Nina loved Saturday mornings. Saturdays were the one time when there was nowhere to rush off to. She could lie in bed with her face pressed against Kolya’s shoulder, listen to the street slowly waking up outside the window, and let herself think about something pleasant.
For example, about the fact that they already had two hundred and forty thousand saved in their account. That meant they were less than two years away from their cherished million. After that would come a three-room apartment in a new neighborhood, a nursery with yellow curtains, and maybe a dog. Or a cat. Or both.
“What are you thinking about?” Kolya asked sleepily, without opening his eyes.
“Yellow curtains.”
“I see,” he murmured, smiling without really understanding, and pulled her closer.
They had been married for three years. Kolya was twenty-eight, Nina was twenty-six. Both of them worked, both were building their careers, and both wanted to live for themselves first — travel a little, find their footing, feel steady ground beneath their feet before putting down roots. It had been a conscious decision, discussed and thought through during long evening conversations over tea. No pressure, no rush. They both knew exactly what they wanted.
But Kolya’s mother, Valentina Petrovna, refused to believe that.
Valentina Petrovna was a large, loud woman who was absolutely convinced she was right about everything. She had raised two children on her own — Kolya and his younger sister Lena — after her husband left when Lena was three. Since then, she had believed she was owed a special kind of respect. And in her mind, respect meant that everyone around her had to treat her words as instructions.
Things had gone wrong between her and Nina from the very first meeting.
“She’s too thin,” Valentina Petrovna told Kolya afterward. “Women like that don’t give birth.”
Back then, Kolya had brushed it off, deciding his mother was simply nervous and trying to get used to things. But Valentina Petrovna was not just “getting used to things.” She was carefully, steadily, and without the slightest embarrassment building her own version of reality — one in which Nina was to blame for the absence of grandchildren.
At every family gathering, whenever the opportunity arose, she managed to slip in some remark. Sometimes she sighed and said, “Other couples already have two children by now, and you two are still traveling.” Sometimes, while pouring tea, she would casually drop, “They say if you wait too long, later it may not happen at all.” Other times, looking at Nina with exaggerated pity, she would say, “The main thing is, don’t worry. Medicine can treat all kinds of problems these days.”
At first, Nina stayed silent. Then she began answering briefly and coldly. Then she and Kolya talked, Kolya talked to his mother, his mother took offense, cried, said no one understood her — and a week later, everything started all over again.
“She does it on purpose,” Nina told Kolya. “She knows perfectly well that this was our decision. She just wants to hurt me.”
“She isn’t evil,” Kolya would answer. “She’s just… like that.”
“‘Like that’ is not an excuse.”
He agreed. Then he spoke to his mother again. His mother became offended again. The circle closed.
Valentina Petrovna found out about their savings by accident. Kolya once mentioned in front of her that he and Nina were saving for an apartment. His mother said nothing then, but Nina noticed something flash in her eyes. Something unpleasant.
“You shouldn’t have told her,” Nina said to Kolya afterward.
“Oh, come on. What is she going to do, take it?”
“I don’t know. But it would have been better if you hadn’t said anything.”
Kolya waved it off again. He was a gentle, good-natured person who preferred to think well of people. It was both his strength and his weakness.
Kolya’s younger sister Lena was a pretty, impulsive twenty-three-year-old who had a remarkable talent for getting herself into trouble. She changed jobs, changed interests, changed boyfriends — and at some point, she failed to be careful.
She told her mother about the pregnancy in November. Nina heard about it from Kolya, who had heard it from his mother, who had called in a panic and cried into the phone for half an hour. The father of the child was some man named Artyom, whom Lena had been dating for six months. He was willing to marry her. Lena was thinking.
She thought for a long time — too long. By the time she finally decided to keep the baby, there was no other choice left. Her mother breathed a sigh of relief. Lena set one condition: a wedding. A real one. With a banquet hall, a white dress, live music, and no fewer than fifty guests.
“I’m not just signing papers at the registry office,” Lena declared firmly.
