Vera decided to meet her husband at the airport for the first time in sixteen years. She arrived an hour early and saw him in a café. He was holding hands with a gray-haired woman and laughing in a way she hadn’t seen at home in a very long time.
Vera always arrived early: to the train station, to the doctor, to parent meetings, even to her own wedding. This time, that extra hour would cost her sixteen years of marriage—but as she parked on the third level, she had no idea.
The morning started as usual.
The kitchen smelled of dough and fried onions. Vera stood at the stove in her old flannel robe, a button missing at the waist, making dumplings and lining them up perfectly, eight in a row. Gleb loved lamb dumplings. He always said that during his business trips, he ate only buckwheat and canteen cutlets, so on the day he returned, something homemade was always on the table. That was the tradition. Vera ran many traditions, and kept up with all of them.
A note was stuck to the fridge with a plane-shaped magnet. In her neat, pressed handwriting: “Flight 18:40. Koltsovo. Taxi yourself.” And below it, in a slightly different colored pen: “Shirts are in the closet, don’t take the blue one.”
“Mom, why are you making so many?” Sonya came into the kitchen wearing headphones, pulling one down to her neck. “Dad is just one person.”
“Dad’s hungry.”
“Dad’s an adult. He can boil dumplings himself. From a package.”
“He won’t eat from a package.”
Sonya opened the fridge, stared inside as if watching a movie, and closed it without taking anything. She was sixteen, one meter sixty-eight, three centimeters taller than her mother, and proud of it. Her hair was dyed ashy, with her natural chestnut roots already growing in.
“He didn’t even eat last time,” her daughter said. “He just came in, said ‘thanks, Vera,’ and went to bed.”
“He was tired.”
“He’s always tired.”
Vera didn’t reply. The flour on her fingers dried and tightened her skin, so she rubbed her palms together, the white crumbs falling onto the cutting board. Sixteen years. Gleb had been going on business trips for the last nine of them, two weeks a month, sometimes three. An engineer setting up equipment at bakeries: Novosibirsk, Moscow, Perm, Tyumen. He always came back gray, smelling of airplane coffee and strange hotels, kissed her on the temple, left his bag in the entryway, and showered. For a long time. Sometimes forty minutes.
She kept count. She always kept count.
“Listen,” Vera wiped her hands on a towel. “What if I meet him this time?”
Sonya pulled out her other earbud.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, go to the airport. With flowers. Like in the movies.”
“Mom, you’ve never once met him in sixteen years.”
“Exactly.”
Her daughter looked at her closely, almost like an adult, and that look made Vera uncomfortable. As if she’d been caught at something. At what? For wanting to do something nice for her own husband?
“He doesn’t like surprises,” Sonya said.
“How do you know?”
“He said so. Like when you planned that restaurant for his fortieth, but he wanted to go fishing.”
Vera remembered that restaurant: twelve guests, a cake with numbers, toasts. Gleb smiled all evening, but in the car on the way back he said, “Thanks, Vera. Really.” And was silent all the way home. She had thought he was touched.
“He showed the photos to everyone for a month,” Vera said.
“You showed them,” Sonya corrected. “He was just standing next to you.”
By lunch, the dumplings were in the freezer in three bags, labeled with marker. Vera showered, dried her shoulder-length dark chestnut hair, and spent a long time choosing what to wear. Mustard coat, bought last spring and worn only twice. Gleb had said it was bright. She never figured out if that was praise or not.
The flower shop by the metro smelled of damp earth and chrysanthemums. The clerk in a green apron asked, “Who are they for?”
“My husband.”
“Your husband?” The clerk smiled. “I hear that rarely. Usually it’s the other way—it’s husbands buying for wives.”
“He’s flying back from a business trip.”
“Tulips then. Yellow ones. Men don’t like roses; they feel awkward holding them.”
Vera took nine yellow tulips. The stems were cold and squeaked as the clerk wrapped them in craft paper. Vera carried the bouquet like a cake, careful not to spill it.
The app on her phone said: flight from Moscow, on time, 18:40. She left at 16:50. The drive would take forty minutes, fifty to be safe. But Vera knew herself: better to stand by the arrivals board than rush in with a twisted face at the last minute.
Trucks rumbled along the Koltsovsky highway. The sky was low and March-gray, with a yellow stripe on the horizon. The car smelled of tulips and a bit of gasoline. Hanging from the mirror was a trinket she put there five years ago: a tiny icon and an amber bead.
All the way there, Vera rehearsed.
She pictured Gleb coming through the sliding doors, tired, his bag over his shoulder, in his gray jacket with the worn left cuff. Seeing her. How his face would change. What would he say? “Vera, what are you doing here?” Or maybe he’d just hug her. He hadn’t hugged her in a long time, not that she remembered.
The arrival hall was bright and loud. It smelled of coffee, wet shoes, and something sweet from the bakery. Vera checked the clock above the board: 17:38. Exactly an hour until landing, maybe a bit less.
She walked to the board, found her flight. “Moscow. 18:40. On time.” Above it: “Moscow. 16:05. Arrived.”
She didn’t pay attention to that flight. Why would she?
People crowded the fence with name signs. A woman in a puffy jacket cradled a four-year-old boy, who chewed on a bagel. Two men in work overalls argued about a railcar. Vera put her bag by her feet, shifted the bouquet, and realized she wanted coffee. Not because she was tired. She just needed something for her hands to do.
The café was to the right of the exit, behind a low glass partition with fake ivy. Wooden tables, pies under domes, a hint of cinnamon in the air. Vera went to the counter, opened her wallet, and looked up.
At a far table by the window sat Gleb.
At first she didn’t believe it. Man in a blue sweater, short gray-streaked hair, broad shoulders, slightly slouched. Could be anyone. Then he turned his head and she saw the scar above his right eyebrow, a thin white line he got at nineteen falling off a bike. She kissed that scar their first night together.
Gleb was laughing.
Not like he did at home, watching sitcoms with Sonya. Not politely, with just his mouth. He laughed with his whole body, leaning back in his chair, covering his eyes with his hand—a gesture she hadn’t seen in ten years, maybe more.
Sitting across from him was a woman.
She was older. Much older. Her gray braid lay over her shoulder, thick, almost to her waist, tied with a black rubber band. A gray knitted cardigan, thin wrists. Vera couldn’t see much of her face—the woman sat turned slightly to the window.
And Gleb held her hand.
Covered it with his palm, not letting go. He stroked her knuckles slowly, back and forth, with his thumb.
“Miss, can I help you?” the barista asked.
Vera didn’t answer. Her fingers gripped the bouquet so tight the paper crunched.
“Miss?”
“Nothing. Thank you.”
She stepped behind a column. Her back pressed to the cold marble. Her heart didn’t ache—nothing like that—just suddenly it was hard to swallow, her mouth dry. Vera swallowed. Again.
He arrived on the 16:05 flight. Has been sitting here for an hour and a half. With her.
Who is she?
Theories lined up in her head quickly and neatly, like dumplings on a board. A colleague? What kind of colleague is over sixty? A fellow traveler? People don’t hold hands with fellow travelers. A lover? The woman was old enough to be his mother.
Vera peeked out from behind the column.
The gray-haired woman was talking, gesturing. Gleb listened, propped his cheek on his fist, nodded. There were two cups and a plate of pastries on the table. One pastry was bitten. Gleb ate cabbage ones—only cabbage. Vera baked him meat pies for twelve years before he said he didn’t really like them.
She pulled out her phone. Her hands wouldn’t cooperate; she tapped the contacts app twice.
Ringing. Second ring. Through the glass, she saw Gleb look down at his pocket, pull out his phone, check the caller. His face changed. His shoulders rose, he straightened up, the smile gone—like water soaking into sand.
“Yeah, Vera.”
“Hey. Where are you?”
“Domodedovo. Sitting at the gate. Boarding soon.”
Vera watched him from across the hall. He was twenty meters away, back to the window, outside which a plane landed.
