“It Was All Your Wife. No One Else Could Have Taken Those Five Hundred Thousand,” the Mother-in-Law Declared Confidently
The taxi stopped beside the familiar front garden at half past seven in the evening. Andrey paid the driver through the app, got out, and simply stood there for several seconds, looking at the illuminated windows of his house. January in the Tver region was nothing like February in Surgut, where he had just returned from after a three-and-a-half-week work rotation. There, the cold was serious, and the workers warmed themselves beside stoves right inside their temporary cabins. Here, the weather was mild, the snow lay thick and quiet, and the air smelled of trees rather than diesel fuel.
He took out his keys, opened the gate, and walked toward the porch.
The door opened before he even had time to put the key in the lock. Nadya stood in the doorway wearing a casual sweater, looking at him with the smile he saw every morning and had missed terribly while away on his work trips.
“You finally made it,” she said. “I was already thinking that if you were another hour late, I’d go get you myself.”
“The flight was delayed by forty minutes.” Andrey stepped onto the porch and hugged his wife. She smelled of onions and something fried.
“Cabbage soup and cutlets,” she announced, as though she had read his mind. “Go get changed. I’ll serve dinner.”
Andrey hung up his jacket, took off his shoes, and went into the bathroom. While soaping his hands, out of habit he opened his banking app to see whether his daily allowance for the last few days had arrived.
It had.
His salary had arrived too.
But the savings account he had opened in March and had been adding money to all year showed zero where there should have been a little over five hundred thousand rubles.
Andrey brought the phone closer to his face.
He opened the transaction history.
Four days earlier, there had been a single transfer to an outside bank card.
Amount: 520,000 rubles.
He rinsed his hands, grabbed a towel, and walked into the hallway.
“Nadya,” he called. “Come here for a second.”
She appeared from the kitchen carrying a plate.
“What happened? You’ve gone completely pale.”
“More than five hundred thousand disappeared from the savings account. Four days ago. Do you know anything about it?”
Nadya put the plate down on the cabinet. Something resembling confusion flashed across her face.
“Wait. What five hundred thousand? I’m not even linked to that account. I don’t have access to it.”
“I know you don’t,” Andrey said, sounding calmer than he felt inside. “That’s exactly why I’m asking. Maybe someone from the bank called? Maybe some email came?”
“Nothing.” Nadya shook her head. “Come on, let’s sit down and look at it together.”
They sat at the table. The cabbage soup remained untouched while Andrey scrolled through the transaction history and Nadya looked at the screen beside him.
The transfer had been made through mobile banking.
The recipient’s card number meant nothing to either of them.
“You need to call the bank,” she said.
“Tomorrow morning,” Andrey nodded. “At this hour, I won’t get through to an actual operator.”
They ate dinner in silence.
Conversation simply wouldn’t come.
At around nine in the evening, the doorbell rang.
It was Andrey’s mother, Galina Fyodorovna, carrying a bag from which came the clinking of containers and the smell of homemade food. Behind her was his younger brother Kostya, twenty years old, a third-year education student who lived with their mother about ten minutes away.
“I knew you were coming home today,” Galina Fyodorovna said as she unwound her scarf. “I brought fish pies. You like them.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
She walked into the kitchen, put down the bag, and greeted Nadya with a brief nod. Then she looked at her son.
“Something’s wrong. I can tell immediately.”
“Money disappeared from my savings account,” Andrey said. “More than five hundred thousand. Four days ago.”
Galina Fyodorovna slowly turned toward Nadya.
“Nadya, you wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”
“No,” Nadya replied evenly. “I already explained to Andrey that I don’t even have access to that account.”
“Well, you may not have access, but Andrey was away at work,” Galina Fyodorovna said without hostility, though she chose every word carefully. “And how is your father doing now, Nadyusha? I heard he had an operation recently?”
Nadya paused briefly.
“He did. In December. I took out a consumer loan from Sberbank. Here’s the agreement. I can show you.”
She got up, took her phone from the table, found the relevant document in her email, and placed it in front of Galina Fyodorovna.
“Four hundred and eighty thousand. For three years. I told Andrey about it when he had just left.”
Andrey did vaguely remember that conversation. It had been a Tuesday. He was sitting in the workers’ cafeteria, it was noisy, and he kept asking Nadya to repeat herself.
But he couldn’t remember exactly what she had said about the loan.
“Four hundred and eighty thousand and five hundred and twenty thousand are different amounts,” Galina Fyodorovna pointed out, though her tone had softened.
“Exactly,” Nadya said. “They’re different.”
