“I won’t be a grandmother to your child,” my husband’s mother said after our wedding. Later, she deeply regretted those words

Valentina Ivanovna set the table as if she were expecting an inspection: napkins shooting out of glasses like sharp triangles, the aspic cut into perfect squares, and the herring under a fur coat arranged in the shape of a heart. The wedding was just three days ago, and this dinner, she told them on the phone, was a family gathering. She made a point of saying she wanted to sit “without any extra people,” and all evening Anna tried to guess who, exactly, she thought was extra.
Kirill sat by Igor, rolling a fire truck across the tablecloth—a gift from his stepdad that morning. The truck had a ladder that extended, and every few minutes the boy would raise it up as high as it would go, checking if it could reach the chandelier.
“Look, Igor, it almost touches the ceiling!” Kirill lifted the ladder so high that it nearly hit a wine glass.
“Be careful, that’s crystal from my mother,” Valentina Ivanovna said, moving the glass closer to herself.
Meanwhile, Anna was unwrapping the gift she and Igor had spent all Saturday choosing—a warm cashmere shawl, the color of melted milk. Her mother-in-law picked it up with two fingers, glanced at the label, and set it down on the windowsill next to a flowerpot.
“Thank you,” she said. “I don’t really have anywhere to wear it, but thanks.”
Igor winked at his wife from across the table, and Anna decided not to take offense. She helped herself to some aspic, complimented the horseradish, asked where Valentina Ivanovna had found the beef shanks, and almost believed the evening would make it to tea without incident. Her mother-in-law kept her answers brief, but kept watching as Kirill leaned against Igor’s shoulder and Igor, almost absentmindedly, straightened the boy’s rumpled collar.
Then she set her fork down and dabbed her lips with a napkin.
“So, have you explained to Kirill yet that Igor isn’t his real father?” she asked, as casually as though she were asking about the weekend forecast.
Anna looked up from her plate and stared at her mother-in-law for a moment. Igor stopped chewing, but Kirill just kept rolling his truck along the edge of the tablecloth—the word “father” still didn’t really mean anything to him.
“Mom, we’ve talked about this already,” Igor said. “Kirill knows he has a dad, and he knows I love him.”
“You love him, for now,” Valentina Ivanovna shot back. “But once you have a child of your own, we’ll see who matters to you then.”
Anna set her fork on the edge of her plate so carefully it didn’t even make a sound. She’d heard this kind of talk before, but until now her mother-in-law kept it to whispered conversations in the kitchen while Igor smoked on the balcony.
“If our future worries you so much, why did you come to the wedding at all?” Anna asked.
“Because Igor is my son, and I’m not going to disown him over his latest mistake,” Valentina Ivanovna replied firmly. “But let’s agree on one thing right away, Anya. I won’t be a grandmother to your child. He has your mother for that, so let her do the babysitting. I never signed up to raise other people’s kids.”
Kirill looked up at his mother. His hand jerked, the ladder knocked into the wine glass, and it crashed to the floor, shattering so loudly that everyone jumped.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Valentina Ivanovna jumped up, knocking over her chair. “That’s my mother’s crystal! I’ve protected it for forty years! I swear, I could wring your hands off for this!”
Kirill shrank against Igor and dropped his toy car. Anna stood up so abruptly she knocked her knee on the table, and the salad with herring slid off the tablecloth.
“What did you just say to the child?!” Her voice broke into a shout. “He’s seven years old! He hears everything—every single word you say!”
“Well, I didn’t say anything he won’t learn eventually!” Valentina Ivanovna yelled back, scooping up the shards with her hand right into her apron. “Let him get used to the fact that no one here owes him anything from the start!”
Igor stood up, pulled the boy closer, and hugged his shoulders. He spoke in a quiet voice, though his face was as white as the tablecloth.
“Then don’t come to our house and pretend you’re accepting our family.”
Valentina Ivanovna froze with the shards still cradled in her apron. She braced herself for anything: that Anna would cry and try to explain herself, that her son would tell everyone to calm down and sit back down, that the boy would be sent off to watch cartoons in the bedroom. But none of that happened—and suddenly she started yelling at her son instead:
“You’re raising your voice at your own mother—because of her?! Because of that woman?!”
Anna silently fumbled Kirill’s jacket on him, mixing up the sleeves because the boy kept looking back at the car under the table. Igor bent down, grabbed the toy, handed it to Kirill, and followed them out into the hallway. Out on the landing, the door suddenly opened behind them, and a rolled-up scarf the color of baked milk landed on the steps.
