All Amazing Babies

 “An overdue loan payment? What loan?” Zinaida pressed the phone between her ear and shoulder, trying with her free hand to catch the cash register log as it slid off the desk.

“Credit agreement number seven-three-four-eight, dated November twenty-second of last year,” the woman’s indifferent voice droned in the receiver. “Issued in your name as co-borrower. The primary borrower is Mikhail Andreyevich Petrov. The arrears amount to two months.”

Zinaida froze. The log thudded dully onto the floor. Mikhail. Misha. Her husband. Dead for a year now. Since October. And the loan, apparently, was taken in November. The square of sunlight lying on the faded linoleum of the cashier’s little room suddenly seemed mockingly bright, out of place.

“There must be some mistake. My husband… he died in October. Last year.”

There was a short pause on the line, filled with the rustle of papers.
“Zinaida Pavlovna, my system shows the date the agreement was concluded. And your signature is on the documents. You need to come to the central office in Volgograd as soon as possible to clarify the situation.”

The call cut off. Zinaida slowly lowered the hand holding the phone. She was forty-three. For the last year she had lived like a sleepwalker in a thick fog of grief. Widow. A word that still scraped her throat. Her world had shrunk to the size of a small two-room apartment with a view of old poplars, and the cash desk of the sports complex where she had worked for fifteen years. A world in which tennis remained her only outlet, the only bright spot. Twice a week she went out on court, and only there, hitting back the springy yellow ball, did she feel life returning to her numbed limbs.

Misha… He couldn’t have. He simply couldn’t. He was the embodiment of reliability, her rock wall. Any thought of debts or loans horrified him. How? And, most importantly—with whom?

The first thing she did was call Inna, Mikhail’s sister.
“Inn, hi. I just got a call from the bank…” Zinaida swallowed. “They’re saying Misha has some loan. And I’m… a co-borrower.”

“Loan?” Inna’s voice sounded deliberately surprised, a bit too loud. “Oh, Zinochka, what are you talking about! Maybe some old one resurfaced?”

“No. They say it’s from November.”

“November?” Inna held a pause worthy of a drama-theater actress. “Strange… Although, wait. He did say something to me… about business. Yeah, yeah, he wanted to open some kind of workshop to repair boat motors. Volgograd, the Volga’s nearby, there’d be clients, he said. He probably started gathering documents, and you just forgot. It happens after… such grief.”

Zinaida was silent, listening closely to her sister-in-law’s intonations. Something in that overly sympathetic tone grated on her ear.

“But he died in October, Inna. And the agreement is dated November.”

“Oh, those people in banks don’t know anything! They mix things up and then you have to sort it all out. Zina, the main thing is don’t worry. Maybe it’s just an error in the dates. Come over to mine tonight, we’ll sit, talk. I’ve just baked a cabbage pie.”

She hung up, leaving Zinaida alone in the hollow silence of her little room. From behind the door came the muffled thud of balls against the court wall and the squeak of sneakers. Spring in Volgograd was coming into its own, filling the air with the smell of heated asphalt and blooming apricot trees. But Zinaida felt only an icy cold spreading from within. A workshop for motor repairs? Misha, who couldn’t tell a carburetor from a battery? That was as absurd as if she herself suddenly decided to become a ballerina.

That evening at Inna’s it smelled of cabbage pie and anxiety. Inna herself, a short, stout woman with an ever-evaluating gaze, bustled around the table.
“Well, come on, sit down, Zinochka. Tea? Or something stronger? You look, honestly…”

She sat down opposite her, laying her short fingers with their bright manicure on the tablecloth.
“So what’s this loan then? Is it a big amount?”

“I don’t know. They didn’t say,” Zinaida answered quietly, staring into her cup.

“Well, our Misha was a guy with imagination,” Inna sighed. “He always had some project in his head. Maybe he really did want his own business… And you, all worn out, signed the papers without looking. He could be very persuasive.”

“I didn’t sign anything after he died,” Zinaida said firmly.

“Oh, come on, Zina!” Inna waved her hand irritably. “Maybe it was before. The formal date could’ve been processed later. Bureaucracy! The main thing now is to figure out what to do. If the amount isn’t big, maybe it’s just easier to pay it off little by little? So they don’t drag Misha’s name through the mud. For the sake of his memory…”

The word “memory” rang out like a shot. Inna used it like a skeleton key, trying to pick the lock of Zinaida’s soul.

“I’m going to the bank. Tomorrow,” Zinaida said, getting up. “Thank you for the pie, it’s very good. But I have to go.”

“Zin, wait!” Inna jumped up. “Maybe you shouldn’t bother with the banks? Why do you need all that stress? I can find everything out myself through my contacts. Quietly, without fuss.”

“No. I’ll do it myself.”

She stepped outside. Dusk was settling over the city. In the distance, on the other bank of the Volga, the lights of Krasnoslobodsk were coming on. The air was warm, smelling of river and dust. Zinaida walked home, and for the first time in a year her head was filled not with grief but with cold, ringing fury. They were deceiving her. Crude, clumsy deception, taking her for a docile, grief-stricken widow who could be fed any lie.

The next day, during her lunch break, she went to the bank’s central office. A tall building of glass and concrete in the very center of Volgograd. Inside—air-conditioning coolness, the scent of expensive perfume, and the quiet hum of equipment. Zinaida, in her modest blouse and skirt, felt like a stranger here.

A young female manager studied her passport for a long time, then searched for something in the computer.
“Yes, Zinaida Pavlovna. Here’s your agreement. A consumer loan for eight hundred thousand rubles.”

Zinaida felt the floor slip from under her feet. Eight hundred thousand.

“Show me the documents.”

The girl printed out several sheets. There it was, the agreement. Mikhail’s name. Her own. And the signatures. Misha’s signature looked similar but somehow… uncertain. And her own… It was a crude, clumsy forgery. Someone had simply tried to copy her flourish.

“May I have copies of all the documents?” Zinaida asked, her voice trembling.

“Of course.”

She walked out of the bank with a folder in her hands. The sun was beating into her eyes. Eight hundred thousand. For what? For whom? The idea of a motor-repair business now seemed not just absurd, but mocking.

That evening there was tennis. Her partner, Vladimir—a man about her age, calm, laconic, a lawyer—immediately noticed something was wrong. The balls flew past, her shots were weak, she kept losing focus.

“Zin, what’s going on?” he asked after yet another lost point, stepping up to the net. “You’re not yourself.”

And she, unexpectedly even for herself, told him. Everything. About the call, about the conversation with Inna, about the trip to the bank and the forged signature.

Vladimir listened in silence, frowning. His usually impassive face had become hard.
“All right,” he said when she finished. “This is no simple mistake. This is Article 159 of the Criminal Code. Fraud.”

“But who? Inna? Why would she?”

“The motives can vary,” Vladimir rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “But one thing is clear: you need to protect yourself. Immediately. The memory of Mikhail is one thing. A criminal offense and a huge debt is quite another. You must file a statement with the police. And with the bank’s security service.”

His words sobered her. He didn’t say “don’t worry” or “it’ll all work out.” He said “fraud,” “statement,” “protect yourself.” He saw not a grief-stricken widow, but a person in trouble who needed concrete help.

“I’m afraid,” she admitted quietly. “It’s Misha’s family. It’ll be a scandal… dirt.”

“Zinaida,” he looked straight into her eyes. “The dirt has already started. The moment someone forged your signature. The question is whether you’ll let them smear you and Misha’s memory with it—or you’ll clean it off.”

After practice they sat in the little café at the sports complex. On a napkin, Vladimir sketched out a plan of action. “First—a written complaint to the bank. Second—a statement to the police about fraud. Third—a request for a handwriting examination of the signatures.” Everything was clear and to the point.

 

“I’ll help you draft the statements,” he said. “Don’t be afraid. You’re not alone.”

And for the first time in a long while, Zinaida felt not loneliness, but support. Solid, manly, reliable support—the kind she had lacked for a whole year.

The next day Inna called her herself. Her voice oozed fake concern.
“Well, Zinochka? Did you go to the bank? What did they say?”

“They said I owe eight hundred thousand. And that my signature was forged.”

Silence hung heavy on the line. So dense it felt you could touch it.

“How… forged?” Inna finally squeezed out. “Zin, are you out of your mind? Why are you slandering Misha? He would never—”

“I’m not slandering Misha,” Zinaida replied in an icy tone. “I’m saying someone used his name and forged my signature. I’m going to the police tomorrow.”

“To the police?!” Inna squealed. “Are you crazy?! You want to shame our family? Drag everything out into the open… Do you even understand what you’re doing?! You want those cops to drag my brother’s, your husband’s name through the mud?!”

“I want the truth, Inna. And I’m not going to pay for fraudsters.”

Zinaida hung up. Her hands were shaking. She had done it. She had crossed the line. She had declared war.

That evening the doorbell rang. Inna stood on the threshold. Her face was red, twisted with rage. She walked into the apartment without being invited.

“Who do you think you are, huh?” she hissed, stepping toward Zinaida. “Decided to play the heroine? ‘She’s going to the police!’”

“Leave, Inna.”

“I’m not leaving until you come to your senses!” Inna glanced around the modest yet cozy apartment. “You think I don’t know what you’re after? You want to grab everything for yourself! Misha’s flat, the car in the garage! You think we’ll let you?”

“It’s my apartment too,” Zinaida said quietly but firmly. “We bought it together.”

“Yeah, together! With his money! While you sat as a cashier for three kopecks!” Inna flew into a scream. “Yes, Misha needed money! He wanted to buy out a share in the business from his partner! He had big plans! And you… you were always the brake! Always with your fears, your penny-pinching! He had to do it! He wanted what was best for the family, for you!”

Zinaida looked at her and no longer saw her husband’s sister, but a stranger filled with malice. Lies seeped from every word. What business? What partner? Misha told her everything.

“Enough lying, Inna.”

“It’s not lies!” Inna suddenly lowered her voice to an intimate whisper. “Zin, listen. Let’s settle this quietly. We’ll sell his Volga, the dacha… We’ll pay it off bit by bit. No one has to know. We’ll preserve his bright memory. Let’s not involve the police, I beg you…”

She tried to take Zinaida’s hand, but she pulled away.

“Whose memory are we preserving, Inna? The Misha I loved, or the one you’ve just invented to cover your own scam?”

At that moment, Zinaida understood. She understood everything. There had been no partner. No grand plans of Misha’s. The money had been for Inna herself. Her husband had recently lost his job, her college-aged daughter had expensive tastes. She had simply taken advantage of her brother’s death. Dug up some old documents, cozied up to a shady bank clerk, forged the signatures… The calculation was simple: the devastated widow wouldn’t dig too deeply, she’d be afraid and would quietly pay, just to “avoid tarnishing her husband’s memory.”

“It was you who took the loan,” Zinaida said—not as a question, but as a statement.

Inna’s face contorted. The mask slipped.
“And even if it was me?” she spat. “So what? I’m his sister! I had the right! He would’ve helped me! But you—you’re a stranger! An outsider! You always were! You were obliged to help your husband’s family!”

This was the culmination. The moment of truth. The clash of two worlds. Zinaida’s world, where love and memory were sacred, and Inna’s world, where blood ties were nothing but a tool for getting what you wanted.

“No, Inna,” Zinaida replied calmly. Her voice no longer trembled; steel rang in it. “I will not consent to this. And I won’t pay. You will pay. And not just the money.”

She opened the front door.
“Leave. Or I’ll call the police right now.”

Inna looked at her with hatred, hissed a curse through her teeth, and stormed out onto the landing.

Zinaida locked the door with every lock. She leaned her back against it and slowly slid down to the floor. Silence… blessed silence. She felt neither relief nor joy. Only immense, draining fatigue. And a strange, quiet sense of release. As if she had just performed a complicated operation and removed a malignant tumor from her life.

The next morning she woke to bright sunlight streaming through the window. Volgograd shone, washed clean by the night’s rain. For the first time in a year, Zinaida looked at this light not with sorrow, but with hope.

She got ready methodically and calmly. She put copies of the agreement, her passport, and Mikhail’s death certificate into a folder. She called Vladimir to clarify a few details. He said he’d be waiting for her by the police station after lunch.

Her first stop was the bank. The same central office. Today she didn’t feel like a stranger here. She walked in with her head held high, fully aware she was in the right.

The head of security, a gray-haired, stern man with attentive eyes, received her. She silently laid the documents out in front of him.

“I’m a cashier,” she began evenly. “I’ve been working with money and documents for fifteen years. I know what a genuine signature looks like and what a forgery looks like. Here is my signature.” She took a sheet of paper and signed several times. “And here is what appears on this agreement. I’ve also brought my husband’s death certificate—Petrov Mikhail Andreyevich. The agreement was concluded a month after he died. I believe your bank has serious issues with client verification procedures and, possibly, with the integrity of your employees.”

The man was silent for a long time, comparing the documents. He saw before him not a frightened woman, but a confident professional speaking the language of facts.

 

“Zinaida Pavlovna,” he said at last. “We will immediately begin an internal investigation. Thank you for informing us. We will be in touch.”

It was her first victory. Small, but important. She was not just defending herself; she was restoring order disrupted by lies and greed.

After the bank, she met Vladimir. Together they went to the police station. The smell of bureaucracy, worn-out chairs, indifferent faces. But Vladimir was beside her, and that gave her strength. She wrote her statement—dry, factual, just as he had taught her. The date of the call. The amount of the loan. The forged signature. Her suspicions regarding her sister-in-law, Inna Petrova.

When they came outside, the spring air seemed especially fresh.

“Well, that’s that,” she said, feeling the tension of the last few days begin to ease. “Now we wait.”

“You did everything right,” Vladimir nodded. “You were great. Very strong.”

He said it simply, without flattery, and his words warmed her.

“Tennis court?” he suggested. “Shall we loosen up a bit?”

“Let’s,” she smiled.

On the court she played as she had never played in her life. Every shot was precise, powerful, calculated. She wasn’t just hitting the ball—she was knocking out the remnants of fear, doubt, and bitterness. She moved lightly, freely, as if she had shrugged off an invisible burden from her shoulders. Vladimir could barely keep up, watching her with surprise and admiration.

In the final set, at 5–5, she stepped up to serve. Tossed the ball, arched her back—a powerful, whiplike stroke. Ace. Match point. She laughed—for the first time in a very, very long while. Freely and happily.

The investigation lasted several months. It confirmed everything. Under the weight of the evidence, Inna confessed. It turned out she had talked a friendly manager in the loan department into helping, promising him “a cut.” Both of them faced trial. The loan was annulled. Mikhail’s name was cleared of lies. Zinaida’s name—of debt.

Her relationship with her husband’s family was destroyed forever. But Zinaida realized she had lost nothing. Because anything that could be destroyed by a single scam had never been real in the first place.

One summer evening she sat with Vladimir on a bench on the Central Embankment. The sun was setting over the Volga, painting the sky pink and orange.

“You know,” she said, looking at the water, “I didn’t just get rid of the debt. I feel like I found myself. The me I’d long lost. The one who can not only endure and drift with the current, but also fight.”

“I always knew she was there,” Vladimir smiled. “She was just waiting for her moment. For her serve.”

He gently took her hand. His palm was warm and strong. And Zinaida, without hesitation, squeezed his fingers in return. Ahead lay a new life. Unclear, mysterious, but undeniably her own. And she was ready for it

Phone buzzed on the table, lighting up a social media notification.

Tamara Igorevna, my mother-in-law, had posted a new photo. “Enjoying the Turkish sunshine!” the caption read.

In the picture she was smiling happily with a cocktail in hand against a backdrop of azure sea. I zoomed in on the background. Just automatically.

There, at the water’s edge, stood two people. Slightly out of focus, but painfully recognizable.

My husband Dima—who was supposed to be on an “urgent business trip” to Yekaterinburg—had his arm around my younger sister Ira’s waist. Ira was laughing, head thrown back.

His hand lay on her waist so confidently. So familiarly.

The world didn’t collapse. Nothing snapped inside me.

The air in the room didn’t grow thick. I just looked at the screen while, in my head, a puzzle of dozens of tiny details I’d refused to notice for so long fell into place with perfect clarity.

His sudden evening meetings. Her mysterious “admirer” she didn’t want to talk about.

His irritation when I asked for his phone. Her averted eyes at the last family dinner.

 

His words: “Nastya, you’re tired, you need to rest,” when I cried after yet another failed attempt at pregnancy. And her words, said at the same time: “Maybe it’s just not meant to be for you two?”

Calmly, I took a screenshot. Opened an editor. Cropped out my mother-in-law’s beaming face and left only what mattered.

I sent the edited photo to Ira without a single word.

Then I called my husband. He didn’t pick up right away; I could hear the sound of waves and some music in the background.

“Yeah, Nastya, hi. I’m in a meeting, not a great time.”

His voice was lively, pleased. Nothing like a man swamped with work.

“Just wanted to ask,” I said evenly, without a tremor. “How’s the weather in Yekaterinburg? Not too hot?”

He hesitated for a second.

“It’s fine,” he threw out. “Work-like. Nastya, I’ll call you back, I really can’t right now.”

“Of course, call me back,” I smiled, though he couldn’t see it. “When you finish your ‘business trip.’”

I hung up. The phone vibrated again immediately. Tamara Igorevna. She’d clearly seen my comment under her photo: “How lovely! And do say hi to Dima and little Ira from me!”

I declined the call and opened the banking app. There it was—our joint account, where his salary was deposited and from which all the main expenses were paid. I saw the latest transaction: “Restaurant ‘Sea Breeze,’ Antalya. Paid 15 minutes ago.”

In a matter of seconds I opened a new account in my name and transferred every last kopeck there. Then I blocked the joint credit card linked to that account. His personal debit card was now just a useless piece of plastic.

