“From now on, pay for your own whims!” Vera declared after her mother-in-law’s treacherous act.
“Are you seriously giving me an empty gift box?” the mother-in-law cried indignantly as she removed the lid.
Nina Andreevna stared inside for several seconds, as if hoping the expensive gold jewelry was simply hidden deeper beneath the thin layer of festive paper. She even lifted the box and shook it. But it was completely empty—not a rustle, not a sound.
“That’s my gift,” Vera replied calmly, looking her mother-in-law straight in the eyes. “That’s exactly how much you’ll be getting from me from now on, after what you did.”
Nina Andreevna slowly lowered the box onto the table. Her face first turned pale, then became blotchy red. She abruptly rose from her chair, drawing breath for an angry tirade, but familiar footsteps—her son’s—could already be heard in the hallway.
Vera did not look away.
She waited.
It had all begun long before that evening.
Vera worked as the chief accountant at a large construction company—a position she had earned not through connections, but through seven years of painstaking work. She knew how to manage money, prepare reports, and keep dozens of figures in her head at once.
But when it came to family, numbers took a back seat.
After marrying Maxim, Vera genuinely wanted to become part of his family.
Nina Andreevna had retired shortly before they met and lived alone in an old three-bedroom apartment. Every time they saw each other, she made a point of mentioning how difficult her life was.
“Alone, completely alone,” she would say, resting her cheek on her palm. “The apartment is big, but my pension is small. The windows let in drafts, and the refrigerator is barely hanging on.”
Vera listened—and helped.
At first, it seemed only natural.
She paid to have the windows replaced before winter, then bought a new refrigerator, and later brought expensive blood-pressure medication several times.
Maxim thanked his wife quietly but sincerely.
Over time, however, the requests became more substantial.
Vera paid for a complete bathroom renovation, including the tiles they spent three straight hours choosing together at a large home-improvement store. Nina Andreevna stood in front of the sample displays for ages, putting one option aside and then changing her mind.
“This light-colored one seems all right,” she said uncertainly.
“Choose whichever one you like,” Vera replied.
Then came a new sofa, a kitchen set, and a trip to a health resort in the Caucasian Mineral Waters region. Vera spent hours waiting in lines at the public services office, arranging paperwork for the apartment renovation. She helped move furniture and bought groceries for her mother-in-law’s anniversary celebration.
Every New Year and every birthday, Vera gave Nina Andreevna a substantial amount of cash in a beautiful box with a card.
But her mother-in-law never said a simple “thank you.”
At the family table, she invariably said the same thing:
“Money is nice, of course. But a real wife should think less about her career and more about her family. About children.”
And she almost always added:
“Marina was such a domestic girl. She dreamed of having children, never argued. Quiet, cozy.”
Marina was Maxim’s ex-girlfriend.
Vera had heard the name so many times that eventually she stopped reacting.
Almost.
Marina returned to the city at the beginning of autumn after getting divorced, as Nina Andreevna mentioned casually, as though it were nothing important.
“Poor girl,” she said over tea. “Her husband turned out to be the wrong kind of man. She came back and is renting an apartment. All alone.”
Vera nodded and thought nothing of it.
But about a month later, she began noticing strange things.
Maxim started visiting his mother more often in the evenings, without any particular reason—just to “drop by and help with something.”
Nina Andreevna began calling her son frequently, insisting that he come over for dinner.
“Mom baked a pie,” Maxim would say while putting on his jacket. “She misses me.”
Vera did not go with him.
She was tired after work, and Maxim assured her he would not be gone long.
One day, Vera decided to stop by herself and bring the groceries her mother-in-law had asked for.
She filled several bags at the supermarket and drove to the familiar apartment building.
Vera went upstairs and rang the bell.
No one answered.
She went back outside and moved toward the edge of the courtyard, where a small window gave her a view of the kitchen. The light was on inside, and she could hear laughter.
She looked through the window.
Three people were sitting at the table.
Nina Andreevna was pouring tea and smiling—truly smiling, broadly, in a way Vera had almost never seen.
Beside her sat Maxim.
Opposite them was a young dark-haired woman, laughing with one hand covering her mouth.
Marina.
Vera stood motionless for several seconds.
Then she went back downstairs, left the bags of groceries by the door, and drove away.
Silently.
Without sending a single message.
After that evening, everything became increasingly obvious.
Maxim lied several times about late meetings at work.
Nina Andreevna once arranged a “small family evening” without telling Vera, yet Marina was there.
Vera’s friend Tanya sent her a photograph with a message:
“Isn’t that Maxim at Bukvoed?”
In the photo, he was standing by a bookshelf next to a dark-haired woman.