Kostya had been sitting by the window the entire time, staring at his phone. When Galina Fyodorovna once again turned toward her daughter-in-law and started talking about “strange coincidences,” he suddenly stood up.
“Mom, I need some air. I’m going outside.”
“It’s cold,” she said.
“I won’t be long.”
He left.
Andrey watched him go.
The rest of the evening was difficult.
Galina Fyodorovna never accused Nadya directly, but the way she asked her questions made it obvious that she had already reached her own conclusion.
Nadya answered briefly and tiredly.
Andrey sat between them, realizing that neither woman was going to back down.
After his mother and Kostya left, he cleared the dishes and went into the kitchen, where Nadya was washing the pot.
“You really don’t know anything about it?” he asked.
Nadya turned off the water and looked at him.
“Are you seriously asking me that?”
“I need to understand what happened.”
“You’ve already seen the loan agreement,” she said, drying her hands. “I took out a loan because Dad needed surgery, while your money was money you were saving for the bathhouse you’ve been planning to build for four years. I didn’t want to touch it. I thought I was doing the right thing. And now you’re standing here looking at me as though I’m hiding something.”
“I’m not saying you’re hiding anything.”
“Then what are you saying?”
He didn’t answer.
She went into the bedroom.
That night they lay on opposite sides of the bed without speaking.
Andrey remained awake for a long time.
In the five years they had lived together, nothing like this had ever happened before.
The next morning he called the bank’s hotline and waited in the queue for twenty minutes.
The operator told him more or less what he had expected to hear: the transfer had been made through an authorized session in the mobile banking app, the SMS confirmation code had been entered correctly, and the system had detected no signs of hacking.
Afterward, Andrey called his father-in-law, Vasily Nikolayevich.
First they talked about his health and the operation. It had gone well, and he was now recovering.
Then Andrey carefully asked how Nadya had helped arrange everything.
“How did she help?” his father-in-law said. “She took out a loan and paid for everything herself. I told her not to, that we’d figure something out somehow. But she said, ‘Dad, don’t be ridiculous.’ Four hundred and eighty thousand isn’t pocket change, Andryusha. I don’t know how she’s even going to manage those payments.”
Andrey thanked him, said goodbye, and sat down on a stool in the hallway.
The theory about Nadya didn’t make sense.
The amounts were different.
The loan was real.
His father-in-law had no reason to lie.
But the money was still gone.
And no one knew where it had gone.
That evening, Andrey brought it up again.
Nadya replied:
“Andrey, I don’t know what else I can show you. I’m not your enemy.”
“I understand.”
“It doesn’t look like it.”
She went to bed earlier than usual.
He remained sitting in the kitchen.
On Saturday morning, Galina Fyodorovna came over again with Kostya.
Nadya was still in the shower.
Andrey went out onto the porch to meet them.
“Mom, I don’t think it was Nadya,” he said quietly. “The amounts don’t match, the loan is real, and her father confirmed everything.”
“The loan could be one thing and the money another,” Galina Fyodorovna objected. “Sometimes people take out loans and spend the money on something completely different.”
“Mom.” Andrey rubbed his face. “Enough.”
Kostya was standing a little apart, staring at the fence.
He didn’t look well. There were dark circles beneath his eyes, and his jacket was buttoned incorrectly.
“I’ll put the kettle on,” Andrey said and went inside.
In the kitchen, he switched on the kettle and opened the window to let in some fresh air.
A minute later, Kostya’s voice came from outside.
He was speaking quietly, but the surroundings were silent enough for every word to carry clearly.
“No, just a little longer, I told you… I’ll pay it all back, no question, just give me another ten days… I already transferred the five hundred and twenty, there isn’t much left… I’m done with betting, I swear, that was the last time… Just give me some time. I’ll find the money.”
Andrey stood motionless beside the window.
Then he went out onto the porch.
“Kostya,” he said. “Come inside.”
His brother turned around.
The expression on his face made it clear that he understood everything.
“And… Andrey, I…”
“Come inside,” Andrey repeated calmly.
They stood in the kitchen.
Galina Fyodorovna had already sensed that something was wrong. She fell silent and watched them from the doorway.
“I heard your conversation,” Andrey said. “Five hundred and twenty thousand. Betting. Debt.”
Kostya swallowed.
“You got into my phone at Mom’s birthday. You were sitting next to me when I was showing everyone the fishing photos. I left my phone on the table.”
“I just wanted… I thought I’d pay it back within a month and you wouldn’t notice…”
“How did you get access?” Andrey interrupted.