“No delays?” she asked.
“None, it seems. Why are you calling?”
“Just made dumplings.”
“With lamb?”
“With lamb.”
“Thanks, Vera. Got to go, they’re calling us.”
He put the phone face down. The gray woman asked something, he shook his head, rubbed his nose with two fingers. Then took her hand again.
Vera headed for the exit.
Not quickly. Steady, trying not to be noticed. The tulips dragged down her arm, and right by the door she saw a trash can, stopped, but couldn’t bring herself to do it. She ended up taking the bouquet to the car, setting it on the back seat like something that wasn’t hers.
At home, Sonya sat on her windowsill, legs tucked up.
“So?” she yelled from her room. “Did you meet him?”
“The flight’s delayed.”
“And the flowers?”
“In the car.”
Vera went to the kitchen and turned on the kettle. Stood watching the first bubbles form on the side. Ran tap water into a glass, raised it to her lips, put it back down without drinking.
Why did she leave? She should have gone over. Sat next to him. Put the flowers on the table, said “hi,” and watched what he would do. Any normal woman would have.
But she couldn’t. Her legs refused. Something inside knew: if she went over, she’d have to hear the answer.
At 20:25, the entryway lock clicked. Vera jumped so hard her spoon clattered against her cup.
“I’m home,” Gleb said.
He came in, smelling of street and a little cinnamon. He set his bag down, hung his coat. Kissed Vera on the temple. Dry. Routine.
“How was the flight?” she asked.
“Fine. Some turbulence over Kazan.”
“Bad?”
“Bearable.”
She watched him wash his hands over the kitchen sink, even though there was a bathroom nearby. He always washed his hands in the kitchen. For a long time, with soap, up to the elbows like a surgeon.
“I’ll cook the dumplings,” Vera said.
“Don’t, Vera. I ate on the plane.”
“But that’s just chicken and rice.”
“Yeah, chicken and rice.”
He lied so easily it made her jaw clench. Cabbage pastries. Cinnamon. Gray braid.
“Sonya was asking about you,” she said.
“I’ll go see her.”
He went to their daughter. Vera heard them talking from the hallway. Sonya was laughing. Gleb was telling a story about a nervous passenger who held a stewardess by the sleeve the whole flight. Passenger. Stewardess. He was making it up, and it sounded smooth.
She took a bag of dumplings from the freezer, looked at her marker note: “lamb, 48 pcs.” and put it back.
That night, Gleb slept on his back, arm thrown behind his head. Vera lay beside him listening to his deep, even breaths. Could someone who lies sleep that well? She’d always thought liars slept badly.
His bag was in the entryway. She knew it, without seeing. The side pocket zipper, where he kept documents.
Don’t, Vera told herself. That’s low.
At 2:40 she got up, put on her robe, and went to the entryway.
The boarding pass was in the side pocket, folded into quarters. Vera unfolded it in the kitchen light. “Moscow. Yekaterinburg. Departure 12:20.” Not the evening one. A midday flight.
Below it was something else: a little clear bag, inside a dried sprig of lavender tied with string and a folded note on notebook paper. Vera opened it. Large, careful script with a curly letter “d”: “Glebushka, don’t forget your blood pressure pills this time. I’ll check. F.”
F.
She read the note three times. Glebushka. Maybe only his mom called him that as a child. Vera didn’t know. She’d met his mother only a few times, long ago, and things ended badly—better not to remember.
In the pocket were also an old receipt, some paper clips, and a café bill. Two Americanos, four cabbage pastries. Date. Time: 16:32.
And then Vera did something she’d never done. Took his phone from the hallway table where it was charging. She knew the password: Sonya’s birthday. He’d never changed it.
Under “F.” in contacts there were three: Fyodor Sergeyevich, his boss in Tyumen. “Window firm” with the installer’s number. And just “F.” No surname. A number starting with 9008.
No texts with “F.” at all. Just calls. Vera scrolled through the call log: every week, sometimes twice. Sundays, always, at seven in the morning, when she was still asleep. Twenty minutes. Forty.
She put the phone back, face down as he’d left it. Stood in the dark. The fridge hummed in the kitchen, water trickled in the neighbors’ pipes.
What are you doing, Vera? Checking your husband’s pockets at night. Like in a bad soap opera.
But her hand remembered the lavender bag, prickly through the plastic.
She went back to bed and lay there until morning, staring at the ceiling, where the streetlight painted a yellow square. The square faded by six.
In the morning, Gleb made coffee himself. He rarely got out the cezve—he said it took too much fuss.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, setting the cup in front of her.
“What’s wrong with me?”
“You look pale.”
“Didn’t sleep well.”
“High blood pressure again?”
“I don’t have high blood pressure, Gleb. You do.”
He raised an eyebrow over the scar.
“Says who?”
“You take pills.”
“What pills?”
Just like that. Calmly, without missing a beat. Vera stirred the coffee, though she hadn’t put in any sugar.
“Never mind,” she said. “I must’ve imagined it.”
“You imagine a lot.”
He said it without malice, almost playfully, and turned to the window. Outside, the maintenance man in an orange vest was knocking icicles from the porch awning with a long stick. The icicles fell and shattered with a crash.
Vera watched her husband’s back.
When did he become like this? Or was he always, and she just never saw? Sixteen years she knew everything about him. What toothpaste he liked, how much salt in his soup, why he avoided meat pies. Well, not the meat pies—she only found out about those after twelve years. How many other meat pies were there?
After breakfast, Gleb went to the office to turn in a report. Vera was alone. Sonya left for school, slamming the door so hard a scarf fell from the rack.
Vera called her friend.
Lida worked as a senior nurse at the clinic and talked like she was dictating for a patient file: short, to the point, diagnosis at the end.
“So. Gray hair, you say?”
“Gray. Braid down to the waist.”
“How old?”
“Almost seventy. Maybe a bit less.”
“Okay. And he held her hand?”
“Yes, Lida.”
“Well, I don’t know. Could be a client. Maybe from some charity. Men help with charities now.”
“They don’t talk to clients for forty minutes on the phone at seven in the morning.”
Lida was silent. Vera could hear someone knocking on her door on the other end.
“Vera. Don’t overthink. Find out first.”
“How?”
“Ask directly. Like everyone does.”
“And if he lies?”
“He already lied. It won’t be worse.”
“Yes, it will, Lida. It will be, if he tells the truth.”
Her friend didn’t reply. Then a sigh:
“Alright, I have a line outside. I’ll call tonight. Hang in there.”
Vera put her phone on the table. It lay there, screen up, silent.
Gleb’s next business trip was in eleven days. Perm. Vera knew—she’d written it herself in the calendar on the fridge.
Those eleven days felt like walking a tightrope. She made breakfast every morning. Worked during the day—she handled bookkeeping for three small companies from home, and her numbers lined up as always. Dinner in the evening, TV, small talk.
Gleb seemed the same. Or did she simply not remember him well as he was?
She started noticing things. How he checked his phone every Sunday morning, stepping onto the balcony in just his socks, even though it was minus five outside. How long he took in the shower. How, when she asked, “Do you love me?” he replied, “Vera, come on, what kinda question is that,” and it was neither yes nor no.
Once she asked:
“Gleb, when was the last time you thought of your mother?”
He was slicing bread. The knife froze in the middle of the loaf.
“Why ask?”
“Just… Sonya wanted to know for a school family tree.”
“Tell Sonya she has no grandmother.”
“But she does, Gleb. She’s alive somewhere.”
He put the knife down, blade pointing toward the wall.
“Vera. You said it back then: it’s her or us. Remember?”
“I remember.”
“So that’s that.”
He left the kitchen. The bread stayed half cut, crust sticking out.
Vera remembered. Of course she did. Their wedding, the Malyshova café, fifty guests. Gleb’s mother, Faina, came drunk. Bright red hair, purple lipstick, a shiny dress. First she sang, then she cried, then started fighting with Vera’s mom over who loved whom more. At the end of the night, an envelope with money—thirty thousand from Vera’s aunt—went missing from the gift pile. They found it in Faina’s purse. Faina screamed she hadn’t taken it, she’d been set up, Vera was a snake.
