“Lyudmila Arkadyevna, this isn’t about flowers. I need to send you something. It’s about Sergey.”
“Did something happen to Sergey?” Her voice didn’t tremble, but it dropped half a tone.
“His health is fine. It’s more about his conscience. I’ll send it to you now, and please take a look.”
“I’m without my glasses,” her mother-in-law snapped. “Read it out loud.”
Natalia read it. The message about the bunny. The chat about divorce and storage units. About the bracelet that was “gold, just like you love.” Then she recalled the receipt from memory and listed the amount, the name of the jewelry store, and the exact figure.
In their family, money was always shared—Natalia considered it as unbreakable as the multiplication table. The idea that someone could take half the cash from their common envelope and buy a bracelet for someone else? That simply didn’t compute in her arithmetic.
“One hundred and forty thousand,” she repeated. “From the dresser, from our envelope. That’s exactly half of what we’d saved. And I remember, Lyudmila Arkadyevna, that in August you asked him to pay for your trip to the sanatorium. ‘Pine Grove.’ He promised the money then. And what did he say to you after that?”
There was no answer on the line. The silence stretched on. Natalia could hear the ticking of the cuckoo clock in her mother-in-law’s room, as if even the cuckoo was too wary to come out in such a quiet moment.
“He said,” Lyudmila Arkadyevna finally spoke very slowly, “that there’s no money right now. That he invested in work stuff. That I should borrow from Tamara, and he’d pay me back.”
“Borrow?”
“I haven’t borrowed a single ruble from Tamara Ilyinichna in fifteen years. Out of principle.” She paused. “But I called her. I humbled myself and called. And Tamara told me she’s struggling too right now. So for three weeks, I walked around the yard acting like I didn’t care where I’d be vacationing.”
This was the longest speech Natalia had ever heard from her mother-in-law without a single complaint. She didn’t know what to say, so she told the truth.
“He’ll be at ‘The Old Pier’ tonight at seven. With this Victoria woman. She’ll be getting the bracelet there.”
There was a thud on the other end. Natalia guessed it was the cane—either dropped or set down too sharply.
The silence changed. It wasn’t empty anymore—it felt solid, like a door slammed shut. Natalia suddenly realized that this was what Lyudmila Arkadyevna’s fury looked like. No shouting, no smashing plates, no sobbing into the phone. Just cold. Around this woman, it seemed, the temperature dropped a degree every second.
Sergey once told a story about how his mother, back when she was still the deputy principal, stood up silently at a parent-teacher meeting and simply looked at his father, who had been causing a scene. Within a minute, his father fell silent and sat down. Now Natalya understood exactly how that must have looked.
“Give me the address,” her mother-in-law said.
“I’ll pick you up at six.”
“At six. And, Natalya.”
“Yes?”
“Don’t be late. I can’t stand it when people are late, even for a confrontation.”
She hung up. Natalya looked at her phone. The time was twenty to four. There was still a lot of time before the meeting, but even more chores to do. First on her list was finding the locksmith from the next building, old Mikhailych, who helped everyone with their locks and never said no to anyone. He arrived at five and worked on the door for half an hour while Natalya silently packed Sergey’s things. Two bags. The winter jacket didn’t fit in either one, though. His razor, skis, fishing rod, socks by the list. She folded his shirts with a precision that deserved a better purpose.
“So, you’re kicking him out?” Mikhailych asked, not looking up.
“For now, I’m just changing the locks,” Natalya replied. “So he’ll learn to call first.”
“Smart move. You know, in our building, a lot of people have worse locks than they do tempers.”
As she folded his shirts, Natalya caught herself smoothing out each collar and grew irritated at her own hands. For thirty-five years they had been conditioned for this job, and apparently no one had explained to them that things had changed. One shirt was missing a button, and she automatically reached for a needle. She stopped, stood there for a moment holding the needle like a relay baton with no one to pass it to, then put it back in the box and left the shirt without a button. Let his mother sew it on. It was about time.
