“What do you think you’re doing here?!” Dasha’s voice cracked into a hoarse shout the moment she stepped over the threshold of her own apartment.
A thick, nauseating smell of Corvalol hit her in the face. In the hallway, right on her favorite pale rug—the one she washed by hand every week—three huge plaid bags were piled up like a barricade. From one of them stuck out a crooked old floor lamp.
But that was not the worst part.
The kitchen windowsill was empty.
“Where are my orchids?”
Dasha crossed the corridor in two quick strides, dropping her grocery bag straight onto the floor.
From the kitchen emerged Zinaida Arkadyevna, Igor’s mother, wearing Dasha’s slippers.
“Don’t shout, Dashenka. This isn’t a marketplace,” her mother-in-law drawled in a syrupy, deliberately calm voice. “I put your weeds out on the balcony. That’s where they belong. I need the space here. My seedlings will be ready soon.”
“What balcony? It drops to minus two at night! Are you trying to kill them?”
Dasha flung the balcony door open. Three pots of rare phalaenopsis orchids, which she had been caring for for two years, huddled miserably against the cold glass.
She spun around sharply.
“Take your bags and get out. Right now.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Zinaida Arkadyevna said, lowering herself onto a chair and folding her arms across her broad chest. “I live here now. Igor! Igorek, come out and explain the situation to your wife!”
Igor, forty-five years old, shuffled out of the bedroom. He kept his eyes lowered, nervously tugging at the stretched collar of his old house T-shirt.
“Dashul, just don’t get upset, okay…” he began, staring somewhere near the baseboard.
“I am calm,” Dasha said through clenched teeth. “Calm as a corpse. What is this woman doing in my apartment with all her junk? Why is there a mountain of dirty dishes in the sink? And why does the hallway stink like old rags?”
“Mom moved in with us. Permanently,” Igor blurted out in one breath, then immediately pulled his head into his shoulders.
Dasha froze.
Twenty years of marriage flashed before her eyes. Twenty years of carrying the household on her back. Twenty years of working as an accountant at a logistics company, taking extra work home, stretching every ruble, finding money for their daughter’s tutors.
Igor, the unrecognized genius of architecture, survived on random orders for sheds and verandas, earning pennies.
And his mother had always been a shadow hanging over their life.
“In my apartment?” Dasha narrowed her eyes. “Have you both lost your minds?”
“Dasha, try to understand!” Igor whined, backing toward the refrigerator. “We have problems. I have problems. I took out a loan to grow my business. For new software, for professional courses…”
“What loan?” Dasha grabbed him by the sleeve of his T-shirt. “How much?”
“One and a half million,” Igor squeaked.
“How much?!” she roared. “You don’t bring a single kopeck into this house! You borrow cigarette money from me! Who gave you one and a half million?”
“It was secured against Mom’s apartment…” he whispered.
“And we lost it, Dashulya,” Zinaida Arkadyevna sighed theatrically, wiping away a tear that wasn’t there. “Because of collec—ugh, because of bank debts. I sold my two-room apartment to save my son from prison. So now you are obliged to take me in. I ended up practically begging on the street for the sake of your family!”
Dasha leaned heavily against the countertop. Her fingers touched a sticky patch—her mother-in-law had already spilled jam and hadn’t bothered wiping it up.
“So let me get this straight. You, Igor, take out a loan behind my back. You flush it all down the toilet. Your mother sells her apartment. And the two of you decide she’s moving in with me? Without even asking me?”
“Well, where is Mom supposed to go?” Igor protested, growing a little bolder. “We’ll manage somehow. It’s not a big deal. We’ll help you. Mom will cook…”
“Cook?”
Dasha pointed with disgust at the frying pan on the stove, where something gray floated in a layer of grease.
“This? I wouldn’t even feed this to stray dogs.”
“You ungrateful creature!” Zinaida Arkadyevna shrieked, jumping to her feet. “I lost my home for you, and you turn up your nose! Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it. We’ll move Liza to the living room, onto the sofa, and I’ll settle into her room. It gets morning sun. Good for my skin.”
“My daughter? On that sagging sofa?”
Dasha grabbed a kitchen towel and twisted it hard into a tight rope.
“You’ve completely lost your shame.”
“Dasha, stop throwing a tantrum,” Igor tried to sound like a man. “Mom has already unpacked her things.”
“She can pack them back up!”
Dasha marched into the hallway and kicked the nearest plaid bag.