Artyom shrugged. He seemed ready to agree to anything, as long as people stopped pressuring him. His parents spread their hands helplessly: they had no money. The bride’s parent — meaning Valentina Petrovna, proudly alone — did the same: no money.
Nina heard these conversations in passing and understood everything. She understood it even before Valentina Petrovna called and said she wanted to come over “to talk.”
“Kolya,” Nina said that evening, “she’s coming for money.”
“Nina, don’t start right away…”
“Kolya. She is coming for money.”
He said nothing. That meant he understood it too.
Valentina Petrovna came on Sunday afternoon, just after Nina had finished washing the lunch dishes and was about to sit down with a book. She entered the hallway, took off her shoes, walked into the kitchen, looking around with the air of someone who had not been there in a while and was not especially pleased to return, and sat down at the table without waiting to be invited.
“Is Kolya home?” she asked, looking past Nina.
“I’ll call him.”
Kolya came out of the room looking like a man walking into an interrogation. He sat opposite his mother. Nina remained standing by the stove, arms crossed.
Valentina Petrovna began from afar — with Lena, her condition, how badly timed it all was, how she, as a mother, could no longer sleep at night. Then she moved on to Artyom — not a bad man, he worked, but he had no money, and his parents were ordinary people. Then came the wedding. How Lena deserved a proper celebration, how she was still a daughter, how they could not simply sign papers quietly and pretend nothing was happening.
Nina listened and knew exactly where it was going.
“And so I thought,” Valentina Petrovna finally said, looking at Nina with an expression that was probably meant to seem kind, “you and Kolya are not having children yet anyway. You said yourselves that you are not in a hurry. And your money is just sitting there, growing. Give your savings to your sister-in-law for the wedding, and when you give birth, she’ll return it to you.”
The kitchen went silent.
Nina slowly turned her head and looked at her mother-in-law. Valentina Petrovna looked back calmly, even with a certain superiority, as if she had just said something perfectly reasonable and was waiting to be thanked.
“That is our money,” Kolya said quietly. “We were saving it for an apartment.”
“So what?” Valentina Petrovna shrugged. “The apartment won’t disappear. You’re young, you’ll save again. But Lena is pregnant now. She needs help. This is family, Kolya. Family helps.”
“We would help,” Kolya said, “if we were asked. But we don’t have the kind of money we can hand over for a wedding.”
“You do,” his mother said shortly. “I know how much is there.”
Nina felt her cheeks begin to burn.
“You know how much is there?” she asked slowly.
“Well, Kolya mentioned it once…”
“Kolya said we were saving for an apartment. He did not say you could decide what to do with it.”
Valentina Petrovna looked at her with cold irritation.
“I’m not talking to you.”
“You are in my apartment,” Nina said. “You are talking about my money. So yes, you are talking to me.”
“This is Kolya’s apartment too.”
“It is our shared home. And the savings are shared as well. That means half of them are mine. And I say no.”
Valentina Petrovna tightened her lips. Then she looked at her son with the kind of expression one gives a child, waiting for him to come to his senses and put an unruly toy back in its place.
“Kolya, say something to her.”
Kolya remained silent.
“Kolya,” his mother repeated, and that special tone appeared in her voice — a tone Nina had studied down to the last note over three years. The tone of a woman used to being obeyed. “You understand your sister needs help. Lena is alone right now. She is struggling. You are her brother.”
“I am her brother,” Kolya said. “But I will not pay for her wedding with our money.”
Something twitched in Valentina Petrovna’s face — surprise, almost hurt. Clearly, she had not expected that.
“So some…” Valentina Petrovna made an vague gesture toward Nina, “some woman is more important to you than your own sister?”
“Nina is my wife. And you are in her home.”
Valentina Petrovna leaned back in her chair. She was silent for a moment. Then she said, quietly, almost thoughtfully — and that was worse than shouting:
“I knew from the beginning that she was the wrong woman. I told you. There were better options. You didn’t listen. And she…” She looked at Nina. “She will never give you children. I was always sure of that. Three years have passed. Nothing. Not because you’re ‘not in a hurry.’ Because there’s nothing to give.”