Then came two more years—the phone calls at night, requests for loans, her drunken visit to the hospital after Sonya was born. So Vera said: it’s her or us. One on one, in the hospital hallway, holding her swaddled daughter.
Gleb chose them.
He stopped visiting his mother. Stopped calling, at least in front of her. Never mentioned her. Vera thought that freed him. She really did.
And now: gray braid. “Glebushka.” The letter F.
No. Can’t be. That old Faina was red-haired, loud, purple-mouthed, and rough-voiced. The woman at the airport was quiet, in a gray cardigan, her hands thin and almost transparent.
People don’t change that much.
Or do they?
On the day of the next business trip, Gleb left for the airport at 7:15 am. Vera got up with him, made sandwiches, packed them in a container. He watched her with a strange expression.
“You’re not sleeping?”
“I can’t sleep.”
“Vera, are you okay?”
“And you?…Continued just below the image in the first comment on this post..”
For the first time in sixteen years, Vera decided to meet her husband at the airport after his business trip. She arrived an hour early and saw him in a café. He was holding hands with an older, gray-haired woman and laughing in a way she hadn’t seen at home for a long time.
Vera had arrived at the airport an hour early because she always did. Whether it was the train station, the doctor’s office, school meetings, or even her own wedding—she was always early. This time, that extra hour would cost her sixteen years of marriage, but as she parked on the third level, she had no idea yet.
But the morning had started out just like any other.
The kitchen was filled with the smell of dough and fried onions. Vera stood by the stove in her old flannel robe, a button missing at the belly, making dumplings and arranging them neatly on the board, eight at a time in each row. Gleb loved lamb dumplings. He always said that on his business trips he ate nothing but buckwheat and canteen meatballs, so whenever he came home, there had to be something homemade on the table. That was the rule. Vera was someone who made lots of rules—and stuck to them.
A piece of paper was pinned to the fridge with a plane-shaped magnet. In her small, pressing handwriting: “Flight 18:40. Koltsovo. Taxi yourself.” Underneath, in a slightly different pen color: “Shirts in the closet, don’t take the blue one.”
“Mom, why are you making so many?” Sonya walked into the kitchen with her headphones on, pulling one down to her neck. “Dad’s just one person.”
“Dad’s hungry.”
“Dad’s a grown man. He can cook dumplings himself. From a pack.”
“He won’t eat them from a pack.”
Sonya opened the fridge and stared inside for a long time, as if it was showing a movie, then closed it without taking anything. She was sixteen, already one hundred sixty-eight centimeters tall—three centimeters taller than her mom—and proud of it. Her hair was dyed ash-blonde, but her natural chestnut roots had started to grow in.
“Last time, he didn’t eat any at all,” her daughter said. “He just came home, said ‘thank you, Vera,’ and went straight to sleep.”
“He was tired.”
“He’s always tired.”
Vera didn’t answer. The flour on her fingers had dried, tightening her skin, and she rubbed her palms together, shaking off white flakes onto the board. Sixteen years. Gleb had been traveling for the last nine of them, two weeks every month, sometimes three. He was a specialist who set up equipment at bakeries: Novosibirsk, Moscow, Perm, Tyumen. When he came home, he looked gray, smelled of airplane coffee and strange hotels, kissed her on the temple, left his bag in the hallway, and went to take a shower. A long one. Sometimes up to forty minutes.
She kept count. She counted everything.
“Listen,” Vera wiped her hands on a towel. “What if I meet him?”
Sonya took out her other earbud.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, literally. I’ll go to the airport. With flowers. Like in the movies.”
“Mom, you haven’t met him once in sixteen years.”
“Exactly.”
Her daughter looked at her closely, in a way that seemed beyond her years, and Vera felt uneasy under that glance. As if she’d been caught at something. But at what? For wanting to do something nice for her own husband?
“He doesn’t like surprises,” Sonya said.
“How do you know?”
“He told you. Remember when you booked a restaurant for his 40th birthday, but he wanted to go fishing instead?”
Vera remembered this restaurant well. Twelve guests, a birthday cake with a number, toasts all around. Gleb smiled the entire evening, and on the way home in the car he said, “Thank you, Vera. Really.” Then he stayed silent all the way back to the house. She figured he was simply touched by it all.
“He spent the whole next month showing those photos to everyone,” Vera said.
“You were the one showing them,” Sonya corrected her. “He was just standing beside you.”
By lunchtime, the dumplings were stashed in the freezer, packed in three bags marked with a permanent marker. Vera took a shower, dried her shoulder-length dark chestnut hair, and spent a long time choosing what to wear. The mustard-colored coat she’d bought last spring and worn only twice, as far as she could recall. Gleb had commented that it was bright. She still wasn’t sure if that was meant as a compliment or not.
The flower shop near the metro smelled of damp earth and chrysanthemums. The shopkeeper in a green apron looked at her and asked:
“Who are the flowers for?”
“My husband.”
“For your husband?” the shopkeeper repeated with a smile. “That’s rare. Usually it’s the other way around—husbands buying for their wives.”
“He’s coming back from a work trip.”
“Then tulips. Yellow ones. Men don’t like roses—feels awkward for them to hold roses.”
Vera picked out nine yellow tulips. Their stems were cold and creaked as the shopkeeper wrapped them in kraft paper. Vera carefully carried the bouquet like one would hold a cake, large and level, and walked toward her car as if she could spill something if she didn’t.
Her phone app showed the flight from Moscow—on time, scheduled landing at 18:40. She left at 16:50. The drive would take about forty minutes, maybe fifty to play it safe. But Vera knew herself: better to wait at the arrivals board than rush in at the last minute, flustered.
Trucks lined the Koltsovsky highway. The sky hung low and gray, streaked with a yellow band at the horizon, typical for March. The car’s interior smelled of tulips and a bit of gasoline. Hanging from the mirror was a keychain she’d placed there five years ago: a tiny icon and an amber bead.
And all the way there, Vera rehearsed.
She pictured Gleb coming through the sliding doors, tired, with his bag slung over his shoulder, wearing that gray jacket with the worn left cuff. Imagined him spotting her. How his expression would change. What would he say? “Vera, what are you doing here?” Or maybe he’d say nothing, just hug her. He hadn’t hugged her like that in a long time—not in a way she could remember.
The arrivals hall was bright and echoing. It smelled of coffee, wet shoes, and something sweet from the bakery. Vera glanced at the clock above the board: 17:38. Exactly one hour until the landing—unless it arrived early.
She walked along the display until she found her flight: “Moscow. 18:40. On time.” Just above it, another line read: “Moscow. 16:05. Arrived.”
She didn’t pay any attention to that earlier flight. Why would she?
People crowded around the barrier with signs. A woman in a puffy coat held a little boy, about four years old, munching on a bagel. Two men in work overalls argued about some train car. Vera set her bag down by her feet, shifted her bouquet, and realized she wanted coffee. Not because she was tired—she just needed something to do with her hands.
The café was to the right of the exit, behind a low glass divider wrapped in fake ivy. Wooden tables, pastries under a dome, the smell of cinnamon in the air. Vera walked up to the counter, opened her wallet, and then looked up.
At a back table by the window, Gleb was sitting.
At first, she didn’t believe it. The man in the blue sweater, with short-cropped hair greying at the temples, broad shoulders, and a slight slouch—there are plenty who look like that. But then he turned his head, and she saw the scar above his right eyebrow, that thin white line from when he was nineteen and fell off his bike. She had kissed that scar the first night they spent together.
Gleb was laughing.
Not the way he laughed at home, watching some show with Sonya. Not politely, just with his mouth. He was laughing with his whole body, leaning back in his chair, covering his eyes with his hand—the kind of laugh that brings tears. Vera hadn’t seen him laugh like that in ten years. Maybe more.