Let them enjoy their vacation. On their own dime now. If they even have one.

No more than ten minutes passed before the phone started blowing up. Ira first. Ten missed calls, then a barrage of messages.

“Are you out of your mind? What kind of Photoshop is that? Why are you doing this?”

“Nastya, delete your comment right now! Dima’s mom is calling me in hysterics!”

“It’s not what you think! We ran into each other by accident!”

By accident. In another country. At a hotel my husband paid for. I read it all and felt nothing but a cold, ringing calm.

Then Dima joined in. His messages were different. First—rage.

“What the hell are you doing? What the hell? My card isn’t going through! Did you block it?”

“I don’t get it—what kind of games are these? Answer the phone!”

I stayed silent. I went to the closet and took out a big suitcase. His suitcase. Opened it and put it on the bed. While I methodically folded his things, the phone rang again. My mother.

“Anyechka, sweetie, what happened? Ira just called me in tears. Says you’re accusing her of something…”

“Mom, everything’s fine. It’s just that Ira is vacationing in Turkey with my husband. And he’s supposed to be on a business trip.”

Mom fell silent, searching for words.

“Nastya, but you know what Ira is like… She’s so flighty. Maybe it’s just a misunderstanding? You’re the older sister, you should be wiser. You can’t just hack at things like this.”

“Wiser means letting my sister sleep with my husband?” I asked, my voice icy.

“There’s no need to put it that way… You should figure it out…”

“Thanks for the advice, Mom,” I said and hung up.

A new wave of messages from my husband. The tone shifted from angry to pleading.

“Nastya, I don’t know what you’ve made up for yourself, but you left me without a cent in a foreign country! That’s low!”

“Please unblock the card. We’ll come back and I’ll explain everything. You don’t want to destroy our family over some nonsense, do you?”

Nonsense. Ten years of marriage he called nonsense. I smirked and tossed his shaving kit into the suitcase. The final chord was my mother-in-law. She sent a voice message, dripping with venom.

“I always knew you were a snake! Decided to ruin my son’s life, did you? He found you in the gutter, and you… He’ll be happy to be rid of you! Ira’s a good girl, a looker, not like you—a gray mouse!”

I didn’t finish listening. I deleted the message and blocked her number. Then I took a photo of the packed suitcase by the front door. And sent that photo to Dima.

With a single caption: “It’s waiting for you. As are the divorce papers.”

There was a lull for almost five days. In that time I changed the locks on my apartment, consulted a lawyer, and called Dima’s boss, Igor Semenovich, an old friend of our family.

I didn’t complain, no.

I simply “shared a concern,” saying that Dima had flown to Turkey on a “last-minute package,” though he was supposed to be at a critical site in Yekaterinburg, and that I was very worried about his condition. Igor Semenovich understood without extra words.

On the evening of the fifth day the doorbell rang. In the peephole stood the two of them. Rumpled, angry, with sunburned noses.

I didn’t open.

“Nastya, open the door!” Dima’s voice was thick with fury. “Stop putting on a circus!”

He slid his key into the lock. Useless.

“You changed the locks?” amazement crept into his voice.

I calmly opened the door, leaving the chain on. I was wearing my best dress, light makeup, red lipstick.

“What are you doing here?” I asked politely.

“I came home!” Dima tried to yank the door.

“This is my home, Dima. And yours, it seems, is now wherever my sister is.”

That’s when Ira stepped forward.

“Stop playing the victim, Nastya!” she hissed. “So yes, it happened. Dima fell in love with me! You just need to accept it. You can’t give him anything anyway. Not passion, not even a child.”

That was a low blow. They both knew what my two miscarriages had cost me.

And in that moment, something clicked. The so-called “wise older sister” inside me died.

I looked at Ira. Straight into her brazen eyes. And smiled.

“A child? Are you sure you want to talk about that? You haven’t even paid off the loan for your ‘procedure’ yet. You couldn’t carry to term, and your man vanished afterward…”

Ira’s face turned as white as a sheet. Dima stared between her and me, stunned.

“What loan? What child?” he muttered.

“Oh, he doesn’t know?” I feigned surprise. “Well, then you’ll be interested to learn that your new ‘look-er’ has been living off me for the last six months. And not just her.”

I turned to Dima.

“Your things,” I nodded toward the suitcase in the hall, “a courier will deliver to your mother tomorrow. The divorce papers are with my lawyer. And now, be so kind as to clear my doorstep.”

Without waiting for an answer, I slowly and deliberately closed the door right in their faces. The lock clicked.

For a while there were muffled shouts behind the door. Accusations flew both ways. He yelled about a child, she—about him being broke. Then silence.

The next morning I called my father. I told him everything. Calmly, without tears, just the facts. He was quiet for a long time, then said, “I understand, daughter. You did everything right.”

 

A week later Dima called. From an unfamiliar number. His voice was completely different.

“Nastya… forgive me. I was an idiot. That Ira… she nagged me to death.”

I listened in silence.

“I got fired. Igor Semenovich said I let him down. I’m living with my mother, and she nags me from morning to night. Nastya, I’ve lost everything. Let’s start over?”

I paused.

“You know, Dima, I took a look at our joint accounts. And I found a couple of interesting loans taken out in my name without my knowledge. For ‘business development.’ So, I sold our car. It was just enough to pay everything off.”

A heavy silence hung on the other end.

“How… sold it? You had no right!”

“I had every right to protect myself and my future,” I cut him off. “And your future is now entirely in your hands. Live with that.”

I ended the call.

A year later.

I was sitting in a small café on one of Florence’s side streets, sketching in my notebook.

Over the year I’d traveled almost all over Italy, and my old, neglected passion for drawing had turned into something more. I started selling my watercolors online.

That day I happened to open a social network. And saw a message from my cousin.

“Nastya, hi! I saw your drawings—they’re out of this world! Listen, here’s the thing… Remember your Dima? His mother, Tamara Igorevna, called my mom recently, crying.”

I smirked and kept reading.

“Turns out your Dima fell to pieces after the divorce. Lived with her for a month, then she kicked him out herself. Supposedly he left to find work and just disappeared.

And with your Ira—what a circus. She tried to move back in with her parents, but Uncle Slava wouldn’t let her set foot over the threshold. Said he wants nothing to do with her until she apologizes to you.

She drifted around, found herself some guy, moved in with him. He kicked her out two months later. Word is, she tried to milk him for money.

Now she’s working the register at a 24-hour shop. And the funniest thing,” the message ended, “is that Tamara Igorevna now tells everyone what a wonderful daughter-in-law she lost.”

I closed the message. There was no gloating, no satisfaction. There was… nothing. Their life, their choices, their consequences. They wrote their own script.

I looked at my drawing—sun-washed square, pigeons drinking from a fountain.

I remembered how Dima laughed at my hobby, calling it “kid’s scribbles.” How Ira said artists are paupers.

They both tried to jam me into the frame of their world.

I put my pencil down and took a sip of espresso. The bitterness of the coffee tasted good.

Victory isn’t when your enemies are humiliated. Victory is when their lives and opinions no longer matter to you at all.

And at that moment, under the warm Italian sun, I realized I had finally, completely won.

 

My mother was the chief engineer of my existence, the quiet drafter of every blueprint I ever followed. When my father vanished from our lives—leaving behind a six-year-old boy and a woman suddenly carrying the weight of a collapsing world—she became everything celestial to me: sun for warmth, moon for tide, constellations to steer by. She never complained. Still, some nights, when the house went still and the refrigerator hummed like distant traffic, I would hear water running in the kitchen and, beneath it, a muffled, breaking sound. I knew the faucet was a curtain; I knew the sobs were the truth. In that dark, breath-held childhood silence, I made a private vow: I would never cross her. If she decided, I agreed. If she pointed, I went. Her will, my command.

So when I turned thirty-two and she informed me—calm as if reading a grocery list—that she had found the perfect bride, I didn’t argue. It wasn’t inability. I’d dated. But no one passed customs at the border of my mother’s approval. One woman laughed too loudly; another’s blonde wasn’t the right blonde; a third didn’t tilt her head at the precise degree of deference. Each time, I folded. She, who had bled so much for me, must surely know what was best.

I did not see my bride until the wedding. Her name, my mother said, was Sarah. An orphan, raised like an afterthought by tired relatives in a town you’d only find by accident on a paper map. Such scarcity had forged virtues, according to my mother: quiet, obedience, modesty. But the crown jewel—the detail that lit a quiet triumph in my mother’s eyes—was this: Sarah could not speak. Born mute. She communicated by gestures and by a small leather notebook she carried like a second pulse.

“She’s perfect for our family, Michael,” my mother murmured, her voice smooth as a museum floor—no friction, no trace. “No arguments. No shouting. No scenes. Just a grateful young woman who understands her place. You’re doing her a favor; who else would take a wife with a flaw like that?”

The logic was glacial, but I let it slide over me until I went numb. Loneliness is a persuasive advocate; trust in my mother, a lifelong habit. The photograph she produced was the final stamp. Sarah was arresting—slender, with chestnut hair falling in soft cascades, wide blue eyes, a shy mouth curved as if guarding a secret. I felt curiosity flicker. I said yes.

The wedding was not a ceremony; it was a production. My mother staged it at an extravagant country club, all glass and manicured water, the air perfumed with lilies and applause. I stood in a custom suit that fit me like a verdict, a stranger at my own altar. Two hundred guests—mostly my mother’s partners and clients—filled the room, the murmur of their approval already written into the script. It was, as much as anything, a testimonial: look what she built.

The doors parted. Sarah entered, more luminous than the photograph had promised. A veil softened her into myth. She moved with a deliberate, unspilled grace, eyes lowered, steps measured. Through the vows she was the definition of demure—nodding at their cue, taking the pen like it was a feather and writing her new name with a ballerina’s wrist. People leaned forward, charmed. My mother radiated a holy, blinding pride.

At the reception, Sarah sat beside me like a porcelain saint—beautiful, still, faultless. She smiled when smiled at, tipped her head when jokes were tossed across the table, and when addressed directly, she opened the little notebook and answered in neat, economical lines. I felt the old reflex: my mother had done it again. The solution, immaculate.

In the taxi to the apartment my mother had helped me buy—new floors, new paint, new life—Sarah watched the city blur by, her reflection slipping in and out of the dark glass. A small, private smile played on her lips, unreadable as a closed book. Satisfaction, I thought, settling like a cloak around my shoulders. Not love, not yet—something steadier, quieter. A beginning with smooth edges.

I opened the door. The place smelled like fresh paint and possibility. The click as the door shut rang in the emptied rooms. I turned to her, ready—awkward, hopeful—to begin.

She met my eyes. The shy smile disappeared, peeled back like a mask. In its place was something keen and lucid, a sharpness that caught the light.

“Finally,” she said, voice bright and bell-clear. “Just us, Michael. We can stop performing.”

I stopped breathing. Words lost their meaning in the white noise filling my skull. “What?” I managed. “You—my mother said—you’re—” The sentence fell apart in my mouth. “You’re mute.”

Sarah’s mouth tilted into a weary, almost amused smirk, an expression that felt impossible on the face of the silent girl from an hour ago. She slipped out of her heels, padded to an armchair, and sank into it, the white dress pooling like spilled milk. “Mute? No. That fiction was your mother’s stroke of genius.” She exhaled, the sound full of fatigue older than the day. “She said you needed a gentle, obedient wife who wouldn’t interfere with your perfect little duet.”

Her words kept landing and landing. My mind refused delivery. It stamped them RETURN TO SENDER. “Who are you?” I whispered, like a man asking the ocean its name.

“Oh, that’s long.” She loosened the tiny hooks at the collar of her dress and crossed to the window, drawing the curtains until the room softened into an intimate dusk. When she turned back, her eyes carried something I hadn’t seen before: a cold glint of resolve, anger burnished into steel, and the cool satisfaction of a door finally opening. “Did your mother never mention me?” she asked softly, iron threaded through the silk. “Our family? What happened twenty-five years ago?”

I shook my head, my body a collection of trembling parts. The disbelief was not a wave; it was a riptide.

“Then listen,” she said. “Because this began long before you could count years. If you want to understand why I’m here—and what happens next—you need every word.”

My knees went unreliable; I sank onto the sofa.

 

“You really believe your father just left?” she asked, and the question jabbed under my ribs. “Ran off with another woman, the way your mother always told it?”

That story was the ground I’d been taught to walk on: father the deserter, mother the saint. “Yes,” I said, fists tightening like a habit. “He abandoned us.”

Sarah’s head moved in a slow, sorrowful no. “He didn’t leave you, Michael. He never would have. You were his north.”

“How do you know?” Anger burst through the fog—hot, defensive, grateful to have somewhere to go.

“I know,” she said quietly, “because your father was my mother’s brother. He was my uncle.”

The air thinned. The words hovered, impossible and precise. Cousin. My cousin. A family I’d been taught was dead air. Why would my mother—

“Your mother erased us from your map,” Sarah continued, her voice hardening into the edge of a blade. “After what she did to your father, it served her to make sure you never heard another version of the story.”

“What did she do to him?” I asked, and the question tasted like ice.

She reached into her purse and pulled out a photograph gone soft at the corners. A man who could have been my reflection stood with a woman I didn’t recognize and a small girl with wide, curious eyes. “Your father,” she said, and her voice gentled. “My mother—his sister. And me, five years old. The last picture we took together. A week before he disappeared.”

“Disappeared? My mother said—”

“He didn’t walk away,” Sarah said. “He went missing. He left for a business meeting and never came back. A week later they pulled his car from a lake. No body.”

I stared until the faces swam. My father’s features—my features—looked back at me from another life. “But why would she—”

“Your parents built a tech company together,” Sarah said, the warmth draining from her tone. “Co-founders. But most of the shares were in his name. After he vanished, everything flowed to her. And days before he disappeared, she took out a massive life-insurance policy on him.”

I felt the blood leave my face. “That’s not true.”

“Is it?” She slid a small, battered notebook from her bag and set it on the table between us as if placing a matchbook on gasoline. “Your father’s journal. My mother kept it hidden. Your mother never knew it survived. Read before you decide I’m lying.”

She tapped the cover once, lifted her gaze to mine, and her voice softened in a way that undid me. “I’m giving you a few hours alone with him,” she said. “Don’t call your mother. Not yet.” Then she was at the door, a muted click, and the apartment swallowed her absence.

Silence expanded until it pressed against my eardrums. The journal sat where she’d left it, small and ordinary, unbearable. To open it felt like treason against the woman who had been my entire sky. Not to open it felt like treason against the man I’d been taught to condemn. My hand shook as I reached.

The handwriting on the first page was a shock—the same elegant script that had once looped across a handful of birthday cards, artifacts from before the void.

March 15th: Fought with Elizabeth again. She’s pushing for more control of the company, but I can’t give it to her. Not when I suspect she’s working with competitors behind my back. Michael drew a picture of our family today. Such a bright kid. I hope I can protect him from all of this.

I turned the page, my heart pounding so hard it rattled the room.

March 20 — Elizabeth is… off. She whispers on the phone and goes quiet when I walk in. Today I watched her meet Bob from Innovatech—our biggest rival—outside the café on 3rd. She called it a coincidence. I watched them trade envelopes. Not a coincidence.

With every entry I wrote after that, the halo around my sainted mother cracked. I recorded her secrecy, the odd calls that cut out when I picked up the extension, the files I found tucked beneath the false bottom of her desk drawer—memos about back-channel talks, unsigned agreements, and her sudden insistence that I increase my life insurance “for Michael’s sake.”

April 10 — Anonymous message. A warning: “Elizabeth is planning to get rid of me.” Paranoia? Maybe. But I can’t ignore it. I’m sending Michael to my sister, Karen, until I understand what’s happening.

The last entry was dated the day before he disappeared.

April 15 — Proof. Definitive. She’s been selling our proprietary designs. Meeting a lawyer tomorrow to start divorce proceedings. Must protect Michael. I’m scared for my life, more scared for my son. If anything happens to me, Karen must know the truth: Elizabeth is dangerous. She cannot be allowed custody.

I closed the notebook. My tears had wrinkled the paper so the ink bloomed like bruises. His love for me, his terror for my safety—every line pulsed with it. My childhood, my identity, the altar I’d built to my mother’s goodness—everything collapsed in a breath.

When Sarah came back into the room, I didn’t speak. I didn’t need to. She read the ruin on my face.

“It’s not enough,” I said, my voice sandpapered raw. “It’s his handwriting, his fear—but it doesn’t prove she actually… did anything.”

“I know,” Sarah answered, jaw set. She lifted another folder. Inside: a private investigator’s reports, copies of bank statements showing large, sour-smelling transfers, sworn statements about Elizabeth meeting men who never used their real names. The picture it painted was terrifying—and circumstantial.

“That’s why I had to marry you,” she said, steady, unblinking. “Your mother is meticulous. The one piece that will end this—the smoking gun—is in her house. Hidden. And now, as your wife, I can get close enough to find it.”

“You want to use me to search my mother’s home?” I asked, anger rising like fire under ice.

“I think you want the truth as much as I do,” she said. “You’re already questioning everything. I’m offering you a way to answer it.”

She was right. I needed to know.

The dinner at my mother’s was a dream inside a nightmare. I wore the smile of the dutiful son; Sarah, the luminous, silent bride. Elizabeth floated room to room, the benevolent queen of a perfect tableau, laughter sparkling off crystal and silver. But beneath the pleasantries, something hunched and hungry watched us all.

After dinner, as guests drifted toward the conservatory and a piano began to tinkle out polite music, Sarah breathed, “Now. Keep her busy.”

