I Installed a Video Doorbell for My Mother, and Three Days Later I Saw My Husband Unlocking Her Apartment with His Own Key
“Mom, I’m asking you again: why did you open the door to complete strangers?”
Larisa held the phone against her ear with her shoulder while trying to pull two bags of groceries from the trunk. The handle of one bag caught on a plastic hook, and a can of peas rolled across the pavement.
“They weren’t strangers,” her mother replied indignantly. “They were from the gas company. They were wearing uniforms.”
“What kind of uniforms?”
“Blue ones.”
“Mom, half the city wears blue jackets. Did they show you any identification?”
There was a pause on the other end.
“Why are you pestering me? They checked the stove and left.”
“Did they take anything?”
“What would they take from me? My old television?”
Larisa picked up the can, placed it back in the bag, and slammed the trunk shut. There was no point in getting angry with her mother. For seventy-two years, Nina Petrovna had lived with the firm belief that bad people always looked suspicious. In her opinion, a good person had to be clean-shaven, polite, and preferably holding a folder.
People exactly like that had deceived the neighbor on the second floor a week earlier. They had introduced themselves as water utility employees, gone into the kitchen, distracted the woman with a conversation about her meters, and stolen money from a cabinet.
“I’ll come tomorrow,” Larisa said. “And I’ll install a proper video doorbell for you.”
“I don’t need you to install anything. The ordinary peephole is enough.”
“An ordinary peephole doesn’t record anything.”
“I’m not planning to record anyone.”
“But they might be planning to record you.”
Her mother sighed irritably and ended the call.
The next day, Larisa brought over the smart video doorbell she had ordered in advance. It could record footage and send notifications to a phone. Her husband, Andrei, volunteered to install it himself. He worked as an engineer at a furniture factory and treated anything involving wires, fasteners, or instructions as a personal challenge.
Nina Petrovna stood in the hallway with her arms crossed, watching her son-in-law remove the old peephole.
“Are you going to monitor me now?” she asked.
“Of course,” Andrei replied calmly. “We’ll find out how many times you go to your neighbor to borrow salt.”
“I don’t borrow salt from her.”
“Then she borrows it from you. We’ll catch her.”
Her mother snorted but stepped aside.
Forty minutes later, everything was ready. A small screen hung on the inside of the door, and the application had been installed not only on Nina Petrovna’s phone but also on Larisa’s.
“When someone approaches the door, you’ll get a notification,” her daughter explained. “You can see who’s there even when you aren’t home.”
“What if a cat walks past?”
“You don’t have a cat.”
“It could be someone else’s.”
Andrei laughed.
“Nina Petrovna, in a couple of days you’ll get used to it and start giving lectures about it to all the neighbors.”
“In a couple of days, I’ll ask you to remove this thing.”
But no one had to remove it.
During the first two days, the device reported only the mail carrier, the neighbor Valentina Stepanovna, and a boy from the floor above who, for some reason, pressed the doorbell three times and ran away.
On the third day, at around two thirty in the afternoon, Larisa’s phone vibrated briefly.
She was sitting in a small coffee shop opposite the dental clinic, waiting for her son’s appointment to finish. A message appeared on the screen:
“Motion detected at the door.”
Larisa opened the application without thinking.
At first, she saw a man from behind. A gray coat, dark trousers, and a familiar leather shoulder bag. He was standing too close to the door, so the camera showed only the back of his head.
A second later, the man turned around.
It was Andrei.
Larisa straightened involuntarily.
Her husband was supposed to be at work on the other side of the city. That morning, he had said they had an important equipment inspection and that he would not be free before seven.
A woman of about forty stood beside him. Her blond hair was tied into a low ponytail, and she was holding a thick blue folder.
Andrei took a key out of his pocket.
He did not ring the bell.
He did not knock.
He simply unlocked the door to her mother’s apartment and allowed the woman to enter first.
The recording ended.
For several seconds, Larisa stared at the screen, unable to decide what alarmed her more: the unfamiliar woman, the key to the apartment, or the confidence with which her husband had entered her mother’s home.
She immediately called Nina Petrovna.
“Mom, where are you?”
“At the clinic. I’m waiting to see the therapist. Why?”
“No reason. I was just asking.”
“Larisa, I’m not a child. Tell me.”
“Later.”
She ended the call and reopened the application. The camera showed an empty landing.