There was a woman sitting across from him.
She was older. Much older. A gray braid rested on her shoulder, thick and reaching almost to her waist, tied with a black elastic. She wore a gray knitted cardigan, her hands were thin. Vera could barely see her face; the woman was turned sideways, facing the window.
And Gleb was holding her hand.
He covered her hand with his and wouldn’t let go. With his thumb, he slowly stroked her knuckles, back and forth.
“Miss, can I help you?” asked the barista.
Vera didn’t answer. Her fingers clutched the paper around the bouquet so tightly it crinkled.
“Miss?”
“Nothing, thanks.”
She stepped behind a column. Her back pressed against the cold marble. Her heart didn’t tighten, not really—no—but suddenly it was hard to swallow, as if her mouth had gone dry all at once. Vera swallowed. Then swallowed again.
He landed on the 4:05 PM flight. Been sitting here for an hour and a half. With her.
Who is she?
Theories lined up in her head, quick and neat, like dumplings on a board. A coworker? What coworker is in her sixties? A fellow passenger? You don’t hold hands with a fellow passenger. A lover? The woman was old enough to be his mother.
Vera peeked out from behind the column.
The grey-haired woman was talking, gesturing with her hands. Gleb was listening, leaning his cheek on his fist, nodding. On the table were two paper cups and a plate of pastries. One pastry had a bite taken out of it. Gleb ate cabbage ones. Only cabbage. Vera had made him meat ones for twelve years until he finally admitted he didn’t really like them.
She pulled out her phone. Her hands wouldn’t cooperate; she had to tap the contacts icon twice to get it open.
A ring. Then a second. Gleb, seen through the glass, looked down at his pocket, took out his phone, glanced at the screen. His face changed. His shoulders rose, his back straightened, his smile disappeared—gone like water soaking into sand.
“Yes, Vera.”
“Hi. Where are you?”
“At Domodedovo. Sitting at the gate. Boarding will start soon.”
Vera watched him across the hall. He was sitting twenty meters away, his back to the window where a plane was landing outside.
“Any delays?” she asked.
“Looks fine. Why are you calling?”
“No reason. I made dumplings.”
“With lamb?”
“With lamb.”
“Thank you, Vera. Okay, they’re calling us, I have to go.”
He set the phone face down. The gray-haired woman asked him something, he shook his head and rubbed the bridge of his nose with two fingers. Then he took her hand again.
Vera headed for the exit.
Not quickly. Just steady, so as not to attract attention. The tulips weighed down her arm, and right by the door she noticed a trash bin, stopped over it—and couldn’t do it. So she carried the bouquet out to the parking lot, into the wind, and laid it on the back seat, as if it belonged to someone else.
At home, Sonya sat on the windowsill in her room with her knees drawn up.
“Well?” she shouted across the hallway. “Did you meet her?”
“The flight is delayed.”
“And the flowers?”
“They’re in the car.”
Vera walked into the kitchen and turned on the kettle. She stood still, watching the first bubbles appear on the inside of the kettle. She filled a glass with tap water, brought it to her lips, and then set it back down without drinking.
Why did she leave? She should have just gone over, sat next to him, placed the bouquet on the table, said “hi,” and watched what he would do. Any normal woman would have approached him.
But she couldn’t do it. Her legs wouldn’t move. Something inside her just knew: if she went over, she’d have to hear his answer.
At 8:25 PM, the front door lock clicked. Vera jumped so much the spoon rang against the saucer.
“I’m home,” Gleb said.
He walked in, smelling of the outdoors and faintly of cinnamon. He set his bag on the bench and hung up his jacket. He kissed Vera on the temple—dryly, out of habit.
“How was your flight?” she asked.
“It was fine. There was turbulence over Kazan.”
“Was it bad?”
“It was bearable.”
She watched him wash his hands over the kitchen sink, even though there was a bathroom for that. He always washed up in the kitchen. For a long time, with soap, up to his elbows—like a surgeon.
“I’ll make some dumplings,” Vera said.
“No need, Vera. I ate on the plane.”
“But they only serve chicken with rice.”
“Exactly, I had chicken with rice.”
He lied so easily her jaw tightened. Cabbage pies. Cinnamon. A gray braid.
“Sonya was asking about you,” she said.
“I’ll go see her now.”
And he headed to their daughter’s room. Vera could hear their voices from the hallway. Sonya was laughing while Gleb told a story about a fellow passenger who was scared the entire flight and kept clinging to the stewardess’s sleeve. The passenger. The stewardess. He was making it up as he went along, and it all sounded so believable.
She took a bag of dumplings from the freezer, looked at her marker label—”lamb, 48 pcs.”—and put it back.
That night, Gleb slept on his back with his arm thrown over his head. Vera lay beside him, listening to him breathe—steady, deep. Would someone who lies really sleep so soundly? She had always believed liars sleep poorly.
His bag was in the hallway. She knew it was there even without seeing it. The zipper on the side pocket was where he always put his documents.
Don’t, Vera told herself. That would be too low.
At 2:40 in the morning, she got up, threw on her robe, and went to the hallway.
The boarding pass was in the side pocket, folded in four. Vera unfolded it under the kitchen light. “Moscow. Yekaterinburg. Departure 12:20.” Not in the evening. Daytime.
Under the boarding pass, she found something else. A small transparent bag containing a dried sprig of lavender tied with string, and a folded note on notebook paper. Vera unfolded it. Large, careful handwriting with a loop on the letter “d”: “Glebushka, don’t forget your blood pressure pills this time. I’ll check. F.”
F.
She read the note three times. Glebushka. Only as a kid did anyone call him that. His mother did, probably. Vera didn’t know. She’d only met his mother a few times, and that was long ago, and things ended in a way she’d rather not remember.
There was also an old receipt in the pocket, some paperclips, and a check from an airport café. Two Americanos, four cabbage pies. The date. The time: 4:32 PM.
Then Vera did something she had never done before. She took his phone from the hallway nightstand where it was charging. She knew his password: Sonya’s birthday. He hadn’t changed it.
There were three contacts under the letter ‘F’. Fyodor Sergeevich, the workshop manager in Tyumen. ‘Window Company’ with the number of the technician. And just ‘F.’ No last name. With a number starting with 908.
There were no messages with ‘F.’ at all. Not a single one. Only calls. Vera scrolled through the call log: every week, sometimes twice. On Sundays, always at the same time, seven in the morning, when she was still asleep. Calls would last twenty minutes. Sometimes forty.
She put the phone back in its place, face down, just as it had been. She stood in the darkness. The fridge was humming in the kitchen, and water was gurgling somewhere in the neighbors’ pipes.
What are you doing, Vera? Checking your husband’s pockets at night. Like in a cheap soap opera.
But her hand still remembered the little bag of lavender. The dry stems scratched through the plastic.
She went back to bed and stared at the ceiling until morning, where a yellow square from the streetlight lay. The square slowly faded. By six o’clock it had disappeared completely.
In the morning, Gleb made coffee himself. He rarely took out the coffee pot, saying it was too much trouble.
“What’s wrong with you?” he asked, setting the cup in front of her.
“What do you mean?”
“You look pale.”
“I didn’t sleep well.”
“High blood pressure again?”
“I don’t have high blood pressure, Gleb. That’s your problem.”
He raised his eyebrow with the scar.
“Why do you think that?”
“You take pills.”
“What pills?”
Just like that. Calmly, without missing a beat. Vera stirred her coffee even though she hadn’t put in any sugar.
“Never mind,” she said. “I must have imagined it.”
“You imagine a lot of things.”
He said this not angrily, almost cheerfully, and turned to the window. Outside in the yard, a janitor in an orange vest was knocking icicles off the building’s awning with a long stick. The icicles fell and shattered with a crash.
Vera looked at her husband’s back.
When did he become like this? Or was he always this way, and she just hadn’t noticed? For sixteen years, she thought she knew everything about him. What toothpaste he liked, how he salted his soup, why he didn’t eat meat pies. Though, actually, she only found out about the pies after twelve years. How many more pies were there?