I intercepted my mother with small talk sharpened into a blade: how had she found Sarah, what did she think of the dress, had she met Sarah’s family, and—oh—what was Sarah’s maiden name again? For a heartbeat, something slipped. Panic flashed in her eyes, a tremor beneath the lacquer. Then the mask snapped tight.

Sarah reappeared a few minutes later, the room buzzing around us. Our eyes locked across the crowd. The smallest nod. She’d found it.

The drive home was a stretch of taut, wordless wire. Inside the apartment, Sarah slid a flash drive into her laptop. “From her study,” she said, fingers sprinting across keys. “There was a folder labeled with your father’s name—David.”

It was locked, password-gated, smug. Sarah—raised by my aunt Karen, who’d taught her to outthink locked doors—bypassed the encryption in minutes.

The folder opened into a gallery of dread. Telephoto shots of my father from across streets and restaurants and parking lots. PI logs detailing his schedule to the minute. And a final document, titled with surgical simplicity: “The Plan.”

It was meticulous. Dates. Addresses. Retainers for “specialists.” A timetable that marched to a single conclusion. And the last, damning line: After David is removed, the startup is fully mine. Michael stays with me. No contact with David’s family.

We stared at the screen, the proof casting a cold light across the room—when the doorbell rang.

I checked the peephole. My mother.

“I had a feeling,” she said, sweeping in, eyes combing the apartment with a predator’s calm. She stopped on Sarah. “Your wife,” she murmured, voice dropping, “is not who she says she is.”

Sarah didn’t flinch. “You’re right, Elizabeth. I have an agenda. To find proof of what you did to my uncle.”

No mask, not anymore. My mother’s face went still, then cruelly amused. “Karen’s girl,” she said, almost pleased with herself. “I should have guessed.” She laughed, a sound as empty as an abandoned warehouse. “You have nothing. You never will.”

“We have his journal,” Sarah said. “And the files from your computer.”

My mother turned to me, fury cutting through the room like a wire. “You let her?”

 

“I want the truth,” I said. My hands were shaking. I didn’t hide them.

“The truth?” She spat the word like a seed. “The truth is your father was weak. He wanted ethics and principles. I wanted to win. He was leaving, taking you, burning down what I built. So yes—I did what was necessary.”

She confessed—clean, almost bored. Not a flicker of regret. A line item on a balance sheet.

“I protected our interests, Michael. Yours. Because of me, you had everything.”

“You killed him,” I said, and the words sounded like they belonged to some other man in some other life.

“A necessary decision,” she replied. “As was handling your meddling aunt five years ago. And as was drugging your little wife tonight.”

My stomach dropped. The champagne.

“Relax,” she said, shark-soft. “A sleeping agent. She’ll live. If you stop this ridiculous crusade. Divorce her. Pretend she never existed. Or she might have… an accident. Like her mother.”

I unbuttoned my shirt, slow and deliberate, and lifted the tiny microphone Gregory Parker—Sarah’s adoptive father and my father’s old partner—had pinned there an hour before. “Now we have it,” I said. “Your confession. Recorded.”

The door crashed open. The room flooded with blue windbreakers and hard voices. A detective Gregory had on standby moved first. Handcuffs clicked like the punch line to a terrible joke.

My mother looked at me as they led her away, eyes like knives dipped in winter. “You’ll regret this, Michael,” she hissed. “You think you’ve won? I own this city. When I get out, you’ll learn what betrayal costs.”

The trial ground on for months, a relentless threshing of evidence and testimony. But the recording, the journal, the files—together they were a wall. The verdict landed with the finality of a slammed cell door: guilty on all counts. Murder. Conspiracy. Attempted murder.

Afterward came the slow work of living. Sarah and I—tied by blood, by loss, by the fire we walked through—chose separate paths. Not enemies. Not lovers. Something steadier: the kind of family that survives truth. I took the company and rebuilt it in the shape of my father’s ghost—principles, transparency, work that didn’t rot your soul.

Years later I met Chloe. She was gentle without being fragile, kind without being naïve. She saw me—not the son of a monster, not a victim, just a man learning how to stand in his own life. With her, trust returned like rain after a long dry season. Love followed.

My mother will die in prison. I don’t visit. I don’t write. The woman I adored was a story she told me; the author was always a stranger. The truth is that my mother died to me a long time ago—in a quiet kitchen, water running to drown out her sobs—leaving only the architect of a crime.

My father, the man I hardly knew, I visit every week. Not at a grave, but in Gregory’s stories, in the photographs Sarah keeps sending, and in the mirror where his features look back at me, softened by time and understanding. He wasn’t a traitor. He was a hero. And I am his son.

 

All our relatives are coming to stay with us for the summer!” Sergey announced happily, bursting into the kitchen with his phone in his hand.

I froze with my half-finished cup of coffee. My first thought was, “He’s joking.” The second: “God, anything but this.”

“What relatives exactly?” I asked cautiously, hoping he meant at most his parents.

Sergey flopped down on the chair opposite me, beaming like a string of Christmas lights.

“Everyone! Mom and Dad, Lenka with her husband and the twins, Dima with Alena and their son. Can you imagine how great it’ll be? A whole month together!”

I tried to smile, but it didn’t go well. A picture flashed before my eyes: our not-so-big house crammed with eight adults and three children, one shared bathroom, a line for the kitchen, shouting, noise… And my project, which I needed to work on in silence and concentration to get the long-awaited promotion.

“When are they coming?” I asked, trying to grasp the scale of the catastrophe.

“Mom and Dad and Lenka with her family this Saturday, Dima in a week. Cool, right?”

There were three days left until Saturday. I silently took out my phone and went out into the garden, pretending the reception was better there.

“Hello, do you have any vacancies for July? A single room, please.”

That’s how the craziest summer of my life began.

The first to arrive were Sergey’s parents, Anna Petrovna and Viktor Stepanovich. My mother-in-law immediately set about imposing her own rules in the kitchen, while my father-in-law took over Sergey’s favorite armchair and turned the TV up to full volume.

“Irinochka,” Anna Petrovna whispered conspiratorially when we were alone in the kitchen, “Vitya and I brought the family heirloom box. It’s time to hand it over to a worthy heir.”

She took a wooden box with intricate carving out of her bag.

“It’s been passed down in our family for four generations already. They say Sergey’s great-grandfather made it with his own hands for his great-grandmother.”

“And who do you want to pass it on to?” I asked out of politeness, though I already had a feeling what the answer would be.

“That is what we will decide!” my mother-in-law said meaningfully. “We’ll see who proves themselves this summer.”

 

That same evening Sergey’s sister Elena arrived with her husband Nikolai and the twins Kostya and Katya. The ten-year-old rascals immediately took over the guest room, and Lena and Nikolai settled in the study where I had planned to work on my project.

“Irina, it’s been so long since we last saw each other!” Lena hugged me tightly. “We’ll finally get to really talk! And I brought my signature pie. I hope you don’t mind if I take over your kitchen a little?”

I smiled and nodded, mentally counting the days until the end of July.

On the third day of living together I realized that I simply wouldn’t survive without my “backup airfield.” Getting up at five in the morning, I left a note saying I was going to an important work meeting and fled to the hotel.

I never thought I’d be so happy about an impersonal hotel room. Silence, just my laptop and my work.

At lunchtime I went down to the hotel restaurant and froze on the threshold. At a table in the back sat Dmitry—Sergey’s brother, who wasn’t supposed to arrive until the following week.

Our eyes met, and we both froze like schoolkids caught red-handed.

“Don’t tell me you’ve run away too,” Dmitry said, half asking, half stating.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in the city?”

Dmitry snorted.

“We got in last night. Alena and Mishka went straight to your place, and I said I had a business meeting and checked in here. I didn’t even know you were hiding out here too.”

I sat down at his table.

“Shall we make a non-aggression pact?” I suggested. “I don’t tell anyone about you, and you don’t tell anyone about me.”

“Deal,” Dmitry smiled. “I wonder who else from our big happy family has found a way to escape?”

That question turned out to be prophetic.

A few days later I noticed that Anna Petrovna regularly disappeared from the house for a couple of hours, explaining it as health walks. Nikolai “went on business” three times a week, although he was officially on vacation. And Elena had signed up for some mysterious treatments after which she came back suspiciously refreshed.

Even my Sergey, the biggest enthusiast of the family gathering, started stopping by the local café on a regular basis “to chat with new friends.”

Only the children and Viktor Stepanovich remained faithful to the house, though the latter, it seemed, simply didn’t hear all the commotion over the sound of the TV.

And then there was that very box. Every evening at dinner Anna Petrovna would start a conversation about family values and traditions, hinting that she was watching everyone closely.

“The box should go to the one who truly values family,” she would say meaningfully, letting her gaze move from one face to another.

That unspoken competition just added to the tension in an already strained atmosphere.

On Friday evening I came back from the hotel earlier than usual—I had to prepare a presentation for an important meeting. The house greeted me with an unusual silence. In the living room I found only Alena, Dmitry’s wife, who was leafing through a magazine with a focused look.

“Where is everybody?” I asked in surprise.

“They’ve scattered in all directions,” Alena shrugged. “Mother-in-law went to the library, Sergey to his café, Lenka to her treatments, Nikolai to a meeting, Dima… well, you know where. The kids went to the park with Grandpa.”

I froze.

“Wait, you know about Dima?”

Alena snorted.

“Of course. We agreed on it ages ago: he gets a couple of days off at the hotel, then I get a couple of days. Otherwise we’d have killed each other in this madhouse.”

“And you know about me too?”

“I know about everyone,” she said, putting the magazine aside. “Sit down, I’ll tell you something interesting.”

It turned out that Anna Petrovna wasn’t taking walks at all, but going to the local library, where she spent hours reading in silence. Elena wasn’t going to treatments either, but to a nearby town to see a childhood friend. Nikolai was playing tennis at the sports club. And Sergey was in his café obsessively playing board games with the locals.

“But how did you find out?” I was amazed.

“It’s a small town; everyone sees everything,” Alena shrugged. “Besides, I’m the only one who actually wanted this family gathering. But even I need a break.”

We laughed and, for the first time in all this time, really talked.

Everything changed on Saturday evening. Anna Petrovna had organized a festive family dinner, after which she planned to announce her decision about the box. I was setting the table when I heard her scream from the guest room.

“The box is gone!”

Everyone ran to her call. Anna Petrovna was standing in the middle of the room with a look of extreme indignation on her face.

“I clearly remember leaving it on the dresser, and now it’s not there!”

“Maybe you moved it and forgot?” suggested Viktor Stepanovich.

“I’m not senile!” she protested. “Someone took the box without asking!”

Everyone’s eyes began darting from one to another. Nikolai was the first to snap.

“Why are you all looking at me? You think I stole it? What on earth would I need it for!”

“No one is accusing you,” Sergey began, but Elena cut him off.

“Actually, you’re the only one who’s constantly going off somewhere. Who knows, maybe you wanted to sell it!”

“I’m the one going off?” Nikolai retorted. “And what about you! What kind of ‘treatments’ last three hours?”

“Don’t you dare accuse me!” Elena flared up. “You’d better ask Dmitry where he spends half his nights!”

Dmitry turned pale.

“What do you mean?”

“We all know about your hotel!” blurted Elena. “And Irina’s too!”

A deathly silence fell. Sergey slowly turned to me.

“What hotel?”

I took a deep breath.

“I booked a room at Pine Grove so I could sometimes work on my project in peace. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

“How often are you there?” he asked quietly.

“Almost every day,” I answered honestly.

“And did you know my brother was there too?”

“We ran into each other in the restaurant by accident,” Dmitry cut in. “And agreed not to give each other away. But we go there at different times.”

“Traitors!” cried Anna Petrovna. “And here I was wondering whom to entrust with the family heirloom! Fine heirs you are!”

“And what about you!” I couldn’t help myself. “You sneak off to the library when you’re supposedly out for a walk!”

Anna Petrovna gasped and clutched at her heart.

“How did you…”

“Everyone knows everything about everyone,” Alena sighed. “Elena goes to see her friend, Nikolai plays tennis, Sergey is in the café playing board games. Only me, the kids, and Viktor Stepanovich honestly stay at home.”

“Dad runs away too,” little Mishka piped up suddenly. “Only he hides in the shed. He’s got a chair and books there.”

Viktor Stepanovich grunted and spread his hands.

“Busted.”

There was an awkward pause, and then Sergey started laughing. Elena joined in, then Dmitry, and soon everyone was roaring with laughter.

“What a family,” said Anna Petrovna, wiping her tears. “No one’s interested in being with each other.”

“That’s not it, Mom,” Sergey objected. “It’s just that everyone needs personal space.”

“And what about the box?” my mother-in-law remembered. “It’s still missing!”

“Grandma, I took it,” Katya said quietly, stepping forward. “It’s so pretty, I wanted to keep my stuff in it.”

She held out the box, and Anna Petrovna took it, relieved.

 

“Well, since we’ve all confessed to each other, let’s talk like adults,” Sergey suggested. “Over dinner.”

It was the most candid family dinner of my life. We talked about personal boundaries, about the need to be alone, about how we loved each other but sometimes couldn’t stand constant togetherness.

“Irina, forgive me,” Sergey said when everyone had gone. “I should have discussed my family’s visit with you beforehand. I just really wanted to get everyone together like when we were kids.”

“And I should have been honest that I needed time to work and time for myself,” I replied. “Instead of secretly running away.”

We agreed to draw up a schedule for the remaining two weeks: mornings for work and personal time, daytime for activities together, and evenings for family dinners—but not every day.

“And what about the box?” I asked Anna Petrovna before bed.

She smiled.

“I’ll keep it for now. But I’ve had an idea. What if every year, during our family gathering, we put little souvenirs in it? Each family member their own, with a story. In a few years it will become a real family treasure.”

On the last day of our reunion I booked a large table at the Pine Grove hotel restaurant. Everyone was surprised when I invited them there.

“Welcome to my ‘backup airfield,’” I said with a smile when we sat down at the festive table.

“It’s cozy here,” Anna Petrovna nodded approvingly. “Next year maybe we’ll stay here right away? We’ll just visit each other.”

“But first we’ll definitely discuss the plans,” Sergey said firmly, taking my hand.

I smiled and nodded. That summer I not only finished my project and got my promotion, but also realized one important thing: sometimes you need to pull away a little in order to truly grow closer.

The box stayed with my mother-in-law, but we all put small keepsakes into it: I a flash drive with my project, Sergey a die from the café, the kids some sea shells, each of us something of our own.

Before leaving, Elena hugged me and whispered:

“Next year book me a room next to yours. And thank you for your honesty.”

Now, when I remember that summer, I smile. Sometimes it takes a full-blown family drama to finally learn how to tell the truth

 

Tatyana was wiping dust off the chest of drawers in the living room when she heard the familiar sound of keys in the lock. Her husband had come home from work an hour earlier than usual, and that could mean only one thing—more news about his sister Marina.

“Tanechka,” Igor called from the hallway, “we’re going to have a guest. Marina is coming the day after tomorrow.”

Tatyana froze with the rag in her hand. The last time her husband’s sister had stayed with them was three years ago, and those two weeks had forever remained in her memory as one of the most tense periods of their family life.

“For long?” she asked carefully.

 

“Mom’s asking us to get her settled in the city. Marina is already twenty-seven and still can’t find her place in life. I think a big city will give her more opportunities.”

Tatyana sighed. She remembered Marina—a tall blonde with a sulky mouth and a habit of treating everyone around her like hired help. The girl had never worked, lived with their mother in a small town, where the older woman supported her on her pension and the money her son sent.

“Fine,” Tatyana said, realizing she had no choice. “I’ll make up a bed for her in the living room.”

Marina arrived on Thursday morning with two huge suitcases and a bag stuffed with cosmetics. She was just as striking as before, but in her eyes Tatyana could read the weariness of provincial life and a hunger for change.

“Igoryok!” she exclaimed joyfully, hugging her brother. “I’ve missed real civilization so much!”

Tatyana silently watched the reunion of the siblings. Marina barely nodded in her direction in greeting, as if her brother’s wife were just another piece of furniture.

“Show me my room,” Marina asked. “I’m so tired from the road. And is there anything to eat? I didn’t have breakfast.”

The following days settled into a certain rhythm. Marina got up around noon, spent a long time getting herself ready, and then demanded breakfast. Tatyana, who worked from home remotely, was forced to interrupt her work to cook for their guest.

“Tanechka, don’t you have any better coffee? This one is kind of sour,” Marina complained, grimacing.

“Tanechka, can you wash my blouse? I want to go downtown for a walk today.”

“Tanechka, do you have an iron? My dress is all wrinkled.”

Igor could see his wife was on edge, but preferred not to notice. Moreover, every day he gave his sister spending money—sometimes for a taxi, sometimes for lunch at a café, sometimes for shopping at the mall.

“Igor,” Tatyana began cautiously one evening when Marina had gone out to meet some new acquaintances, “maybe you should talk to her about getting a job? She’s been here two weeks already and she just keeps having fun.”

“Give her time to settle in,” her husband waved her off. “She’s spent her whole life in a small town. Let her get to know our city first, figure out what suits her.”

Tatyana fell silent, but inside everything was boiling. She watched their family budget melt before her eyes, watched their home turn into a hotel for a spoiled girl who couldn’t even manage a proper “thank you.”

A week later Marina came home in high spirits. She had met her old school friends Alyona and Sveta at the mall. Both had married well and now lived in comfort.

“Can you imagine,” she told her brother excitedly, “Alyona married a businessman, they have an apartment in an upscale neighborhood. And Sveta married a doctor, he opened a private clinic. Every year they vacation somewhere—Turkey one year, Greece the next.”

