“Mom, I’m almost there. I’ll be at the station in half an hour.”
Lera pressed the phone to her ear, looking out the train window. Suburban settlements flashed past the glass, along with familiar station names.
“So, how did the training go?” her mother asked, her voice lively, carrying its usual note of curiosity.
“Fine. New display standards, handling complaints, staff motivation. Three days of lectures, two days of practice.”
“And the house? Have you settled in already?”
Lera smiled as she looked at the road.
“Yes, Mom. Denis and I have already moved in. We’re living together.”
“We?” Her mother’s voice suddenly brightened. “Is that the Denis you told me about?”
“Yes. We’ve been together for six months already, I told you. It’s serious.”
“Lerochka, finally! I was already worried you’d be alone in that house. Your grandmother’s house is a good thing, but it’s gloomy there alone. When will you introduce me?”
“Mom, let’s do it later. I’ll get there now and rest after the trip.”
“All right, all right, I won’t pester you. But call more often, do you hear me?”
“I hear you, Mom. Kisses.”
Lera put the phone into her bag and leaned back against the seat. Five days of training had worn her out, but she was in a good mood. Ahead were the weekend, her own house, Denis. She imagined them sitting on the veranda in the evening, opening a bottle of wine, chatting about nothing. Maybe they would make shashlik on Sunday.
At the station, she took a taxi and asked the driver to stop by a supermarket. She ran in for five minutes, bought a bottle of red wine and a cherry cake — Denis loved that kind. At the checkout, she dialed his number. Long beeps, then a mechanical voice: the subscriber is unavailable.
He’s probably asleep, she thought. After his shifts, he always passes out.
Lera returned to the taxi with her bags and gave the address. The neighborhood was quiet, on the outskirts, a private residential area. She had inherited her grandmother’s house a year earlier, but had only moved in that spring, after doing minimal repairs. It was old, but sturdy — her grandfather had built it back in the seventies. Six hundred square meters of land, apple trees, a cherry tree, and a lawn she had planted in May.
The taxi stopped by the gate. Lera paid, got out with her suitcase and bag — and froze.
Right on the lawn stood an old beige Lada, with cloudy headlights and a cracked bumper. Its wheels had sunk into the ground, crushing the grass.
Smoke drifted from behind the house. It smelled of charcoal and grilled meat. Somewhere a child was screaming — not crying, but screaming loudly and cheerfully, the way children scream when they’re running around unsupervised.
Lera walked into the yard, dragging her suitcase with one hand and holding the bag with the cake and wine in the other. Then she stopped.
On the porch sat an unfamiliar woman of about thirty, wearing sweatpants and a tank top, poking at her phone. Beside her stood a mug and an ashtray full of cigarette butts. At the grill, a large man in camouflage shorts was turning sausages. And between the apple trees, a boy of about six was running around, kicking a soccer ball.
“Oh, Lerochka, you’re here, sweetheart!” Denis came around the corner of the house with a bottle of beer in his hand. He walked over and pecked her on the cheek. “How are you? How was the trip? Bet you’re tired from the road.”
“It was fine. Five days running around with all those trainings…”
“Well, good. Now you can rest. Come in, meet everyone. This is Tolik, my brother, with his family. They came from Beryozovka.”
Lera stood there with the cake in her hands, feeling something collapse inside her.
“What do you mean, came?”
“Well, they sold their house and decided to move to the city. Kirill needs to be enrolled in school; he starts first grade in September. And Tolik is a builder, he’s looking for work. I thought they could stay with us for now, until they get settled.”
“With us?”
Denis set his beer on the porch railing and stepped closer.
“Yes. Listen, he’ll help with the roof, it needs patching, you know that yourself. And he’ll replace the windows. He has golden hands, a specialist from God, honestly! And Zhanna will take care of the wallpaper; she’s quick. Why pay strangers when we have our own people? They’ll stay for a week while they look around, and everyone wins.”
The woman on the porch lifted her eyes from her phone.
“Hi. I’m Zhanna.”
“Lera,” she replied mechanically.
Tolik waved from the grill.
“Hey there! I’ll finish frying the sausages and we’ll sit down properly.”
The boy ran up, out of breath, with the ball under his arm.
“Dad, I’m hungry!”
“Wait, Kiryukha, it’ll be ready soon.”
Lera looked at Denis. He was smiling as if he had given her a present.
“It’s temporary,” he said. “Just for a week, while they look around.”
“Denis,” she lowered her voice, “couldn’t you at least have called?”
“They only arrived yesterday. I thought you’d be back later today. I wanted to meet you and explain everything properly.”