After breakfast, Gleb left for the office to hand in a report. Vera was alone. Sonya had left for school, slamming the door so hard a scarf fell off the coat rack.
Vera called her friend.
Lida worked as the head nurse at a clinic and spoke as if she was jotting notes on a medical chart: short, to the point, with a clear diagnosis at the end.
“So. Gray hair, you said?”
“Gray hair. A braid down to her waist.”
“How old?”
“Almost seventy. Maybe a little younger.”
“And did he hold her hand?”
“He did, Lida.”
“Well, I don’t know. Maybe she’s a client. Maybe from a charity. Men go to charities these days, to help out.”
“People don’t talk to clients for forty minutes on the phone at seven in the morning.”
Lida was silent. Vera could hear someone knocking on Lida’s office door on the other end.
“Vera. Just don’t work yourself up. Find out first.”
“How?”
“How everyone does. Ask him directly.”
“What if he lies?”
“He’s already lied. It won’t get worse.”
“It will, Lida. It will get worse if he tells the truth.”
Her friend didn’t answer. Then she sighed:
“Alright, I’ve got a line of people here. I’ll call you in the evening. Hang in there.”
Vera put her phone down on the table. It lay there, screen up, silent.
Gleb’s next business trip was in eleven days. Perm. Vera knew this because she was the one who added it to the calendar on the fridge.
For those eleven days, she felt like she was walking on a tightrope. In the mornings, she made breakfast. During the day, she worked from home managing the accounts for three small companies—the numbers always added up, just like they always did. In the evenings, it was dinner, TV, and conversations about nothing.
Gleb seemed the same as always. Or maybe she just didn’t remember what he used to be like?
But now she started noticing things. How he checked his phone on Sunday mornings, stepping onto the balcony in just his socks even though it was minus five outside. How he took longer showers than before. How, when she asked, “Do you love me?” he replied, “Vera, what kind of question is that?”—which wasn’t a yes or a no.
One day she asked him:
“Gleb, when was the last time you thought about your mother?”
He was slicing bread. The knife paused halfway through the loaf.
“Why do you ask?”
“No reason. Sonya was asking about her grandmother. For school—they’re making a family tree.”
“Tell Sonya her grandmother’s gone.”
“She’s not, Gleb. She’s still out there, alive somewhere.”
He put the knife down carefully, blade facing the wall.
“Vera. You were the one who said back then: it’s either her or us. Remember?”
“I remember.”
“Well, there you go.”
He walked out of the kitchen, leaving the bread half-sliced, the crust jutting out to the side.
Vera remembered. Of course she did. Their wedding, the café on Malysheva, fifty guests. Gleb’s mother, Faina, arrived drunk. Fiery red hair, purple lipstick, a sparkly dress. First, she sang, then she cried, then she picked a fight with Vera’s mom about who loved whom more. And at the end of the night, an envelope of money—a gift from Vera’s aunt, thirty thousand—went missing from the present box. They found the envelope in Faina’s purse. She screamed that she didn’t take it, that she was being framed, that Vera was a snake.
Then there were two more years. Late night calls. Requests to borrow money. She even turned up at the maternity ward with a bottle in a bag when Sonya was born. That was when Vera said, “It’s her or us.” She said it one-on-one, in the hospital corridor, holding her newborn daughter.
Gleb chose them.
He never visited his mother again. Didn’t call, at least not in front of her. Never mentioned her. Vera thought it had freed him. She really believed that.
And now: the gray braid. “Glebushka.” The letter “F.”
No. It couldn’t be. That Faina had been fiery red, loud, with purple lips and a gravelly laugh. The woman at the airport was quiet, in a gray cardigan, her hands thin and almost transparent.
People don’t change like that.
Or do they?
On the day of the business trip, Gleb left in the morning at 7:15. Vera woke up with him, made sandwiches, and packed them. He watched her do this with a strange look on his face.
“Why aren’t you sleeping?”
“I just can’t sleep.”
“Vera, are you okay?”
“And you?”
He hesitated in the doorway, bag on his shoulder, jacket undone. Vera could see his Adam’s apple twitch.
“I’m fine,” he said. “I’ll be back Wednesday.”
“What time’s your flight?”
“Evening. Around seven-ish. I’ll text you.”
“Text me.”
He left. Vera shut the door after him and leaned her forehead against it. The metal was cold.
Evening. Around seven-ish.
She opened the airline’s website and checked the schedule. There were two flights from Perm on Wednesday. One at 19:10 and another at 14:30.
On Wednesday, Vera headed to the airport at 13:30. No flowers this time.
She sat in the café early, at a table by the column with a view of the whole room and the distant corner by the window. She ordered thyme tea. The barista—the same girl as last time—looked at her and seemed to recognize her.
At 14:15, a gray-haired woman entered the café.
Vera noticed her immediately. The braid, the gray cardigan, and this time a dark blue dress underneath. In her hands, a fabric bag embroidered with a sunflower. The woman walked to the far table, the same one by the window, sat down, and took a small thermos out of her bag. Then two porcelain cups with a blue rim. She set them on the table, one opposite the other.
The barista called out to her from behind the counter:
“Faina Arkadyevna, the usual for you?”
“The usual, Irochka. Two with cabbage. And one with cherry, he’s earned something sweet today.”
Her voice was low and husky. Vera recognized it right away, and her stomach clenched. Not just the voice. The intonation. The drawn-out “swee-eet”—just like sixteen years ago at the wedding, when she raised a glass to the newlyweds.
Faina Arkadyevna. Her mother-in-law.
Vera kept watching her, unable to look away. Where were the red hair and lipstick? The woman was dry, upright, with a narrow face lined with wrinkles near her mouth. No makeup. On the ring finger of her left hand, a simple, thin, worn ring. On her wrist, a watch with a leather strap. She sat looking out the window at the airfield, her lips moving slightly. Was she praying? Counting?
At 14:40, the boarding for the Perm flight was announced.
At 15:05, Gleb entered the café.
Faina stood up to meet him. He hugged her tightly, bending down because he was a whole head taller. She said something into his shoulder, patting him on the back. Then she drew back, took his face in her hands, and turned it one way and then the other, like checking on a child after an illness.
“You’ve lost weight,” she said. Vera heard every word. “Not eating again.”
“I am eating, Mom.”
“Did you bring your pills?”
“I did.”
“Show me.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a blister pack. Faina took it, counted the empty cells, and nodded.
“Good boy. Sit down.”
They sat. She poured him a drink from the thermos. Steam rose above the cup with the blue rim.
Vera sat behind the column, her thyme tea growing cold in front of her. Her hands lay on her knees. She couldn’t feel them.
Mom.
He said “Mom” so easily, as if he said it every week. And probably he did. On Sundays. At seven in the morning. For forty minutes.
How many years? How many years has he been sitting in this café, arriving on the daytime flight to spend three hours with his mother, then going home to his wife, who makes dumplings and labels the packages with a marker?
Vera sat and listened.
“How’s Sonechka?” Faina asked.
“She’s growing up. She dyed her hair, it’s kind of gray.”
“Ash-blonde, that’s trendy. Show me a photo.”
He took out his phone, scrolled through. Faina looked, holding the screen away from her eyes like farsighted people do. She looked for a long time. Then traced her finger across the screen, over her granddaughter’s face, and gave the phone back.
“She looks like you. That chin of yours.”
“She looks like Vera.”
“Like Vera, too. Her eyes. So serious.”
Gleb stayed silent, breaking off a piece of pastry.
“How’s Vera?” his mother asked.
“She’s fine.”
“Gleb.”
“What?”
“I’m asking how Vera is. Not how the weather is.”
He set the pastry aside. Rubbing the bridge of his nose with two fingers—the same motion he’d made last time.
“I don’t know, Mom. She’s sensing something. She looks at me strangely. Yesterday she asked about the pills.”