Her first instinct was to call Andrei and ask him directly, “What are you doing in my mother’s apartment? Who is that woman?”
But Larisa did not call.
She wanted to understand first how far the deception had gone.
Until that day, she had never checked up on her husband. In fourteen years of marriage, he had never given her a reason. Andrei could forget the anniversary of their first date, confuse the time of a parent-teacher meeting, or drive around for a week with a bag of garbage in his trunk, but he did not know how to lie.
Whenever he tried, the corner of his mouth began to twitch.
Forty-seven minutes later, a second notification arrived.
The door opened. The unfamiliar woman came out first. She said something to Andrei, but the audio was unclear. Then he appeared.
Her husband was carrying an old brown suitcase with worn metal corners.
Larisa knew that suitcase.
It had been lying on the top shelf of her mother’s closet for as long as she could remember. Her father had once taken it with him on business trips. After his death, Nina Petrovna had placed documents, old photographs, and some letters inside it.
Andrei carried the suitcase out, locked the door, and left with the woman.
Larisa felt an unpleasant heaviness beneath her ribs.
She tried to come up with a reasonable explanation.
Perhaps her mother had asked him to collect some papers.
Perhaps the woman worked for the pension office or was a notary or insurance agent.
But why had Nina Petrovna said nothing about it?
And where had Andrei gotten the key?
That evening, her husband returned home at seven thirty. He looked tired and had brought bread and a carton of apple juice.
“Did you finish the inspection?” Larisa asked.
“Barely. The suppliers mixed up half the documents again.”
The corner of his mouth did not twitch.
Andrei calmly changed his clothes, washed his hands, and began reheating dinner.
“Were you at the factory all day?”
He turned around.
“Almost.”
“What does ‘almost’ mean?”
“I went out during lunch.”
“Where?”
There was a pause now.
It was very brief, but Larisa noticed it.
“I had some business to take care of.”
“What kind of business?”
Andrei placed the spoon beside the stove.
“Lar, what’s wrong?”
She could have shown him the recording. Instead, she said:
“Nothing.”
They barely spoke during dinner. Their son talked about the dentist, a new classmate, and the game console he wanted for his birthday. Andrei asked questions, nodded, and smiled.
Larisa watched him and thought about the brown suitcase.
That night, she could not fall asleep for a long time.
The simplest explanation was an affair. An unfamiliar woman, a secret meeting, and a lie about work. But why would he meet a lover in his elderly mother-in-law’s apartment? And why would he take documents?
The second possibility was worse.
Her mother owned a three-bedroom apartment in the city center. The building was old, but the neighborhood was considered desirable. Several months earlier, Nina Petrovna had said that she wanted to leave the apartment equally to her children—Larisa and her younger brother, Denis.
Andrei had remained silent at the time.
Could he have decided to influence her now? To persuade her to transfer the apartment to Larisa? Or perhaps to arrange something in his own name?
Larisa herself understood how wild that sounded. But the longer she lay in the darkness, the more convincing the worst assumptions became.
In the morning, she called her mother.
“Mom, does Andrei have a key to your apartment?”
Nina Petrovna did not answer immediately.
“I gave him the spare one.”
“When?”
“What difference does it make?”
“A big difference. When?”
“About two months ago. My lock got stuck, and he came to repair it.”
“And he didn’t return the key?”
“He must have forgotten.”
Larisa closed her eyes.
Her mother was lying. Awkwardly and hastily, almost exactly like Andrei.
“Did you ask him to come over yesterday?”
“Yesterday?”
“Yes.”
“No. Why would I?”
“I’m just asking.”
“Larisa, you’ve started imagining things again.”
“Where is Dad’s old suitcase?”
The line went silent.
“On the top shelf.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course.”
“Check.”
“Now you expect me to climb ladders because of your fantasies?”
“Mom, just check.”
Nina Petrovna grumbled, put down the phone, and returned several minutes later.
“It’s not there,” she said in a different voice.
“Are you sure?”
“The shelf is empty.”
“Do you know who took it?”
“Maybe Andrei did. I asked him at some point to sort through the papers.”
“When did you ask him?”
“I don’t remember.”
As Larisa listened, one thing became increasingly clear: her mother was hiding something. The only question was whether she was protecting her son-in-law or afraid of him.
That evening, Andrei returned late again. Larisa decided not to ask about the woman or the suitcase. She waited for him to bring it up himself.