“Properly?”
She looked at the trampled lawn, at the stranger’s car by the fence, at the cigarette butts in the ashtray on her porch. Then she looked at the cake and wine in her hands. A romantic evening. Right.
“Fine,” she said quietly. “We’ll talk later.”
She went into the house. In the hallway stood someone else’s bags, and children’s sneakers were lying in the middle of the corridor. In the kitchen, there was a mountain of dirty dishes in the sink, empty beer bottles on the table, crumbs on the floor. In the living room, crumpled bed linen and someone’s sweater lay on her sofa.
Lera put her suitcase by the door, the cake on the table, and the wine beside it. She went into the bedroom. It was clean, but someone else’s jacket hung over the chair, and a woman’s makeup bag lay on the bedside table.
She returned to the kitchen, sat down on a stool, and stared out the window. Outside, Denis was talking to his brother; both of them were laughing. Zhanna was still sitting on the porch. The boy was chasing the ball between the apple trees again.
Her phone vibrated — a message from her mother: “Did you get there? How is everything?”
Lera typed: “Yes, everything is fine” — and pressed send.
Then she stared at the screen for a long time, not understanding whom she was trying to deceive.
That evening, when the guests had finally gone off to their rooms, Denis sat down on the edge of the bed and took her hand.
“Don’t be upset, Ler. I really didn’t have time to warn you. They called and said they were on their way — and that was it. I couldn’t just send them out into the street.”
“You could at least have called me.”
“My phone died while we were rushing around. Listen, they’re family. They’ll stay a week, look around, find an apartment — and move out. Just be patient a little, okay?”
He spoke softly, almost tenderly. The way he had in the beginning, when they had first started dating.
Lera lay in the darkness and remembered. Six months earlier, he had appeared at the store where she worked — he had delivered a shipment of winter boots and stayed to chat. Then he started stopping by more often, bringing coffee or a chocolate bar. He invited her to the movies, then to a barbecue with friends. He brought flowers for no reason at all. When she decided to move into the house her grandmother had left her in her will, Denis had volunteered to help — carrying boxes, assembling furniture, never once complaining.
And now it was as if he had been replaced. Around his relatives, he became different: loud, possessive, one of the guys. And in that “family closeness,” for some reason, there seemed to be no place for her.
Three days passed. There was no sign of any repairs. Tolik left in the mornings “on business” — looking for work, as he said. He came back by lunchtime, sat with Denis in the yard, and they opened beer. By evening, they grilled sausages, blasted music, and guffawed across the whole yard.
Lera came home from work exhausted — and found the party in full swing. One evening, she approached the grill.
“Denis, what about the roof? When are you going to start?”
“We’ll get to it, why are you rushing?” he said, turning a sausage without looking at her. “Besides, we need to buy materials.”
“There’s not much to do there, I already checked,” Tolik added, taking a swig of beer.
“I can pay for it. Tell me what you need, I’ll stop by, buy it, and have it delivered.”
“Don’t fuss,” Denis waved her off. “We’ll figure it out. Better sit down and eat with us.”
Lera turned around and went into the house. In the kitchen, there was a mountain of dishes in the sink, empty bottles on the table, crumbs on the floor.
Zhanna settled in quickly. On the fourth day, Lera couldn’t find her lipstick.
“Oh, I took it,” Zhanna said, not even embarrassed. “I needed it for a job interview, and mine was finished. I thought you wouldn’t mind.”
“And asking?”
“Oh, you were at work. I’ll buy one later and give it back.”
The next morning, her makeup remover disappeared.
“Mine ran out, and I didn’t have time to go to the store,” Zhanna explained.
Lera silently took a spare bottle from the cabinet. That evening, she discovered that her things had been moved out of the bedroom dresser and into a box, while Kirill’s pants and T-shirts now occupied the shelves.
“We moved things around a little to make it more convenient,” Zhanna said. “The child needs somewhere to put his clothes.”
At work, Marina immediately noticed that something was wrong with her.
“What’s with you? You look awful.”
“Can you imagine? Denis brought his relatives here. His brother, wife, and child came from the village. They want to settle in the city.”
“Straight into your house?” Marina’s eyes widened.
“Yes. He says it’s temporary, and that they’ll patch the roof.”
“Yeah, I know that kind of temporary.” Marina sipped her coffee and shook her head. “When my husband and I bought our apartment, he started the same thing — first a friend coming for a week, then his sister with her kids. I put up with it for six months, thinking, well, they’re family, it’s awkward. Then I said: one more time and I’ll throw them out right from the doorstep, I don’t care who they are. My husband grumbled, but he understood.”