“Maybe it’s time?”
“No.”
“Twelve years, son. You’ve been behind her back for twelve years.”
“Mom, we’ve talked about this.”
“We have. But I’ll say it anyway. You’re not lying to her, you’re lying to yourself. What does she care? She buried her mother-in-law long ago. But you live between two homes, and they’re both on the other side of the airport.”
Gleb let out a laugh. Short, humorless.
“Just like you said. On the other side of the airport.”
“How else could it be? You come here to me like you’re at a retreat. You sit, warm up, then head back there, to your dumplings.”
“Mom. Leave the dumplings out of it.”
“I won’t. Sorry.”
She laid her hand on his. He didn’t pull away.
Vera stood up. The chair scraped against the tile, and the barista, Ira, looked up. Faina Arkadyevna lifted her head, too, automatically, at the sound.
And their eyes met.
Faina recognized her immediately. Vera saw it happen: her eyes widened slightly, her hand tightened on her son’s, her lips parted. But the mother-in-law said nothing. Absolutely nothing. She just stared, unblinking, and then, very slowly, removed her hand from the table.
Gleb noticed his mother was looking past him and started to turn.
Vera left the café before he could see her face.
Parking lot, third level. Concrete, the smell of exhaust and dampness. Vera sat in the car, both hands on the wheel, engine off.
Twelve years.
She was counting in her head, as she always did. Sonya is sixteen. Twelve years ago, her daughter was four. That was the year Gleb got his new job and started traveling on business trips. The year he suddenly grew calmer, stopped snapping over little things, spent long dinners in silence. That was the year she thought he’d finally matured.
He didn’t mature. He found his mother.
Or did his mother find him?
Vera pulled some wet wipes from the glove compartment, wiped her face even though it was dry. The wipe smelled like aloe. She crushed it into her fist.
Her phone rang. Gleb.
She watched as the screen lit up, then went dark. Then lit up again. The third time. The fourth.
On the fifth ring, she picked up.
“Vera. Where are you?”
“In the parking lot.”
“Which one?”
“Right below you. Third level.”
There was a pause. She could hear the noise from the hall, an announcement about boarding to Sochi.
“I’ll come down,” Gleb said.
“Don’t.”
“Vera.”
“I said, don’t. Stay with her. Finish your tea from the thermos. You’re not in a hurry until evening, your flight’s at seven-something.”
He was silent. Then said:
“How long have you known?”
“Two weeks.”
“And you said nothing.”
“And you said nothing for twelve years, Gleb. I’m not ready to compete with you yet.”
She ended the call and started the engine.
She drove home slowly in the right lane, letting everyone pass her. Trucks sped by, splashing dirty water onto her windshield, and the wipers couldn’t keep up. Vera peered through the murky glass, thinking about the cups with the blue rim. Two cups. Porcelain. You don’t buy those for just a casual meeting. You carry them around in a fabric bag, wrapping them in a towel every time to keep them from breaking. For years.
Sonya was sitting in the kitchen, eating dumplings. Right out of the pot, with a fork.
“Mom, I made them myself,” she said, her mouth full. “Where were you?”
“Running errands.”
“Dad called. Like five times. He said that if you came home, I should tell you he’ll be here soon.”
“But I thought he’s taking the evening flight.”
“I don’t know. He said soon.”
Vera took off her coat. Mustard yellow, bright. She hung it on the hook and spent a long time adjusting the collar.
“Sonya. Do you remember your grandmother? Dad’s mom?”
Her daughter stopped chewing.
“No. How could I? You always said she left when I was little.”
“That’s what I said.”
“But what really happened?”
Vera sat down across from her. She took a fork from the drawer, speared a dumpling from the pot, took a bite. Lamb, onion, pepper. As usual, delicious. Or maybe too delicious, too perfect, too much by the book?
“What really happened is I made her leave,” Vera said. “Out of our lives. When you were born.”
Sonya put down her fork.
“Why?”
“She drank. A lot. She stole money at our wedding. She came to see you at the hospital drunk.”
“Oh,” her daughter said. She was quiet. “Well, that makes sense then.”
“It makes sense?”
“Yeah. I probably would have done the same thing.”
Vera looked at her daughter. Sixteen years old, ashy hair, serious eyes. Her own eyes. Faina had called them serious.
“She doesn’t drink anymore, Sonya. Hasn’t for a long time.”
“How do you know?”
“I saw her today.”
“Where?”
“At the airport. With Dad.”
Sonya was silent for a long time. Then she got up, walked to the window, and pressed her forehead to the glass, just like she used to do as a kid when she was waiting for her dad to come back from a business trip.
“So he talks to her?” her daughter asked, not turning around.
“For twelve years.”
“And you didn’t know?”
“I didn’t know.”
“Wow,” said Sonya. And suddenly she laughed—short, a little confused. “Mom. Listen. For twelve years he’s been hiding from you with his own mom. Like a teenager. Like me when I sneak off to the movies with Dania.”
“It’s not funny, Sonya.”
“Not funny,” her daughter agreed. She turned around. “Mom. Why was he hiding?”
Vera didn’t answer.
Because she said: it’s either her or us. Because she never asked. Because in their house, everything was labeled with a marker and pinned to the fridge with a magnet, and for a mother who quit drinking, there just wasn’t any space left on that list.
Gleb arrived at 5:20 PM, by taxi. Vera heard the car door slam downstairs and him coming up the stairs quickly, not waiting for the elevator. Heavy, rapid steps.
He came in and stopped in the hallway. Didn’t take off his jacket. Held his bag in his hand.
Sonya peeked out of her room and instantly shut the door again. The lock clicked.
“Vera,” he said.
“Come in. Wash your hands.”
He went to the kitchen and washed his hands in the sink. For a long time. Up to his elbows. Vera watched his back and for the first time wondered: why is he washing like that? What’s he trying to wash off?
Gleb dried his hands on the towel and sat down at the table. Across from her. Just like Faina used to sit across from him in the café.
“I don’t know where to begin,” he said.
“Start at the beginning.”
— She got a call from the hospital. Twelve years ago. She collapsed on the street during winter, her heart gave out. My number was the only one in her phone. I went to see her. I thought it was the same as before. Drunk again, needing money again. But this time, she was sober. For the first time in my life, she was sober. She told me: Glebushka, I haven’t had a drink in two years. I’m sorry to call you. There’s no one else.
Vera listened. Her fingers found the edge of the tablecloth and started folding it back and forth, back and forth.
— I didn’t want to lie to you, — Gleb said. — I wanted to tell you right away. But I came home and you were with Sonya. Sonya came down with chickenpox. You hadn’t slept for three days. So I thought: later. I’ll tell you when Sonya recovers. Later, when you’re not so tired. Later.
— Twelve years later.
— Yes.
— And the business trips?
— The business trips were real. I just took earlier flights. I’d arrive three hours ahead of schedule. She got a job at the airport, first as a cleaner, then in the cloakroom, and now in the luggage room. She lives here in the village, fifteen minutes away by bus. It’s easier for her that way. Easier for me too.
— Easier for you, — Vera echoed.
He looked up at her. His gray eyes were red around the edges.
— Vera. It made me feel calmer. Do you understand? Not easier. Calmer. I would fly in, spend three hours with her, and there nobody checked up on me. Nobody asked if I took the blue shirt. Nobody kept track of how long I was in the shower.
Vera let go of the tablecloth’s edge.
— Is that what you think about me?
— That’s what I think about myself. I’m a coward. I was afraid of you.
— Afraid of me?
— Of you. That you’d say: her or us. Again. And I’d have to choose again.
The kitchen fell silent. The fridge clicked and hummed. From Sonya’s room, quiet music played—the bass just barely coming through the wall.
Vera stood up and walked to the fridge. There was a note held by a plane-shaped magnet. “Flight 18:40. Koltsovo. Take a taxi yourself.” And below it: “Shirts are in the wardrobe, don’t take the blue one.”