“Take your gifts back!” Valentina Ivanovna shouted, slamming the door so hard the whole stairwell echoed.
Kirill picked up the scarf, dusted it off, and asked his mother if they could keep it in their car instead of a blanket now.
Two weeks later, Igor was assembling a desk for Kirill and cursing at the instructions, because screw number seven looked exactly like screw number nine for some reason. Kirill was arranging notebooks, rulers, and his new pencil case with astronauts on the floor. Every five minutes, he’d ask when he could finally sit at his new desk for real.
Anna’s phone buzzed on the arm of the couch. On the screen appeared the simple word “Igor’s mom,” which she hadn’t found the courage to change after the wedding. Anna looked at her husband, who was fiddling with the desk leg and didn’t notice the call. After a short pause, she stepped into the kitchen with the phone.
“I need to give Igor the car papers,” Valentina Ivanovna began right away. “He worked on my engine last time, and all the documents are still with me.”
“Okay, I’ll tell him,” Anna replied, already reaching to end the call.
“Wait,” her mother-in-law said. “I don’t want to fight with you. But you have to understand that Igor has a different life now, and I’m not going to adjust to someone else’s child.”
Anna quietly closed the kitchen door and leaned her back against it. She wanted to keep it brief and say goodbye, but instead started explaining: no one was expecting anything from Valentina Ivanovna, and Kirill didn’t need to be raised—she just wished she would stop reminding him every time that he’s not her own.
“Exactly, he may not be asking for anything now,” her mother-in-law smirked. “Today he’s just living with you, but tomorrow he’ll start calling Igor ‘dad.’ And the day after that, he’ll decide he’s entitled to everything just like your real children.”
“He’s not taking anything away from you!” Anna raised her voice without even realizing it. “He and Igor go to the library together on Saturdays, you know? Igor is teaching him letters, they pick out dinosaur books together, and he won’t even go to sleep without Igor!”
“You’re explaining too much, Anya,” Valentina Ivanovna interrupted her. “If everything is so great with you two, why do you need my approval?”
Anna opened the fridge, just to have something to do with her hands, and stared for a long time at a pack of cottage cheese she didn’t even need. She had an answer, but she couldn’t say it to her mother-in-law out loud. After the divorce, Kirill had slept in her bed for six months, checking every morning to make sure his mom was still there. And when his father stopped visiting on Sundays, the boy started hiding his dad’s old lighter under his pillow.
“Goodbye, Valentina Ivanovna,” she said and hung up the phone.
When she came back to the room, Igor was sitting on the floor with a hex key in his hand, looking up at her.
“Was that your mom calling?” he asked.
Anna nodded, and he immediately reached out for her phone.
“Let me block her number, and then we’ll never have to talk about this again.”
“Igor, don’t,” Anna hid her phone behind her back. “That would only fire her up more. You still have to live with her your whole life, and Kirill might want to… someday…”
“Want what?!” Igor threw the hex key onto the carpet, and it bounced off toward the radiator. “She scolded him with a shot glass, Anya! A shot glass! To a seven-year-old kid!”
“You think I like this?!” Anna shouted back. “You think it’s easy for me to call her and smile?!”
They stood in the middle of the room, surrounded by pieces of an unfinished table, yelling at each other as if they were the ones who had fought at that dinner. Kirill stopped laying out his notebooks and quietly asked, eyes down:
“Was that Grandma Valya on the phone? Is she still mad about the shot glass?”
Igor sat back down on the carpet and silently pulled the boy to him. Anna sat next to them and told him no one was mad at him, that the shot glass was old and would’ve broken sooner or later anyway. Kirill nodded with the kind of face kids make when politely agreeing with adults who are talking nonsense.
That night, Anna asked her husband to give his mother one more chance. Igor was silent for a long time, staring at the ceiling, then finally said she didn’t owe respect to someone who didn’t show it in return. Anna said she understood but still asked him to wait, and Igor agreed—though by the way he turned to face the wall, it was clear he had no faith in this chance.
A year later, Masha was born at the end of March, crying loudly and with a patch of dark fuzz on her head. Igor held her so awkwardly and so tenderly, as if he’d been handed something made of crystal, and Anna, exhausted from childbirth, laughed from her hospital bed. Kirill stood by the clear baby crib and examined his new sister with a serious look, like a child sizing up a puppy he’s not sure won’t bite.
