. For exactly three hours. So you can ask for money. Then you take them away because ‘Grandma spoils them.’ No, Sveta. The grandchildren are your last trump card. And it won’t work.”
She stood.
The children flinched.
“I’m going to make myself some tea.”
She walked toward the door.
“When I return, I want these envelopes opened. By you. If you don’t do it, you’ll leave here without them altogether. And you… you very much need to know what’s inside.”
She stopped in the doorway.
“You don’t know the main thing yet.”
“What?” Yegor asked.
“Did you think that notary came only to read out a list?”
Elena Sergeyevna smiled.
“Open them.”
She left the room, quietly closing the door behind her.
The door shut.
In the kitchen, a switch clicked. Water began to rush into the kettle.
Yegor and Sveta sat motionless, staring at the two white rectangles.
“She… she’s insane,” Sveta broke the silence first. Her voice was hoarse from suppressed sobs. “She’s lost her mind.”
Yegor slowly exhaled.
“No. Worse. She is completely sane.”
He looked at his sister. The anger had vanished; only sticky, cold fear remained.
“What did she mean? About the notary?”
“Yegor… What if… what if she really…”
“What ‘really’?” he barked.
“…signed everything away? To cats. To… I don’t know! To that Pyotr Ivanovich!”
Yegor rubbed his face.
“‘Expense notebook’… Do you understand what she was doing? She was collecting compromising material. For years.”
“Why?” Sveta sobbed. “She’s… our mother.”
“She’s an accountant. She was always an accountant, not a mother. Everything calculated.”
From the kitchen came the rising whistle of the kettle.
That ordinary, peaceful household sound seemed sinister in the dead silence of the living room.
“We have to do something,” Sveta whispered. “We have to… stop her. Say that she’s…”
“What?” Yegor looked at her with contempt. “That she isn’t in her right mind? After she just laid out our whole lives by date? Who would believe us?”
The kettle in the kitchen shrieked desperately and then fell silent. The switch clicked.
“She’s coming,” Sveta gripped the armrests.
“Open it,” Yegor ordered.
“I can’t! Yegor, please, don’t! Let’s just… let’s leave!”
“Leave?” Yegor laughed hysterically. “Leave? And where will you go, Sveta? Back to your Oleg? Should I remind you how long you have until the mortgage payment — the one she pays?”
He jabbed a finger at his own envelope.
“And me? I walk out of here now, and tomorrow people will come for me. People I owe.”
He looked at the door.
“She left us no choice. She never leaves us a choice.”
“She said we have to open them,” Sveta stared at the envelopes as if they were snakes.
“Yes. She wants to watch. She wants to enjoy it.”
Yegor picked up his envelope.
His fingers would not obey. He could not hook the edge.
“Come on,” Sveta urged, hearing footsteps in the corridor. “Come on!”
Yegor tore the paper.
He ripped the envelope carelessly, almost in half.
Watching him, Sveta caught the flap of her own envelope with her fingernail.
The living room door began to open.
Yegor shook the contents onto the table.
Sveta pulled out a sheet folded in half.
It was not money. And not a deed of gift.
Elena Sergeyevna entered the room. She was carrying a cup of fragrant tea.
She stopped two steps from the table.
She looked at their faces.
Yegor sat staring at his sheet of paper, completely white. His jaw had dropped. He slowly raised his eyes to his mother. There was no hatred in them. Only shock and… bewilderment.
Sveta did the opposite.
She looked at her mother. Then lowered her eyes to the paper in her hands.
She read it.
And looked at her mother again.
She did not cry.
She opened her mouth, but only a quiet, strangled groan escaped. As if she had been hit in the stomach.
“Well,” Elena Sergeyevna calmly took a sip of tea. “Have you read it?”
Yegor said nothing.
His gaze was fixed on the sheet of paper.
It was not a deed of gift. Not a will.
It was a copy of a purchase and sale agreement.
“What is this?” he whispered, not believing it. “Mom, what is this?”
“This, Yegor, is called liquidation of assets.”
Elena Sergeyevna placed the cup on the table.
“The apartment you live in. The one you were already mentally renovating…”
“I sold it.”
The words fell like stones.
“Sold it?” Yegor’s eye twitched. “To whom?”
“To people. Good people. This morning. Pyotr Ivanovich certified everything.”