— Why don’t you like the blue shirt? — she asked, without turning around.
— What?
— I wrote: don’t take the blue one. Why? I don’t even remember why I wrote that.
— You said it made me look older.
— But do you like it?
Gleb paused.
— I like it. My mom gave it to me.
Vera took the note off the fridge. The magnet dropped to the floor, clinking on the tiles, and the little plane lost a wing. She didn’t pick it up.
— When will you fly to see her again? — she asked.
— I don’t know. I didn’t think that after today…
— When, Gleb?
— She calls next Sunday. Like always.
— And when will you see her?
— I have Tyumen in three weeks. That one’s by car, not by plane.
— So you’ll go especially. On Sunday. To the airport.
He looked at her, not understanding.
— Vera, what are you talking about?
— I’m saying I’ll go with you.
But there were still six days left until Sunday. Vera lived each one as if she were walking on ice that cracked beneath her, but never broke.
Gleb moved around the apartment gingerly. He washed his cup right after finishing his drink. He asked if she needed anything from the store. Once, he brought her yellow tulips, nine of them. Vera put them in a vase and remembered the ones left on the backseat of the car. They must have dried out by now. The paper had yellowed.
On Wednesday night, she woke up to find he wasn’t beside her. She found him on the balcony, standing in socks on the cold floor, smoking. He quit smoking eight years ago.
“Gleb.”
“Can’t sleep.”
“Me neither.”
She stood next to him. The courtyard below was dark except for a single lamp above the entrance, its light catching tiny snowflakes swirling around.
“Do you really want to go?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Then why did you say you did?”
“Because if I don’t go, you’ll keep going there for another twelve years. And I’ll keep making dumplings and labeling the bags. And we’ll both keep pretending that this is life.”
Gleb exhaled smoke away from her.
“She’s afraid of you,” he said.
“Who?”
“Mom. She told me when she saw you at the cafe: ‘Glebushka, she looked at me just like she did back at the hospital.’
Vera remembered. The hospital corridor, the smell of bleach, the tiny bundle in her arms. The red-haired woman with a bag clinking with a bottle. And Vera’s own voice: get out. Out. I never want to see you again.
“I was right back then,” said Vera.
“You were.”
“And now?”
He stubbed out his cigarette on the rail. Sparks fluttered down and died in the snow.
“Now I don’t know, Vera. Now, none of the three of us are right.”
Lida called on Thursday. Vera told her everything, sitting on the bathroom floor—the only place where voices couldn’t be heard from the other room.
“So,” her friend said. “So it’s not a mistress.”
“Not a mistress.”
“His mother.”
“His mother.”
“Listen, that’s wonderful, Vera. Really, it’s the best outcome you could’ve hoped for. Honestly, I was already thinking I needed to find you a lawyer.”
“Wonderful,” Vera repeated. “My husband has been hiding his mother from me for twelve years because he’s afraid of me. That’s wonderful.”
“Well, okay, but why was he afraid?”
Vera paused.
“Because he had good reason to be, Lida.”
Her friend didn’t say anything. Some device beeped over the line, someone called her name.
“Vera. Will you go?”
“I will.”
“Bring something with you. You can’t visit your mother-in-law empty-handed. Even this one.”
On Saturday evening, Vera was making pirozhki.
Not dumplings. Pirozhki with cabbage. She found the recipe in her mother’s old notebook, the one in a vinyl cover with greasy stains on the pages. She braised the cabbage with onions and carrots for a long time until it turned golden and sweet. She kneaded the dough by hand, the flour getting clogged under her nails.
Sonya came, drawn by the smell.
“Who are those for?”
“For Grandma. And Dad.”
“Aren’t you making any with meat?”
“Dad doesn’t like them with meat.”
Her daughter sat down on the stool, knees pulled up to her chest.
“Mom, can I go with you too?”
Vera stopped, hands covered in flour, half a pirozhok on the board.
“Do you want to?”
“I don’t know. Just to see. She is my grandma, after all.”
“Sonya, she might not be anything like you imagine.”
“What do I imagine she’s like?”
“I don’t know. Kind. Like in the books.”
“Mom, I’m sixteen. I don’t think grandmas are like in the books. I don’t really have any expectations. She just hasn’t been there.”
Vera closed up the pirozhok, pinched the edges. Her fingers worked on their own. She had made pirozhki at twenty, thirty, forty. Never thought she’d make them for Faina.
“Next time,” she said. “Let me go first. Okay?”
Sonya nodded. She took one of the first batch, already cooled, and took a bite.
“Delicious,” she said. “They’re even better with cabbage.”
Sunday was sunny—the very first like it all March. The snow along the sides of Koltsovsky Trakt was blackened and melting, while the puddles reflected the sky, bright and endless.
Gleb was driving. Vera sat in the passenger seat with a container of pies on her lap, wrapped in a towel. Still warm.
“Does she know I’m coming?” Vera asked.
“Yes. I told her this morning.”
“What did she say?”
Gleb slowed down a little for the upcoming turn.
“Nothing, at first. She was quiet and then said, ‘Okay.’ After that, she asked what you’d be wearing. Just to know.”
“She would recognize me anyway.”
“She said last time she recognized you out of fear. This time, she wants it to be… normal.”
Vera wore a mustard-colored coat. When Gleb saw her that morning in the hallway, he said nothing, just smiled a little. He put on a blue shirt.
The arrivals hall smelled of coffee and damp shoes, just like the very first time. People waited behind the barrier. A boy, maybe five, sat on a suitcase, swinging his legs. The arrival board kept blinking.
Vera checked her watch: 1:20 PM. They’d agreed to meet at half past one.
“We’re early,” Gleb said.
“I’m always early.”
“I know.”
They headed to the café. Behind the counter, barista Ira saw the two of them together, arched her brows, then smiled shyly and said:
“Faina Arkadyevna is already here. She’s been here since twelve.”
Since twelve. An hour and a half before meeting time.
Faina sat at a table by the window, farthest from the door. A braid, a gray cardigan, a blue dress. On the table: a thermos and not two, but three cups with blue rims. The third, with a slightly chipped edge, sat off to the side as if placed there at the last minute, uncertain where it should go.
Her mother-in-law noticed them and got up—too quickly, making her chair wobble. She grabbed the backrest and stood, hands unsure. Then she laced her fingers tightly in front of her.
Vera walked over. She stopped one step away.
They looked at each other. Up close, Faina seemed even thinner. The skin on her cheekbones was stretched and thin, veined with fine red lines. Her eyes, pale gray like Gleb’s. And a small, old scar on her chin.
“Hello, Faina Arkadyevna,” Vera said.
“Hello, Verochka.” Faina’s voice trembled at Vera’s name. “Have a seat. Please, sit. I made tea—with mint. I don’t know if you like mint.”
“I do.”
“Good. Good.”
They sat down. Gleb took the seat between them and to the side, like a referee. He stayed silent. Vera noticed his knee moving under the table.
Faina poured tea into the three cups. Her hands trembled slightly, and the stream missed a little, pooling onto the saucer. She quickly wiped it with a napkin.
Vera unwrapped the towel and set the container with the pies on the table.
“Here. With cabbage.”
Faina looked at the pies for a long moment. Then at Vera.
“Did you bake them yourself?”
“I did.”
“He doesn’t eat them with meat.”
“I know. I do now.”
Her mother-in-law took a pie, broke it open. Steam rose from the cabbage filling. She took a bite, chewed, then closed her eyes.
“They’re good,” she said. “Soft. Mine never came out this way. I always overworked the dough.”
They fell silent. Outside, a tractor pulled a blue-tailed plane across the tarmac.
Verочка,” Faina said. “I want to tell you something. Please don’t interrupt, okay? I’ve been preparing to say this for twelve years, but I’ll probably say it awkwardly.
“Go ahead.”
“I took the money at the wedding. It was me. No one set me up. I screamed that I didn’t take it, but I did. I needed it for booze, my hands wouldn’t stop shaking. I even showed up drunk at the maternity hospital. And you were right to throw me out. You were right.”