Nina felt her patience snap.
It did not hurt anymore. She had long since grown used to the hints, the looks, the endless “others already have children.” Nina threw away the last scraps of politeness she had kept out of courtesy, out of respect for her husband, out of unwillingness to start yet another family scandal.
“You have completely lost all shame,” Nina said.
Her voice was even. Then it grew louder.
“You have completely lost all shame! You come into someone else’s home, demand money no one ever promised you, and then insult the very person you are asking that money from! Do you even understand what that is called?”
“Do not raise your voice at me,” Valentina Petrovna said coldly. “I did not come to you. I came to my son. This is none of your business.”
“This is my apartment! My money! How is it none of my business?”
“Kolya,” his mother turned to her son as if Nina were not even in the room, “control your wife. Teach her to respect her elders before it’s too late.”
At that moment, Kolya stood up.
Nina saw him rise — slowly, heavily, like a man who had been sitting on something painful for a long time and had finally decided to stand. Her Kolya was tall, and when he stood like that, shoulders straightened, he seemed broader and firmer than usual.
“Mom,” he said, “enough.”
“What?”
“Enough. You have said more than enough.” His voice was calm, without shouting, and that made it more frightening. “My wife is right. You came into our home, demanded our money, and insulted Nina. I will not allow you to treat her like this. Not in our home. Not anywhere.”
“Kolya, I only…”
“No, Mom. We have talked about this many times. Do you remember? We asked you not to make remarks, not to talk about children in front of everyone, not to humiliate Nina. You didn’t listen. Maybe now you will.”
Valentina Petrovna looked at him like someone who had just been struck by something she had never seen coming. She opened her mouth, then closed it. Then she said, her voice trembling:
“So you are on her side.”
“I am on our side,” Kolya said. “Nina and I are one side. That is what happens when people get married.”
“And Lena? Lena doesn’t matter to you?”
“Lena matters. But we are not going to pay for her mistakes. She is an adult. Let her get married in the way she and Artyom can afford. There is nothing shameful about a modest wedding.”
“She doesn’t want a modest wedding!”
“That is her problem,” Nina said quietly and very clearly. “She is twenty-three years old. She got herself into this situation. Let her find her own way out.”
Valentina Petrovna stood up. She tugged her cardigan into place. Then she looked at Nina for a long time — the way people look at something unpleasant.
“Of course, I will leave,” she said. “But I will remember this.”
“So will I,” Nina answered.
That night, Nina could not fall asleep for a long time. Kolya breathed quietly beside her. He had a rare ability to let go of heavy things quickly, a talent Nina both valued and envied a little. She lay in the dark, staring at the ceiling, replaying the scene again and again.
Give your savings to your sister-in-law for the wedding, and when you give birth, she’ll return it to you. That was exactly how it had been said. Calmly, like an owner giving instructions. As if they were not talking about someone else’s savings, but something obvious and available. As if Nina were some kind of safe standing in the corner, quietly collecting money until the right person came along.
Nina thought about how long it had been going on. Three years. Three years of hints, sighs, sympathetic looks. Three years of explanations — we decided this ourselves, we are not in a hurry, we want to get on our feet first. Three years during which those explanations were either ignored or declared excuses.
She was not infertile. She was healthy. She and Kolya had both been checked — simply for their own peace of mind, because Nina wanted to know for sure. Everything was fine. She had never told her mother-in-law because she believed she did not owe a report about her health to an outsider. And Valentina Petrovna, despite the connection through Kolya, was exactly that to Nina: an outsider. A stranger.
Maybe that was cruel. Maybe from the beginning she should have sat down and talked, explained everything — not coldly, the way she usually did, but honestly and openly. Maybe then things would have turned out differently.
But Nina stared at the ceiling and understood: no, they would not have. Because the problem was never misunderstanding. The problem was that Valentina Petrovna had decided from the start that Nina was not the right woman. Not the right woman for her son. And everything else — the assumptions about infertility, the complaints about children, the story with the savings — all of it was just different ways of saying the same thing: you are a stranger here.