“That’s wonderful,” Igor replied absently, scrolling through the news on his tablet.

“They invited me to go with them!” Marina blurted out. “To Cyprus! They say it’s beautiful there now, not as hot as in the summer. We can buy a twelve-day tour.”

Igor lifted his eyes from the screen. Silence hung in the room.

“Marina,” he said slowly, “but you don’t have any money for such a trip.”

“Igoryok,” Marina sat down next to her brother and took his hand. “You understand the position I’ll be in if I tell my friends I can’t go. They’ll think I’m a pauper. And then they’ll spread those rumors all over our town.”

“Marina, that’s serious money. A tour to Cyprus, plus spending money…”

“But you’re my brother!” Marina’s voice trembled with tears. “There’s no one else I can ask. Mom already gave me all her savings so I could move here. And I… I was so hoping to start a new life.”

Tatyana heard this conversation from the kitchen, where she was washing dishes. Her hands were shaking with outrage. She understood perfectly well where this was heading.

“How much will it cost?” Igor asked.

“The tour is about eighty thousand. And maybe twenty thousand for spending money. I can’t show up there empty-handed when my friends will have the best of everything.”

A hundred thousand rubles. Tatyana knew they had exactly that amount in their account—they had been saving for repairs on the dacha she had inherited from her grandmother.

“Alright,” Igor sighed. “I’ll help you.”

When Marina, overjoyed, ran off to call her friends, Tatyana came out of the kitchen. Her face was pale with anger.

“Igor, have you lost your mind?” she said quietly but clearly. “A hundred thousand rubles for your sister’s whims?”

“Tanechka, you see what state she’s in. Who will help her if not me? If I refuse, she’ll throw a fit and go back home. Then all our efforts will be in vain.”

“What efforts? She isn’t even looking for a job! She’s turned our home into a hotel and me into a maid!”

“Don’t exaggerate,” Igor winced. “She just needs to get used to the new place.”

“Get used to it? In three weeks? Igor, we were putting that money aside for the dacha. The roof leaks, the veranda is falling apart.”

“The dacha can wait. But the chance for Marina to start a new life might not come again. She needs connections to help her find a good job.”

“A new life?” Tatyana felt a lump rise in her throat. “Igor, do you hear yourself? We’re about to blow all our savings so she can play rich lady in front of her friends for two weeks!”

“My sister is going on vacation, even if I have to sell your dacha! Get that through your head,” Igor snapped in a fit of temper, and at once realized he had gone too far.

Tatyana stared at him, eyes wide. She couldn’t believe that the man she’d lived with for five years could say such words.

“I see,” she said quietly. “So my dacha is just small change to be traded for your sister. Got it.”

She turned and walked to the bedroom. Igor tried to stop her, but she closed the door behind her.

Tatyana did not sleep all night. She lay there thinking about how her husband, without batting an eye, had been ready to sacrifice her property for his sister’s whims. In the morning, when Igor left for work and Marina was still asleep, she sat down at the computer.

Tatyana opened a popular classifieds website and posted an ad to sell Igor’s car—a black Škoda he had bought two years earlier. She set a very attractive price—significantly below market value. In the description she wrote that the car was in excellent condition, the sale was urgent, and she left her husband’s phone number. Confirming it while he slept had been easy. She knew the password to his phone.

The first call to Igor came at seven in the morning. Then at eight-thirty. By lunchtime his phone wouldn’t stop ringing.

“Hello, are you the one selling the Škoda? I’m calling about the ad,” buyers asked.

“What ad?” Igor was puzzled. “I’m not selling my car.”

“But there’s an ad on the internet with your phone number.”

“There must be some mistake.”

By evening Igor was exhausted. He had counted more than thirty calls from potential buyers.

At home he was met by his wife, calmly making dinner. Marina was sitting at the kitchen table, animatedly talking about her plans for the trip.

“Tanechka,” Igor addressed his wife, “all day people have been calling me about selling my car. Do you know what that might be?”

“I do,” Tatyana replied calmly, without looking up from the frying pan. “I posted an ad to sell your car.”

“What?!” Igor turned pale. “Are you out of your mind?”

“Not at all. I’m helping you raise money for Marina. Your sister is more important than your car. You can take the bus to work.”

Marina stopped chewing and looked closely at her brother.

“Tanechka, this isn’t funny,” Igor said.

“I’m not laughing,” his wife turned to him. “Yesterday you said you were ready to sell my dacha for Marina’s vacation. I figured it was only logical to start with your property.”

“I lost my temper. That’s not what I meant.”

“No, Igor, that is exactly what you meant. You’re ready to sacrifice everything for your sister’s whims. Then sacrifice your own car.”

Marina realized she was becoming the cause of a family quarrel and tried to intervene:

“Igoryok, maybe you shouldn’t fight over this?”

“No, Marina,” Tatyana said firmly. “Your brother thinks your vacation is so important that he’s ready to sell my dacha. So he can part with his car too.”

“Take down the ad,” Igor asked. “People won’t stop calling.”

“I will, once you apologize to me and give up this crazy vacation idea.”

“But I already promised Marina!”

 

“And you promised me you would love and respect me. Where is that respect when you’re ready to sell my property?”

Igor looked helplessly at his sister, then at his wife. For the first time in all these weeks he saw the situation from the outside. His sister really had turned into a spoiled freeloader who thought of nothing but her own pleasures. And he, trying to help her, had been ready to destroy his relationship with his wife.

“Marina,” he said quietly, “I won’t be able to give you money for the trip.”

“What?” Marina jumped up from her chair. “But you promised! I already told the girls I’m going! They’re already buying tickets!”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t spend all our savings on your vacation.”

“You’re a traitor!” Marina screamed. “I never thought my own brother could do this to me! Mom will be horrified!”

“Mom will understand,” Igor replied calmly. “She’s always said that family is the most important thing. And my family is Tatyana and me.”

“I’m not staying in this house!” Marina ran to her room. “I’m going back home tomorrow!”

The door slammed shut. Tatyana turned off the stove and looked at her husband.

“Forgive me,” Igor said quietly. “I let myself be led by her manipulations and almost destroyed everything we have. Take down the ad,” he asked.

“I’m already doing it.”

The next day Marina packed her suitcases and ostentatiously called a taxi. She didn’t say goodbye to Tatyana, only gave her brother a frosty nod.

“Don’t think I’ll forget this,” she said at the last moment. “Mom will find out how you treated me.”

“Tell Mom I love her,” Igor replied. “And that I’m always ready to help my family. But only in a sensible way.”

When the taxi disappeared around the corner, Tatyana took her husband’s hand.

“Do you regret it?” she asked.

“No,” Igor shook his head. “I realized I almost lost what’s most precious for the sake of someone who doesn’t value it.”

That evening, as they sat in the kitchen over tea, Igor said:

“I will never again let anyone, even my relatives, tell us how to spend our money.”

“Family is important,” Tatyana said gently. “But family is you and me. Everyone else is just relatives.”

“Exactly,” Igor agreed. “And I swear I’ll never confuse those concepts again.”

A week later they received a message from Igor’s mother. She apologized for her daughter’s behavior and asked them not to be angry with her. Marina had told her version of events, but their mother was not as naive as the girl thought.

“I know my daughter,” she wrote. “She’s used to everyone around her fulfilling her wishes. Thank you for trying to help her. Maybe this lesson will do her good.”

Their savings remained untouched. In the summer Igor and Tatyana repaired the dacha, and after that they could comfortably spend weekends there. And Marina, according to rumors, got a job as a sales assistant in a clothing store in her town and rented a room. Perhaps life really did teach her to value what she had.

But most importantly, Igor realized that a real family begins with respect for one’s wife, not with indulging the whims of spoiled relatives. And he would never again put his marriage at risk for someone else’s caprices, even if those caprices came from his own sister.

Anna lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling, trying to calm her wildly pounding heart.

Just a few minutes ago she had gone through one of the most frightening moments of her life — a confrontation with her own husband Alexander and his mother, Olga Petrovna.

Their little daughter Sonya was sleeping peacefully in her crib, unaware of the chaos that had been raging around her.

Three days earlier, Anna had come home from the maternity hospital after a difficult delivery. She felt deeply exhausted, both physically and emotionally, but she knew that now she had to care for her newborn daughter.

Her mother-in-law came the next day, having promised to help the young mother cope with the first difficulties.

“Get some rest,” she told Anna with a gentle smile. “I’ll look after the baby.”

The daughter-in-law was grateful for the offer — she really did need to rest.

But she had no idea how far this “selfless help” would go…

When the young mother woke up, the first thing she did was look at the clock. It had already been two hours since Olga Petrovna had taken the baby out for a walk.

Why so long?

At last the door opened, and her mother-in-law came into the room, holding Sonya in her arms. Anna hurried to the stroller to make sure everything was fine with the child, and then something astonishing caught her eye: in the tiny ears of the baby glittered two delicate earrings.

“What is this?!” the daughter-in-law exclaimed, barely holding back tears.

Olga Petrovna shrugged in puzzlement.

“Well, we were out walking, we dropped by a salon… I decided to give our little beauty a present.”

Anna felt the blood rush to her face. Her heart started pounding madly, her breathing grew heavy.

 

“She’s only a week old!” she almost screamed. “Do you even understand what you’re doing?!”

But her mother-in-law only rolled her eyes and waved her hand.

“Oh, come on, dear. We did that with all our girls. Nothing wrong with it!”

That last remark finally threw Anna off balance. She grabbed the baby and headed for the door.

“Leave immediately! I don’t need your help anymore!”

Olga Petrovna looked at her angry daughter-in-law in bewilderment. Not wanting to get into an argument, she silently left the apartment.

Alexander came home late in the evening, exhausted after a long day at work.

When he saw his wife sitting in the living room with a troubled expression on her face, he immediately realized that something serious had happened.

“What’s wrong?” Alexander asked cautiously.

Anna got up to meet her husband; her eyes were shining with tears.

“Your mother had our daughter’s ears pierced,” she whispered, trying to speak quietly so as not to wake the baby.

“Mom? Why would she do that?” he frowned.

“Because she felt like it,” Anna replied sharply. “Without my consent, without your permission. She just went and decided it on her own.”

Her husband hesitated, not knowing what to say. Finally he said:

“Mom has worked with children all her life. She’s experienced…”

These words were a real blow to his wife. She took a deep breath, trying to keep her composure in front of her husband, even though inside her anger and fear for the newborn’s health were boiling.

“Alexander, listen to me carefully,” Anna began, her voice trembling with emotion. “Right now, when our daughter is only one week old, her body is extremely vulnerable. Her immune system isn’t formed yet, and any intervention, especially something as drastic as piercing her ears, can have catastrophic consequences.”

She paused, gathering her thoughts, and then continued:

“Infections, metal allergies, possible inflammations and complications… Do you realize what risks your mother’s action carried? If she had used her head, she would have understood how dangerous this is!”

Anna tried to speak calmly despite her inner anxiety.

“You know,” she added, seeing her husband’s confusion, “in the future, when Sonya is older and can understand and choose her own jewelry, then yes, we can discuss it together. But right now it’s important to protect her health and avoid any reckless actions.”

“You talk as if my mother is some kind of monster! Nothing will happen to Sonya, you’re exaggerating everything,” Alexander suddenly said.

“So you’re taking her side?” his wife asked; her voice was quiet but firm.

“Why are you making an elephant out of a fly? Mom gave her granddaughter a gift from the bottom of her heart, and you’re reacting so violently. Let’s just stop talking about this, and better yet, we’ll go to her this weekend and thank her for the present,” he said coolly and headed to the kitchen.

Anna stood in the middle of the room, watching Alexander walk away with a disappointed look.

She had hoped for support and understanding, but instead she ran into condemnation and indifference.

A few hours later, when the house had sunk into silence, the young mother began to think about her future.

The life she had been building next to the man she loved suddenly seemed like a fragile illusion.

She remembered the happy moments they had shared, their dreams of a bright future, their plans for raising children.

But reality turned out to be cruel: her husband preferred to support his own mother, ignoring his wife’s feelings and her concern for their newborn daughter’s safety.

“What happens next?” Anna asked herself, sitting on the edge of the bed.

Her eyes were dry, her thoughts tangled. Her only desire was to protect little Sonya from any possible danger.

Having finally decided to talk openly with her husband, Anna waited for the next morning.

They met in the kitchen, each busy with their own tasks. When his wife asked Alexander to discuss what had happened, he answered coldly and distantly:

“I think your reaction is excessive. Mom wanted to make our daughter happy, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”

Anna bit her lip, holding back sharp words.

“It’s important to me that you understand what I’m feeling. My main concern right now is our child’s safety. Is that really so wrong?”

Her husband shrugged.

“Maybe your worries are exaggerated. It would have been much better if you had given my mother the opportunity to show her love for her granddaughter.”

Anna’s breath caught. Her pain turned into a firm resolve to put an end to a relationship that had been destroyed by distrust and lack of mutual understanding.

“Listen,” she said firmly, looking Alexander straight in the eye. “Over these past days I’ve realized one important thing: our views on raising and caring for a child are fundamentally different. It seems our values are so far apart that living together has become impossible.”

“What are you talking about? You want to break up?” her husband froze, stunned by her words.

The woman nodded slowly, knowing she was making an important decision.

“Unfortunately, yes. I feel I can no longer trust you or rely on you as a partner. We both need to think about the consequences of our choices, but my position won’t change.”

Alexander stood motionless, like a statue. His face showed a mix of confusion and anger. After a few seconds of silence, his emotions burst out:

“This is absurd! How can you destroy a family over one minor incident?”

But Anna remained unmoved.

“This ‘incident’, as you call it, was the last straw. For a long time I’ve endured your mother’s disapproval and constant pressure from her. But now this is about our child, and I am ready to fight for her well-being at any cost.”

Alexander let out a heavy sigh, realizing that their marriage was falling apart and that any attempts at reconciliation seemed pointless.

Their conversation dragged on late into the night, full of mutual accusations and reproaches. Each tried to prove they were right, and neither wanted to back down.

Finally, the next morning Anna told her husband that she had submitted an application for divorce through the Gosuslugi online portal.

Her face was calm, but despair and exhaustion could be read in her eyes. Her husband listened in silence; his heart was torn by pain and resentment.

A month later the court hearing took place. The judge listened to both sides, weighed their arguments, and delivered a verdict: the divorce would be granted in Anna’s favor.

The child would stay with the mother, and the father would have the right to see his daughter according to a set schedule.

 

Alexander left the courtroom empty and crushed. He felt defeated, deprived of the most precious things — the love and support of his family.

Yet deep down, a small hope still flickered that one day they might be able to restore their broken relationship for the sake of their daughter

 

“Andrew, please bring me some water…” Marina’s voice sounded чужим—dry and brittle, like last year’s leaves. It barely pushed through the cottony blanket that had covered her completely.

Her body had turned into one solid, aching clot of pain. Everything throbbed—from her fingertips to the roots of her hair. Her skin burned, but underneath it a prickly, icy chill seemed to be running. The thermometer she’d barely managed to shake down half an hour earlier had shown 39.8°C. This was no longer just an illness—it was an altered state of consciousness, a half-delirium in which reality mixed with nightmares.

From the next room came an annoyed, muffled sound, as if someone had lifted their head off a pillow. Andrew didn’t appear in the bedroom doorway right away. First he pulled a medical mask over his face, carefully smoothing it across the bridge of his nose, and only then came in. He looked as though he were entering a chamber with biological weapons. He stopped a couple of meters from the bed, eyeing his wife warily.

“Marin, what is it now? I just brought you some,” he said with not a drop of sympathy—only a dull, almost childish irritation. “I’m going to catch it from you. I have work tomorrow. My project is on fire, you know that.”

“My mouth is so dry… please,” she rasped again, trying to push herself up on her elbows, but her head immediately spun and she collapsed back onto the pillow, wet with sweat.

He let out a heavy sigh, making it clear what an unbearable burden had fallen on him. He shuffled to the kitchen, loudly dragging his slippers on purpose. A minute later he returned with a cup only half full and set it on the very edge of the nightstand—so far away that, God forbid, it might touch the bed.

“Here. But do it yourself, okay? I don’t want to spread your germs around.”

Marina stared at him through the cloudy veil of fever—at that dissatisfied, disgusted face behind the stupid blue mask, at how carefully he kept his distance. This was her husband. The man she’d said “yes” to at the registry office three years ago. The man who had sworn to be there “in sickness and in health.” Apparently the flu with a high fever fell into some other category—one not included in the vows.

“Andrew… we need the pharmacy. The fever meds are gone. And buy lemons and ginger. I can’t even stand,” her request sounded pathetic, like a whimper.

“Oh God, the pharmacy again… It’ll be packed with sick people, a breeding ground for infection,” he grumbled, backing into the hallway. “I’ll see what’s going on with work. Maybe I’ll go later. If I have time.”

And he left. Just went into the other room and shut the door tightly behind him. Marina heard the lock click. He locked himself in. From her. As if she weren’t a sick loved one but a leper. A few minutes later, muffled gunshots and shouted commands came through the door—he’d sat down at the computer. Put on his headphones so he wouldn’t hear her. To wall himself off from her illness, her groans, her existence.

The hurt was sharp, physical—almost as strong as the headache. She lay staring at the ceiling, listening to those distant, unreal sounds of a computer war while her own body fought a real battle with a virus. She felt endlessly alone. Not just alone—abandoned. Left to die in her bed by the person who had chosen virtual battles over real help. Time stretched like melted cheese. It felt as if hours had passed. The water in the cup had long run out. The fever became unbearable, reality dissolved, and in her feverish delirium she saw Andrew’s face more and more clearly—alien, cold, behind the blue mask of indifference. She began to sink into a heavy, sticky sleep, and her last clear thought was: He hates me.