Vera looked at her. Her fingers found the edge of the saucer and stopped.
“I won’t say thank you for that,” Faina went on. “But I am grateful for something else. When you kicked me out, I was so ashamed for the first time that I couldn’t drink away the shame. I poured myself a glass, but I just couldn’t drink. I sat there, staring at the glass and thinking of your face. And little Sonechka in her swaddling, I only saw the edge of her, her little cheek. And I just couldn’t do it. For two years after, I slipped again sometimes, but eventually, it stopped. That’s it.”
She set her half-eaten pastry on the napkin.
“I told Glebushka back then, in the hospital, not to tell you, Vera. I asked him to. It wasn’t his idea. I was just afraid you’d say ‘get out’ again. I couldn’t handle a second time. I wouldn’t have survived it.”
Gleb lifted his head.
“Mom, you’re not telling it right…”
“Stay quiet, son. Not right, I know. But it’s not wrong either.”
Vera sat, holding her cup with both hands. The tea was hot and smelled of mint. The water was close to the brim, and Vera couldn’t understand why, since the cup hadn’t been filled. Then she realized—her hands were shaking, and the tea was rippling.
She set the cup down.
“Faina Arkadyevna.”
“Yes?”
“I have something to say to you, too. It might come out awkwardly as well.”
Her mother-in-law nodded. She clenched her fingers tightly.
“For twelve years, I thought that Gleb and I had everything right,” said Vera. “Everything in its place—shirts, flights, dumplings. But for twelve years, he came here, to you, to get away from all that order. That’s what I finally saw. Not you, but him. How he laughs here. He never laughs that way at home. Never.”
Gleb lowered his eyes.
“And I don’t know what to do with that,” Vera said. “Honestly, I don’t know. I don’t know how to do things differently. That’s the way my mother taught me. Keep everything under control, everything counted. Or else everything falls apart.”
Faina reached her hand across the table—a thin hand with a worn ring. She stopped above Vera’s hand, hovering but not touching.
“May I?” she asked.
Vera didn’t respond. But she didn’t move her hand away.
Her mother-in-law covered Vera’s hand with her own. Her skin was dry and cool, rough on the fingertips. She smelled of soap and lavender.
“Things will fall apart,” Faina said. “Something always falls apart. Everything in my life did, Verочка. Husband, home, son. Everything. But then I got this job in the luggage room. People bring in their suitcases, packed to the brim, tied with straps, and then hand them over and go free, just for a while. I see it every day. They breathe out. And I think: that’s how it should be. Even if just for a couple of hours.”
She was quiet for a moment.
“He wasn’t running away from you to me. He came to me to feel unburdened.”
Vera looked at her husband. Gleb sat with red eyes, lips pressed tight, holding his hand to his forehead, covering his eyes. Just like on that very first day when he laughed so freely. Only today, he wasn’t laughing.
“Gleb,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Take off your watch.”
“What?”
“Take off your watch. You’ve been checking it every five minutes. There’s no flight right now. We’re not in a rush.”
He glanced at his wrist, unfastened the strap, and set his watch face down on the table next to the thermos.
Faína suddenly laughed, softly and a bit hoarsely. She covered her mouth with her hand.
“What is it, Mom?”
“Oh, nothing. She reminds me of myself. I used to say the same thing to you when you were a child—take your watch off, don’t hurry. But you always looked anyway. At the wall, at my watch…”
They stayed at the café until five. Barista Ira brought them two more cherry pastries—on the house—and mentioned that Faina Arkadyevna had spent every Sunday at this table for twelve years. Even when Gleb didn’t fly in. She would just sit with her thermos and watch the airplanes.
“Why?” Vera asked once Ira walked away.
Her mother-in-law shrugged her thin shoulders under her cardigan, quickly lowering them as though embarrassed by the gesture.
“Habit. Being alone at home is miserable. But here, there are people. Coming and going. Being greeted. I watch how people are met—some with flowers, some with kids. Some just run with arms wide open.”
“Has anyone ever met you? Even once?”
Faina thought for a moment.
“No,” she said. “No one’s ever met me. I’ve always been alone.”
Vera glanced at Gleb, who was looking out the window. The blue-tailed plane—the one that had been towed—was now speeding down the runway. Faster and faster. Then it lifted off.
On the way back, Vera asked:
“Where does she live? Exactly?”
“In the settlement. On Bakhchivandzhi, past the post office. A two-story barrack, second floor.”
“Alone?”
“With her cat. An orange cat. She says he’s like her old self.”
Vera looked out at the black snow by the roadside. The earth was already starting to show through beneath it.
“Gleb, does anyone come to her birthday?”
“No one. I call her.”
“When is her birthday?”
“April twentieth.”
“That’s soon.”
“Yes.”
Vera was quiet. Then she took her phone from her bag, found April twentieth in her calendar, and stared at the empty square for a long time.
She decided not to make a note.
At home, she put the kettle on, took three mugs from the cupboard, looked at them, put one back, then took it out again. Sonya stood in the doorway, watching this back-and-forth.
“Mom. Well?”
“It was fine.”
“‘It was fine,’” her daughter mimicked. “Mom, how was she?”
Vera poured the boiling water, the steam rising and settling on her wrist as little droplets.
“She’s thin,” Vera said. “Her braid goes down to her waist. Her hands are cold. She laughs like your father.”
“And what did she say?”
“She said I was right to send her away.”
Sonya raised her eyebrows.
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“And you? What did you do?”
Vera set the kettle on its stand.
“I gave her the rest of the pastries. In a container. She said she’d finish them at work tomorrow.”
Sonya came over, took the last pastry Vera had saved for her from the table, and took a bite.
“I want to see her, too,” said Sonya. “Not next time. Soon.”
“Her birthday is April twentieth.”
“That’s a Sunday, right?”
Vera wasn’t sure. She checked the calendar on the fridge. Where a page used to hang on a plane-shaped magnet, there was now just a slightly lighter rectangle on the door. The magnet, its wing broken off, was lying on the shelf by the stove, where she had put it and never thrown it away.
“Sunday,” she said.
On April 20th, Vera woke up at six. Gleb was still asleep, lying on his back with his arm thrown behind his head. She quietly got up, slipped on her robe, and headed to the kitchen.
There was a new note on the fridge. It was her handwriting, small and pressed hard. But there were fewer lines than usual.
“Koltsovo. Café by the window. Blue shirt.”
She turned on the oven. The cabbage, cooked the night before, was waiting in the pot under a lid. The dough was rising in a bowl, covered by a towel, smelling slightly sour and warm.
Sonya came into the kitchen in her pajamas, her hair messy, no longer ashy. She had dyed her grown-out chestnut back to its natural color.
“What time are we leaving?” she asked.
“At twelve.”
“And what time is the meeting?”
“At two.”
“Mom, that’s two extra hours.”
“I know.”
Sonya yawned, sat down on a stool, and pulled her knees up.
“Grandma will come early anyway,” she said. “Dad said she’s there in the morning already.”
“That’s exactly why we’re leaving earlier.”
Her daughter looked at her, seriously, like an adult, with those gray eyes. Then she nodded and went to get dressed.
Vera took the dough from the bowl. It was soft and alive, sticking to her fingers. She rolled it out, cut circles with a glass, filled them with cabbage, and pinched the edges closed. Her hands moved on their own—quick and even.
On the shelf by the stove was a magnet with a broken wing.
Vera picked it up, rolled it in some flour, then stuck it onto the fridge right over the new note, covering the word “Koltsovo.” The little airplane hung crookedly, one-winged, but it stayed up.
In the hallway, Gleb was already ironing the blue shirt. She could hear the hiss of the iron and his gentle humming—something light and unfamiliar.
Vera checked the time. Six forty. There was an eternity left until twelve.
She would have arrived two hours earlier if she could. But this time, it wasn’t to catch someone.
This time, someone was waiting for her.