“You unlocked the phone with Face ID in front of me and then went to the bathroom. The app code was visible on the screen—the numbers… I memorized them. At first I wasn’t going to do anything, honestly. But then the debt got bigger and I didn’t know what else to do.”
The kitchen became completely silent.
“We need to tell Nadya,” Andrey said. Nadya came out of the bathroom a few minutes later.
She saw all of them and stopped in the doorway.
Andrey explained everything briefly.
As he spoke, he watched his wife’s face change—first confusion, then something bitter and exhausted.
Kostya sat at the table without raising his head.
Galina Fyodorovna slowly lowered herself into a chair.
“Kostya,” she said.
Nothing more.
“Nadya,” Andrey began, “I have to tell you…”
“Not now,” she interrupted him. “Just… not now.”
She took a mug from the windowsill, filled it with tap water, and drank while standing with her back to them.
Then she turned around.
“You know what hurts the most?” she said, looking at Andrey. “It’s not that Galina Fyodorovna immediately pointed her finger at me. I’ve been used to that for a long time. It’s that you doubted me. You looked at me and thought, ‘What if she did?’ After five years.”
“It was my fault,” Andrey said.
“Yes,” she agreed. “It was.”
Galina Fyodorovna stood up.
“Nadya.” Her voice was unusually quiet. “I accused you without any grounds. Forgive me.”
Nadya was silent for a second.
“Galina Fyodorovna, you haven’t accepted me since the day of our wedding. I’ve always felt it. I thought you’d eventually get used to me. You didn’t.”
“No, I didn’t,” she admitted. “It hurt me that my son was living his own life instead of the one I had imagined for him. That’s my problem, not yours. I’ll deal with it.”
Kostya finally raised his head.
“I’ll repay every last kopeck. I’ll find a job and pay it back.”
“That goes without saying,” Andrey said. “But this isn’t only about the money. Do you understand what happened?”
“I do.”
“Good.”
They barely spoke for the rest of the day.
Their mother and Kostya left earlier than usual.
Andrey and Nadya remained alone.
He approached her when she was once again standing by the window.
“I really am sorry,” he said.
“I know,” she replied. “Just give me a little time.” Time passed.
Two months wasn’t very long, but a great deal happened during those two months.
Kostya found a part-time job at an online store’s warehouse. He worked three evenings a week plus both weekend days while continuing his studies.
Every two weeks, he transferred a fixed amount to his brother—not very much, but consistently.
Andrey silently recorded each payment in a spreadsheet on his phone.
Once a month they met for dinner at their mother’s house, and the conversations gradually became less tense.
One day in March, Galina Fyodorovna called Nadya herself for no particular reason. She simply asked how things were going and whether Nadya needed any help around the house.
Nadya told Andrey about the call over dinner afterward, looking as though she herself wasn’t entirely sure what to make of it.
“She’s a human being,” he said.
“I’m aware of that,” Nadya replied. “It’s just unusual.”
In April, the family gathered to celebrate Galina Fyodorovna’s birthday.
Everyone came—Andrey and Nadya, Kostya, and an aunt from Tver.
The table was lively and noisy.
At one point Galina Fyodorovna announced that Kostya had met some girl from his university year.
“Mom,” Kostya groaned.
“What do you mean, ‘Mom’? Bring her over. Let us meet her. There’s no reason to hide her.”
“I’m not hiding anything. It’s just too soon.”
“Too soon is when you’ve been seeing each other for a week. You’ve been keeping quiet about her for two months.”
Andrey looked at his brother.
“Bring her,” he said. “We’ll just have a normal dinner.”
“Just don’t turn it into some kind of inspection,” Kostya said seriously, though without irritation. “She’s a normal person, and I don’t want her to feel uncomfortable.”
Nadya smiled slightly and pushed the bowl of salad toward him.
That evening, after the guests had left and she and Andrey were washing the dishes together, he caught her gaze in the small kitchen mirror above the sink.
“Listen,” he said. “I’ve been thinking. About those five hundred thousand…”
“Well?”
“If none of this had happened, we would have kept living the same way—you feeling that the family didn’t accept you and me failing to notice it. Kostya would have kept doing whatever he wanted, and we wouldn’t have known.”
“That’s some interesting arithmetic,” Nadya said.
“I’m serious.”
She turned off the water and picked up a towel.
“I understand what you mean. But next time, let’s try to manage without such extreme teaching methods.”
“Deal,” Andrey said.
Outside the window, the April rain continued to fall—persistent, businesslike, without a hint of romance.
It simply washed the streets and went about its work.