“Who on earth is ringing the bell this early in the morning? Kolya, go open the door!” Marina said, waking her husband.
“No. I’m sleeping. Go yourself,” her sleepy husband muttered back.
“Oh, really? Nice try! It’s probably that neighbor Dima again, coming over to borrow something. That man never rests!” Marina grumbled, turning onto her other side. “Six in the morning, a day off, and he can’t sleep! What is wrong with people?”
“It’s not him. Dima went to the village to visit his family yesterday.”
“Then go and see who it is. What, am I supposed to go? Get up already, before they wake the whole building. Just listen to how stubbornly they’re ringing! Have they lost their minds?”
Marina was angry. Once again, she had failed to sleep in on her rightful day off. The previous Saturday, her sister had come to visit with her husband and their son. They had stayed overnight, and as the hospitable hostess, Marina had been forced to get up at the crack of dawn to prepare a proper breakfast for everyone.
Nikolai reluctantly got out of bed and dragged himself into the hallway. He looked through the peephole and, for a moment, could not believe what he saw on the other side of the door.
“Well, I’ll be… What brought them here at this hour?” he said in surprise.
For exactly ten seconds, he stood frozen, trying to decide what to do. If he opened the door, a disaster of universal proportions would follow. He knew that very well. But the ringing only grew more persistent, and finally he made up his mind.
The lock clicked, the door opened, and then it all began.
“Oh, Kolyan! Hey, brother! Come here, let me hug you!” Tatyana wrapped her arms around him. “Why did you take so long to open? Were you sleeping or what? You’ve got guests at the door, and you’re still lying around. Marinka, get up, wake up! We’re already here!” she shouted loudly into the apartment.
“What happened here? Why are you yelling as if there’s a fire?” the disheveled hostess came out of the bedroom.
“You’ve got guests, darling. That’s what happened. Wake up and feed us. We’re hungry! And entertain us too. After all, we’re guests.”
“Excuse me?” Marina snapped sharply. “I wasn’t expecting any guests. And the fact that it entered your sick head to come here is entirely your problem.”
“I don’t understand… Why are you talking to us like that? Didn’t anyone teach you manners and basic decency?” Tatyana asked Marina with displeasure. “Nikolai, what is this, brother? Are you not happy to see us?”
“Marinka will wake up properly in a minute, and everything will be fine. My wife is like a cobra when she’s half-asleep, but then she calms down,” Nikolai mumbled, looking at his wife in surprise.
“No, don’t even dream about it! What kind of nerve does it take to show up at the crack of dawn, when normal people are sleeping, and demand a proper welcome? Oh, sure! Let me just run and pull out a magic tablecloth for you! I’m already rushing!” Marina decided not to back down and to show her shameless sister-in-law who was in charge here.
“Gena, I don’t understand. Are they throwing us out?” Tatyana turned to her husband in shock. He had been standing silently beside her.
“Well, yes. I told you we should come around lunchtime. But no, you insisted on now. So what do we have in the end? Who was right?” her worried husband replied.
“Oh, now you’re going to lecture me too, wise guy? Last time we came here at lunch, and what happened? We kissed the door and went back home. Have you forgotten? Kolka and Marinka had already gone off to the dacha. Or wherever they go on weekends, I don’t know. You have to think ahead! On a day off, you have to catch the hosts at home while they’re still warm in their beds,” Tatyana explained knowingly.
“Wait a minute. I don’t understand. Why were you so determined to catch us at home at any cost?” Marina asked, stunned.
“Oh, just because we missed you,” Tatyana said, suddenly embarrassed and unwilling to continue the topic. “Can’t we simply come and see you? Sit together, talk? But you’re never home! So we decided to take drastic measures just to meet with family.”
“Well, I don’t care what you decided. I didn’t invite you here, so I’m not obligated to welcome you. I’m going back to sleep,” Marina said, turning her back on the uninvited guests and preparing to leave.
“Marin, come on, it’s awkward. Stay,” Nikolai called after his wife.