She nodded at the paper in his hand.
“That’s your copy. An official notice. You have thirty days to move out.”
“Thirty… days…” Yegor crushed the useless agreement in his fist. “You… you threw me out onto the street?”
“Me?” his mother said, surprised. “I simply sold my property. You are a grown man. You have ‘projects.’ You’ll find somewhere to live.”
She turned to Sveta.
Sveta sat motionless, shrunken.
“And why are you silent, daughter?”
Sveta slowly raised her sheet.
It was shaking.
“I have…” Sveta whispered. “I have here… a bill.”
“Not exactly,” her mother corrected her.
Sveta looked at her in horror.
“Mortgage payment. Overdue. Mom, but you… you always paid on the tenth.”
“I did.”
“And today… is the eleventh.”
“Yes.”
Yegor understood nothing.
“What? What mortgage?”
“This, Yegor, is Sveta’s ‘dowry.’”
Elena Sergeyevna addressed her daughter.
“I made the last payment last month, Sveta. Just as I promised when you took it out. ‘For the first year, until Oleg finds a job.’”
“But… but he hasn’t found one!” Sveta shouted.
“I noticed,” her mother said dryly. “But my year is over. Yours has begun.”
“We don’t have money!” Sveta jumped up. The paper flew to the floor. “You know we don’t! The bank… the bank will take the apartment!”
“Those are your risks. Yours and your husband’s.”
“Mom!” Sveta wailed. “But you have… you have money! You… sold the apartment!”
It dawned on her.
She looked at Yegor. He looked at her too.
Their shock was replaced by a new, shared thought.
The very thought with which they had arrived.
“Money,” Yegor said hoarsely, rising.
“Yes. You’re right, Sveta. I do have money now.”
“From the sale of Yegor’s apartment. And…”
She walked over to the sideboard.
Took her handbag.
“…from the sale of the country house.”
“What?!” the children said in unison.
“The country house?” Yegor clutched the table. “Our country house? Grandpa’s?”
“It was also registered in my name.”
Elena Sergeyevna opened her purse.
She took out her international passport.
Then a ticket.
“You came to divide millions. But you are too late.”
She placed the ticket on the table on top of the Expense Notebook.
Flight. Today. Evening.
“You were waiting for me to die so you could receive an inheritance. I decided not to wait.”
“You’re… leaving?” Sveta sat down again. “Where?”
“What difference does it make?” Elena Sergeyevna shrugged. “Somewhere warm. Somewhere no one is waiting for me.”
“And us?” Yegor asked. His voice was empty. “What about us?”
Elena Sergeyevna looked at him. For a long time.
She walked up to the table.
Picked up the thick envelope with the Expense List.
“And you…” she handed the envelope to Yegor. “May keep this. As a souvenir.”
Yegor recoiled from it as if from fire.
“That is everything you are owed. Memories of how much you cost me.”
“But… you can’t!” Sveta began crying again, but now it was angry, helpless crying. “You are a mother!”
“I was a mother. Now I am simply a woman whose plane leaves in three hours.”
She walked toward the hallway.
“Close the door behind you when you leave. And Yegor.”
He raised dead eyes to her.
“Don’t forget to give the new tenants the keys. Otherwise they’ll change the locks. I left them your number. I told them you were my nephew who is living there temporarily. Deal with it yourself.”
Epilogue
The lock clicked in the hallway.
Yegor and Sveta did not even turn around. They heard the front door open and close. Heard the key turn in the lock.
Their mother was gone.
They sat in deafening silence.
The room smelled of her perfume, Krasnaya Moskva, and cooling bergamot tea.
Sveta stared at one spot. Her sheet lay on the floor. The overdue notice.
Yegor stared blankly at the ticket his mother had left on the table.
Flight: Moscow — Buenos Aires.
She had not even been afraid to leave it there. She knew they would not make it to the airport in time. Knew they would not dare.
“She left,” he said. It was not a question.
Sveta nodded.
“She… she did it.”
Yegor stood. His legs felt weak, as if after a long illness.
He walked to the window.
Down below, in the courtyard, stood a yellow taxi. He saw his mother come out of the entrance.
She did not look back. Not once did she raise her head.
She calmly got into the car, and it drove out of the courtyard, rustling over wet leaves.
