Nadezhda stood in the entryway, staring at two boys with matching backpacks. Behind them loomed Andrey, gripping an enormous travel bag in each hand.
It was Wednesday. An ordinary Wednesday, not Saturday.
“Who exactly have you brought into my home?” she asked in an even voice. “We agreed that the children from your first marriage would not be living with us.”
Andrey squeezed past her into the hallway and dropped the bags onto the floor.
“Don’t start, Nadezhda. Things have changed. It’ll be a month, maybe two.”
“Maybe three?” Nadezhda crouched in front of the twins, smiled at them, and gently stroked their hair. “Boys, go into the living room. There’s a building set on the shelf. Play for a while while your father and I talk.”
The children walked away. Nadezhda shut the front door and turned to her husband.
“Let me make sure I understand this correctly, Andrey. You brought the children here on a Wednesday, with all their belongings, and decided to confront me with a done deal?”
“What was I supposed to do? They’re my sons! Did you want them sleeping on the street?”
“Interesting logic. When we got married, you swore the boys would live with Kristina. Remember? Or is your memory like the menu in a cheap cafeteria—only offering what happens to suit you?”
“This is temporary!”
“Temporary is Saturday and Sunday. Two giant bags and three months is called moving in. Do you understand the difference?”
Andrey began pacing up and down the hallway.
“I’m not going to justify myself to you for taking care of my own children. This is my home too.”
“No, Andrey. This is my apartment. It belonged to me before you, and it will still belong to me after you. And before you say the word ‘mine’ again, take a look at the ownership papers. There is only one name on them, and it isn’t yours.”
Nadezhda took out her phone and dialed her mother-in-law. Andrey jerked toward her.
“Hang up. Don’t you dare call my mother!”
“Why not? You make decisions for both of us. Maybe she doesn’t know she’s just become a full-time grandmother either.”
“Nadezhda, I’m warning you!”
“Warning me about what? That in five minutes Galina Pavlovna is going to find out how her son is disposing of someone else’s apartment?”
The line rang. Her mother-in-law answered after the third tone.
“Good evening, Galina Pavlovna. Tell me, did you know that Andrey moved Matvey and Timur into our home? Permanently. With all their things.”
There was a pause. Then her mother-in-law spoke, sounding confused and genuinely startled.
“Nadyusha, I knew nothing about it. He never said a word. What do you mean, with all their things?”
“Two large bags. And the phrase ‘a month, maybe two, maybe three.’ So I’m trying to understand whether this is a family plan or one of Andrey’s private improvisations.”
“My God. Nadya, I am so grateful for your patience. You already look after those boys every weekend while he runs off to see his friends. I’ll speak to him.”
“Thank you. But I think I’ll deal with this myself. I need Kristina’s address. I’d like to understand why she suddenly decided to unload the children on us.”
Her mother-in-law gave her the address. Andrey stood pale against the wall.
“Why do you need her address? What are you planning?”
“Why have you gone so pale? If everything is innocent, what are you afraid of?”
“Stay out of this, Nadezhda. It’s none of your business.”
“None of my business? The boys are in my apartment. They sleep on my sofa and eat at my table. Every Saturday and Sunday, I draw with them, take them for walks, and feed them while you supposedly go ‘to a friend’s’ or ‘to your mother’s.’ Except, as it turns out, your mother never sees you either. So where do you actually go on weekends, Andrey?”
“I don’t have to report every move I make!”
“That’s right. You don’t. But I don’t have to serve as an unpaid nanny for someone else’s children while their father is off entertaining himself somewhere.”
Nadezhda stepped closer and looked him directly in the eyes.
“Give me Kristina’s phone number.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I said no! Stop interrogating me!”
“You know, Andrey, when someone has nothing to hide, he doesn’t shout. He simply gives you the number and calmly drinks his fruit compote. Right now, you look like a cat caught on the kitchen table with a fish in its mouth. The fish is already swallowed, but you still can’t manage to look innocent.”
Andrey fell silent.
Nadezhda nodded.
“Fine. It’s late. The boys are tired. I’ll make up the sofa for them in the living room. Tomorrow, we will return to this conversation.”
The night was difficult. Nadezhda lay awake, remembering something her friend Rita had told her a year earlier.
“Prepare yourself for a surprise, and you won’t like it. My sister Veronika had the same situation. She got divorced, kept the child with her, but whenever the opportunity arose, she dumped him on her ex. Not for a day—for weeks or even months. Yet she still demanded child support right on time. Her ex eventually moved to another city just to keep from losing his mind.”
At the time, Nadezhda had brushed it off. Rita always dramatized everything.
Now every word sounded prophetic.
In the morning, Andrey began getting ready to leave.
“I need to go out. I have things to do.”
“Of course you do. You always have things to do. Especially on Saturdays.”
“Are you starting again?”
“I haven’t even started yet. Go. I’ll take care of the boys. As usual.”
He left.
Nadezhda waited twenty minutes, dressed the twins, and drove them to Galina Pavlovna’s home.