He did not.
Nothing happened for two days.
Then, on Thursday morning, the application sent another notification.
Denis was standing on the landing.
Her brother looked terrible. His jacket was wrinkled, his face unshaven, and his eyes red. He pressed the doorbell several times and then began pounding on the door with his fist.
Their mother did not open it.
Denis took out his phone, called someone, and left.
An hour later, Larisa called him.
“Why did you go to Mom’s apartment?”
“I missed her.”
“At eight in the morning?”
“What, do I need to have my visiting schedule approved now?”
“Is everything all right?”
“Couldn’t be better.”
Denis sounded far too cheerful. During the past year, he had not held a proper job. First he had sold car parts, then repaired phones, and later announced that he had invested in a “promising online project.” Every new project ended the same way: Denis asked his mother for money and promised to return it within a month.
He never returned anything.
“Mom said you borrowed money from her again,” Larisa said.
“Mom says a lot of things.”
“How much did you take?”
“Nothing.”
“Denis.”
“Don’t start. Your husband makes good money, so enjoy your peaceful life.”
He ended the call.
On Saturday, Larisa went to her mother’s apartment without warning. Nina Petrovna opened the door quickly, as though she had been standing nearby.
The kitchen smelled of fried onions and fresh dill. There were pastries on the table, the kind her mother usually made only when expecting guests.
“Who are you waiting for?” Larisa asked.
“No one.”
“Then why did you make so many pastries?”
“What, am I not allowed to bake without permission anymore?”
Her mother bustled around, moving cups and wiping an already clean countertop. She was wearing a new blouse, but Nina Petrovna looked tired.
“Mom, what’s going on?”
“Nothing.”
“Andrei came here with a woman. I saw the recording.”
Her mother froze.
“What woman?”
“Don’t pretend you don’t understand. They took Dad’s suitcase.”
Nina Petrovna lowered herself onto a stool.
“So that camera of yours shows everything?”
“That’s why we installed it.”
“We shouldn’t have.”
“Why?”
Her mother pressed her lips together.
“There are some things children don’t need to know.”
“I’m thirty-eight years old.”
“You’re still a child to me.”
“Is Andrei threatening you?”
Nina Petrovna jerked her head up.
“Have you lost your mind? Andrei is a good man.”
“Then explain what he was doing here.”
“I can’t.”
“Or you don’t want to?”
“Larisa, stay out of it.”
“This is my family.”
“Exactly. Protect your family.”
That final sentence sounded particularly strange.
Larisa left angry and confused. On the way home, she considered calling Andrei several times but kept postponing the conversation.
He met her in the hallway.
“Were you at your mother’s?”
“How do you know?”
“She called.”
“That was fast.”
Andrei rubbed a hand over his face.
“Let’s not do this now.”
“No. We’re doing it now. Who was that woman?”
“A lawyer.”
“What kind of lawyer?”
“Someone I know.”
“You know her well enough to take her into other people’s apartments?”
“Larisa…”
“Where is the suitcase?”
“Somewhere safe.”
“I want to see it.”
“I can’t show it to you.”
“Why?”
Andrei remained silent.
“What were you arranging?” she asked. “The apartment? A power of attorney? A will?”
At the words “power of attorney,” he visibly tensed.
Larisa noticed and felt everything inside her tighten.
“So I guessed correctly.”
“You didn’t guess anything.”
“Then explain.”
“I made a promise to your mother.”
“And you didn’t make any promises to me?”
Andrei stepped closer.
“I’m trying to help all of you.”
“Who asked you?”
“Larisa, please. Give me a couple more days.”
“You’ve been lying to me for a week.”
“Because you won’t like the truth.”
“Do you think I like what’s happening now?”
He looked at her for a long time, exhausted.
“Ask Denis why he needs your mother’s apartment.”
Larisa wanted to demand that he explain more, but Andrei took his jacket and left the house.
He did not return all night.
In the morning, he sent a short message:
“I’m staying with a friend. I need to finish something.”
Larisa did not reply.
She watched the recordings from the camera again. She enlarged the image of the woman and studied her folder, clothes, and face. Then she replayed the moment when Andrei came out carrying the suitcase.
There was nothing new.
Except that when he was standing close to the door, he said to the woman:
“The main thing is that Denis mustn’t find out where the documents are.”
Larisa listened to the sentence several times.