“That’s it,” Yegor said. “She’s gone.”
Sveta slowly raised her eyes to him. All her anger, all her resentment had drained away. Only thick gray panic remained.
“What…” she whispered. “What are we going to do now, Yegor?”
Yegor looked at his sister.
“What?”
“Oleg… he’ll… he’ll kill me. The bank. The apartment…”
“And what am I supposed to do?” Yegor interrupted her, and for the first time in many years, not cynicism but real animal fear broke through in his voice. “I have one month.”
He looked at the Expense Notebook their mother had thrown to him.
“She… she didn’t even leave us money. Not a single kopeck.”
“She left you an apartment,” Sveta suddenly said.
“What?” Yegor did not understand.
“She sold your apartment. And our country house.” Sveta began thinking feverishly, her mind grabbing at the last injustice. “The money. She has all the money. And we…”
She looked at her sheet.
“And we have debts.”
They stared at each other.
For the first time in their lives, they were not competitors for their mother’s resources.
They were both… nothing.
“She… crossed us out,” Yegor concluded.
He walked over to the table.
Picked up his torn envelope with the contract.
Picked up Sveta’s notice.
Picked up the plane ticket.
And looked at the thick envelope with the list.
“She was right,” he said quietly.
“About what?” Sveta did not recognize his voice.
“She is an accountant.”
Yegor picked up the Expense Notebook.
“She didn’t just run away.”
He opened the first page.
“Yegor’s tutor. $50.”
“She…” he smiled bitterly. “She wrote us off. Like a loss-making asset.”
Sveta stood.
“I’ll go… I need to go to Oleg. We need to… think of something.”
“Think of something?” Yegor looked at her. “What will you think of, Sveta? Do you know how to do anything except ask Mom?”
“And you?” she snapped back out of habit.
“Me too,” he nodded. “Me too.”
Sveta went to the hallway. Put on her shoes.
She had already opened the door when Yegor called after her.
“Sveta.”
She turned around.
He stood in the middle of the living room, in that expensive apartment that was now someone else’s. In his hands he held that humiliating list.
“She…” he said, looking at the floor, “she isn’t even sick.”
Sveta silently closed the door behind her.
Yegor left the apartment an hour later.
He did not take the list. He left it on the polished table. Beside the ticket and the two empty torn envelopes.
He went down to the courtyard.
Sat on the bench. The very same one where they had played knife games as children.
He took out his phone.
“Mother. 5 minutes.” The reminder was supposed to go off only on Sunday.
He deleted it.
Then he opened his contacts.
“Nikolai. Debt.”
He stared at the number. And did not know what to say.
He suddenly understood that when his mother had been paying off his debts, she had not been saving him. She had simply been delaying the inevitable.
And now it had arrived.
Sveta was riding the bus.
She looked at her reflection in the dark, dirty glass.
Thirty-one years old. A lazy husband. Two children, who were now at their grandmother-in-law’s.
And a mortgage.
For the first time in ten years, she realized she had no safety cushion.
She had no “Mom.”
She felt afraid.
And then angry.
Not at her mother.
At Oleg. At herself.
She got off at her stop. Went up to the apartment.
Oleg was lying on the sofa, watching television.
“Well?” he asked. “Did she give you anything?”
Sveta looked at him.
“Get up,” she said.
“What?” he grimaced in annoyance. “Come in more quietly, I’m watching a show.”
“I said get up. Go look for a job. Right now.”
Oleg sat up in surprise.
“What’s with you, Svet?”
“Mom won’t pay anymore.”
And eight hours later, high above the clouds, a woman was flying.
Elena Sergeyevna reclined her business-class seat.
She ordered a glass of champagne.
The flight attendant brought her the drink with a smile.
“Are you celebrating something?”
Elena Sergeyevna looked at the bubbles in the glass.
She remembered her children’s faces. Shock. Bewilderment. Fear.
She remembered the Expense Notebook.
“Yes,” she said, smiling at the flight attendant. “I am celebrating.”
She took a sip.
“I quit a very difficult job today.”
She turned toward the airplane window.
Down there, below, remained her debts. Her obligations. Her past.
She closed her eyes.
And for the first time in thirty-four years, she felt warmth spread through her. Not from the champagne.
It was simply… relief.