Lera nodded but said nothing. It seemed she would have to do the same.
She thought things couldn’t get worse. She was wrong. The next day, Denis left somewhere in the morning and returned after lunch — with his mother. Lera stepped onto the porch and saw a short woman in a beige coat, holding a large bag.
“Oh, so this is what you look like!” the woman exclaimed, throwing up her hands. “A beauty! Denis told me so much about you, and I kept thinking, when will we finally meet? Tamara Ivanovna. Or just Tamara.”
“Lera,” she said, shaking the offered hand.
“I had a doctor’s appointment in this direction, so I thought I’d stop by, see my son, and meet you. And here are Tolik, Zhannochka, and Kiryushenka too. The whole family has gathered!”
She entered the house as if it were her own, sighing and exclaiming over how cozy it was, how wonderful Lera was. She stayed “for tea.” Tea stretched into the evening, and then Denis said, “Where will she go at this hour? She’ll spend the night, and I’ll drive her back tomorrow.”
Lera called him into the bedroom.
“Denis, why are you bringing everyone here? The house isn’t made of rubber.”
“Oh, come on, why are you reacting like this?” he shrugged. “We’ll squeeze in a little. This is my family. You asked to meet my mother, so now you’ve met.”
“That’s not how I imagined it.”
“How, then? Mom came, she’s happy to see you. What’s wrong?”
Lera wanted to say that everything was wrong. But she stayed silent.
Tomorrow turned into the day after tomorrow. Tamara Ivanovna settled in instantly. She cooked for everyone, took over the kitchen as if it were her own.
“Pies — the boys love them, I mean my boys, Deniska and Tolik, and Kiryushenka too,” she said as she rolled out dough.
In the evening, they sat at the table, the five of them — Tamara Ivanovna, Denis, Tolik, Zhanna, Kirill — discussing some mutual acquaintances from Beryozovka, remembering stories from the brothers’ childhood, laughing. And Lera sat beside them, feeling like a guest in her own home.
On the weekend, Denis reached into the china cabinet.
“Oh, what a set!” He took out porcelain cups with a gold rim. “Let’s at least drink tea like normal people, instead of from mugs as if we’re at a train station.”
“Don’t,” Lera stepped toward him. “That was my grandmother’s. She received it for her wedding. I never use it.”
“And for nothing,” Denis smirked. “What, are you supposed to just stare at it? Dishes are meant to be used.”
He arranged the cups on the table. Zhanna poured the tea, Tamara Ivanovna cut the pie. Kirill ran around the room with a ball.
“Kirill, no ball in the house,” Lera said.
The boy quieted down and sat in the corner. But five minutes later he jumped up again and began kicking the ball underfoot.
“Kirill!”
“Oh, let him be,” Tolik waved her off. “A child can’t just sit still, he needs to move.”
The ball hit the doorframe. The cups clinked. Lera jerked forward, but she was too late — the ball bounced back and slammed straight into the table. Porcelain scattered across the floor with a thin, almost pitiful ringing.
Lera froze. Shards lay on the floor — white with gold, sharp and small. Her grandmother’s set. It had stood in the cabinet for fifty years. It had survived moves, repairs, entire eras changing.
“Well, he’s just a child!” Zhanna grabbed Kirill into her arms. “Why are you looking at him like that? He didn’t do it on purpose!”
“It’s nothing terrible,” Tamara Ivanovna added. “Broken dishes bring happiness.”
Lera slowly turned to Denis. He stood with a cup in his hand, looking at the shards.
“Don’t get so worked up,” he said. “It’s just a tea set. This house was given to you for free anyway, along with all this junk. Big deal, some cups.”
Something inside her snapped. Quietly, soundlessly. As if the last thread had broken.
“All right,” Lera lifted her head. Her voice was quiet, but something in it had changed. “I’m tired of putting up with this.”
Denis set the cup on the table.
“Ler, come on, this is just…”
“What exactly do you think you’ve arranged here?” she cut him off. “What is this to you — a dormitory? A revolving door?”
“Lera, what’s gotten into you?” Denis stood up and stepped toward her. “Why are you humiliating me in front of my family?”
“Humiliating you?” She gave a bitter smile. “And you’re not humiliating me? You brought a whole crowd of people here without asking. I come home and there’s drinking, mess, strangers in my things. And I’m humiliating you?”
“But this is family…” Tamara Ivanovna began.
“This is my house,” Lera snapped. “Mine. My grandmother left it to me. And only I will decide who lives here and how they behave.”