She carried his things out to the landing, arranging them in a neat row like a shop window display. She leaned the fishing rod against the wall, paused, then returned to place a bag of leftover cutlets from lunch on top. At least he’d remember who used to feed him.
Lyudmila Arkadyevna lived across town in a Stalin-era building, with decorative plasterwork above the entrance and the scent of basement dampness lingering on her floor. Her apartment was a two-room flat, and time there seemed to have frozen in 1987. A rug hung on the wall, crystal glasses rested in a cabinet only opened twice in thirty years, and everywhere there were photos—dozens of them—and in each one was Seryozha.
Seryozha on the potty. Seryozha at school. Seryozha in his Young Pioneer tie, tall and straight as a candle. In a place of honor on the cabinet sat a framed portrait of young Sergey, his clear eyes looking toward the future.
Now that portrait was turned to face the wall.
Nearby, sitting on a little napkin, was a glass of unfinished tea and, next to it, a pill broken in half as if someone had started to take it and then forgotten.
Natalya paused at the doorway to the room. Her mother-in-law sat at the table on a hard chair, upright like she was at an exam, wearing a gray suit and a string of pearls around her neck. Beside her were her handbag and a cane. She wasn’t crying. Only the fingers of her right hand kept stroking the pearls one after another, as if counting them.
“Sit down,” she said. “Take a moment to catch your breath.”
Natalya took a seat. For a minute, both of them were silent, and never before had their silence felt so much like a real conversation.
Natalya looked at the older woman and suddenly saw her in a new light. No longer the one inspecting for dust with her finger, but a small, wiry woman who had carried not only her life but her son’s on her shoulders for years. Female solidarity, she thought, isn’t about hugging and crying together. It’s when two people, who couldn’t stand each other for twenty years, sit quietly at the same table because they were both deceived in the exact same way.
“You know what hurts?” said Lyudmila Arkadyevna, staring at the table. “Not the bracelet. I raised him alone, Natasha. His father left when the boy was six. I worked double shifts, and in the evenings I cleaned the stairwell just so he’d have shoes. I shaped him the best I could. And now he tells me about Tamara. So he thought I was a fool. So I’m not his mother anymore, just some grandma in a line he doesn’t have to pay attention to.”
Her lips quivered, and she pressed them together quickly, like closing a purse. Then she stood, walked to the cabinet, picked up a photo frame, and turned it to face the room.
“Why?” asked Natalya.
“So I know what I’m aiming at,” Lyudmila Arkadyevna answered dryly. “Don’t think we’ve become friends. This isn’t affection for you, Natalya. It’s about principles. But today, our principles just happen to align.”
“I don’t think that,” said Natalya.
“For thirty-five years I thought you were a spendthrift. Five hundred rubles for face cream.”
“One hundred and forty thousand,” Natalya reminded her.
“Exactly. So it turns out my son is the spendthrift. And you’re the thrifty woman with the notebook. I’ll just have to find a way to live with that.”
“Just forgive me the cream, that’s the main thing,” said Natalya, and suddenly both of them laughed—a short, nervous, raspy laugh, like people do when they don’t actually want to laugh, but their bodies decide it’s time.
After they finished laughing, Lyudmila Arkadyevna wiped the corner of her eye with a handkerchief stitched with the letter “L” and suddenly asked,
“And how are you feeling? You’re not made of steel either.”
Natalya became flustered. In thirty-five years, her mother-in-law had never once asked how she felt—unless you count asking, “You’re not coming down with something, are you? That kitchen draft is bad, and I have to eat my porridge.”
“Cold,” she said honestly. “On the inside—as if someone opened a window and forgot to close it.”
“That’ll pass,” Lyudmila Arkadyevna nodded. “It gets hot, then empty, then you just want to eat. I went through it when his father left. The emptiness fills up eventually. The main thing is not to let just anyone in to take that space.”
“Are you telling me that or yourself?”
“Both of us,” her mother-in-law replied curtly.
“Let’s go,” her mother-in-law said, putting on her hat and picking up her cane. “But not by tram. I don’t want to arrive looking all flushed.”