Then she called her brother.
“We need to meet.”
“I’m busy.”
“It’s about Mom’s apartment.”
Denis arrived forty minutes later.
They met in a café near the bus station. Her brother ordered coffee but barely touched it. He constantly checked his phone and bounced his leg under the table.
“What is Andrei doing with Mom’s documents?” Larisa asked.
“How would I know?”
“He said you want to take the apartment.”
Denis smirked.
“Of course. How convenient to blame everything on me.”
“Blame what on you?”
“Your husband has been eyeing that apartment for a long time. Why do you think he’s always hovering around Mom? Repairing her locks, bringing groceries, calling doctors. You think he does all that for free?”
“Do you understand what you’re saying?”
“Why? Is he a saint?”
Larisa remembered how Andrei visited Nina Petrovna almost every weekend to repair a faucet, replace an electrical outlet, or move furniture. Denis was usually busy at those times.
“Do you have a power of attorney from Mom?” she asked.
Her brother stopped bouncing his leg.
“What power of attorney?”
“A general power of attorney.”
“Have you been watching too many legal dramas?”
“Show me your passport.”
“Why?”
“I want to see whether there’s any conscience recorded in it.”
Denis stood abruptly.
“Deal with your husband yourselves.”
He left, abandoning his coffee untouched.
Two days later, the video doorbell Larisa had installed to protect her mother sent another notification.
It was eleven o’clock at night.
Larisa was already in bed. Andrei had returned home after their argument, but they barely spoke. He slept in the living room.
When she saw the message, she opened the application.
Denis was standing on the landing.
He did not ring the bell. He simply slapped the door with his palm.
“Mom, open up! I know you’re home!”
A few seconds later, the door opened slightly, held by the security chain.
“Denis, it’s late,” Nina Petrovna’s voice said.
“Give me the documents.”
“I don’t have them.”
“Don’t lie. Where’s the suitcase?”
“Andrei took it.”
Denis swore.
“Do you understand what you’ve done? People are waiting.”
“What people?”
“The buyers.”
Larisa sat up in bed.
“I’m not selling anything,” her mother said.
“You’ve already signed everything.”
“You said it was for benefits.”
“What difference does that make now? I have the power of attorney.”
“I’ll cancel it.”
Denis moved closer to the door until the camera showed his face in close-up.
“Just try it. I took a deposit. I don’t have the money to return it.”
“You sold my apartment?”
“I haven’t sold it yet. But I will if you stop interfering.”
“Where am I supposed to live?”
“With Larisa. She has a big house.”
Nina Petrovna tried to close the door, but Denis placed his foot in the gap.
“Move your foot.”
“First tell me where the papers are.”
“Go away, Denis.”
“Mom, don’t push me.”
Larisa jumped out of bed.
“Andrei!”
He appeared in the living-room doorway almost immediately, as though he had not been sleeping either.
She held out the phone.
He watched the screen for only a few seconds, grabbed his keys, and said:
“Call the police. I’ll go ahead.”
They reached her mother’s building in twelve minutes. Andrei drove his car, and Larisa followed him. The entire time, she continued listening to the conversation through the application.
Denis alternated between trying to persuade his mother and raising his voice. He promised to buy her a room, said the apartment was too large for her, and accused Larisa of being greedy.
When Andrei reached the floor, Denis still had his foot wedged between the door and the frame.
“Step away from her,” Andrei said.
“And here comes the owner.”
“Step away.”
“Who are you to give me orders?”
Andrei did not answer. He simply grabbed Denis by the shoulder and pulled him away from the door.
Her brother drew back his arm, but he did not have time to strike. Larisa appeared on the staircase.
“Everything was recorded,” she said. “Every word.”
Denis looked at the video doorbell. Then at his sister.
“This is a family conversation.”
“No. This is an attempt to leave our mother without a home.”
“She signed everything herself.”
“You deceived her.”
“Prove it.”
“You just proved it yourself.”
Footsteps sounded from below. Two police officers summoned by Larisa were coming up the stairs.
Denis changed immediately. He lowered his hands, adjusted his jacket, and spoke calmly.
“Nothing happened. We just had an argument.”
“We’ll review the recording,” one officer replied.
Inside the apartment, Nina Petrovna was sitting on a stool in the hallway. Her hands were trembling. For the first time, Larisa saw her mother looking so small and helpless.