A sharp, nagging trill yanked Marina out of oblivion. The sound was insistent, demanding, and came from the part of the apartment where her husband was. At first she didn’t understand what it was. A phone call. Someone was calling Andrew. Through the cottony haze of illness she heard the gunfire in his room stop, and then his voice—surprisingly lively and clear. He’d taken off his headphones.

“Yeah, Mom, hi! Did something happen?” His tone was pure concern. No irritation, no fatigue.

Marina listened. She couldn’t hear her mother-in-law’s voice, of course, but from Andrew’s replies the picture began to form—and it was ugly.

“What do you mean ‘not good’? Blood pressure? What does the monitor say? One-forty over ninety? Well, that’s not critical, but it’s unpleasant, yeah… Dizzy? Badly?” Real anxiety crept into his voice—the very anxiety Marina had been waiting for all day. “Did you take your pills? Which ones? And you didn’t put anything under your tongue? Got it. Sit down, don’t do anything. I’m coming right now.”

I’m coming right now. Those two words hit Marina like a slap. She even pushed herself up in bed, forgetting her weakness. The room swayed, but she held on, gripping the headboard.

His door flew open. Andrew burst out like he’d been scalded. He’d already ripped off the mask and thrown it somewhere on the floor. His face was focused, worried. He darted around the apartment like a man whose house was on fire. He didn’t even glance in her direction.

 

He yanked open the fridge and started grabbing things, shoving them into a bag. Marina made out the oranges she’d bought yesterday for herself, a couple of yogurts, a pack of cottage cheese. Then he lunged at the wall-mounted first-aid kit in the hallway. He jerked the door so hard it nearly came off. His hands frantically sorted boxes and blister packs. He snatched an expensive heart medication they’d bought “just in case,” then something for blood pressure. And then his gaze landed on the last blister pack of fever reducers—the only one left in the house. The very one she’d begged him for.

“Andrew…” she whispered, but he didn’t hear her.

Without a moment’s hesitation he tossed those tablets into the bag with the rest of the medicine. He was going to take away the last thing that could bring her temperature down and ease her suffering.

Only then—already pulling on his shoes in the hallway—did he seem to remember she existed. He leaned into the bedroom, shrugging into his jacket as he spoke.

“Marin, I’m going to Mom’s. She’s really bad—seems like a pre-stroke situation.”

“She has one-forty blood pressure, Andrew,” Marina’s voice suddenly gained strength. “That’s not ‘pre-stroke.’ And I have forty fever. You took the last tablets.”

He grimaced as if she’d said something stupid that got in the way of his heroic rescue mission.

“Marin, don’t start. Mom’s fifty-eight, she has a heart condition. And you’re young—strong body. You’ll lie down and get through it. You’ll be fine. I can’t leave her alone like this. That’s it, I’m running.”

He didn’t listen to her answer. He just turned and rushed out, leaving the door open. She heard him thunder down the stairs, the entrance door slam. And that was it. Silence.

She stared at the open bedroom door, the mask tossed on the floor, the chaos by the medicine cabinet. He’d left. He’d raced across the city because his mother “felt dizzy.” And he’d left her here alone, burning with fever. Without medicine. Without food. Without a drop of water. And it wasn’t even about the pills. It was about the screaming, monstrous contrast: his disgusted indifference toward her—and his instant, panicked care for his mother. In that moment Marina understood her illness had been nothing but litmus paper. A test her husband had failed spectacularly. And the price of that failure was far higher than ruined relations.

Time lost its shape. It either collapsed into one endless second of pulsing pain in her temples or stretched into a murky eternity filled with scraps of nightmare dreams. Marina drifted under and surfaced again, not knowing whether it was day or night. In one of those moments of clarity she realized she couldn’t endure anymore. Her mouth tasted of dust and bitterness. Her tongue had swollen and stuck to her palate. The fever was so strong it felt as if her blood were about to boil. The glass on the nightstand—filled by Andrew an eternity ago—had long been empty.

Her gaze wandered aimlessly around the room. Empty. Andrew wasn’t there. At first she couldn’t even remember where he’d gone. Then her memory obligingly supplied the image: his worried face, his hurried packing, the bag with oranges and—most of all—the last blister pack of fever reducer disappearing into that bag. He’d gone to his mother. Leaving her. That thought no longer brought pain. It was simply a fact—cold and sharp as a shard of glass.

She had to get to the kitchen. To water. That idea became the only lighthouse in the fog of her mind. She threw off the damp, heavy blanket. Her body wouldn’t obey. Muscles twisted by illness refused to cooperate. Marina sat up, and the room immediately pitched like the deck of a sinking ship. She squeezed her eyes shut, clinging to the mattress, waiting out the wave of nausea and dizziness. There was no strength to stand. None.

So she slid off the bed onto the floor. Her knees struck the laminate, but the pain was far away, muted by the main torment—thirst. She crawled. On all fours, like a wounded animal, slowly moving hands and knees that felt чужими—like numb prosthetics. Every meter was torture. In the dim hallway, where the air was stale and motionless, her shoulder caught on the doorframe. Losing balance, she toppled onto her side and slammed her knee hard against the sharp corner of the tiled threshold that separated the hallway from the kitchen.

The pain was sharp, piercing, sobering. It tore through the fever fog like a bolt of lightning. Marina cried out, but it came out quiet and hoarse. She pulled her leg toward her. Through the thin fabric of her pajama pants a dark, quickly spreading stain appeared. Blood. She’d split her knee open. To the blood. In her own home. Because her husband had gone to save his mother from “dizziness.”

That moment became the point of no return. Sitting on the cold kitchen floor, pressing a hand to her bleeding knee, she looked at her apartment and saw it with completely different eyes. It wasn’t their cozy nest. It was the place of her humiliation. The place where she’d been left alone, helpless, like an unwanted thing. Fighting through the new, sharp pain, she crawled to the sink, somehow reached the faucet, turned on cold water, and drank greedily straight from the stream, choking and coughing. It was the best thing she’d felt in twenty-four hours.

Once she’d come to a little, she found the strength to stand, bracing herself on the countertop. Her legs trembled. Her phone lay on the kitchen table. The screen lit up: three missed calls from her mother. She didn’t call back—she didn’t want to scare her. Instead, with a trembling finger, she dialed Andrew.

The ringing went on for a long time. Finally he answered. His voice was lively, but edged with irritation, as if she’d pulled him away from something important.

“Yeah, Marin, is it urgent? I’m busy here with Mom.”

Something hummed behind him—maybe the TV. Busy, flashed through her mind.

Her own voice sounded unexpectedly steady and cold. No weakness, no pleading.

“Andrew, I fell. I crawled to the kitchen for water and I split my knee. There’s blood. I’m really unwell.”

For a second, silence hung in the line. She waited for some response—alarm, sympathy. But she heard only a heavy sigh.

“Marin, why are you acting like a child? Put antiseptic on it—brilliant green, whatever you’ve got. I can’t drop everything right now, do you understand? Mom’s having a serious crisis, she needs peace and attention. I can’t leave her. And you’re young—you’ll manage. I’ll call you back later.”

And something in her snapped. But it wasn’t hysterics. It was cold, concentrated rage poured into words she spoke clearly, enunciating every syllable:

“So while I was lying here with a forty-degree fever, you couldn’t even pour me tea, but the moment your mother sneezed you raced across the city with medicine? Fine—stay there treating your precious mommy, and don’t come back to me, traitor.”

She hung up without waiting for his reply and tossed the phone onto the table. That was it. Something inside broke—the last thread connecting her to this man. She looked at her split knee, at the drops of blood on the pale tile, and for the first time in days she felt nothing. No pain, no hurt, no heat. Only icy, absolute emptiness—and a decision as hard as granite.

Two days passed. The fever retreated, leaving a hollow weakness throughout her body and a strange, unfamiliar clarity in her head. The crisis had passed—both physical and emotional. On the second day Marina, barely moving around the apartment, called her neighbor, Aunt Valya, an elderly but lively woman from downstairs. Seeing Marina—pale, with huge bruised shadows under her eyes and dried blood on her bandaged leg—she gasped and immediately brought hot chicken broth and a first-aid kit. She treated the wound properly, grumbled about “men these days,” and left Marina her number, ordering her to call if anything happened.

That simple human care from someone almost a stranger became the final counterargument against Andrew. While the neighbor fussed in her kitchen, Marina acted. Her movements were slow, but methodical. First she found online the number of a service that opened and replaced locks. A technician arrived within an hour. A brief rasp of tools—and a new set of keys was in her hand. The old lock cylinder went into the trash. That was the first step.

Then she moved on to Andrew’s things. This wasn’t a hysterical flinging of clothes. It was methodical, almost ritual. She opened the wardrobe and began pulling out his shirts, suits, T-shirts. She packed them into large black construction trash bags. His shoes from the hallway went in too. His laptop from the desk, his gaming console, his disc collection, the headphones that mattered more to him than her moans. His shaving things from the bathroom, his favorite mug, even a half-used bottle of cologne. She was clearing the space, burning his presence out of the apartment. When three huge bags were filled, she forced herself, one by one, to drag them out to the stairwell and leave them by the trash chute.

Evening came unnoticed. Marina sat in the kitchen, drinking tea with lemon she’d brewed for herself. She felt nothing—no gloating, no regret. Only emptiness and exhaustion. And then, finally, she heard the familiar sound: Andrew’s steps on the staircase. Then the scrape of a key in the lock. Once. Twice. A quiet, bewildered curse.

Then a hesitant knock.

“Marin? Are you home? What’s wrong with the lock?”

Marina stayed silent, staring at one point.

The knocking grew louder, more insistent.

“Marina, open up! What kind of joke is this? My key doesn’t work!”

She kept silent. She savored the sound—his helplessness.

“Wh—what the hell is going on?!” Now he wasn’t knocking, he was pounding the door with his fist. “Marina! Open up right now!”

At that moment, through the peephole she saw the curious nose of their neighbor Uncle Vitya poke out from the next apartment. He looked at the bags by the trash chute, then at Andrew, and a sly grin spread across his face. He walked over to one of the bags, untied it, and with interest pulled out a nearly new branded hoodie. Tried it on. Fit perfectly.

“Hey! That’s mine! Put it back!” Andrew yelled when he saw it through the crack on the landing.

“Well, it’s been thrown out,” Uncle Vitya replied calmly, digging through the bag further. “Ownerless.”

Andrew howled with rage and hammered the door again.

“You—! Marina, I’ll break this door down! What are you doing?!”

And then she came to the door. Without opening it, she said loudly and clearly, so he and the neighbors—already gathering at the noise—could hear:

“Go away, Andrew. This isn’t your home anymore.”

“Have you lost your mind?! This is my apartment too! I’m calling the police!”

 

“Call them,” her voice was ice. “You’ll explain how you left your sick wife to die and ran to Mommy because she ‘felt dizzy.’ You’ll tell them how I crawled across the floor with a forty-degree fever and smashed my knees while you told me I’d ‘manage on my own.’ Go on—call. Let everyone hear.”

At that moment his phone rang in his pocket. He answered without stepping away from the door.

“Yeah, Mom… No, I can’t talk!.. What?! She won’t let me in, she changed the locks, she threw my stuff out!”

And then Marina heard Nina Petrovna’s shrill, screeching voice blaring from the speaker.

“What do you mean she won’t let you in?! Who does she think she is?! Andryusha, tell her to open immediately! She’s got no shame! I almost died here, and she’s putting on a show!”

Andrew pressed himself to the door again.

“You hear that?! Mom almost died because of you, because of your nerves! Open up!”

Marina smirked—coldly, silently.

“Tell your mother she now has a wonderful chance to take care of you around the clock. You can live with her. Treat her dizzy spells and bring her oranges. And don’t touch my things or my apartment again.”

“You’ll regret this!” he snarled. “You’ll dance for me!”

But his threats were already drowning in the general roar. The neighbors, emboldened, were dragging his things away. Someone grabbed the console, someone hauled off a bag of clothes. Uncle Vitya was already strutting in his jacket. It was the finale—loud, humiliating, public.

Andrew kept shouting, his mother kept shrieking into the phone, but Marina wasn’t listening anymore. She stepped away from the door and returned to the kitchen. Sat at the table. The noise outside gradually faded into retreating curses. He was leaving. Defeated. Left with nothing.

And she sat in the silence of her—now only her—apartment, slowly sipping cold tea. She felt no victory, no joy. Only emptiness—and a steel-hard certainty that she had done the right thing

 — Yesterday I saw it myself: your “poor” mom was striding cheerfully down the alley with her friend, laughing her head off. And today—on my birthday—she’s suddenly at death’s door? How convenient!

Larisa was a Scorpio. Not just by horoscope, but by her very nature—prickly, closed-off, unable to tolerate hypocrisy and lies. She was already tired of how people, the moment they learned her birthday, would roll their eyes and say:

“Oh, a Scorpio. Well, that explains everything.”

They slapped labels on her: jealous, spiteful, dangerous. Maybe that was why she liked to celebrate her birthday—which fell on a gloomy November day—in a strictly family setting. Or rather, in the company of one single person: her husband, Nikita.

She had been married for three years. She loved Nikita with that loyal, steadfast kind of love. He was her quiet harbor—the man who could see a vulnerable soul behind all the spikes and wasn’t afraid of it.

 

But his mother, Olga Vladimirovna, had never been thrilled about their union from the very beginning. Larisa could clearly feel her cool, appraising attitude, but she couldn’t—and didn’t want to—do anything about it. She had her own full life: an interesting job at a design studio, a passion for embroidery and sports, and loyal, time-tested friends. She wasn’t going to prove anything to anyone.

After two years of marriage, she and Nikita finally scraped together enough for a down payment and bought an apartment. Small, but cozy—a one-bedroom right in the city center, in an old but solid building with high ceilings. Larisa was over the moon.

The moment Olga Vladimirovna heard the news from her son, she frowned at once.

“A one-bedroom?” she said with such contempt, as if they’d purchased a shed. “I told you, you should’ve gotten a two-bedroom—or even a three-bedroom—in a new district. The air is better there, and there’s space for children.”

“Mom, we like it here,” Nikita replied gently. “And it’s a five-minute walk to Larisa’s work.”

“To work!” his mother snorted. “She won’t be commuting for long. You should be thinking about children. In that place you probably won’t even have anywhere to park a stroller.”

Larisa, standing by her new fireplace (decorative, technically), felt that familiar shiver of irritation run down her back as she listened to her husband’s retelling. She took a deep breath.

“We agreed—no kids until we’re thirty. First we get on our feet and build a financial safety cushion.”

“I get it,” Nikita said with a sigh. “But Mom… she keeps pushing her way. What, are you trying to make us fight or something? I don’t get it…”

Larisa pressed her lips together stubbornly. She didn’t start a scandal. She simply held her ground—and thankfully Nikita was on her side. She looked around their small, bright apartment and then at her husband, who was smiling and holding her hand.

Olga Vladimirovna wouldn’t let up. Like a true strategist, she tested her son’s defenses again and again—calling to complain about loneliness, criticizing Larisa’s interior choices, hinting that “normal women” her age were already pushing strollers. But to her great disappointment, Nikita didn’t fall for the provocations. His love for his wife and their shared plans turned out to be stronger than his mother’s manipulation.

So the woman decided to strike at the most vulnerable spot: ruin her daughter-in-law’s birthday—that hated holiday they celebrated without her.

Two weeks before Larisa’s birthday, Olga Vladimirovna called her son with tragic sighs.

“Sonny, disaster! The fridge has completely broken down! The repairman looked and said it’s pointless to fix. And how am I supposed to live without a fridge? All the food will spoil! And your father’s salary has been delayed too, would you believe it.”

After complaining about her bad luck and hinting at being broke, she wrangled a new, fairly expensive refrigerator out of Nikita. The cost hit Larisa and Nikita’s budget hard, and the gift Nikita had planned for his wife—an elegant gold pendant—had to be forgotten.

Then Larisa’s birthday finally arrived. That morning, there was another call from his mother. Olga Vladimirovna’s voice sounded weak and sickly.

“Nikitushka, I feel so bad… My heart is stabbing, my head is spinning. Could you come? I’m scared to be alone. Your father will be late today. He doesn’t think about me at all…”

Of course the son rushed over almost immediately. He asked to leave work, ruining all plans, and sat by his mother’s bed until evening—bringing her water, checking her blood pressure, listening to her quiet moans and complaints. Every time he got ready to leave, Olga Vladimirovna suddenly got worse: clutching her chest, complaining of weakness, begging her son not to abandon her.

Nikita was visibly anxious. He kept looking at the clock, his throat tight with worry. Larisa was waiting at home. They were supposed to have a romantic candlelit dinner—and he still hadn’t bought flowers. In his pocket he had only a pathetic substitute for a gift: a cosmetics store gift certificate purchased in a rush at the nearest mall.

“Mom, I really need to go home…” he tried to protest, but the sight of her pale, suffering face always made him fall silent.

Finally, unable to take it, he stepped into the kitchen and quietly called his wife.

“Larisa, I’m sorry… Mom feels bad, I can’t leave her,” he began, guilt heavy in his voice.

At first there was silence on the line. Then Larisa, barely restraining her fury, hissed:

“Yesterday I saw it myself: your ‘poor’ mom was striding cheerfully down the alley with her friend, laughing her head off. And today—on my birthday—she’s suddenly at death’s door? How convenient!”

Without listening further, Larisa slammed the call shut.

Nikita stood in the middle of his parents’ kitchen, torn between duty to his mother and the woman he loved. He felt trapped. Desperate, he called his father, Pavel Petrovich.