Vera put all the pieces together.
The picture was clear.
She spoke to Maxim one evening.
She simply asked him to explain.
He remained silent for a while, then admitted that his mother had been repeating the same thing for months.
“She kept telling me, ‘At least talk to Marina,’” he said without looking up. “Maybe the two of you were too quick to break up back then. I didn’t want a scandal with you or with Mom.”
“There was no affair,” he added.
“I believe you,” Vera replied evenly. “But the worst part isn’t even the meetings. The worst part is that the person I helped for all these years was spending that entire time thinking about how to remove me from your family.”
Maxim said nothing.
There was nothing he could say.
The next morning, Nina Andreevna called.
Her voice had its usual plaintive tone.
“Vera, please help me out. I found this wonderful massage recliner chair. It’s very good for the back. My pension isn’t enough, as you know. Add two hundred thousand, and I’ll somehow come up with the rest myself.”
Vera was silent for a second.
“Of course,” she said calmly. “I’ll stop by this evening.”
Before visiting, Vera went into a jewelry store.
She bought a beautiful box—velvet, dark blue, with gold embossing. The sort of box normally used for expensive jewelry.
Inside, she placed only a sheet of white paper folded into quarters.
Then she closed the lid.
At Nina Andreevna’s apartment, the table had been set for tea.
Her mother-in-law kept glancing at the box Vera had placed at the edge of the table.
They talked about nothing in particular—the weather, health, neighbors.
Finally, Nina Andreevna could no longer restrain herself and reached for the box.
She opened it.
She stared inside for a long time.
Then she looked up.
“Where’s the money?”
“Everything you deserve is in there,” Vera replied calmly.
Nina Andreevna started to say something, but Vera continued.
“I paid for the renovation of your apartment. I bought your furniture, refrigerator, and kitchen cabinets. I brought you medicine. I paid for your health-resort trip. I helped you with your car. For years, I gave you money on holidays. I spent hours waiting in lines to sort out your paperwork.”
Nina Andreevna remained silent.
“All that time, you accepted my help while simultaneously looking for a woman you wanted to replace me with. Fine. From now on, buy your own furniture, vacations, and gifts. And don’t call me asking for money anymore.”
The lock clicked in the hallway.
Maxim entered.
He stopped in the kitchen doorway and silently looked from one woman to the other.
Vera did not turn around.
“You destroyed the trust yourself, Mom,” he said quietly. “You did this yourself.”
A week later, Vera and Maxim left for Karelia.
They simply got into the car and headed north.
Vera looked out the window at the pine trees and gray boulders along the roadside and thought about how long it had been since the two of them had gone anywhere alone together.
In the evenings, they sat by the water.
They talked.
“I knew Mom was going too far,” Maxim admitted one day, looking out over the lake. “But every time, it seemed easier to stay quiet.”
“Silence is a choice too,” Vera replied.
He nodded.
He did not argue.
While they were in Karelia, Maxim wrote his mother a long message.
He told her that his meetings with Marina were over.
That interference in their marriage was no longer open for discussion.
That he loved his mother, but he would no longer allow her to use that love as leverage.
Nina Andreevna called Vera three more times.
The first time, she complained about a leaking faucet.
The second time, she hinted that a good winter coat was expensive.
The third time, she directly asked for money for a new vacuum cleaner.
Each time, Vera gave the same calm, brief reply.
“No, Nina Andreevna. That isn’t in my plans.”
Her mother-in-law would fall silent.
Then she would call Maxim instead.
But she received the same firm answer from him.
Gradually, she began mentioning the things she wanted to buy less and less.
Her familiar wish list became shorter—not because the desires had disappeared, but because there was no longer someone willing to pay for them.
Nina Andreevna came to visit on her own at the end of February.
She called beforehand and asked whether she could stop by. No requests. No lists.
She sat in the kitchen for a long time in silence, holding her cup with both hands.
Then she began speaking quietly, with visible effort, as though every word were difficult for her.
“For years, I kept thinking about Marina. I thought she would have been better. Calmer. Easier. But I didn’t notice that I had invented something that never really existed, while destroying what actually did exist. Forgive me, Vera. If you can.”
Vera was silent for a moment.
“I accept your apology,” she finally replied. “But everything else will remain as it is.”
Nina Andreevna nodded.
She did not seem to expect anything different.
From then on, Vera and Maxim visited his mother on holidays with cake, flowers, and fruit.
No envelopes.
As for the dark-blue velvet box, Vera put it away in a drawer of her desk.
Sometimes she would open the drawer and catch sight of it from the corner of her eye—a small reminder of the day she finally stopped trying to buy someone else’s approval and learned to stand up for herself.