Valentina Ivanovna showed up the next day without calling first. She walked into the hospital room carrying a huge bag, pulled out a pink set with lace frills, and immediately reached for the crib.
“Give her to me,” she said to Igor, without even glancing at Anna.
She never asked how the birth went. Instead, she rocked her granddaughter, fixed her hat, and kept repeating that the girl looked just like Igor, that she had his chin and his eyebrows. Anna watched from her bed in silence, not caring much as long as no one was yelling.
Kirill shifted from foot to foot, holding a drawing in his hands. He had spent three evenings on it: colorful houses, a big yellow sun, and underneath two figures, tall and small, labeled in block letters: Kirill and Masha. He waited until Grandma straightened up and then handed her the paper.
Valentina Ivanovna barely glanced at the drawing before setting it on the windowsill next to her bag.
“You’re a big boy now, Kirill, don’t be upset that everyone is busy with the baby right now,” she said. “Masha is tiny, she needs her grandma more.”
Kirill took the drawing from the windowsill, carefully folded it in half, then again, and tucked it into his jeans pocket. Igor watched his every move. He walked over to his mother, took his daughter from her, and put her back in the crib.
“Mom, don’t come over unannounced anymore,” he said. “And don’t come at all if you can’t treat everyone in my family with respect.”
“Everyone!” Valentina Ivanovna flared up. “You forgot your own mother for a woman who brought you someone else’s child, and now you’re giving me orders?”
Igor didn’t reply. He just opened the door to the hospital room for her. She walked out, her heels echoing loudly in the hallway, and the pink set was left sitting on the nightstand.
***
A week later, Anna did something she would later regret: she called her mother-in-law and invited her for Sunday lunch. She thought that if Valentina Ivanovna saw Kirill next to his sister, all the nonsense about real and not real children would seem silly and petty even to her. When Igor heard about the invitation, he just shook his head and went out to buy wine.
At lunch, Kirill asked to be taught how to hold Masha. Igor moved the boy onto the couch next to him, placed the bundle with his sister in his arms, and showed him how to support her head.
“Look at you, Masha, you’ve got a big brother,” Igor said. “He’s already protecting you, and you can’t even answer back yet.”
Valentina Ivanovna set her cup down on the saucer so hard that tea spilled onto the tablecloth.
“I don’t understand why you’re pretending to be the father of two children,” she said loudly. “The boy has his own father, let him show him how to hold a baby.”
At the sharp sound, Masha grimaced and started crying. Kirill, scared, handed her back to Igor, and Anna stood up from the table.
“Please leave,” she said. “Right now, please.”
“I’ll go,” Valentina Ivanovna was already standing in the hallway, yanking at the zipper of her boot. “But remember, Igor, one day you’ll regret putting that stranger boy above your own daughter!”
Anna dashed into the bedroom, grabbed the pink set from the dresser—still in its bag with the price tag on—and hurried downstairs after her mother-in-law.
“Take it!” she thrust the bag into her hands so abruptly that she almost lost her balance. “We don’t want anything from you, not a single thing!”
The bag tumbled down the staircase, but Valentina Ivanovna didn’t even bend to pick it up. Anna went back into the apartment to find Kirill standing by the hallway door, holding Masha’s rattle and looking at her as if he had just been the one thrown out.
Kirill was ten the first time he was summoned to the principal’s office. Anna rushed from work in a wrinkled jacket, but Igor was already waiting at the school gates with Kirill beside him—his uniform dirty, his lip split, touching it over and over with his tongue.
He’d gotten into a fight with Timur from a neighboring class. All through gym class, Timur teased him, saying Igor wasn’t really his father and that if his real dad cared, he would have taken Kirill to live with him long ago. Kirill held out until they reached the locker room—then he turned and threw the first punch.
Igor first listened to his son while sitting with him on a bench outside the gym, then took him to Timur’s house to apologize. Walking a little behind, Anna overheard her husband telling Kirill that there are different ways to stand up for yourself, and using your fists usually leaves the worst impression.
“You’re not going to leave me if I get into another fight, right?” Kirill asked, right outside their building.
Igor stopped, crouched down in front of him, and promised he would never leave, no matter how serious things got—even though they’d have to deal with the consequences together. Kirill managed his first smile of the day with his busted lip, winced, and asked if he could sign up for swimming lessons.