“Awkward? For whom? For you? Then you entertain your relatives!”
“That’s not fair. Last weekend, you hosted your sister, her husband, and their child. But now you don’t want to. So your relatives are people, and mine aren’t?” her husband asked, offended.
“Yes!” Tatyana chimed in. “Answer us! What kind of injustice is this?”
“I’ll answer. I invited my sister. And the key word here is invited. I expected her because I asked her to come. But I did not invite Tanya and Genka, and I certainly did not dream of seeing them at six in the morning on my day off!”
“Marish, stop sulking. You’re already awake anyway. Let’s at least put the kettle on and show our guests some respect,” her husband continued, behaving strangely. Until then, he had never been in the habit of arguing with her.
“There’s the kitchen. Go ahead. Feed them, give them tea, entertain them. Do whatever you want, but leave me alone!”
Marina went back to the bedroom. Nikolai had no choice but to invite the uninvited guests to breakfast.
“You two really are something! You could have come later if it was so urgent. Then Marinka would have slept properly and been in a better mood. By the way, what have you come up with? I’m sure you didn’t come here just for nothing.”
“There’s no point hiding it. We do need to talk to you, you’re right,” Tatyana said while slicing sausage and bread. “To be honest, we’ve been trying to catch you at home for three weeks now, but all in vain.”
“You could have called like normal people and said you had something serious to discuss. Instead, you acted like spies, honestly!” Nikolai said, pouring fragrant tea into cups.
“Well… You see, the thing is…” his sister hesitated and glanced meaningfully at her husband, but he remained silent, clearly unwilling to help his wife with such a delicate matter. “If we had said we needed to discuss a problem, then we would have had to say what kind of problem. Right? And then, most likely, your wife would never have allowed us to come here.”
“Why not?” Nikolai asked in surprise. “What kind of royal secret is this? Come on, sister, tell me what you’ve cooked up.”
“I’ll explain everything now,” the guest said, taking a large bite of her sausage sandwich. “Gen, maybe you’ll say it after all? I’m asking you!”
Tatyana gave her husband another displeased look.
“Oh no, leave me out of this. These are your family matters. You deal with them. To be honest, I would follow Marina’s example. Thanks for the tea. I’ll go to the car and take a short nap.”
Gennady ignored his wife, got up from the table, and left. He had a very good idea that the conversation between his wife and her brother would not be easy.
Agitated by everything that had happened, Marina could not fall asleep again. She heard the front door slam when Gennady left.
“That’s it? They left? No way Tanya would give up that quickly!” Marina whispered to herself.
She got up and quietly crept closer to the kitchen, where she could hear her husband and his sister talking.
“So Genka left, but she’s still here. Interesting. What has my dear sister-in-law planned now? I’m about to find out.”
Marina listened carefully.
“…and you know perfectly well what kind of situation we’re in. The apartment was bought with a mortgage, I’m not working right now, and Gennady barely earns anything. But you two are doing well. You and Marina have paid off your apartment, and as far as I know, you don’t have any loans. So why do you even need that house? Give up your share,” Tatyana said quietly, but Marina could hear everything very clearly.
“Listen, that’s completely unfair. Grandma left the house to both of us — to you and me. Yes, you have problems, I’m not denying that. But who doesn’t? We have plenty of problems too. We just don’t shout about them on every corner!” Nikolai refused.
“Come on, Kolya, be a decent person! It’s a good thing we’re talking without your wife here. She wouldn’t even let me say a word. But persuading you won’t be hard. You’re kind. I just don’t know what to do with her. Maybe you can try to convince her yourself,” the sister-in-law continued cynically.
“That’s absurd! Don’t even think I’m going to give up my share,” Nikolai said, already getting nervous.
“Oh, stop it. We need that house more. We could sell it and pay off the mortgage. Maybe there would even be something left for other needs. I could buy myself a car…”
“Now you’re really dreaming! Even if I were single and had no family, I still wouldn’t agree. Why on earth should I be so generous? Think about it, if you’re capable of thinking at all! Grandma thought about both of us. She cared about both of us. And now you want to go against her will? No. I’m against it.”