“Dad, could you leave work a bit early today? Mom’s not well, and I really have to get home… It’s Larisa’s birthday.”

His father gave a surprised snort.

“What’s she sick with? This morning she was perfectly healthy—stuffed her face with pancakes…”

But Nikita wasn’t listening anymore. The moment Pavel Petrovich crossed the apartment threshold, Nikita tossed a quick “Thanks!” over his shoulder, practically flew out the door, and raced down the stairs, clutching that cursed certificate in his pocket. He knew he was late. He knew the trust his wife had so carefully given him had cracked. And the reason wasn’t illness, but his mother’s well-planned performance.

 

“So why did you come crawling in?” Olga Vladimirovna asked her husband bluntly when he appeared in the bedroom doorway.

“Olya, what’s with the theatrics? The boy’s happy with Larisa—so let him be. Why are you tormenting him? You’re not hurting Larisa—you’re hurting your own son.”

Nikita opened the apartment door. The entryway was dark, but warm light spilled from the kitchen. He froze on the threshold, holding his breath. Larisa was sitting at the table set for one. Two candles burned in front of her, a single wineglass stood nearby, and with calm appetite she was eating rolls and sushi—what they must have planned to eat together.

“Larisa…” he started softly, stepping closer.

She didn’t look up, continuing her meal. The air in the kitchen felt thick and icy despite the candle flames.

“Forgive me, I…” Nikita tried again, but the words stuck in his throat. He placed a luxurious bouquet of scarlet roses on the edge of the table, bought from a nearby flower shop. Larisa didn’t even glance at them. Then he pulled the gift certificate from his pocket and set it beside her plate.

Only then did Larisa slowly raise her eyes. There was no anger in them—only deep exhaustion and disappointment.

“You understand it’s not about the gifts,” she said quietly and evenly, without a single note of reproach—and that somehow hurt even more. “It’s about how you treat me. I wanted to spend this day with just you. And you chose to spend it with your mother, who was simply pretending to be sick.”

“I couldn’t just abandon her!” Nikita burst out, swept up by guilt and self-justification. “I wasn’t sure it was an act! What if she really was ill? I’d never forgive myself!”

Larisa sipped her wine and set the glass down with a soft tap.

“Want to call your father right now?” she suggested. “Ask what your gravely ill wife is doing at this very moment?”

Nikita stubbornly shook his head. He understood exactly where that conversation would lead—and he was afraid to hear the answer. Without another word, Larisa pushed her chair back, stood up, and left for the bedroom, closing the door behind her. She didn’t even put the roses in a vase. They stayed on the table like a silent accusation, slowly wilting.

For the next few days, an icy silence ruled the apartment. Larisa barely spoke to Nikita, answering in one-word replies, acting as if he didn’t exist. He felt like a ghost in his own home.

And the very next day, Olga Vladimirovna—glowing and pleased with herself—called her son.

“Sonny, thank you for not abandoning your old mother yesterday,” she purred. “All alone, sick… You’re my only support.”

Nikita listened in silence, staring out at the gray November sky.

“By the way,” his mother continued casually, with a faintly mocking tone, “how did Larisa’s birthday go yesterday? Did you celebrate well?”

And in that moment, everything finally clicked into one bleak picture inside Nikita’s head. It wasn’t the occasion itself that mattered to her—it was whether she had managed to ruin it.

“We celebrated well,” Nikita said very clearly—and hung up.

He stood in the middle of the living room, staring at the locked bedroom door. At last he understood. Understood that his mother had been waging war against his wife. And in that war she was ready to destroy everything in her path—including his own happiness. And he, with his blind obedience, had been helping her do it.

For several days Nikita tried to make up for it. He made breakfast, cleaned the apartment, attempted timid conversations, but Larisa remained cold and distant. Her silence drove him nearly mad.

So Nikita took a desperate step. One evening he drove to her office and waited right by the exit. When Larisa saw him, she tried to turn away, but he gently took her hand.

“Let’s just have dinner. No excuses—just dinner. Please.”

She agreed without a word. They went to a rooftop restaurant in a skyscraper, with a panoramic view of the city at night. The lights of the metropolis glittered below like scattered gemstones. At a table by the window, Nikita finally said what had been piling up in his soul.

“Forgive me,” he said, looking straight into her eyes. “I was blind and stupid. I let my mother manipulate me and I hurt you on the most important day. But I understand now, and I want to fix it.”

He paused and smiled.

 

“Let’s celebrate your birthday now. Right here. Again—properly.”

Larisa looked at him, and for the first time in days something warm flickered in her eyes. The corners of her lips twitched into a faint smile.

“Okay,” she agreed.

They ordered dinner—the most exquisite dishes on the menu. They talked about work, about plans, about everything except his mother. The tension slowly melted.

Then the waiter brought dessert—an elegant tiramisu with a single candle. Suddenly several staff gathered around their table and sang “Happy Birthday.” Larisa blushed, shyly lowering her eyes as warmth spread across her cheeks. It was the most spontaneous, unexpected—and in its own way, beautiful—birthday she had ever had.

That evening she truly forgave her husband. On the way home Nikita bought her a huge bouquet of white roses, and she climbed the steps to their apartment holding it to her chest, happy and at peace.

And at home one more surprise awaited her. On the doorstep sat a tiny fluffy bundle—a gray kitten with enormous green eyes. It looked at Larisa timidly and mewed plaintively. She had dreamed of a pet like that for a long time, but never dared to get one, afraid of responsibility.

“This is… your main gift,” Nikita smiled. “You’ve said so often you want a kitty.”

Larisa dropped to her knees, and the kitten immediately climbed into her arms and began to purr, settling comfortably on her lap. Not a drop of resentment toward her husband remained in her heart.

When Olga Vladimirovna heard about her son’s new “recklessness,” she instantly responded with a fresh serving of criticism.

“A kitten? In such a small apartment? Have you lost your mind? That’s dirt, fur everywhere! Throw it out in the street before you get attached! You need a child, not a kitten!”

But Nikita, for the first time in his life, answered calmly and firmly:

“Mom, this is Larisa’s and my home, and these are our decisions. We like our kitten. And yes—I’m not going to discuss our personal life with you anymore. Because I don’t want to lose my family.”

He hung up without listening to her outraged objections. For the first time he felt not like a boy being controlled, but like a man building his own happiness. And in the living room, Larisa laughed and played with their new family member. Her happy laughter was the best reward he could have.

“Don’t Like My Celebration? The Door’s Open—I’m Not Keeping You Here,” Vera Said Calmly To Her Mother-In-Law.
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— “Varvara Nikitichna, I’ve got everything ready, really. You don’t need to bring anything.”

Vera pinned the phone between her shoulder and ear and kept slicing cucumbers for the salad. It was eleven in the morning; there were eight hours left until the guests arrived, and her mother-in-law had already called for the third time that morning.

“Verочка, what are you saying! How could it be ‘don’t need’? I always make my jellied meat for the holidays. Zhenya loves it so much. You remember—last year yours turned out a bit runny, the gelatin didn’t set properly.”

“I used a different recipe this year…”

“No, no, I’ve already decided. I’ll bring aspic too, and a fish pie. Your oven is small—you won’t manage.”

Vera closed her eyes and exhaled slowly. Seven years. Seven years of listening to these lectures, seven years of nodding and agreeing. But today was supposed to be different. For the first time in their marriage, they were celebrating New Year’s at their place, not at Varvara Nikitichna’s. Vera had spent three months preparing Zhenya for this conversation. Three months convincing him it was time to have their own traditions.

“Varvara Nikitichna, I really appreciate your care, but…”

“Perfect! Then I’ll be waiting for you at seven in the evening. Dress warmly—it’s minus fifteen outside.”

“Excuse me, what? We agreed it would be at our place today!”

A pause hung on the line. Then her mother-in-law laughed—strangely, tightly.

“Oh, Verочка, you’re so forgetful! We never agreed to anything like that. Zhenya himself told me last week you’d come. Right, Zhenya?”

Vera spun around. Zhenya was standing in the kitchen doorway in old jeans and a stretched-out T-shirt, holding a box of Christmas ornaments. His face looked guilty.

“Mom, I said this year we’re staying home…”

“What do you mean ‘staying’? I’ve already bought everything! I’m roasting a duck—your favorite! Kostya and Masha put presents under the tree, they drew pictures especially for Uncle Zhenya!”

“Mom…”

“And Oleg and Svetochka will come too. We’ll gather the whole family. Or are you refusing the family now?”

Vera watched Zhenya deflate before her eyes. Like always. Every time it came to standing up to his mother, he gave in—just dropped his hands and agreed.

“Varvara Nikitichna,” Vera gripped the phone tighter, “we’re staying home. If you want, come to us. I’ll be glad.”

“Are you mocking me? My table is already half set!”

“Then I’m sorry, but we won’t come.”

Vera ended the call. Her hands were shaking. The phone rang again immediately, but she declined. Then another call. And another.

“Why did you do that?” Zhenya asked quietly. “She’ll be upset.”

“And I won’t be?” Vera turned to him. “You promised me, Zhenya. Promised you’d talk to her. Explain.”

“I did talk! But she… you know her. She can’t do it differently.”

“She can’t—or you didn’t tell her?”

Zhenya put the box on the floor and ran a hand through his hair. Vera knew that gesture well—he always did it when he didn’t want to answer a direct question.

“I told her,” he repeated. “Just… maybe not clearly enough.”

“Not clearly enough,” Vera smirked. “Zhenya, you’re thirty-four. You’re married. We’ve lived together seven years. When will it finally be ‘clear enough’?”

“Ver, not now. Let’s just go to Mom’s, celebrate…”

“No.”

The word came out sharp, distinct. Vera surprised herself with her own resolve. Usually she gave in—because it was easier, because then Zhenya would spend three days gloomier than a storm cloud and call his mother every evening, apologizing for his wife. But today something clicked inside her. Like a switch.

“I told you back in September,” she went on. “We’re celebrating this New Year at home. I spent three days standing in lines buying groceries. Yesterday I made dough for pies until midnight. I want my own holiday. In my own home.”

“But Mom…”

“Your mom can come to us. As a guest. I’m inviting her.”

The phone rang again. This time Zhenya answered.

“Mom, enough… Yes, I understand… No, we’re not coming… Mom, please… Okay, then come to us… At seven… Yes… Deal.”

He hung up and looked at Vera.

“She’ll come to us. Oleg and his family too. But she’s furious.”

“I noticed.”

“She said she’s bringing her dishes anyway. She already cooked.”

Vera pressed her lips together. She wanted to argue, but she stayed silent. A small victory. Let it be that, at least.

By six in the evening, the apartment had transformed. A small two-room place on the fourth floor of an old five-story building gleamed with cleanliness. An artificial tree stood by the window, decorated with colorful baubles and a string of lights. In the living room, a white tablecloth Vera had begged from her mother, and a dinner set she and Zhenya had received at their wedding—still unopened until now.

Vera looked at her handiwork and felt a strange mix of pride and anxiety. The table really was pretty: Olivier in a big bowl, herring under a fur coat, sliced meats and cheeses, roast chicken with a golden crust. Not fancy, not a restaurant—but made with heart.

“Beautiful,” Zhenya said, hugging her from behind. “I’m sorry I… well, sorry.”

She leaned into him. She wanted to say it was fine, but she told the truth:

“I’m tired, Zhenya. Really tired. Every time it’s the same. Your mom decides, we obey.”

“I’ll try,” he promised. “Today I’ll try to be on your side.”

Vera wanted to believe him. She really did.

At half past six, the doorbell rang. Oleg and Svetlana arrived first. The kids immediately rushed to the tree; Svetlana swept the room with an appraising glance.

“Oh, what a small tree you have,” she said, taking off her coat. “Ours is two meters this year. We could barely get it into the room.”

“This one’s enough for us,” Vera replied, taking the gift bags from her.

“Well, sure, your apartment is small. We moved into a new build—three-meter ceilings. Gorgeous!”

Oleg slapped Zhenya on the shoulder.

“How’s it going, bro? Mom already called—warned me you’re rebelling.”

“What rebellion,” Zhenya forced a smile. “We just decided to stay home.”

“You’re a brave man,” Oleg whistled. “Mom doesn’t like that.”

At exactly seven, Varvara Nikitichna arrived. She stepped in with three huge plastic containers, her face unreadable, lips pressed into a thin line.

“Hello,” she said dryly.

“Hello, Varvara Nikitichna,” Vera tried to take the containers. “Let me help.”

“No. I’ll carry them myself.”

Her mother-in-law walked into the kitchen without taking off her coat. Vera followed, feeling her heart drop.

“Varvara Nikitichna, the coat rack is here…”

“I can see where the coat rack is.”

She set the containers straight on the kitchen table, then turned and surveyed the apartment again—like she was assessing flood damage.

“Where are we putting all this?” she finally asked, nodding toward her containers.

“Varvara Nikitichna, my table is already set…”

“Oh, Verочка. It’s no burden, it’s a joy. Zhenya!” she raised her voice. “Come here, help clear space on the table.”

Zhenya appeared in the doorway. Looked at Vera, then at his mother, then back at Vera.

“Mom, we’ve got everything ready…”

“I can see what’s ready. And what, you think I’m supposed to take my dishes back home? I stood at the stove all day!”

“But I stood at the stove too,” Vera said quietly.

“Wonderful! Now there will be more choice. Zhenya, take this,” she handed him a container of jellied meat, “and put it in the center of the table. And move the chicken somewhere to the edge.”

Zhenya took the container. Vera watched him carry it into the living room, watched him obediently push her chicken to the side, freeing the central place for his mother’s jellied meat. Everything inside her tightened into one hard knot.

Varvara Nikitichna followed into the room, finally took off her coat. Then sat at the head of the table—in the seat Vera had prepared for Zhenya.

“Svetа, how are you? How are the kids doing in school?”

“Thank you, Varvara Nikitichna, good. Kostya got an A in math last week.”

“Good boy! And Masha?”

“Masha draws beautifully—the teacher praises her.”

“She takes after me,” Varvara Nikitichna smiled. “I loved drawing as a child too. And you, Sveta, didn’t cook anything? I thought you’d bring something.”

“Well of course we did,” Svetlana pulled a container from the bag. “Here—crab stick salad. My signature.”

“Oh, perfect! Zhenya, put that on the table too.”

Vera stood in the doorway watching, as foreign dishes filled her table, on her tablecloth—watching her mother-in-law command her home like she was the hostess, and Zhenya silently comply.

“Vera, why are you standing there?” Varvara Nikitichna called. “Come sit with us. Or are you still busy?”

“No, I’m free.”

Vera sat down—farther from her mother-in-law, between Zhenya and Oleg. The kids made noise by the tree, inspecting presents. Kostya shook one of the wrapped boxes.

“Uncle Zhenya, what did you get us?”

“You’ll find out after the chimes,” Zhenya smiled.

“And we already know what Grandma got us!” Masha blurted happily. “A construction set!”

“Mashenka, that was supposed to be a surprise,” Varvara Nikitichna frowned, then immediately softened. “Oh well, the main thing is the kids are happy.”

Oleg poured champagne. Varvara Nikitichna pulled the salad closer and tasted it.

“Vera, did you add peas to the Olivier?”

“I did.”

“Strange. It turned out kind of pale.”

“The peas are green,” Vera replied evenly. “From a can.”

“I can see they’re from a can. But usually it’s brighter. And what sausage did you use?”

“Doktorskaya.”

“Yes? The taste isn’t right. I always buy only good doktorskaya—I don’t cut corners.”

“I didn’t cut corners either, Varvara Nikitichna.”

“Well, I don’t know. Maybe you got a different kind.”

Svetlana chimed in:

“Yes, Varvara Nikitichna, your Olivier is always special. I can’t figure out the secret.”

“No secret. You just have to cook with soul,” Varvara Nikitichna smiled condescendingly. “And choose the right products.”

Vera clenched her hands under the table. Zhenya tensed beside her but stayed silent. Oleg poured himself more champagne, clearly not wanting to get involved.

“And your herring is good,” her mother-in-law continued, serving herself. “I would only cut the beets differently. Too big.”

“I like it bigger,” Vera tried to keep her voice steady.

“Well, taste is taste. But small is more delicate. And you needed more mayonnaise. It’s a bit dry.”

“Mom, enough,” Zhenya finally snapped. “Everything’s tasty.”

“Am I scolding? I mean well! Criticism should be constructive.”

“Mom…”

“Zhenya, don’t defend her. Vera’s a smart girl, she’ll understand everything correctly. Right, Verочка?”

Vera looked at her mother-in-law. She was smiling, but her eyes were cold.

“Of course, Varvara Nikitichna.”

About forty minutes remained until the chimes. The kids ran around; Oleg told Zhenya some work story. Vera got up and went to the kitchen—she needed to take the sliced meats out of the fridge.

Svetlana was already there, rummaging in her bag.

“Ver, do you have napkins by any chance? I forgot.”

“In the cabinet on the left.”

Svetlana reached for napkins, then turned back.

“Listen, you’re a champ for standing your ground. I wouldn’t dare. Varvara Nikitichna is so domineering.”

“Today’s not the best day to discuss it.”

“Oh, I’m not saying anything like that! Just… I’m telling you. I have a good relationship with her. I always listen, take her advice. Maybe that’s why we don’t have conflicts.”

Vera looked at her more closely.

“So you’re saying the conflicts are because I don’t listen?”

“Not exactly… It’s just, she’s older, more experienced. She knows better.”

“Svetlana,” Vera said, taking the platter from the fridge, “in my home, I decide.”

“Of course, of course! I’m not arguing. Just… you understand, it’s his mother. Zhenya’s kids will be her grandkids. Maybe you should be softer?”