“What are you ordering everyone around for?” Zhanna rose from the table, clutching Kirill to herself. “So what, some cups broke. You should have kept them in the cabinet instead of putting them on the table.”
“Did I put them there?” Lera turned to Denis. “You took them out. I said not to. And you said, ‘What, are we supposed to just stare at them?’”
“Oh, come on, it’s just a tea set,” Denis grimaced. “This house was given to you for free anyway, along with all this junk. Why are you…”
“Free? Junk?” Lera felt a wave rising inside her. “My grandmother lived her whole life here. She buried my grandfather here. She raised me while my parents worked. And to you, this is free? Junk?”
“That’s not what I meant…”
“Then what did you mean? That because I inherited a house, you can trash it? Bring your relatives here and shove me into a corner?”
Tolik coughed and pushed his chair back.
“Listen, we didn’t force ourselves on anyone. Denis offered for us to stay.”
“Then live with Denis. Somewhere else.”
Silence. Tamara Ivanovna opened her mouth, then closed it. Zhanna stood there with wide eyes.
“Ler, let’s talk calmly,” Denis tried to take her hand.
She stepped back.
“There’s nothing to talk about. This is my house. You don’t decide anything here. And I’m not going to squeeze myself into a corner — not for your relatives, and not for you.”
“Are you serious right now?”
“Absolutely. Everyone, out. Right now. Pack your things and get out of my house. You too, Denis. With them.”
“Have you thought this through?” Denis narrowed his eyes. “I can see you’ve gone off somewhere you shouldn’t have.”
“Are you hard of hearing? Or should I repeat it in another language?”
Denis stood there, clenching his fists. His face turned crimson. He muttered quietly:
“You’ll regret this. You’ll come running back yourself.”
She turned and went out onto the porch. She sat on the step and closed her eyes. Behind her, voices could be heard — Tamara Ivanovna lamenting, Zhanna scolding Tolik about something, cabinet doors slamming.
Half an hour later, the old Lada rolled into the yard. Tolik loaded bags into the trunk, Zhanna settled Kirill into the back seat. Tamara Ivanovna walked past Lera without looking at her, got into Denis’s Logan with its rotten fender and cracked windshield, and demonstratively slammed the door.
Denis came out last. He stopped beside the porch.
“You’re serious? You’re just throwing me out like this?”
Lera looked up at him.
“Leave, Denis.”
He stood there for another second, then spat at his feet and went to the car. He got behind the wheel and revved the engine. Both cars drove out of the yard, and a minute later she could no longer hear them.
Lera sat on the porch and looked at the empty yard. The crushed lawn, tire tracks, a forgotten beer bottle by the grill. Silence. Real, deep silence — for the first time in that endless week.
She took out her phone and found “Mom” in her contacts.
“Hello, Lerochka? Did something happen?”
“Mom,” her voice trembled. “I kicked them out. All of them. Denis too.”
A pause.
“Wait, wait. Tell me everything from the beginning. What’s going on over there?”
And Lera told her. About the brother and his family, about the would-be mother-in-law, about the beer gatherings, about the tea set. About “this house was given to you for free.” She spoke and felt herself letting go — as if a stone had been lifted from her chest.
“You did the right thing,” her mother said when she finished. “I wouldn’t have lasted that long. You’re my brave girl.”
“Mom, I’m alone now.”
“So what? You’re in your own house. In your grandmother’s house. That means a lot. And men… there will be other men. Normal ones.”
After the call, Lera sat on the porch for a long time. The yard was quiet. Somewhere beyond the fence, a dog barked; a car drove down the neighboring street.
She got up and went back inside. The shards of the tea set were still lying on the living room floor. Lera took a broom and carefully swept them into a dustpan. She stood there, looking at the white fragments with gold rims.
“I’m sorry, Grandma,” she whispered. “It wasn’t my fault.”
She emptied the shards into the trash bin. Then she walked through the rooms — everywhere there were traces of someone else’s presence. Crumpled pillows, crumbs, stains. But that could be cleaned. All of that could be fixed.
She opened the bedroom window and let in the fresh air. For the second time. For the second time, she had stepped on the same rake — trusted someone, let him into her life, and then ended up a stranger in her own home. Her first husband had also begun with beautiful words and care. He too had promised that everything would be fine.
Lera clenched her fists. No. This would not happen again. Never. This house was hers. Her life was hers. And no one would ever dare tell her to “be patient” again.
She smiled — for the first time in a week.
Friends, I’m also sharing my Telegram channel. Soon it will be only for those who have joined — it’s my new little corner of inspiration, with much more new and useful content coming. No fluff, just the way you like it.