Her mother-in-law opened the door, saw her grandsons, and understood everything immediately.
“Come in, my darlings. Grandma will make pancakes.”
The boys ran inside. Galina Pavlovna gently caught Nadezhda by the arm.
“Nadyusha, forgive him. I don’t know what has happened to him. He lies to me too.”
“Galina Pavlovna, I need Kristina’s exact address. You gave me the street, but not the building or apartment number.”
“Fourteen Zelenogorskaya Street, apartment forty-one. Nadya, please don’t do anything rash.”
“I’m not acting rashly. I’m opening the wound carefully. Like a surgeon.”
Nadezhda drove to the address.
She entered the building, climbed to the fourth floor, and stopped in front of apartment forty-one.
She rang the bell.
Footsteps approached. A lock clicked.
Andrey opened the door.
One second passed.
Then two.
Then three.
His face went slack. His mouth opened slightly, and his eyes darted around like those of a man caught in the most obvious lie imaginable.
Nadezhda looked at him without speaking.
Then she looked past him into the hallway. A woman’s coat hung on the rack. There were slippers on the floor.
Then she looked back at her husband.
She said nothing.
She turned around and began walking down the stairs.
“Nadezhda! Wait! It isn’t what you think! I was just helping her! The faucet was leaking, she called, so I came over!”
His voice chased her through the stairwell, echoing from the walls.
Nadezhda did not turn around.
She stepped outside, took a deep breath, and pulled out her phone.
Her first call was to a locksmith.
“Good afternoon. I need the lock on my front door replaced. I’ll give you the address. Can you be there within an hour? Excellent.”
Her second call was to a moving service.
“Hello. I need two movers to pack and remove some belongings. It isn’t much—a couple of bags of clothes, a desk, and an armchair. The delivery address is different. Yes, it should all fit in one trip.”
Nadezhda walked quickly down the street.
Everything was clear now.
Kristina had sent the children to Andrey—or, more accurately, to Nadezhda—so that her apartment would be free for meetings with her former husband.
A classic arrangement: send the children away and invite the lover back in.
But Kristina had a legal husband named Oleg. Galina Pavlovna had mentioned him before.
And Nadezhda already knew what she was going to do.
By the time she reached home, the locksmith was already waiting outside the building with a small case of tools.
The movers arrived fifteen minutes later.
Nadezhda opened the apartment and calmly, methodically, without any fuss, began gathering Andrey’s belongings.
His winter coat.
His shoes.
Three shelves of books.
The desk from the study.
The foldout armchair.
Two bags of clothes.
She packed the children’s things carefully into separate bags.
Their toys.
Their backpacks.
“Where are we taking everything?” the senior mover asked.
“Fourteen Zelenogorskaya Street, apartment forty-one. Leave it outside the door. If nobody opens, leave it by the entrance.”
The locksmith replaced the lock in forty minutes and handed her three new keys.
Nadezhda paid him, closed the door, and sat down on the hallway floor in the sudden silence.
Her phone rang an hour and a half later.
It was Andrey.
“Nadezhda! What have you done? Kristina just called me screaming that someone delivered a pile of bags!”
“That’s right. Those are your belongings. And your children’s belongings. I sent them to the only address where, as it turns out, you spend your Saturdays.”
“Have you lost your mind? She has a husband! Oleg is coming home tonight. What is he going to think?”
“Oleg? Don’t worry about him. I already sent him a message. I included the address, the time of your visit, and a brief summary of all the ‘leaking faucets’ you’ve been repairing. He turned out to be a very understanding man. He replied with one word: ‘Thank you.’”
“You didn’t.”
“I did, Andrey. And I would have done it sooner if I hadn’t believed every word you said for an entire year. You know, it’s almost funny. You were so confident in my stupidity that you stopped hiding. You brought the boys over on Wednesday, then walked straight into Kristina’s apartment through the front door. You didn’t even look around to see whether your wife might be standing behind the corner.”
“Nadezhda, listen to me…”
“No. You listen to me. The boys are with Galina Pavlovna. They are safe, fed, and playing with their building set. I changed the lock. I will file for divorce on Monday.”
“You can’t do this! We…”
“What? We had an agreement? Yes, Andrey, we did. The children would live with Kristina. Weekends would belong to us. Fidelity would be mutual. You broke all three parts of that agreement within a single year. If this had been a business contract, you would be paying damages.”
“I did not cheat on you!”
“You opened the door of your ex-wife’s apartment on a Saturday morning while wearing house slippers. You can call that ‘helping with a faucet’ if you like, but in that case, you are the worst plumber in the city, because the faucet still isn’t fixed.”
Andrey fell silent.
Nadezhda could hear him breathing heavily.
“How do you know about the faucet?”
“I heard you rehearsing the excuse last night. You were muttering it to yourself in the bathroom because you thought I was asleep. ‘The faucet was leaking, she called, I just stopped by.’ Andrey, you aren’t even talented at lying. At least say a pipe burst. That would sound more serious.”
“Nadezhda, I’m coming over. We need to talk properly.”