***
Masha was not even three. She met her brother at the door, grabbed onto his pant leg, and demanded to see what happened to his lip. Kirill obediently bent down so that Masha could puff air gently onto the scratch, holding his cheeks in her tiny hands.
“Who did this to you?” she demanded fiercely.
“Some boy, Timur,” Kirill replied.
“I’m going to beat him up!” Masha declared, stomping a foot clad in duck-print tights.
Anna laughed and then went to the bathroom, holding her hands under cold running water for a long time. Igor knocked, came in, and silently hugged her from behind. He remembered all too well how, at the very beginning, she had asked if he’d ever grow tired of a child who, by law, owed nothing to him.
By that time, Valentina Ivanovna had figured out a way to see her granddaughter alone. Every two weeks she would take Masha to the park, ride carousels, and stop for milkshakes at a café. Each time, Masha begged to bring Kirill along. Her grandmother would explain that her brother was too old for carousels, while Anna gritted her teeth and let it happen—because Masha always came home happy, with her pockets full of candy.
One day, the little girl came back from an outing without any candy. She kicked off her shoes in the hallway, went to her room, and tossed a new doll in a fancy dress onto the couch.
“I don’t want to go to Grandma Valya anymore!” she yelled, bursting into sobs. “She says Kiryusha isn’t really ours! But he’s not a stranger—he’s mine!”
Anna picked her up, while Masha pounded her fists on Anna’s shoulder and repeated the same thing over and over until her voice was hoarse. That evening, Igor called his mother and said that from now on, she could only see her granddaughter in his presence—and only once she stopped turning their child into an audience for her theatrics. Valentina Ivanovna called him a pushover and hung up. After that, she didn’t call at all for six months, convinced that sooner or later her son would get tired of other people’s problems and come running back to her.
continued in the comments
When he was twelve, Kirill competed in city swimming competitions for the first time. Igor promised he’d arrive straight from work in time for the start of Kirill’s race, and Kirill asked several times that morning if he’d really make it. He stepped up to the edge of the pool, found Anna and Masha in the stands, and kept searching the rows nearby with his eyes.
Igor wasn’t there for the first race, nor for the second. Anna kept calling his number again and again, listening to endless dial tones as Masha squirmed in her lap and loudly explained to the neighbor that Papa was just stuck in traffic, but he’d definitely be there soon.
Kirill finished second. A medal with a blue-and-white ribbon was placed around his neck, and as he stood on the podium, he stared at the door at the far end of the hall. When he left the locker room with wet hair, he shoved the medal into his sports bag without even looking at it.
“He didn’t come,” Kirill said in an even voice. “It’s fine. Whatever.”
“Papa will come!” Masha objected. “He promised, and he always keeps his promises!”
At that moment, Anna’s phone rang in her hand—a call from an unknown city number. The woman on the other end introduced herself as the nurse on duty and said that Igor had been in an accident on the Ring Road and was now with them in the hospital. Anna listened, asked for his last name again and the name of the hospital, and didn’t notice that Kirill was already by her side, watching her face.
“What happened to him?” he asked. “Mom, what’s wrong with him?!”
“He’s alive,” Anna grabbed her bag. “They took him to the hospital—I’ll go now.”
“I’m coming with you!”
“No, Kirill, you two are going to Aunt Sveta’s.”
“I’m going with you!” Kirill yelled across the whole lobby, making the security guard look up from her crossword. “It’s my fault—he was coming to see me!”
Anna gripped his shoulders and told him she didn’t know what she’d find there, and she wasn’t taking children with her until she saw for herself. Kirill broke free, kicked his bag so hard it slid across the tiles all the way to the wall, and headed for the exit without looking back. Masha started crying loudly, and Anna led them both to the car—Kirill by the sleeve, and Masha in her arms.
Igor was lying in a second-floor hospital room, his head bandaged and a bruise covering the entire left side of his face. The doctor said he had a concussion, a cracked rib, and would stay for a couple of days, and that the car had already been towed away. Anna sat at the edge of the bed and only then noticed she was still holding her car keys.
“Did Kirill get to compete?” was Igor’s first question.
“He came second, he has a medal,” Anna replied. “He spent the whole swim watching the door, Igor. He thinks you don’t want to come to his competitions anymore.”
Igor turned to face the wall and didn’t answer for a long time.