In the taxi, Lyudmila Arkadyevna sat very upright and stared straight ahead. The young driver started to turn on some music, but when he caught her gaze in the mirror, he quickly switched it off. Natalya looked out the window. Storefronts, puddles, people with umbrellas flashed by, and everyday life felt strange—like a silent movie. Suddenly, her mother-in-law, without turning her head, spoke.
I promised him on the day he started school that I’d never let anyone hurt him. But I forgot one thing—he could hurt himself.
Lyudmila Arkadyevna…
Don’t worry. I’m not crying. My eyes are just made so that sometimes they shine.
Natalya stayed silent. That night, she found she was surprisingly good at staying quiet—a pleasant discovery.
‘Old Pier’ was a restaurant for people who dream of the sea but fear seasickness. Fishing nets with tangled bulbs hung from the ceiling, life rings decorated the walls, and waiters in striped shirts carried plates like they were hauling people from the water. On the tables, candles burned in glass floats.
They arrived at five minutes to eight. At the entrance, they were met by a girl in a striped shirt with a badge that read ‘Administrator Alina.’
“Good evening. Do you have a reservation?”
“No,” Lyudmila Arkadyevna replied. “We already have a spot over there.” She pointed her cane toward the dining hall. “We’ll join them.”
“I’m sorry, but that’s a table for two…”
“Dear, I have never been late to a parent-teacher meeting in my life and I don’t intend to start now. Please let us through.”
Alina let them pass. There isn’t an administrator in the world who could resist that cane.
Natalya immediately spotted the corner table by the porthole. Sergey sat with his back to the door, in a sky-blue dress shirt, looking as pleased as a cat who found an open window. Across from him was a woman, about thirty-seven, in a blue dress, her eyelashes thick enough to dry laundry on. Between them lay a velvet box the color of ripe plum, and beside it, like a witness, a red rose.
“Is that her?” Lyudmila Arkadyevna asked almost inaudibly.
“That’s her.”
“Nothing special. The lashes are fake.”
A woman’s gaze is sharper than any device. In a split second, Lyudmila Arkadyevna sized up the dress, the lashes, the price of the earrings, and even saw that Viktoria’s left shoe had given her a blister.
And she walked over—not running, not rushing, but walking, tapping her cane like a school principal approaching a student whom not even a parent can save. Natalya followed half a step behind and realized her legs were suddenly moving perfectly.
Strangely, she didn’t feel any pain in that moment. It was as if she was looking at her own life through a shop window. Everything was familiar and clear, but out of reach. Deep under her ribs, hurt twisted heavily and slowly, like a cat on a stove, but it was waiting for its moment. First, she had to reach the table.
Lyudmila Arkadyevna approached the table, pulled out the empty chair, and sat without being invited, placing her purse right on the tablecloth.
“Good evening, young people,” she said. “Lyudmila Arkadyevna. Mother. And you, I presume, are the bride?”
Sergey turned around. His fork with a shrimp froze midway to his mouth and just stayed there. In a second, his face went from pink to beet red. His large, sticking-out ears glowed like two little lanterns on a Christmas tree.
“Mom?!” he managed to choke out.
“Mom,” confirmed Lyudmila Arkadyevna. “Surprised to see me? Well, imagine, I didn’t expect either that you’d spend my resort money on throwing a party.”
Victoria slowly turned around. Her smile faltered slightly but didn’t disappear completely.
“Seryozha, you said your mom was at the health resort.”
“I was planning to go to the resort, dear,” Lyudmila Arkadyevna replied pleasantly. “But the funds ended up elsewhere.”
“Mom, you got it wrong,” Sergey whispered, moving closer. There was a sticky sweetness in his voice, the same one he used to talk ticket inspectors into letting him off in trams. “This is a business dinner. Viktoria Andreevna is from the supply department—we’re discussing procurements.”
“Procurements of what?” Lyudmila Arkadyevna asked. “Bracelets?”
“Metal. For the workshop.”
“Gold metal?”
To her credit, Viktoria let out a chuckle. Sergey started coughing.
Without asking anyone, she reached out, took the velvet box, and opened it. A gold bracelet with green gemstones that looked like currants sparkled under the lamp.
