“I’ve decided to give you one last chance—apologize for your ridiculous suspicions, and maybe I’ll come back home,” Petya said condescendingly, standing in the doorway with a suitcase.
“Suspicions?” Marina smirked. “You mean when your secretary accidentally sent me photos from the office party? Or when you were ‘stuck in meetings’ three nights in a row?”
“You’re making it all up! I’m tired of your paranoia!”
“You know what? Leave. And leave the keys—I’ll change the locks tomorrow.”
A One-Man Show
Marina stood by the window, watching Petya load his suitcase into the car. Ten years of marriage. Ten years of turning a blind eye to his “late nights at work,” the smell of another woman’s perfume, lipstick on his collar.
“Mom, is Dad really not coming back anymore?” Alyonka pressed herself against her leg.
“I don’t know, sweetheart. Go watch cartoons.”
Half an hour later, her phone exploded with messages. Petya’s mother, his sister, even his cousin from Omsk—everyone already knew that she had “kicked poor Petenka out.” Of course, there was only one version of the story: the hysterical wife had driven the man away.
“Marinka, have you completely lost your mind?” her mother-in-law’s voice trembled with anger. “Petya came over in tears! He says you accused him of cheating!”
“And he didn’t cheat?”
“Even if he did! Men can be forgiven for that! You’d be better off taking care of yourself instead of walking around in some washed-out robe!”
Marina hung up. She hadn’t worn a robe for about five years—there had been no time. Work, home, a child. And Petya… Petya had simply gotten used to everything revolving around him.
A week passed. Petya wrote to her every day—sometimes threatening court and division of property, sometimes begging her to bring everything back “the way it was.” Marina didn’t answer. She methodically packed his things into boxes.
In the pocket of an old jacket, she found a receipt from a jewelry store. Earrings worth forty thousand. She had never received any earrings like that.
“Marin, open up, it’s me,” Lenka, her friend from the first floor, knocked on the door.
“Listen, there’s something…” Lenka hesitated. “I saw your husband yesterday. With some girl in a restaurant. Really young, about twenty-five.”
“His secretary,” Marina nodded. “I know.”
“She’s pregnant! You can already see her belly!”
That was news. Marina sat down on the sofa. So all those six months of “trying to fix the relationship,” he had also been making a child with someone else.
“And you know what’s the most disgusting part?” Lenka continued. “He told her about you. Said his wife was hysterical, that you drove him away, kicked him out of the house. And that girl just nodded along, feeling sorry for him.”
The Return of the Prodigal One
A month later, Petya showed up on his own. Without warning, using the keys Marina had forgotten to change.
“Alyonka! Daddy’s here!” he shouted from the doorway.
The girl ran out and threw her arms around his neck. Marina stood in the kitchen doorway, wiping her hands on her apron.
“Take your things and leave. The boxes are in the hallway.”
“Marish, let’s talk. I realized I was wrong. Let’s start over.”
“With your pregnant secretary included?”
Petya turned pale.
“How did you…”
“It doesn’t matter. Take your things.”
“This is my apartment too!” he exploded. “I have the right to live here!”
“I inherited this apartment from my grandmother. Before the marriage. You’re only registered here.”
“I’ll tell the court you’re turning the child against her father!”
“Try it. At the same time, you can tell them about child support for your second child.”
Alyonka looked at them with wide eyes. Marina took her by the hand and led her into the room.
Petya’s mother arrived the next day. With a cake and tears.
“Marinka, what are you doing? You’re destroying the family! Think about the child!”
“That’s exactly who I’m thinking about. I don’t want her growing up thinking it’s normal when a father lies to her mother.”
“All men are like that! My late Vasily fooled around too. And nothing happened—we lived together for forty years!”
“And you were unhappy for forty years. I saw you crying at night.”
Her mother-in-law flinched.
“That’s none of your business!”
“Now it is. I don’t want to repeat your fate.”
“Who needs you with a child anyway? Thirty-five years old, stretch marks, cellulite! Petya is still willing to take you back!”
“Let him go to his pregnant secretary. She’s young and slim.”
“She’ll leave him as soon as she gives birth! They only need money!”
“That’s his problem.”
Her mother-in-law left, slamming the door. The cake remained on the table. Marina threw it in the trash—she couldn’t stand margarine cream.
Two months later, a stranger called.
“Are you Marina? Pyotr Sergeevich’s wife?”
“Not anymore. Who are you?”
“I’m… I’m Kristina. His… well, I’m pregnant by him.”
Marina stayed silent. She waited for her to continue.
“Can we meet? I need to talk.”
They met in a café. Kristina turned out to be a thin, almost transparent-looking girl with a huge belly.
“He told me he was divorced,” she began without preamble. “That you hadn’t lived together for a year. That you were crazy and wouldn’t let him see his daughter.”
“I see.”
“And then his mother came over. She started screaming that I had destroyed the family. That because of a slut like me, her granddaughter would be left without a father.”
“And?”
“And I went on social media. I found your photos. Family photos. The latest one was from two weeks ago. Your daughter’s birthday.”
Marina nodded. They had indeed celebrated together—for Alyonka’s sake.
“He lied to me, didn’t he? He lied this whole time?”
“What do you think?”
Kristina burst into tears. Smearing her mascara, sobbing like a child.
“I thought we had love. He said I was his destiny. That he had been unhappy with you.”
“He said the same thing to me. When he left his first wife.”
“First?!”
Petya came back six months later. Alone, without belongings, without arrogance. He knocked like a stranger.
“May I come in?”
Marina let him in—after all, Alyonka still had to see her father.
“Kristina had an abortion,” he said, avoiding her eyes. “And she left. Mom won’t speak to me—she says I disgraced the family. I got laid off at work.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Marin, I realized…”
“Don’t. Just don’t.”
“But I really did realize it! You were right. I’m a jerk. But give me a chance to make it right!”
“Petya, you asked for your last chance six months ago. Remember? You demanded an apology for my ‘ridiculous suspicions.’”
“I was a fool!”
“You were. And you still are. Only now—you’re a lonely fool.”
Alyonka ran out of the room and hugged her father. Petya held her close and looked at Marina with the eyes of a beaten dog.
“Daddy will come visit you on weekends,” Marina told her daughter. “If he wants to, of course.”
“And live with us?” the girl asked.
“No, sweetheart. Daddy will live separately.”
Petya left an hour later. He never asked for forgiveness again. He came on weekends, took Alyonka to the park, bought her ice cream. Sometimes Marina saw him from the window—standing by the entrance, looking up at their windows. He would stand there for a while, then leave.
And she? She learned how to be happy alone. Without lies, without affairs, without humiliation. It turned out that loneliness isn’t when there’s no one beside you. It’s when the wrong person is beside you.
Petya’s last chance became her last chance too. Her last chance to believe in the fairy tale that people change.
They don’t change. Never.