“He’s not my father on paper, Anya, but I promised him myself,” he said quietly. “I don’t want him to ever feel like he’s been abandoned again.”
The next day, Anna brought both children to the hospital. Kirill stopped at the doorway, nervously fidgeting with his bag strap, while Masha was already climbing onto her father’s bed. Igor reached out to him, and the boy came closer, hugging him so tightly that Igor winced from his injury, and then Kirill broke down sobbing into the hospital blanket — something he hadn’t done in front of them since he was eight. Afterward, he rummaged through his bag, took out his medal, and put it around Igor’s neck, over the bandages.
Valentina Ivanovna learned about the accident from an old neighbor and arrived at the hospital in the morning. She climbed the stairs carrying a bag packed with homemade chicken broth in a jar, some pastries, and a clean T-shirt. She’d just grabbed the door handle when she looked through the glass into the hospital room. Kirill was sitting right next to the bed, waving his hands as he explained how he’d maneuvered at the edge of the field, while Igor laughed, holding his side, a medal with a blue-and-white ribbon glinting on his neck.
Valentina Ivanovna stood in the hallway with the bag in her hand for a long time as nurses walked by. Then, she quietly opened the door, set the bag on the nightstand by the entrance, told her son that the broth was for him and he should drink it warm, and left without once glancing at Anna.
***
Igor returned to work after a month and a half, but he wasn’t allowed to lift anything heavy for the rest of the spring, so now Kirill carried the shopping bags. He did it with a look of pride, almost as though he’d gotten a promotion: he’d snatch the bags from his stepdad right at the checkout, neatly arranged the groceries at home, and grumbled if Igor tried to help. Masha would trail after her brother, insisting that she be allowed to carry something too, so Kirill would hand her a loaf of bread or a packet of napkins.
After the hospital, Valentina Ivanovna started calling almost every evening. At first, Anna was happy, but soon she began taking the phone into the kitchen during those calls, since the conversation always seemed to veer in the same direction. Her mother-in-law would complain that Igor never visited her, that his injury was getting worse taking care of someone else’s kids, that at his age he needed to think of himself. She hadn’t asked a single time about Kirill’s competitions, though she’d seen the medal with the blue-and-white ribbon hanging around Igor’s neck in the hospital room.
That evening, Anna was packing Masha’s backpack for preschool while Kirill crawled under the desk looking for his lost horse coloring book. The phone was on speaker mode on the table, since Anna’s hands were busy with spare tights and a water bottle.
“Let me tell you something, Anya,” Valentina Ivanovna was saying. “After that accident, Igor needs peace, not a teenager who isn’t even his own to take care of. It’s a burden, think about it — he’ll spend half his life on him, and in the end, the boy will just go back to his real father without even saying thank you.”
Anna reached to turn off the speakerphone, but Masha was faster. She grabbed the phone in both hands and shouted into it so loudly that it made their ears ring:
“You’re the burden! Don’t call us anymore! Don’t call, don’t call, don’t call!”
She threw her phone onto the couch, and it bounced to the floor. Kirill crawled out from under the table holding his coloring book, standing in the middle of the room with flushed ears. Anna picked up the phone—the call timer was still going—and she could hear a confused voice, ‘Masha, Mashenka, what’s wrong?’
Anna ended the call and squatted down in front of her daughter.
‘Mashenka, your grandma loves you. Sometimes adults just have complicated relationships…’
‘Then why does she only love me and not Kirill?’ Masha looked at her with tear-filled, angry eyes. ‘He’s my brother! And Dad loves him too!’
Anna opened her mouth to reply, then closed it, realizing she had nothing to say besides excuses for her mother-in-law. She hugged her daughter and promised she would never take her to Grandma’s again unless Masha wanted to go. Kirill quietly put his coloring book in Masha’s backpack, zipped it up, and went to his room, closing the door gently behind him.
That evening, Anna told Igor everything. Without even taking his coat off, he called his mother.
‘Mom, you called Kirill a burden in front of Masha,’ he said. ‘She’s five years old—now she screams into the phone and throws it.’
‘You’ve turned her against me!’ Valentina Ivanovna’s voice was loud enough to be heard from the hallway. ‘You’ve become a stranger, Igor! You won’t even let me see my own granddaughter!’
‘Masha doesn’t want to visit you because you say terrible things about her brother,’ Igor replied. ‘And I’m not going to force her.’