“It’s beautiful,” she commented. “One hundred and forty thousand. Exactly.”
“Mom, put it back,” Sergey whispered.
“I won’t. That’s mine. That’s my vacation trip.”
She snapped the box shut so loudly that the neighboring tables jumped. People at those tables were already turning their heads. One man in a striped sailor’s shirt—not a waiter’s uniform, but the real deal—stopped chewing and got ready to watch.
Viktoria stood up. She glanced from Sergey to the elderly woman, then to Natalya, who came closer and stood by the back of the chair.
“And who are you?” she asked.
“Natalya. His wife. The very one he ‘almost doesn’t live with,'” Natalya said quietly, and this calm made sweat bead on Sergey’s forehead. “Thirty-five years in November. We haven’t actually filed for divorce. Neither of us. His lawyer tends to drag things out, as you see.”
“Vitya… I mean Vikusya,” Sergey spoke quickly and unclearly, as if swallowing his words without chewing. “It’s a misunderstanding, you know everything has been over for a long time…”
“You said you were divorced!” Victoria’s voice rose and rang out. “And the business? And the warehouses? You told me the plant was just a hobby!”
“He does have warehouses,” Lyudmila Arkadyevna cut in. “A garage. There are skis from ’79 and jars of pickles. Businessman—when it comes to meat patties.”
“Workshop manager for forty-two thousand,” Natalya added, because precision was her weakness. “Plus a bonus. If the audit doesn’t find anything.”
Victoria turned pale, then red, and grabbed her purse as if she wanted to make sure she still had her dignity.
“You pathetic loser!” she blurted out. “I gave up a man with a real car for you!”
And before anyone could react, she picked up a glass of cranberry juice from the table and, calmly and without hurry, poured it right onto Sergey’s pale blue dress shirt. The red stain spread across the stripes like a map of an imaginary country. Instantly, the shirt lost its ceremonial status.
Her heels tapped across the floor like a woodpecker on a pine tree, the door slammed, and the bell above it jangled once more—now without her. The man in the sailor shirt quietly applauded with one hand. The waiter with the tray, who’d seen it all before, pretended to fix a napkin.
Sergey stayed where he was, fiddling with a napkin until it shredded into tiny strips. His shoulders slumped, and suddenly he wasn’t a sixty-year-old factory manager anymore, but a little boy called up to the blackboard who forgot his grade book at home. Only little boys get forgiven, but for him it was already too late.
“Seryozha,” Lyudmila Arkadyevna said, her voice so quiet that Sergey instinctively leaned in. “Tell me one thing. Be honest. When you told me about Tamara, did you remember that you had the receipt in your pocket?”
He opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. The fish in the aquarium near the entrance looked more convincing than he did.
“I remembered,” he finally exhaled.
“Now that’s an answer,” his mother nodded. “I don’t like lies, but at least the truth is useful for something.”
“Young man,” Lyudmila Arkadyevna raised her hand, and the waiter rushed over like a leaf on the wind. “The check, please.”
“Zander, salad, Captain’s Secret dessert, cranberry juice, and…” he glanced at the untouched table, “four thousand seven hundred.”
“He’ll pay.”
Sergey pulled out his payroll card. His fingers fumbled, the card slipped, he picked it up from under the table and bumped his head on the tablecloth. The terminal beeped, and right then, he could hear someone at the next table clink a fork against a plate. “Approved.” By Natalia’s calculations, there was about forty rubles and some bonus points left on the card after that.
Natalia noticed a vein twitch under her mother-in-law’s eye, and the cane in her hand trembled slightly. Not from weakness. Inside this iron-willed woman, something was breaking, but she kept her composure like someone holding shut a door against knocking guests.
Sergey turned to his wife. His eyes grew watery, and that familiar look appeared—the one Natalia remembered from their early years, when he, young and with a thick lock of hair, would come with flowers after every foolish mistake. Back then, it always worked.