“I’m giving you one hour. I don’t want a trace of either of you here. Rent a room, go to a dormitory, live in a basement. I don’t care.”
“You wouldn’t dare throw me out onto the street!” her mother-in-law screamed, clutching at her heart. “My blood pressure! Igorek, bring the blood pressure monitor!”
“I’m calling the police right now,” Dasha said coldly, pulling her phone from her coat pocket.
At that moment, a key turned in the lock. The door opened, and Liza appeared in the entrance. She slipped a heavy backpack full of notes off her shoulder and let out a tired sigh, but then she saw the scene in the hallway and froze.
“Hi… What’s going on? Grandma, why did you take my posters off the wall?”
Liza looked from her father to her mother in confusion.
Dasha sharply turned toward her daughter.
“She was in your room?”
“Well, yes,” Liza said with a shrug. “Dad called me yesterday and told me to pack my things. He said Grandma was moving in with us for a couple of years and I’d live in the living room for now. I thought you knew, Mom…”
Dasha slowly turned her gaze back to her husband.
“Yesterday?” she asked quietly. “You planned this behind my back? You decided to do this to my child just to move that…”
“Dasha, watch your mouth!” Igor snapped. “Liza is young. She doesn’t care where she sleeps. Mom has arthritis!”
“Your mother has no conscience. And neither do you!” Dasha exploded. “Liza, go to your room. And if either of them touches a single one of your things again, I’ll break their hands!”
“You little…” Zinaida Arkadyevna lunged toward her bag and pulled out a folder of documents. “I came to my son! To the apartment where he is registered! You have no right!”
The folder slipped clumsily from Zinaida Arkadyevna’s plump hands, and papers scattered across the linoleum like a fan. Dasha’s eyes dropped automatically.
Among old receipts and medical prescriptions lay a fresh sheet printed on a home printer. At the top, in large letters, it read: “Lease Agreement.”
Dasha bent down and picked it up.
“Hey, give that back! That’s personal!”
Zinaida Arkadyevna tried to snatch the page from her, but Dasha pushed her hand away sharply.
She quickly scanned the text.
“‘Landlord: Zinaida Arkadyevna… Tenant: … Subject of agreement: … Monthly rent: forty-five thousand rubles…’” Dasha read aloud, and with every word her voice grew louder, while Igor’s face turned paler and paler.
A dead, ringing silence fell over the kitchen.
“So you sold your apartment to save your son, did you?”
Dasha stepped toward her mother-in-law. The woman backed away and bumped into a chair.
“You rented it out! And then you dragged yourself here to sit on my neck, eat at my expense, and sleep in my daughter’s room?”
“So what if I did?!” Zinaida Arkadyevna suddenly screeched, going on the attack. “That is my supplement to my pension! I worked hard my entire life! I have the right to live in comfort! And you are obliged to take care of us since you married my son! Igor works, he gets tired, and all you do is shuffle papers around in an office!”
Dasha turned to Igor.
“Why the hell did you play along with her?”
Igor looked away.
“Dasha, what’s the big deal? Mom’s pension is small. We were going to save that money…”
“You? Save?” Dasha burst into hysterical laughter. “You, the man who begged me for a thousand rubles for transport yesterday?”
Her laughter stopped as abruptly as it began. Her face twisted with pure, primal rage. She grabbed a jar of homemade lecho that her mother-in-law had brought with her and hurled it against the wall with all her strength. The jar shattered. Red sauce slowly ran down the wallpaper.
Zinaida Arkadyevna squealed and covered her head with her hands.
“Out!” Dasha growled. “Both of you. Right now!”
“You’ve lost your mind!” Igor shouted.
“You no longer have a family! Your family is your lying mother!” Dasha rushed into the hallway.
She snatched Igor’s jacket from the hanger and threw it out onto the stairwell. His sneakers flew after it.
“Liza!” she shouted. “Bring his suitcase!”
Pale but determined, Liza rolled an old suitcase out of the storage closet. Dasha threw open the wardrobe in the bedroom and began grabbing her husband’s shirts, trousers, and sweaters by the armful, stuffing them inside without folding anything.
“You have no right! I’m registered here!” Igor shrieked, trying to snatch his clothes back.
“I’ll have you removed through court tomorrow! As someone who has lost the right to use the property! This apartment was mine before marriage!” Dasha shoved the suitcase toward the door. “And you, Zinaida Arkadyevna, take your bags before I throw them off the balcony!”
