Don’t bother rummaging around on the mezzanine shelves, Anya. I took the envelope,” Zinaida Pavlovna said, noisily sipping hot tea from her saucer and smugly adjusting the collar of her washed-out housecoat. “My Vitenka has a debt to pay. The boy’s in trouble. And your Lenka will manage somehow. No need for a girl to sit around in some paid university. Let her go to vocational school and become a hairdresser.”
My mother-in-law’s words hit me like a thunderclap out of a clear sky. I froze in the middle of the room with my hands raised, never reaching the top shelf of the wardrobe. My ears started ringing.
Two years. For two years I had taken extra shifts at the hospital, gone without sleep, saved every kopeck, denied myself everything, and walked around in old winter boots just to save enough for my daughter’s first year at university. My husband, Pasha, earned next to nothing, and his mother, Zinaida Pavlovna, had been living with us “temporarily” for five years already, occupying Lena’s room. And now she was sitting in my kitchen, calmly declaring that she had stolen my savings for the sake of her youngest darling—thirty-five-year-old overgrown loafer Vitya, who had never held a job for longer than a month.
“You… are you out of your mind?” My voice went hoarse with outrage. “That money was for my daughter’s education! What right did you have to go through my things?”
My mother-in-law slammed her cup down on the table. The porcelain gave a pitiful clink.
“What right? The right that we’re family!” she barked, drilling into me with her nasty little eyes. “You have no shame, no conscience, Anka! Vitya is your husband’s brother, his own blood! Debt collectors are standing at his door! And you, a healthy mare, can earn more. Your husband agreed, too. He said his brother was more important than women’s little whims.”
The mention of my husband was the final straw. So Pasha knew. He knew and allowed his mother to rob us. Something inside me snapped, and then a cold, calculating rage rose in its place.
The enemy was pressing on family ties, expecting me to sit down on a stool, burst into tears, and submit, just as I had done for the past fifteen years. But Zinaida Pavlovna had failed to account for one thing: I had noticed long ago how she snooped through my shelves while I was on duty.
I leaned against the doorframe and… burst out laughing. Sincerely, loudly, until tears came to my eyes.
My mother-in-law choked on her tea. Her thin little eyebrows crawled upward.
“What are you cackling about, you lunatic? Has greed finally made you lose your mind?”
At that moment, her old smartphone vibrated on the table. The screen lit up: “Vitenka, my son.” Zinaida Pavlovna smirked triumphantly, grabbed the phone, and immediately put it on speaker so I could hear the gratitude from her beloved “little treasure.”
“Sonny, well? Did you pay those monsters back?” she cooed.
What came from the speaker was not a voice, but the hysterical shriek of a grown man.
“Mama, what have you done?! Who did you decide to mess with?! Those guys at the auto shop almost beat me to death!”
“Vitenka, what happened?” My mother-in-law turned pale. Her hands shook treacherously, and the smartphone nearly slipped from her fingers.
“What happened?!” Vitya screamed so loudly the speaker crackled. “I brought them your envelope, they opened it, and inside were play-money bills from the ‘Joke Bank’! With ‘five thousand doubles’ written on them! Now they’ve put me on a payment clock, Mama—another hundred thousand on top for trying to be clever!”
Zinaida Pavlovna’s face broke out in red blotches. She started gulping air, breathing heavily. The sharp smell of Corvalol filled the kitchen as she tried, with trembling hands, to drip the sedative into a glass of water, but half the drops landed on the tablecloth.
“Anya…” she croaked, staring at me with eyes full of terror. “How could this be… Where is the money?”
“In a bank account, Zinaida Pavlovna,” I said, stepping closer and savoring her panic. “I took it to the bank a week ago. And I left that little envelope for you, you thieving rat. I knew those sticky fingers of yours would reach for it.”
“How dare you?!” my mother-in-law shrieked, clutching at her heart. “They’ll kill him! You have to withdraw the money and save Vitya! Pasha will make you!”
I crossed my arms over my chest. My heart was beating evenly and calmly. I had had enough. Enough of being a victim in my own home.
“Pasha can go save his brother together with you. You have exactly one hour to pack your things and get out of my apartment. Both of you. And take your precious husband with you when he gets home from work. You can live with Vitenka, since you’re such a strong family.”
That evening, a ringing silence filled the apartment. No one muttered over the television in the kitchen. No one demanded that dinner be served. I made myself coffee, sat down at the table, and smiled. Tomorrow I would file for divorce, and my daughter would study where she had always dreamed. As for Vitya and his mother… well, let them pay their debts in “doubles.”