“Natasha, you’re a smart woman. I was led astray—who hasn’t been there? We’ve been together thirty-five years…”
“Exactly,” Natalia said. “Thirty-five. And today I counted them all. We’re short a hundred and forty thousand, and your honesty. Honesty didn’t get written in my notebook, so I can’t name the exact sum.”
“You’ve become harsh.”
“I’ve become attentive, Seryozha. That’s a different thing.”
“Mom, please, say something to her,” Sergey pleaded.
“Say what?” Lyudmila Arkadyevna asked in surprise. “That she’s right? She already knows that even without me.”
The man in the striped shirt at the next table grunted in approval. His companion nudged him in the side with her elbow, but she was also smiling into her napkin.
“Come on, Mom,” Sergey said plaintively. “At least give back the bracelet. It was a gift, after all.”
“Gifts, Seryozhenka, are bought with your own money,” Lyudmila Arkadyevna said in a steady, teacher-like tone. “But when it’s with someone else’s, that’s called something else, and at your age, I won’t say that word out loud.”
She placed the box into her bag, clicked the clasp shut, and folded her hands on top.
“Here’s how it’s going to be. I’ll return the bracelet to the shop, and the money will go where it belongs. Some for a trip, some for Natalia to replace what was taken from the envelope. The rest—we’ll discuss.”
“Sergey,” said Natalya, and he flinched as if his name had been called out by a teacher at assembly. “One more thing. I changed the locks at five. Your stuff is out on the landing—two bags, your skis, fishing rod, razor. I packed everything according to the list.”
“Natasha,” his voice cracked, “where am I supposed to go?”
“Home,” chimed in Lyudmila Arkadyevna. “Meaning, with me. Back to your old room. The folding cot is still there.”
“Mom, I’m sixty!”
“And I’m eighty-three, and I haven’t let you go yet.”
“What about my salary?”
“Your salary comes to me. I’ve got your card, and you’ll get money for travel. And no checking up on weekends—the country house needs work. The fence collapsed, the shed’s leaning, we’ve got four hundred square meters of potatoes to dig, and neighbor Zinaida says her garden is better than ours. Since you’re our big businessman, you can handle some farming.”
“Mom…”
“Get up,” she ordered, rising to her feet. “Enough embarrassing the table.”
He stood up, obedient like a child being led out from a party, and followed her with his head down, leaving the red rose lying on the tablecloth. Natalya picked it up, twirled it in her fingers, and placed it with the tips—thinking the waiter might as well have it.
They paused on the porch. The evening was warm, thick with the smell of damp leaves and fried fish. Sergey was already shuffling toward the taxi, and Lyudmila Arkadyevna, waving her cane for him not to lag behind, turned back to her daughter-in-law.
“Don’t think we’re friends.”
“I don’t.”
“But your cutlets are good. I’d just use a little less onion.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” said Natalya.
“And another thing,” added her mother-in-law, straightening her gloves. “I’ll return the envelope money once I pawn the bracelet. The rest—I’ll get out of him. In cash, not by card.”
“In cash,” agreed Natalya.
“Accountant,” her mother-in-law approved.
Her mother-in-law nodded, adjusted her hat, and headed to the car with the kind of stride that could lead a parade.
Natalya remained alone on the porch. The wind rustled the leaves in the flowerbed, the smell of fried fish drifted from the doors, and suddenly she wished someone—anyone—would ask her how she was. Not her mother-in-law, not Rita. Just a passerby. But the passersby walked by with their own bags, each carrying their own life. She straightened her collar, took a deep breath, and realized she was standing just as upright as Lyudmila Arkadyevna. Funny how someone else’s posture can rub off on you.
Back home, everything was quiet. The fridge hummed to itself. Natalya took off her coat, went to the kitchen, and sat in the same spot, next to the same notebook. The kettle had gone cold long ago. She poured herself some tea, took a sip, and noticed her hands were shaking so much the cup rattled on the saucer like teeth chattering in the cold.