“So we won’t come to an agreement?” Tatyana asked, offended. “Some brother you are! Fine, I’m leaving! You’ll regret this!”
Marina hurried back into the bedroom. She had no intention of letting Tatyana know she had heard the entire conversation. She had another plan.
“Well done. I’m proud of you,” she told her husband after his sister left. “Honestly, at one point I thought you might not hold out and would give in.”
“You heard everything?”
“Yes, I heard everything. And once again, I’m amazed by your sister’s arrogance and lack of brains. To suggest something like that, you really have to be completely shameless. It’s good that it ended this way and you didn’t let them push you around. But I’m not leaving it like this. I’m going to get revenge on your sister.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t?” Nikolai asked.
“I should, Kolya. I absolutely should.”
Soon, the brother and sister sold their grandmother’s house. The money was divided equally.
With his share, Nikolai bought his wife a car so she could drive the children to school and their after-school activities.
What Tatyana did with her money, they did not know.
One day, Marina woke her husband at five in the morning and asked him to get dressed quickly.
“Come outside. I’ll be waiting for you in the car.”
“Where are we going?” the man asked sleepily.
“You’ll find out.”
They drove up to the five-story apartment building where Tatyana and Gennady lived.
Marina rang the intercom, but there was no response. Soon, a man with a dog came out of the entrance, and the couple slipped inside.
“Open up! Stop sleeping!” Marina shouted, ringing the doorbell and knocking loudly on her sister-in-law’s door.
Finally, after about five minutes, the sleepy, rumpled hostess appeared in front of them.
“Have you lost your minds? It’s only just after five!”
“No, we haven’t lost our minds. We came to visit!” Marina said, pushing past her bewildered sister-in-law and stepping inside. “Set the table. We’re hungry!”
“Kolya, what is going on?” Tatyana looked at her brother.
He only smiled silently.
“Well? Are we going to eat or not? We didn’t have breakfast. We were in such a hurry to get here. We were afraid we wouldn’t catch you at home.”
“What table? Are you completely crazy?” the sleepy sister-in-law twisted her finger at her temple.
“Then let’s go talk. We have business to discuss! Nikolai, follow me. Tatyana, don’t fall behind!” Marina commanded, walking into the room.
Gennady came out of the bedroom.
“What’s going on here? You woke me up…”
“A conversation. Sit down too. So, I wanted to ask what you did with the money from Grandma’s house,” Marina said, determined.
“What difference does it make to you?” Tatyana was taken aback. “Look at her, coming here to investigate! Why are you so interested in someone else’s money?”
“Nikolai and I had a family meeting and decided that you should give that money to your brother.”
“What?” the sister-in-law became even more confused. “What do you mean?”
“I mean exactly what I said. We have two children, and you don’t have any yet. That money would be very useful to us. Do you know how much we spend on our children?”
“That’s not our problem! And anyway, we already bought a kiosk. I’m opening a business,” Tatyana said proudly.
“And your brother has no proper car. He drives an old wreck. You should have given the money to your brother instead. Honestly, what kind of sister are you?” Marina would not stop.
“You know what?!” Tatyana shouted angrily.
“We know. I just wanted you to know too — to know what it feels like. What goes around comes around. Take it, sign for it, and enjoy the full beauty of the moment. Maybe you’ll understand something. And now we’re going home, since you’re not going to feed us. Come on, Kolya, let’s go home and finish sleeping. It’s still early.”
Marina and her husband left, while Tatyana sat there for a long time with a stunned expression on her face.
“Did you understand anything?” she asked Gennady.
“What’s there not to understand? Let’s go back to sleep.”
After that, the sister-in-law no longer visited her brother and his wife in the mornings. In fact, she rarely saw him and his family at all. And she never asked them for anything again.