‘You’ll regret choosing that woman!’
‘Every day I see the family I chose, and I have nothing to regret,’ Igor said, then hung up.
He stood in the hallway for a long time, turning the phone over in his hands before finally putting it away in the glove drawer. Anna could see how upset he was, but she said nothing and didn’t try to urge reconciliation with his mother. All her previous calls, dinner invitations, and polite smiles across the table now felt as pointless as trying to clean a carpet that gets soup spilled on it every week.
Kirill was thirteen when his coach picked him for the regional competition team. Igor took a day off work to bring him to another city and bought a thermos in advance—a ‘grandpa’ thermos, Kirill called it, but he still carried it to every practice. A week before the trip, the school invited all the participants and their parents to a meeting. The class teacher called Anna to let her know the kids would be asked to share who had helped them most.
‘Does Kirill know who he’ll name?’ Anna asked.
‘He said it’s obvious already,’ the teacher answered, and Anna could hear the smile in her voice through the phone.
By that time, Masha was attending prep classes at the same school, and that evening her group sang two songs about autumn on the auditorium stage. Masha spent half an hour digging through her backpack for the card she made for her teacher. When she finally found it, crumpled between her notebooks, she burst into tears and demanded a new one. Meanwhile, Igor was running around the apartment looking for a second sock, and Kirill was standing in the hallway, fully dressed, loudly reminding everyone that they were late.
At the doors of the assembly hall, Anna spotted Valentina Ivanovna. Her mother-in-law stood holding a bouquet of tiny chrysanthemums, wearing a new coat that was clearly a bit too snug across the shoulders. Anna suddenly realized she’d mentioned Masha’s concert to a mutual acquaintance that morning—that’s how the word got out. Valentina Ivanovna noticed Kirill standing next to Igor and looked confused for a moment, as if she had walked into the wrong room.
Masha sang her songs, mixed up a verse, then dashed over to her parents, sticking her tongue out at her grandma along the way. After the little ones finished performing, the principal called the competition participants to the stage. Kirill went up alongside Igor, nervously fiddled with a piece of paper with his speech on it, then shoved it into his pocket and started to speak from the heart.
“I want to talk about Igor,” he said into the microphone, which squeaked and whined. “For the past three years, he’s driven me to practice at seven in the morning, even though he had to go straight to work afterwards. When I dropped out of my first race, he told me it happens to everyone. He taught me that just because your father lives in another city and doesn’t visit, it doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you.”
The audience burst into applause. Igor stood next to the boy, hands in his pockets, staring at the floor. Then, he stepped forward and hugged Kirill right there on stage, in front of everyone—awkwardly, causing Kirill to bump his forehead against Igor’s chin. Valentina Ivanovna sat in the third row, chrysanthemums resting on her lap, not clapping.
As everyone headed for the exit, she caught up with Anna in the corridor by the coat check.
“Anya, can I talk to you for a minute?” her voice was unusually quiet, without its usual irritation.
Anna stopped, holding Masha’s jacket in her hands.
“I’d like to invite Kirill over from time to time,” Valentina Ivanovna said, staring at the classroom number sign. “Try to build some kind of relationship before he’s fully grown up. I won’t dredge up the past, if you don’t mind.”
“Do you understand why he might say no?” Anna asked. “He’s already grown, and he remembers every word you ever said.”
Valentina Ivanovna moved the chrysanthemums from one hand to the other and gripped her bag’s strap so tightly her fingers turned red.
“I understand,” she replied. “I’m not stupid.”
“I’ll talk to him,” Anna said. “But the decision will be his, and I’m not going to try to talk him into it.”
That evening, Kirill was sitting at his laptop for the tenth time, checking the swim meet schedule. Masha was next to him, coloring horses purple with her tongue stuck out. Igor stayed in the kitchen, even turning the water on so it wouldn’t seem like he was listening and ready to jump in.
Anna sat down across from her son and told him about the conversation in the hallway. Kirill kept his eyes glued to the screen, clicking the same link over and over.
“Why is she thinking about this now?” he finally asked. “Now that I’m doing well in school, swimming, and don’t need anyone to wipe my nose?”
“I don’t know, Kirill,” Anna replied honestly. “Maybe she really wants things to be different. But nobody is forcing you to forgive her.”
“What if she calls me a stranger again? Do I just sit there and act like everything’s okay?”