“You rude, shameless…” her mother-in-law spat venomously, hurriedly grabbing her bags. “Igor, call the police! She’s killing us!”
“The police? Go ahead!” Dasha herself flung open the front door. “I’ll tell them about the fraud while we’re at it! Get out!”
She grabbed her husband by the collar of his T-shirt and, with a strength that seemed impossible for someone her size, shoved him over the threshold. Zinaida Arkadyevna and her plaid bags followed.
Dasha slammed the door shut and immediately turned the key twice.
Muffled thuds came from the stairwell.
“Dasha! Open this door right now!” Igor’s voice trembled. “Dasha, stop acting crazy! Where are we supposed to go now? Mom’s apartment is rented out, people live there!”
“Go to a hotel! With forty-five thousand a month, you can afford it!” she shouted through the door.
“Dasha, this isn’t funny! My laptop is still in there!”
“May you be cursed!” Zinaida Arkadyevna wailed hysterically from the other side. “May you rot alone, you poisonous snake!”
Dasha leaned her forehead against the cold metal door and breathed heavily.
“Mom…” Liza called softly from the hallway. “Are you okay?”
Dasha straightened and turned to her daughter. Crushed apples lay scattered across the floor, the kitchen wall was smeared with lecho, and an icy draft blew in from the balcony.
“I’m wonderful, sweetheart,” Dasha exhaled, wiping a drop of sweat from her forehead. “Just wonderful. Get the bucket and mop. We’re going to wash this mothball stench out of here. And then I’m calling a locksmith. The cylinder in this lock has to be changed immediately.”
“Right now?” Liza asked in surprise.
“Right now. I don’t want to spend one more second afraid that parasite might turn his key in my door.”
An hour later, the locksmith arrived. Dasha paid him double and stood over him while he changed the lock. She threw the old keys into the garbage chute with deep satisfaction.
That evening, she and Liza sat in the kitchen, drinking mint tea in silence. The apartment felt enormous, clean, and finally truly theirs.
Six months passed.
October turned out rainy. Dasha stood in the kitchen, kneading dough for cabbage pies. Broth simmered softly on the stove, and the cozy smell of fried onions spread through the apartment.
On the windowsill above the radiator, new orchids bloomed proudly—two large white phalaenopsis flowers.
Dasha had bought them with the first bonus she received at work. It turned out that without Igor, she suddenly had plenty of free time to take on an additional project, and plenty of spare money that no longer disappeared into the bottomless pit known as the “unrecognized genius.”
Liza sat at the table, typing quickly on her laptop.
“Mom, the potatoes are boiling over,” her daughter said without looking up from the screen.
“Turn the heat down, sunshine,” Dasha replied, shaking flour from her hands.
Her mobile phone rang. Dasha glanced at the screen. “Igor.” He called like clockwork every two weeks.
Dasha answered and put him on speaker.
“Dasha?” Igor asked in a dull, pitiful voice.
In the background, a television was blaring.
“What do you want?”
“Dasha, maybe we could talk? I can’t live like this anymore. Mom is driving me insane. She kicked out the tenants, and now we live together. She counts every ruble. She won’t let me smoke. She makes me get up at seven in the morning and go to the market for bread because it’s three rubles cheaper there…”
“My deepest sympathy,” Dasha said evenly. “What do you want from me?”
“Dasha, we’re not strangers… Twenty years together, after all. Maybe we could try again? I’ll find a real job, I swear. I understand now how wrong I was. Dasha, please take me away from here!”
Liza snorted, covering her mouth with her hand.
Dasha carefully placed a pie on the baking tray, wiped her hands on a sunflower-patterned towel, and leaned toward the microphone.
“Igor. Sign up for a survival course with your mother. And don’t call here again. You’re distracting me from my dough.”
She ended the call, blocked his number, and put the phone on the shelf.
“That was harsh, Mom.”
“That was fair,” Dasha corrected her.
She looked at her clean, blooming orchids, breathed in the smell of homemade pastries, and felt absolute, undisturbed peace spreading through her chest.
“Get the butter, Liz. We’re going to brush the pies. And don’t you dare tell me you’re on a diet.”
Rain drummed against the window, but inside the apartment it was warm, bright, and unbelievably quiet.
No one muttered about a ruined life. No one demanded money. No one tried to take someone else’s place.
For the first time in twenty years, Dasha felt like the owner of her own life.