“Mom…”
“I didn’t know,” she whispered. “He brought the papers and said they were for a utility discount. I signed them. I didn’t even read them.”
Andrei brought her some water.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Larisa asked.
Her mother looked at her son-in-law.
“Because it was my fault. I was ashamed.”
It turned out that Andrei had discovered the power of attorney by accident. Nina Petrovna had asked him to find a receipt among her documents, and he had found a notarized form.
Under the power of attorney, Denis had the right to manage the apartment, sign contracts, and receive money.
Andrei immediately contacted a lawyer he knew. She was the woman Larisa had seen in the recording. The lawyer had come to inspect the papers and prepare the cancellation of the power of attorney.
“And the suitcase?” Larisa asked.
“It contained the apartment documents, the privatization certificate, old contracts, and your mother’s bank papers,” Andrei replied. “We took it so Denis couldn’t get to them.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
He looked at Nina Petrovna.
“She asked me not to.”
“I was afraid you would all start fighting because of me,” her mother said quietly. “I thought I could fix everything myself.”
“So that’s why you lied to me?”
“I wanted to cancel the power of attorney first. Then I would have told you.”
Larisa remembered all her suspicions. The unfamiliar woman. The secret visits. The suitcase. The sleepless night. The cold tone she had used when speaking to her husband.
“You could at least have told me it had nothing to do with us,” she said.
“I could have,” Andrei agreed. “But then I would have had to explain what it did concern.”
“And what about the part where you said I wouldn’t like the truth?”
“Did you like it?”
The following day, the power of attorney was officially canceled. The lawyer helped prepare statements and collect the recordings.
They discovered that Denis had already reached an agreement with an intermediary and received a large deposit toward the future sale of the apartment.
He had already spent almost all the money.
For several weeks, the family lived as though they had survived a fire. Everything looked the same from the outside, but their familiar relationships had been scorched.
Nina Petrovna blamed herself.
Larisa was furious with her brother.
Andrei barely spoke about what had happened.
At first, Denis called repeatedly, demanding that they withdraw the complaint and insisting that he had only wanted what was best. Then he accused his sister of destroying his life. Eventually, he stopped contacting them.
One evening, Larisa found her husband in the kitchen. Andrei was sitting by the window, drinking cold tea.
She placed her phone in front of him.
The screen showed a paused recording from the day he had entered the apartment with the lawyer.
“I thought you had another woman,” Larisa said.
Andrei raised his eyebrows.
“One carrying a folder of documents?”
“Some mistresses are very organized.”
For the first time in many days, he smiled.
“And why did I steal the suitcase?”
“There could have been gold inside it.”
“In your mother’s suitcase?”
“That evening, I thought it probably contained the crown jewels.”
Andrei shook his head.
“I should have told you.”
“You should have.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry too.”
She sat beside him.
“You know what frightened me most? I believed that you were capable of deceiving Mom. But until the very end, I kept thinking Denis was simply confused.”
“We tend to suspect the people closest to us,” Andrei said. “Because they are the ones we’re afraid to lose.”
A month later, Nina Petrovna called her daughter herself.
“Larisa, do you remember where you ordered that thing?”
“What thing?”
“The one on the door.”
“The video doorbell?”
“Yes.”
“What about it?”
“Valentina Stepanovna wants one too. A man came to her apartment yesterday and claimed he was a window repairman.”
“But she always said cameras were a waste of money.”
“She doesn’t say that anymore.”
Larisa sent the neighbor a link to the same video doorbell with remote phone access.
Several days later, she stopped by her mother’s apartment with groceries. Nina Petrovna opened the door before her daughter had time to ring.
“I saw you,” she said proudly, pointing at the screen.
“And you wanted Andrei to remove it.”
“So what if I did? I didn’t understand then.”
She took the bag from her daughter and headed toward the kitchen.
“It’s a useful thing,” Nina Petrovna added. “It stays quiet, doesn’t argue, and remembers everything.”
“Unlike relatives?”
Her mother stopped.
“Unlike certain relatives.”
She said it without anger. She simply sounded tired.
Larisa looked at the small camera in the door. It was an ordinary device purchased because she was worried about her elderly mother. It was only supposed to show who came to visit.
But it had helped them see what had remained unnoticed for years: one loved one had come to the apartment to take something that did not belong to him, while another had come to save it.
They had understood the difference only because, that time, the door had remembered everything.