I remember that day down to the smallest details: the way a ray of sunlight fell on the white walls of the doctor’s office, the creak of the chair when I tried to stand on trembling legs. The way Dr. Petrova looked at me with concern but without pity—exactly what I needed at that moment. … Read more
“Drinking plain tea, Ksyusha? Nervous?” Tamara Pavlovna’s voice was sweet like an overripe fruit whose skin already hides rot. She sat at the table in her daughter-in-law’s impeccably clean kitchen and methodically stirred the spoon in her porcelain cup, though the sugar had long since dissolved. That monotonous, scraping sound—scritch, scritch, scritch across the bottom—frayed … Read more
— “What do you mean ‘Elena Vladimirovna’? You’re only twenty-nine!” her friends would remark, chuckling. — “It stuck,” Lena would wave it off. “For clients I’m Elena Vladimirovna; for suppliers—especially. And for colleagues.” Lena was building her business and meant it seriously. So at work the tone was businesslike, with no chumminess. — “Come on, … Read more
The autumn air in the settlement of Lesnaya Sloboda was thick, sweet, and searingly cold. It smelled of rotting leaves, smoke from stove pipes, and that special, timeless silence that wraps the soul like a good old blanket. Olga had come here, to the nest she’d left long ago, to visit her parents—or rather, their … Read more