“You can get up and leave whenever you want,” Anna said. “Even five minutes after she walks in.”
Kirill snapped his laptop shut and said he would meet with her just once, at home, and only if his mom sat next to them.
Valentina Ivanovna arrived on Saturday exactly at noon, although they had agreed on half past twelve. She stood in the hallway, unsure where to put the large gift-wrapped box, while Masha made a point of not leaving her room. Kirill took the box, thanked her, set it on the console table without opening it, and sat down across from the guest at the table.
“I’ll get right to the point, okay?” he began, looking her straight between the eyes. “I’m not going to pretend everything was fine between us.”
“Okay,” Valentina Ivanovna replied.
“I remember when you said you wouldn’t be a grandmother to me,” Kirill spoke steadily, though he kept rubbing the edge of the table with his thumb. “And I remember you saying I should have my hands ripped off over that glass. I was just a kid back then and thought that if you didn’t love me, there must be something wrong with me. I even stopped drawing pictures for you because I figured I was bad at it.”
Valentina Ivanovna opened her mouth slightly and remained silent for a moment. She had clearly braced herself for complaints about Anna, for the boy to repeat someone else’s words, for childish resentment that could be softened with gifts and pies. But in front of her was almost a grown man with shaggy bangs, looking at her without any anger—and that hurt more than if he had yelled.
“I shouldn’t have said those things,” she managed to utter. “It’s not your fault you had another family before Igor.”
“But you didn’t see it that way back then,” Kirill said. “And I don’t know why I should suddenly trust you now.”
Valentina Ivanovna turned pale and looked over at Anna, as if hoping she would smooth things over or invite them for tea. Anna simply sat with her hands on her knees, saying nothing. Kirill got up, politely said goodbye, and went to his room, leaving the gift box unopened on the hallway console.
“I thought he was little and would forget,” her mother-in-law said, staring at the closed door. “I figured as long as Igor’s main priority stayed the same, the rest would work itself out somehow.”
“Kids forget a lot,” Anna replied. “But they never forget how it felt to be around adults.”
Valentina Ivanovna spent a long time fumbling with her coat buttons before leaving, and for the first time she didn’t say a word about Anna, her past, or about her son being taken away.
Kirill started to sometimes answer her calls. Valentina Ivanovna would ask about competitions and his algebra grades, and Kirill could hear how she bit her tongue each time she wanted to give advice. He replied politely but briefly—and never called her back himself.
In the middle of winter, Valentina Ivanovna suddenly felt dizzy while waiting in line at the neighborhood store. The ambulance took her away with her blood pressure near two hundred. The doctors said it was nothing serious for now, but kept her for observation. She called Igor from the hospital intake room, and he rushed over in forty minutes—handling paperwork, running for spare clothes and towels.
Anna suggested bringing Masha to visit for even ten minutes, but her mother-in-law quickly waved her off.
“She doesn’t need to see me like this,” she said. “Lying here like a lump, hair unwashed, hooked up to an IV.”
In the evening, it turned out that Valentina Ivanovna had forgotten her glasses and phone charger at home. Igor was planning to pick them up after work, but when Kirill heard this, he silently took the keys to his mother’s apartment from Igor.
“I’ll take them myself, I have practice nearby,” Kirill said.
“You don’t have to,” Anna said as he was putting on his shoes. “You don’t have to take care of her just because she’s Igor’s mother.”
“I know, Mom,” Kirill replied as he tightened his shoelace. “I just can’t stand it when someone is in trouble and I’m just sitting at home.”
At first, Valentina Ivanovna couldn’t believe he had come alone. She tried to sit up in bed, bumped her elbow on the IV drip, and Kirill immediately rushed over to steady the stand.
“Just stay lying down,” he muttered, placing the glasses in their case, the charger, and a piece of paper folded in four on her bedside table. “This is from Masha. She said to hurry home and get better.”
On the paper was a purple horse and a crooked message in block letters. Valentina Ivanovna put on her glasses, stared at the drawing for a long time, then turned to the wall and began to cry—loudly, wiping her nose with the edge of the hospital sheet.
“You drew for me, too, back then,” she said to the wall. “With little houses. Do you still have it?”
“I left it in my jeans, then Mom washed them,” Kirill replied. “Now it’s all just mush.”
Valentina Ivanovna turned toward him, her face wet and blotched with red marks.
“Why did you come, after how I treated you?”