“Maybe,” Vera agreed. “Only I’ve been ‘softer’ for seven years. You can see the result.”

She returned to the living room. Varvara Nikitichna was telling the children about her youth:

“…and I worked as vice principal then. A very responsible position, by the way. The whole staff depended on me. The principal only knew how to sign papers.”

“Grandma, did you scold everyone?” Kostya asked.

“I didn’t scold—I guided them onto the right path. Many should thank me, by the way. Take your dad—he was such a mischief-maker as a child. And I made a person out of him.”

Oleg laughed awkwardly.

“Mom, not in front of the kids.”

“And what’s wrong with that? Truth is truth. I raised you and Zhenya alone—your father left when you were little. And I managed! I brought up two sons, got both of you on your feet.”

Vera sat down. Zhenya touched her hand under the table, but she didn’t respond.

Outside, the first bursts of fireworks sounded—someone was rushing to congratulate the city early.

“The chimes are soon,” Oleg said. “Let’s get closer to the TV.”

They gathered near the screen. Kids climbed onto the couch, adults stood with champagne. Varvara Nikitichna settled into the armchair like a queen on a throne.

The last seconds of the old year. The chimes. Cheers, clinking glasses, popping party crackers. Kids shouted “Hooray!” and threw confetti. Oleg hugged Svetlana, Zhenya kissed Vera.

“Happy New Year,” he whispered. “Forgive me for everything.”

Vera nodded but said nothing.

After midnight, the table gradually fell into disarray: empty bottles, used napkins, scraps of food. The kids got their presents and now fussed with new toys in the corner. Oleg told a joke; Svetlana giggled.

Vera stood to clear dirty plates. In the kitchen, she leaned against the wall and closed her eyes. Her head buzzed from tension, from fake smiles, from constant control. Her holiday. Her home. Yet she felt like an unwanted guest at someone else’s party.

“Vera!” Varvara Nikitichna called from the living room. “Where are the salads? Bring more—Olezhek wants seconds!”

Vera clenched her fists. Counted to ten. Then took the bowl of Olivier and carried it in.

“Here you go.”

“And bring the herring too. And my aspic. Zhenya loves it so much.”

Vera went back and forth: aspic, bread, mustard, something else—she didn’t even remember what anymore. Just walked like a waitress at her own holiday.

“Verочка, you should tidy up a bit,” Varvara Nikitichna said when Vera appeared in the doorway again. “Trash is piling up—doesn’t look nice.”

“Varvara Nikitichna, it’s a holiday…”

“Even more so! In my home there was never trash on the table. I always cleaned immediately.”

“Mom, enough already,” Zhenya tried again, but his voice was uncertain.

Vera silently grabbed the dirty plates and carried them to the kitchen. She set them in the sink, braced her hands on the counter. Breathing got hard; her vision swam.

Seven years. Seven years of remarks. Seven years of being not good enough: cooking wrong, cleaning wrong, dressing wrong, even speaking wrong. And on top of that, she wasn’t giving him children, imagine that.

Svetlana appeared in the doorway.

“Ver, you okay? Want help?”

“No.”

“Oh come on. Don’t take it to heart. Varvara Nikitichna is just like that—you have to get used to her.”

“I’ve been getting used to her for seven years.”

“Well, a little more,” Svetlana tried to joke. “They say after ten years you don’t care at all.”

Vera spun around sharply.

“Svet, I don’t want to wait ten years to stop caring about my own life!”

“Lower your voice! They’ll hear.”

“Let them!”

But Svetlana had already gone back. Vera stayed alone in the kitchen among dirty dishes and the remains of the celebration.

When she returned, they were talking about children. Varvara Nikitichna was explaining how to raise them:

“The main thing is strictness. Without strictness, nothing works. I raised my sons… Zhenya, remember when you brought home a failing grade in fifth grade? I kept you from going out for a month. And there were no more failing grades after that.”

“Mom, that was thirty years ago,” Zhenya said tiredly.

“So what? Good methods are always relevant. Kids today are spoiled—parents indulge every whim.”

“We try to find a balance,” Svetlana said carefully.

“What balance? Kids need a firm hand. When Vera has children, she’ll understand right away.”

An awkward pause. Oleg cleared his throat. Zhenya stared at his plate.

“Varvara Nikitichna,” Vera said, “let’s not discuss my plans.”

“What’s wrong with that? How old are you? Married seven years? It’s time already.”

“Mom, that’s our business,” Zhenya said more firmly.

“Your business, fine. Only Zhenya is thirty-four. A man at that age needs to have kids. Later it’ll be too late.”

“Enough,” Vera stood. “Excuse me, I’m going out to the balcony for some air.”

“In this frost? Are you out of your mind,” her mother-in-law snorted.

But Vera was already walking to the balcony door. She had to get out—immediately. Or she would snap and say something she couldn’t take back.

It was truly cold outside. Minus fifteen had turned into minus twenty. Vera hugged herself and stared at the night city. Somewhere in the distance fireworks still exploded.

The door opened behind her. Zhenya.

“Ver, come back in. You’ll freeze.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Just don’t pay attention. She’s like that with everyone.”

“Really?” Vera turned. “With everyone? Or only with me?”

“Well… yes, she’s stricter with you. But it’s because… she worries. She wants what’s best.”

“Seven years, Zhenya. Seven years your mother has treated me like a servant. I don’t cook well enough, clean well enough, look well enough, work well enough—and on top of that I’m not having your children, can you believe it?”

“That’s not what she meant…”

“Then what did she mean? What?”

Zhenya was silent. Vera waited.

“I don’t know,” he admitted at last. “I don’t know what she meant. But she’s my mother.”

“And who am I? A random fellow traveler?”

“Ver…”

“You’ve never once taken my side. Not once, Zhenya. Every time she starts, you stay quiet. Or agree. Or tell me ‘don’t pay attention.’”

“I don’t want to choose between you!”

“And I don’t want to be an outcast in my own home!” Vera raised her voice. “This is MY apartment! MY holiday! I prepared for three days! And she comes in and turns everything upside down, commands, criticizes—and you let her!”

“What am I supposed to do?! Throw my own mother out?!”

“No. You’re supposed to stop her. Tell her that in our home I’m the hostess. That we have our own rules. That she is a guest and should behave accordingly.”

“She won’t understand.”

“Try explaining.”

“I did talk…”

“Not clearly enough!” Vera waved her hand. “You always talk not clearly enough—because you’re afraid of upsetting her!”

“But you’re not afraid of upsetting me, are you?”

The question hung in the freezing air. Vera looked at her husband and suddenly understood—he really believed that. That she could be upset. That she’d endure it, understand, forgive. Because she always had.

“Let’s go back inside,” Zhenya said tiredly. “The guests are waiting.”

“Guests,” Vera gave a bitter little laugh. “Your mom isn’t a guest, Zhenya. She’s a conqueror.”

But she still went back in.

At the table, the talk shifted to work. Oleg spoke about a new construction site, Svetlana complained about grocery prices. Varvara Nikitichna listened halfheartedly, occasionally inserting her comments.

“Olezhek, you should buy a plot outside the city. Lots of people do. You can have a garden, and kids can be outdoors.”

“Mom, I don’t have money for a plot.”

“If you saved, you would. Zhenya’s a good boy, he saves. Right, Zhenya?”

Zhenya nodded without looking up.

“And you could get a better apartment,” she continued. “This one is so small. In new buildings they sell three-bedrooms cheap.”

“Varvara Nikitichna,” Vera set her fork down, “we’re fine with our apartment.”

“What do you mean, fine? It’s a tiny two-room! When children appear, there’ll be nowhere to put them.”

“If they appear, we’ll decide then.”

“What ‘if’? They have to! Zhenya, you want kids, don’t you?”

“Mom, not now.”

“And when? You’re both over thirty! I had Oleg at twenty-four!”

“Times were different,” Svetlana remarked.

“Times, times,” Varvara Nikitichna waved it off. “There are always excuses. Then they regret it. You’ll see.”

Vera stood up slowly, calmly. Took her plate and carried it to the kitchen. Behind her she heard:

“Offended again. So sensitive.”

“Mom, stop already,” Zhenya tried again.

“What do you mean, stop? I mean well!”

In the kitchen Vera paused by the window. Fireworks still popped somewhere below; people laughed. Someone was having a real holiday—bright and joyful. And hers was… this.

The kitchen door opened. Varvara Nikitichna came in.

“Vera, we need to talk.”

“About what?”

“About you. And about Zhenya.”

Vera turned. Her mother-in-law stood in the doorway with arms crossed—a victor’s posture.

“I’m listening.”

“You don’t like me. That’s clear. I don’t expect love. But you must show respect.”

“I respect you, Varvara Nikitichna.”

“No. If you respected me, you wouldn’t argue back. I’m older, wiser. I raised Zhenya. I know what he needs.”

“And I’m his wife. And I also know what he needs.”

“Wife,” her mother-in-law smirked. “Do you even iron his shirts? I saw he goes to work wrinkled.”

“Zhenya is an adult man. He can iron his own shirts.”

“And that’s exactly your problem! You don’t understand what it means to be a wife! At your age I worked, ran the house, raised kids—and my husband always had a hot dinner. And everyone’s clothes were ironed. And you? You’re at work all day, come home tired…”

“I’m a nurse. I help people.”

“And that’s wonderful! But family has to come first! Zhenya needs a real homemaker, not a…”

“Not what?” Vera stepped closer. “Finish it.”

“Not a careerist who thinks only of herself!”

“A careerist?” Vera laughed. “Varvara Nikitichna, I’m a nurse at a district clinic. What career?”

“Still! Your job matters more to you than family!”

“My job gives us extra income,” Vera said evenly. “Or do you think we can live on Zhenya’s salary alone?”

“You can, if you economize! I raised two sons on my own!”

“On your vice principal salary,” Vera replied calmly. “Which was twice a regular teacher’s. And you had an apartment the state gave you. We rented for five years, saved for the down payment. Different times, Varvara Nikitichna.”

“You’re making excuses!” her mother-in-law raised her voice. “Always excuses! And the facts are: Zhenya lives in a tiny apartment, goes to work in unwashed shirts, eats tasteless food!”

Something inside Vera snapped—finally. Like the last thin thread breaking.

“Varvara Nikitichna,” she said very quietly, each word clear, “get out of my kitchen.”

“What did you say?”

“I said—get out. This is my kitchen. In my apartment. The one Zhenya and I bought with our money.”

“How dare you speak to your elders like that?”

“The way people speak to someone who doesn’t respect other people’s boundaries. Seven years, Varvara Nikitichna. Seven years I’ve listened to your remarks—that I’m a bad homemaker, a bad wife, unworthy of your son.”

“I didn’t say that!”

“You did. Constantly. Every holiday. Every visit. Today I invited you as a guest. A GUEST. And you came in and started commanding. You brought your own food because you don’t like mine. You criticized everything you could reach—even my Olivier!”

“I wanted to help…”

“NO!” Vera raised her voice. “You wanted to show I’m worse than you. That without you we can’t cope. That you’re indispensable!”

Zhenya appeared in the doorway:

“What’s going on here?”

“Your wife is insulting me!” Varvara Nikitichna jabbed a finger at Vera. “She’s throwing me out!”

“I’m not insulting you,” Vera turned to her husband. “I’m just telling the truth. For the first time in seven years.”

“Ver, calm down…”

“NO! I won’t calm down! Zhenya, look around! This is our apartment! Our holiday! I prepared for three days! And your mother came and ruined everything—like always!”

“How can you…” Varvara Nikitichna whispered, turning pale. “I’m like family to you…”

“You’re NOT family to me!” Vera blurted. “Family respects each other! Rejoices in each other’s successes! And you only rejoice when I fail—when something doesn’t work for me—because it proves you were right!”

“You’ve lost your mind,” Varvara Nikitichna said, white-faced. “Zhenya, say something!”

Zhenya stood in the middle of the kitchen, confused, looking from his mother to his wife.

“Mom, you really do… go too far sometimes.”

“WHAT?”

“Well, the Olivier, for example. Why were you picking at it? It was fine.”

“I wasn’t picking at it! I was constructively—”

“Mom, you always do this. With every dish. Every little thing. Vera tried, and you…”

“Then both of you are against me!” Varvara Nikitichna clutched her chest. “She’s turned my own son against his mother!”

“Nobody turned anyone,” Vera said wearily. “You do it yourself.”

“I do it myself? I devoted my whole life to my children! Raised them alone! And now look—thanks!”

“Mom, stop with the ‘raised them alone,’” Oleg appeared behind Zhenya. “We’re adults now, stop playing that card.”

“You too?!” Varvara Nikitichna looked at both sons. “Both of you?!”

“Mom, you really do sometimes… overdo it,” Oleg said carefully. “Svetka was telling me the other day—”

“Svetka! So that’s what this is! You’ve all conspired!”

“Nobody conspired,” Vera stepped forward. “Varvara Nikitichna, I’m sorry, but I can’t anymore. I can’t keep enduring your remarks. Your control. Your constant dissatisfaction. I’m not perfect, but I try. And I have a right to respect—in my own home.”

“So what are you suggesting?” her mother-in-law threw up her hands. “That I never come to you again?”

“No. Come. But as a guest—who respects the hosts. You don’t like my holiday? The door is open. I’m not holding you.”

Silence fell. Somewhere in the living room the kids rustled softly. Outside, another firework burst.

“Zhenya,” Varvara Nikitichna turned to her son, “I’m leaving. Walk me out.”

“Mom…”

“I said—walk me out!”

Zhenya looked helplessly at Vera. She nodded.

“Go.”

They left. Varvara Nikitichna, Zhenya, Oleg with Svetlana and the children. The apartment emptied in five minutes. Oleg gave Vera a long look, as if he wanted to say something, but stayed silent. Svetlana hurriedly dressed the kids. Kostya asked:

“Why is Grandma crying?”

“Hush, sweetheart. I’ll explain later.”

The door closed. Vera was alone in the apartment, full of dirty dishes, leftovers, and a half-eaten holiday. She sat on the couch and just sat there. No tears. Just sat, staring at the tree lights.

Zhenya came back half an hour later. Quietly, sat next to her. Stayed silent for a long time.

“You went too far,” he finally said.

“I know.”

“Mom’s hysterical. Oleg barely calmed her down.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Are you?”

Vera turned to him.

“No. If I’m honest—no. I’m sorry it happened like that. On a holiday. In front of everyone. But I don’t regret what I said.”

“Ver…”

“Zhenya, I can’t do this anymore. Do you understand? Not at all. Every time your mom comes, I feel… small. Worthless. Everything I do is wrong, everything I say is stupid. I’m tired of proving I’m worthy of you.”

“You are worthy.”

“Then why didn’t you tell her that earlier? Why did I fight alone for seven years?”

Zhenya dragged a hand down his face.

“I was afraid. Afraid of hurting Mom. She’s been through a lot. Raised us alone…”

“I’ve heard that story a million times,” Vera said wearily. “And yes, it’s hard. I respect her for it. But it doesn’t give her the right to control our life.”

“She just wants what’s best.”

“For whom? For you—or for herself?”

The question hung in the air. Zhenya stared at the floor.

“I don’t know,” he admitted at last. “Honestly—I don’t know.”

They sat like that for another ten minutes. Then Vera stood.

“I’m going to clean up in the kitchen.”

“Let me help.”

They cleaned in silence—packed leftovers into containers, washed dishes, wiped the table—mechanically, not looking at each other. Around three in the morning they finished.

“Go to bed,” Vera said. “I’ll sit a little longer.”

“Ver…”

“Go. Really. I need to think.”

Zhenya went to the bedroom. Vera stayed in the kitchen, boiled the kettle, made tea, sat by the window and watched the sleeping city.

The phone was silent. Usually after fights Varvara Nikitichna would call Zhenya, cry, complain. But today—silence.

Maybe she really had gone too far. Maybe she should have stayed quiet, like always. Swallowed one more holiday, one more portion of criticism, one more evening as the failure.

No. Enough.

In the morning she was woken by a call—Toma, a colleague from work.

“Ver, happy New Year! How did you celebrate?”

“Fine.”

“Seriously? Your voice sounds odd.”

“Just tired.”

“Got it. Listen, how are you really? I ran into Oleg yesterday at the store. He told me about your… well, situation.”

Vera closed her eyes. Of course. Small town—by evening the whole neighborhood would know.

“Toma, I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I’m not calling for that! I just wanted to say—you did great. Honestly. If I were you, I would’ve blown up five years ago.”

“Really?”

“Ver, come on! Varvara Nikitichna ruins everybody’s life! Oleg and Svetka can’t divorce for three years now—his mom won’t let them. Says it’s shameful. She calls my Anton too, gives unsolicited advice. Good thing we live in another district.”

Vera smirked.

“So I’m not the only one.”

“You’re a heroine! The first who told her the truth to her face. Respect.”

After the call, Vera felt a little better. She got up, went to the kitchen. Zhenya was already there, with the morning face of someone who hadn’t slept all night.

“Mom called,” he said. “Three times. I didn’t pick up.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t know what to say.”

Vera sat across from him.

“And what do you want to say?”

“That you’re right. About everything. Mom… she’s like that. Controls everything. Controlled our whole life. First me and Oleg. Now you—wives. She’ll control grandkids too. I’m used to it. But you shouldn’t have had to get used to it.”

“What do you suggest?”

“I’ll call her. Talk. Seriously talk. Explain this can’t go on.”

“She won’t understand.”

“I’ll try. At least try.”

He called that evening. Vera heard fragments from the other room:

“Mom, listen… No, I’m not choosing… Mom, let me finish… This is our home… Mom, please… I love you both…”

The conversation lasted more than an hour. When Zhenya came back, he looked exhausted.

“How is she?”