Only now did everything hit her at once. The hurt, the pity, the anger, the exhaustion, and an odd pride that she hadn’t raised her voice a single time. She started to cry—quietly, no sobbing—tears just flowed and dripped into her tea. Then, to her own surprise, she laughed, remembering Victoria’s eyelashes and the forty rubles left on her card. Then she cried again. Then she finally ate the salami sandwich she’d been craving all day, and it was the best thing she’d ever tasted.
Natalia’s phone lit up with a message from her friend Rita, who lived next door and always knew everything before anyone else. “Natasha, there are some bags and a fishing pole in your hallway. Is it cleaning day?” Natalia replied with just one word: “Later”. Rita sent back three question marks and a finger-pointing emoji, and it was clear the whole building would spend the night guessing wild stories—each more outlandish than the last. Natalia was a little amused by this. Her whole life, she’d been the woman without stories, and now, look at that: a real-life story, and quite a dramatic one at that.
She went to bed at 11:45. And for the first time in half a year, nobody was secretly scrolling through their phone under the covers.
Lying in the dark, she automatically moved towards the edge of the bed, leaving space on his side, and suddenly realized that this side had gotten surprisingly big. She could stretch out her arms. She could turn on the bedside lamp and read until one in the morning, without hearing any grumbling. She could, for once, just not decide anything until morning. Natalia gazed at the ceiling, where stripes of light from the occasional cars slid across. She didn’t know what would come next. The only thing she knew was that tomorrow she’d change the pillowcases—not because she had to, but because she wanted to. And as for the rest—the things you can’t count in rubles—well, those she’d have to calculate slowly and without a calculator.
Two months passed.
Natalia sat in her new armchair on the glassed-in balcony, wrapped in a blanket. The chair was deep, soft, the color of baked milk, and she bought it with the money from that troublesome envelope—the one Lyudmila Arkadyevna brought herself at the beginning of October, counting the bills out loud, twice, with the air of a chief accountant. The bracelet had been returned to the ‘Amber Thread’ jewelry store, and the missing commission had been withheld by her mother-in-law from her son, a ruble a day, as she put it, ‘for character building’.
Lyudmila Arkadyevna herself did end up visiting ‘Sosnovy Bor’. She came back in such a mood that neighbor Tamara Ilyinichna didn’t show her face in the yard for two whole weeks.
As for Sergey, he was still writing. He used different numbers now since Natalia had blocked his. The first message came from a neighbor’s phone at the dacha, the second from the factory, the third from some unknown number. ‘Natasha, Mom wakes me at six. Natasha, I’m digging up potatoes and thinking of you. Natasha, let me at least on the doormat, I’ll be quiet.’
Natalia would read these messages while sipping warm tea, watching the first wet snow fall outside her balcony window. There was something familiar, almost homely, in these messages—like the smell of an old saucepan. And it didn’t make anything feel better or worse. It just was.
Another message arrived, this time from a number ending in forty-seven. Natalia read it, sighed, pressed ‘block’, and smiled. Then she set the phone on the windowsill, next to her expense notebook, where a new entry had just been added—the shortest one in the history of the notebook: ‘Chair. Balcony. Peace.’
She firmly decided not to distract her ex-husband from his happy life with his mother. Let him live. Let him dig.
Her phone buzzed again. Lyudmila Arkadyevna’s name flashed on the screen.
‘Hello, I’m listening.’
‘Natalia, it’s me.’
‘I hear you, Lyudmila Arkadyevna.’
‘Sergei says you blocked him again.’
‘I did.’
— That’s right. I would have blocked him too, but he’s in my kitchen, so there’s nowhere for him to go.
— How is he doing?
— He’s watering the cucumbers. Barely complains at all. Yesterday, he even asked if you had the recipe for those famous cutlets.
— I’ll think about it.
— Please do. You’re our accountant, after all. Come over to the dacha on Sunday—I’ll have cabbage pies ready. He’ll be digging outside. You can see for yourself how he’s doing.
— What am I supposed to see?
— Everything, Natalia. Him, the fence, the pies. It’s up to you. All I have to do now is prepare the dough.
— I do love pies, — Natalia said slowly. — As for the rest, Lyudmila Arkadyevna, we’ll see.
— Yes, come and see for yourself.