Nina turned onto her side and closed her eyes. In his sleep, Kolya quietly placed his hand on her shoulder — without waking, instinctively, the way he always did.
She thought that maybe this was exactly why she loved him. For that calm, unconscious “I am here.”
Lena got married in March. There was no banquet hall, no live music, no fifty guests. There was a small celebration in Valentina Petrovna’s apartment — about twelve people, Olivier salad, baked chicken, and a cake from a pastry shop. Nina and Kolya came too. Nina smiled, offered congratulations, clinked glasses. She did everything properly.
Lena did not look at her. Artyom drank nervously and explained something to his father. Valentina Petrovna fussed around in the kitchen and did not meet Nina’s eyes even once.
In April, Lena and Artyom moved in with her mother. They had nowhere else to go. Artyom’s parents lived in a one-room apartment with his younger student brother. Renting a place while pregnant made neither financial nor practical sense. Valentina Petrovna made room.
In June, a boy was born. They named him Misha.
Nina heard about it from Kolya. He had gone to the maternity hospital. He came home tired and a little confused.
“How is Lena?” Nina asked.
“She’s fine. The baby screams a lot, but he’s healthy.”
“That’s good.”
They were silent for a moment.
“Mom asked me to tell you…” Kolya began, then stopped.
“What?”
“That she would be glad if you came by to meet your nephew.”
Nina thought about it.
“I will,” she said. “Later. When things settle down a little.”
Kolya nodded. They both understood that “later” might not come for a very long time.
In the autumn, Nina found out — by accident, from Kolya, who had heard it from Lena after she called to complain — that life in Valentina Petrovna’s apartment had become unbearable.
Misha cried at night. Artyom came home from work angry and exhausted. Lena was angry at Artyom and at her mother. Her mother was angry at Lena and Artyom. Everyone was angry at Misha, though Misha was not to blame for anything. Scandals broke out every other day.
“Lena is exactly like Mom,” Kolya said. “Same character, one to one. They won’t be able to live together.”
“I know,” Nina said.
“Don’t you feel sorry for my mother?”
Nina thought about it. She tried to find something inside herself resembling pity — pity for that large, loud woman who now slept badly because of a crying grandson, who endured cramped rooms and arguments she herself had never learned how to avoid.
She found nothing.
“No,” she said. “I don’t.”
Kolya sighed. Perhaps he had expected a different answer. But he did not argue. He knew there was nothing to argue about.
In November, exactly one year after the unfortunate news of Lena’s pregnancy, Nina and Kolya sat at the table one evening and calculated their savings. They had three hundred and eighty thousand in the account. Less than a year and a half remained before they reached a million.
“Do you think we can still go somewhere this year?” Kolya asked.
“If we go in December, yes.”
“Where do you want to go?”
Nina rested her cheek on her palm and looked out the window, where the first snow already lay beyond the glass.
“Somewhere warm.”
Kolya smiled and reached for the laptop to look at tickets.
Nina watched him and thought that she did not regret a single decision they had made. Not the decision not to rush. Not the decision to save. Not the words they had said to his mother that day.
Especially not those.
Because there was something in it that felt like the world was still fair after all. You could not spend years humiliating someone, demanding their money, telling them to their face that they were somehow incomplete — and receive nothing in return.
Valentina Petrovna had received something.
Not from Nina, but from life. From her own daughter, who was cut from the same cloth. From a cramped apartment and a baby crying at three in the morning. From the quarrelsome nature she herself had raised in Lena, because Lena truly had taken after her mother.
Nina was sure Valentina Petrovna had finally gotten what she deserved.
Not because Nina wished her harm.
Simply because justice may be slow, but it is inevitable.
And outside the window, the snow kept falling and falling. Tickets to Tenerife in December were surprisingly inexpensive. And the yellow curtains for the nursery had not disappeared anywhere.
They would simply wait a little longer.
Just a little.