“Bad. She cried. Shouted. Threatened never to come again.”

“And what did you say?”

“That it’s her choice. But if she comes—then as a guest. With respect for the hosts.”

“And?”

“And she hung up.”

Vera hugged him. He leaned into her and she felt him trembling.

“I’m scared,” Zhenya whispered. “She’s my mother. The only one. And I hurt her so much.”

“You didn’t hurt her. You finally told the truth.”

“What if she really doesn’t come again?”

“Then that’s her choice. Not yours.”

They sat like that, holding each other, until it grew completely dark outside.

Two weeks passed in an odd silence. Varvara Nikitichna didn’t call. Oleg sent Zhenya short messages—“Mom’s offended,” “Mom’s crying,” “Mom says you abandoned her.” Zhenya stayed quiet, grew darker each day. Vera stayed quiet too—but didn’t give in.

Then, in the third week of January, the doorbell rang. Vera opened it and saw Varvara Nikitichna with a pie in her hands.

“May I come in?”

“Of course.”

They sat in the kitchen, drank tea. The pie sat between them—apple, still warm. Varvara Nikitichna worried the edge of a napkin.

“I… wanted to say,” she began. “Maybe I really do… sometimes allow myself too much.”

“Not sometimes. Constantly.”

“Vera, I’m trying to apologize.”

“I know. And I appreciate it. But ‘sometimes’ isn’t true.”

Her mother-in-law sighed.

“All right. Constantly. I’m used to controlling everything. At work it was necessary. At home too. I raised kids alone. I gave an order—they did it. I don’t know how to do it differently.”

“But I’m not your child, Varvara Nikitichna.”

“I understand. Zhenya explained that… very thoroughly. Two hours of explaining.”

“And?”

“And I thought about it. Maybe he’s right. Maybe I really do try to control what doesn’t belong to me.”

Vera watched her carefully. Varvara Nikitichna looked tired—older. For the first time in seven years, she looked like an elderly woman, not a formidable judge.

“I don’t promise I’ll change immediately,” she continued. “I’ll be sixty soon. My character is set. But… I’ll try. At least not to say every thought out loud.”

“That’s already good.”

“And your pie wasn’t bad,” Varvara Nikitichna suddenly added. “On New Year’s. The chicken was juicy. I tried to make it the same way at home—it didn’t work.”

Vera choked on her tea. A compliment—from her mother-in-law? Miracles indeed.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. It was genuinely tasty.”

They finished tea, ate a slice of pie each. Then Varvara Nikitichna stood.

“I should go. Only… Vera. I really didn’t want to hurt you. I was just… afraid.”

“Of what?”

“That they’d take Zhenya away from me. That I’d become unnecessary. I lived my whole life for them. First for my husband—he left. Then for the children. And now the children have grown up. And I don’t know who I am without them.”

Vera looked at her and suddenly understood—truly. Not excused her, but understood. Varvara Nikitichna wasn’t a villain. She was a frightened woman losing control over the only thing that gave her meaning.

“You are needed, Varvara Nikitichna,” Vera said softly. “Just… differently. Not as a boss. But as… a grandmother. An adviser. A friend.”

“I don’t know how to be friends with daughters-in-law.”

“You’ll learn. We still have a lot of time.”

Her mother-in-law nodded and left.

In the evening, Zhenya came home from work. Vera told him about the visit. He listened silently, then hugged her hard.

“Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For not giving up. For not leaving. For giving us a chance.”

“It wasn’t me who gave the chance. Your mom took it.”

“Still. Without you, she wouldn’t have come.”

They stood in the kitchen hugging as winter night fell outside. The first snow of the new year began only now, in mid-January—soft, fluffy, beautiful.

“Do you think it’ll work?” Vera asked. “Fixing things?”

“I don’t know. But we’ll try. And Mom will try too. And that’s not nothing.”

“She’s inviting us to hers for March 8.”

“And what did you say?”

“That I’ll come—if she promises not to criticize my salad.”

Zhenya laughed. For the first time in two weeks—he laughed for real. Vera smiled too.

Yes, there would be new arguments ahead. New conflicts. Varvara Nikitichna wouldn’t change in a day. But something had shifted. Something important. For the first time in seven years, Vera didn’t feel like a stranger in this family. For the first time, her voice had been heard.

And it was only the beginning—of a long, difficult, but possible road

— The potatoes turned out especially good today. Just like in childhood,” Stas said, spearing a golden slice with his fork and popping it into his mouth with relish, his eyes closing in satisfaction. “And these cutlets of yours… pure magic.”

Lena smiled—not the tired, automatic smile after a long workday, but a genuinely warm one. She loved evenings like this. Just the two of them in their small but cozy kitchen. Outside the window, deep blue November twilight was gathering; inside, a soft light glowed, the air smelled of fried chicken and dill, and for a moment it felt as if all their problems were somewhere far away, beyond the borders of their little world.

“I tried,” she said, neatly cutting off a piece of cutlet. Fragrant juices ran onto her plate. “You know, today I counted everything again. And looked at apartment prices. If we save a little more, then by summer we’ll probably be able to start looking at options.”

She was talking about the money her grandmother had left her. It wasn’t just a sum in a bank account. It was a final greeting from her childhood, the last tangible expression of her grandmother’s love. Every time Lena thought about that money, she didn’t see numbers—she saw wrinkled, warm hands that baked the best pies in the world, and mischievous eyes looking at her from a faded photo on the dresser. She and Stas had decided right away that it was their shared ticket to a new life: a spacious two-bedroom apartment, with room for a nursery and a corner of their own.

“Yeah, that would be great,” Stas nodded, chewing thoughtfully. He set down his fork and looked at Lena. “It’s like she knew… your grandma. She wanted you to have something of your own, something reliable. So you’d feel more secure.”

Lena looked at him with gratitude. He understood. He felt the same way she did. That mattered. More than anything.

Stas was quiet a moment longer, staring at his plate, and then suddenly he looked up—something new and energetic lit up in his eyes.

“By the way, speaking of good things. It’s Irka’s birthday soon. Thirty—an anniversary. And I keep thinking what I should get her…”

Irka, his younger sister, was a delicate topic. A dragonfly flitting through life, changing jobs and boyfriends, constantly complaining about having no money and how cruel the world was. Lena felt neutral toward her, like toward an unavoidable weather event.

“Get her a spa gift certificate. She likes that stuff,” Lena suggested, her thoughts drifting back to their apartment plans.

 

Stas waved it off, as if she’d suggested giving the birthday girl a bunch of balloons.

“Come on, a certificate… that’s small stuff. This needs to be a gift that’s, like… wow. Something she’ll remember. Something that actually changes her life for the better. She’s always getting bounced around on those minibuses, spending her last money on taxis.”

He leaned across the table, his face turning conspiratorial and thrilled, the way kids look when they’ve come up with a genius prank. His voice dropped to a confidential half-whisper.

“Len, listen. What if…” He paused for effect. “What if we buy her a car with your money? Huh? Can you imagine? Not a new one, of course—something simple, used. Just so she can drive. Picture her face! She’ll lose her mind with happiness! Now that would be a gift!”

The fork in Lena’s hand froze halfway to her mouth. The warmth from the food that had been spreading comfortably through her body seconds ago evaporated instantly, replaced by an icy chill in her stomach. She stared at his beaming, completely sincere face and couldn’t understand. Was this some stupid, inappropriate joke? A test? Or did he really just say that?

Slowly, she set her fork down on the plate. The metallic clink against the porcelain sounded deafening in the sudden silence.

“Are you out of your mind?” she asked. Her voice was even, almost calm—but there was steel ringing in it.

Stas didn’t even understand what had happened. His smile slid off his face, replaced by confusion. He genuinely didn’t get her reaction.

“What’s the big deal? We have the money. It would really help Irka. We’re family—we should help each other. What, are you stingy or something?”

“Stingy?”

That simple word hit Lena in the gut harder than a slap. It was so absurd, so monstrously out of place, that for a few seconds she couldn’t breathe. He sat across from her with the same sincerely bewildered expression and waited for an answer. He truly didn’t understand. Didn’t understand that with a single sentence he’d trampled the memory of her grandmother, their shared plans, her trust—everything at once. He had simply devalued what was sacred to her, turning it into a banal question of greed.

She slowly straightened in her chair. The kitchen table, which a minute ago had been the center of their little universe, now felt like a barrier separating two warring camps. The smell of dinner suddenly seemed cloying and nauseating.

“What does your sister have to do with the money my grandmother left me? Who is she to me? Why on earth would I buy her a car with it, Stas?!”

She said his name as if she were seeing him for the first time and trying to remember what he was called. It wasn’t a questioning “Stas?” but a final “Stas.” A period at the end of the sentence. At the end of their old relationship.

It finally began to sink in for him—not the rightness of her words, no. What sank in was that his brilliant plan had met resistance. His face started to flush.

“Lena, what are you starting for? We’re family. Irka’s my sister, so she’s your family too. Why are you talking like I’m taking the last thing you have? We just want to do something good for her!”

“‘We’?” Lena gave a bitter little smile. “There was no ‘we.’ There was your proposal—and for some reason you expected my automatic agreement. My family is my grandmother, who worked herself to the bone at two jobs so I could have a start in life! She never once even saw your Irka! It’s her money, do you understand? Hers. Not yours, and not even ‘ours’ to waste on gifts!”

The cutlet on his plate was cooling, a pale film of congealed fat forming on top. Dinner was ruined beyond repair.

“So that’s what it is…” he drawled, and accusatory notes crept into his voice. “So when it’s about paying off a mortgage and looking for a bigger apartment, the money is ‘ours’—but when it’s about helping my own sister, suddenly it’s ‘yours’ and ‘grandma’s’? I didn’t expect such pettiness from you. Such greed.”

That word hung in the air again. Greed. Now it wasn’t a question, but a verdict. And that verdict tore away the last of Lena’s self-control.

“Greed?” she laughed, but it was sharp, barking. “That’s what you call greed? I call it trying to latch onto someone else’s money! You’re acting like a freeloader, Stas! You want to solve your sister’s problems at my expense and look like a generous benefactor! It’s easy to be kind with someone else’s money, isn’t it? Maybe we should renovate your parents’ house too? Why not—there’s money, right?”

He sprang up so fast he knocked over his glass of fruit compote. The dark, sticky liquid spread across the white tablecloth, soaking in as an ugly brown stain.

“Have you lost it? Don’t drag my parents into this! I just wanted to do a good deed—and you turned it into money and insults!”

“And it is money!” she shouted, rising too. “It’s not just bills! It’s years of my grandmother’s life! It’s our future home! And you’re trying to blow it on a whim for your infantile little sister!”

They stood facing each other across the table, where their last peaceful dinner was cooling. The cozy kitchen had turned into a ring. And both of them understood the bell had rung, and the fight was only beginning.

The shouting hung in the air, slowly settling like dust after an explosion. Stas was breathing hard, his chest heaving. He still stood with his knuckles pressed into the table, staring at the dark stain on the tablecloth as if it were proof she was wrong. He expected her to keep yelling, arguing, proving her point. But Lena fell silent.

Slowly, with a kind of detached grace, she sat back down. The movement was smooth, deliberate—as if she weren’t a participant in this ugly scene, but an observer watching from the outside. She looked at Stas, and there was no anger left in her eyes, no hurt. There was something far worse—cold, analytical curiosity. The way an entomologist looks at an insect pinned to velvet. She studied his flushed face twisted with malice, his clenched fists, the posture of a cornered animal—and she saw not her husband, but a complete stranger, unpleasant to her.

“So what now? We’re going to sit in silence?” he finally forced out. The quiet was crushing him; it was louder than any scream.

Lena tilted her head slightly.

“And is there anything to talk about? You’ve said everything. I heard you.”

That only enraged him more. Her calm was insulting. He wanted a fight—emotion, argument—something he could win by overpowering her with stubbornness or authority. But she had simply removed him from the conversation, delivered her verdict, and closed the case. He felt the ground slipping out from under him. In this duel, he was losing. And then he did what people do when their own arguments run out—he decided to call for backup.

“Fine,” he hissed, yanking his phone from his jeans pocket. “Talking to you is pointless. There are people who’ll understand me.”

His fingers jabbed nervously at the screen. Lena watched with the same icy calm. She already knew who he was calling. His last, dirtiest move, saved for special occasions: bringing in the “heavy artillery.” His mother.

“Mom, hi. No, I’m not asleep…” He moved toward the window, instinctively turning his back to Lena, forming an alliance against her. “Lena and I are… talking. Yeah. Why I’m calling… Remember I told you about Irka’s birthday? I came up with something…”

Lena didn’t listen to his words. She’d heard them before, in other, less significant fights. That wounded-boy whine, that subtle manipulation where facts were twisted and other people’s words were presented in the ugliest, most convenient way. She stared at his back, at his tense shoulders, at the way he gestured with his free hand, complaining into the receiver about his own wife.

 

 

“…No, can you imagine? She thinks Irka doesn’t deserve it! That it’s only her money! She called me a freeloader! Yeah, she actually said that… that I’m trying to grab someone else’s…”

In that moment, everything fell into place for Lena. This wasn’t just her husband’s stupid impulse. It was the position of his whole family. They were one organism, tight-knit and united. And she was the outsider. An attachment with a useful resource—an inheritance. And now their clan, in the person of her husband and mother-in-law, was deciding how best to use that resource. The man she had married, trusted, planned a future with—right before her eyes, he had turned back into his mother’s son, whining about his “difficult” wife.

He talked for another couple of minutes, nodding at something being said on the other end. Lena didn’t look at him anymore. She looked at the cold cutlet on her plate. The dinner she’d cooked with love now felt like a disgusting mockery. Silently, she stood up, took her plate and Stas’s plate, and dumped the contents into the trash. The sound of food hitting the bin made him turn around.

“…Yeah, Mom, I’ll talk to her again. Okay, bye,” he threw into the phone and hung up.

He turned to her, and his face held a mix of righteous anger and confidence. He’d gotten support; his position had been approved. Now he was ready to continue the fight with renewed strength.

“Mom is shocked by you,” Stas began, and there was steel in his voice, hardened by his mother’s approval. He stepped forward, trying to regain control. “She said you just don’t understand what a real family is. That you need to be—”

He didn’t finish. Without a word, Lena turned around and left the kitchen. Her movement was so calm and purposeful that for a moment Stas was thrown off. He expected tears, screams, pleading—anything but this quiet, demonstrative exit. He stayed alone in the middle of the kitchen, an unfinished sentence on his lips, suddenly feeling stupid. What did it mean? Had she gone to the bedroom to dramatically go to sleep? Decided to ignore him? He snorted. Childish.

From the hallway came a soft rustle. Then another. He frowned, listening. He couldn’t understand what those sounds were. No cabinet doors slamming, no drawers being pulled out—just some quiet, methodical fussing. A minute later, she came back.

In one hand she held his bulky autumn jacket, in the other his worn boots. She walked to the table and carefully set the boots on the floor next to his chair. Then she draped the jacket over the backrest. After that she returned to the hallway and, a few seconds later, came back into the kitchen again. This time she was holding his car and apartment keys and his thick leather wallet. She placed them on the table, right on top of the sticky compote stain. The keyring clinked softly.

Stas stared at the little installation, and his brain refused to process it. It looked like some absurd performance piece.

“What is this?” he asked, his voice lost. The confidence he’d gained from calling his mother had vanished without a trace.

Lena sat down in her chair across from him. She didn’t cross her arms, didn’t take a defensive pose. She simply sat, relaxed and straight, and looked at him.

“These are your things,” she said in an even, colorless voice. “The ones you’ll need in the next ten minutes.”

It began to sink in—slowly, the way pain sinks in after a hard удар.

“You… you’re kicking me out? Because of a car? Are you serious?”

Lena allowed herself a faint, almost imperceptible smirk.

“No, Stas. Not because of a car. The car is just litmus paper. You just called your mom to complain about me. You brought her into our family so she could help you decide what to do with my money. You showed me there is no ‘us’ for you. There’s you and your family—and I’m a newcomer with a useful asset. You decided everything yourself. I’m just drawing conclusions.”

He stared at her, mouth open. He wanted to yell, to protest, to call her crazy—but the words stuck in his throat. Her calm paralyzed him. There was nothing left in her of the woman he’d lived with for five years. In front of him sat a stranger—cold, and absolutely resolute.

“You wanted to give your sister a generous gift,” she went on in the same flat tone, as if reading out contract terms. “I won’t get in your way. In fact, I’ll help you. You’re going to her place now. I’m sure she can find a couch for you. You can enjoy your nobility together.”

“You’ve lost your mind…” he whispered.

“On the contrary. I’ve never been more clear-headed,” she said, standing and taking his jacket from the chair back, holding it out to him. “If gifts for your sister matter so much, go to her and live there. And find yourself a wife with an inheritance you can squander. Mine, unfortunately, isn’t meant for that. You have five minutes to get dressed and walk out the door.”

She didn’t push him. Didn’t shout. She just stood there with the jacket extended, her gaze harder than stone. In that look, Stas read his sentence. He understood it was the end—not another fight they’d make up after. It was a full stop. Slowly, as if in a dream, he took the jacket. Took the keys and wallet from the table. Put on his shoes in silence. All his righteous indignation, all his certainty, crumbled into dust. He was crushed by her icy composure.

When he opened the front door, he turned back in a last, weak hope. But she was already walking back to the kitchen, not even granting him a goodbye glance. The door clicked shut behind him.

Lena was left alone in the apartment, filled with the smell of cold dinner. She took the tablecloth with the ugly brown stain, crumpled it up, and threw it into the trash. In the silence that followed there was no pain, no regret. Only cleanliness. And emptiness.