Kirill shrugged and checked that the charger was plugged in correctly.
“I don’t know, just brought it,” he said. “But don’t think that’s it. I’m not promising to forget everything.”
“I don’t think that,” she replied, nodding several times in a row.
When Kirill left and Igor came back to the ward with a bag of kefir, Valentina Ivanovna asked him to sit next to her and held Masha’s drawing in her hands for a long time.
“I was always afraid she’d take you away from me,” she said. “Anna, I mean. She came with a child, and suddenly you were someone else’s dad and I was nobody. But no one ever took you away, Igor, it was me all along.”
Igor poured some kefir into a glass and set it on the bedside table next to her glasses.
“Mom, I love you,” he said. “And I’ll always come see you. But if you ever say anything about ‘others’ to the kids again, I’ll turn around and leave—this time for good.”
“I understand,” Valentina Ivanovna said, reaching for the glass but spilling some kefir on the blanket.
For Masha’s sixth birthday, Valentina Ivanovna called three days in advance to ask if she could come. Anna said yes, and then spent the whole evening trying to remember if her mother-in-law had ever asked permission for anything before. On Saturday, Masha was arranging plates with unicorns on the table and counting them out loud, while Kirill and Igor taped up a box with a scooter in the other room, trying to keep the paper from tearing at the corners.
Valentina Ivanovna rang the doorbell and stood on the threshold with two bags.
“Is it okay if I stay for dinner?” she asked. “If not, I’ll just give the gifts and go.”
“Come on in,” Anna said, stepping aside to let her into the hallway.
For Masha, she gave a gigantic art set with three levels packed with markers. To Kirill, she handed over a long bag from a sports store, and inside was a black-and-blue swim bag—the very one he had casually mentioned half a year ago in the car while they sat in traffic. The night before, her mother-in-law had called Anna, worrying whether this gift might seem like she was trying to buy his affection, and Anna told her that was up to Kirill to decide.
“Thank you, Valentina Ivanovna,” Kirill said as he unzipped every compartment on the bag one by one.
He never called her Grandma, even though Masha would always loudly say ‘Baba Valya’ when he was near. For the first few months, Valentina Ivanovna used to flinch at hearing her full name from him, but now she just nodded. Masha hung from her grandmother’s neck, then dragged her brother off to argue about whether swim goggles should go in the side pocket or the middle one. Valentina Ivanovna sat on the edge of the couch, listening to their bickering about the pockets, not even trying to get involved.
During dinner, Kirill said he had another swim meet in a week and that Igor had promised to come again.
“This time, he won’t be driving on the wrong side of the road,” Igor said, and Anna kicked him under the table.
“Can I come too?” Valentina Ivanovna asked, putting down her fork.
Kirill thought for a moment, spinning his juice glass in his hands.
“You can,” he said. “Just don’t give me any advice before my race—it throws me off.”
“I’ll try,” she replied. “And if I say something I shouldn’t, just tell me right away, don’t hold back.”
“I will,” Kirill promised, turning to Masha, who was already spreading cake frosting onto her markers.
Once the kids went to their room, Valentina Ivanovna took the plates to the kitchen and stopped at the sink beside Anna.
“I think about that wedding every day,” she said, staring at the stream of water. “I really want him to call me grandma. I want it so much. But I know I have no right to ask.”
“You don’t,” Anna agreed, handing her a towel. “Here, dry these.”
Valentina Ivanovna dried three plates in a row without saying anything. Anna washed the last fork and said she wouldn’t interfere with their relationship, as long as both children stayed equal to her. She didn’t promise anything more.
As she was about to leave, the mother-in-law patted herself down searching for something. Kirill came to the hallway, found her gloves on the cabinet under Masha’s hat, and gave them to her along with the bag.
“Saturday at ten, the pool on Gagarin,” he said. “Igor will be there anyway, and one more set of eyes in the stands won’t hurt.”
“I’ll come, if you really want me to,” Valentina Ivanovna said and dropped one glove.
Kirill picked up the glove, handed it to her and didn’t say anything. She said goodbye to Anna, kissed Masha on the top of her head, smearing her lips with frosting, and had already stepped out onto the landing when Kirill poked his head out the door after her.
“Valentina Ivanovna, try to come early—good seats go fast!”
She turned on the stairs and nodded. Kirill shut the door, clicked the lock, and headed back to the room, shouting for Masha not to dare put her markers into his new bag.