“Don’t come. The keys no longer work. The conversation is over. Here is what I want you to remember: I agreed to marry you knowing you had children. I grew to love them. Every weekend, we went to the park, drew pictures, and read books while you supposedly visited a friend or your mother. By the way, Galina Pavlovna confirmed that you haven’t visited her once in the last four months.”
“She told you that?”
“She told me more than that. She said, ‘Nadya, I’m grateful that you tolerate my son. He doesn’t deserve it.’ And you know what? She’s right.”
“I have nowhere to go.”
“You have Kristina’s address, where you clearly feel at home. You have Galina Pavlovna’s address, where she is waiting for an explanation. And finally, you have the entire planet Earth. There is plenty of room. My apartment is simply no longer one of your options.”
Nadezhda ended the call and blocked his number.
Then she blocked every other possible way he could contact her.
After that, she sat on the small stool in the hallway and spent one full minute in silence.
Her phone rang from an unfamiliar number.
She answered.
“Nadezhda? This is Oleg. Kristina’s husband. Her former husband, apparently, as of today.”
“Oleg. I’m sorry it happened this way.”
“Don’t be. I had suspected something for a long time, but I never had proof. You gave me the proof. Two bags of his belongings outside my door are more convincing than any photograph.”
“He answered the door wearing your slippers.”
“The green ones with dinosaurs?”
“No. Gray plaid.”
“Those are my good slippers. Unbelievable. The man even wears other people’s slippers.”
They both fell silent.
Then Oleg gave a quiet laugh.
“You know, Nadezhda, I’m standing on the balcony, looking down at two bags of junk by the entrance, and for some reason I feel lighter. As though someone amputated a tooth that had been aching for three years.”
“You don’t amputate a tooth. You extract it.”
“This tooth required amputation.”
“Good luck, Oleg.”
“You too. I suppose we’re in the same boat now. The only difference is that you row faster. I probably would have spent another month doubting myself.”
Nadezhda put down the phone.
The apartment was quiet and empty.
There was a mark on the floor where Andrey’s desk had stood.
A clean rectangle remained on the dusty shelf where his books had been.
In the bathroom, the hook that had held his robe was bare.
Rita called.
“Nadya, how are you? I saw you online, but you haven’t written anything.”
“Rita, you were right.”
“About the surprise?”
“About the surprise. I didn’t like it.”
“Tell me everything.”
“He brought the children over with their belongings, then went to see his ex. I drove to her address, and he opened the door. Wearing house slippers. Surprise.”
“And what did you do?”
“I changed the locks, sent his belongings to his ex with movers, messaged her husband, and I’m filing for divorce.”
“How many hours did all that take?”
“Four. Maybe three and a half.”
“Nadezhda, you’re a machine. I would have spent a week crying into my pillow.”
“I’ll cry later. Right now, I don’t have time. I need to call Galina Pavlovna and make sure the boys had dinner.”
At that moment, Andrey was standing in the middle of the street with a phone that would not stop vibrating.
Kristina was calling for the sixth time.
Oleg had sent him a three-word message:
“Collect your things, bastard.”
His mother had written:
“Come over. We’re talking.”
Andrey answered no one.
He simply stood there, staring at the screen, each incoming call sounding like a sentence being passed.
A year earlier, everything had seemed perfect.
His wife loved him.
The children were taken care of.
His ex-wife was available.
Her husband knew nothing.
It had been a perfect arrangement.
Like a house of cards.
And the entire house had collapsed in four hours.
One trip by Nadezhda to a single address, and everything had fallen apart.
His wife had changed the locks.
Oleg knew the truth.
His mother was waiting for an explanation.
Kristina was panicking.
The phone rang again.
Kristina.
Andrey rejected the call, shoved the phone into his pocket, and began walking down the street without knowing where he was going, why he was going there, or what he was supposed to do next.
Meanwhile, Nadezhda was calling her mother-in-law.
“Galina Pavlovna, did the boys have dinner?”
“They did, Nadyusha. They each ate four pancakes. They’re already asleep.”
“Thank you.”
“Nadya… are you filing for divorce?”
“On Monday.”
“I won’t try to talk you out of it. He deserves it. But the boys… You’ve become attached to them, haven’t you?”
“I have. Matvey draws me a card every Sunday. Timur learned to read, and the first word he read aloud to me was ‘sunshine.’”
“You have done more for them than their father has in the past year.”
“The boys are not to blame for any of this. If you need help, I’ll be there. But Andrey and I are finished.”
“I know, Nadyusha. I know.”
Nadezhda placed the phone on the cabinet.
The apartment was quiet, empty, and hers.
There were no чужие bags in the hallway.
No чужие lies hanging in the air.
No чужие slippers by the door.
She walked over to the mirror and looked at herself.
Her eyes were dry.
Her chin was raised.
She was twenty-eight years old, yet in the space of a single day, she felt as though she had grown older and younger at the same time.
Rita sent her a message:
“I’m proud of you.”
Nadezhda smiled and replied:
“Thank you. Now I move on with my life.”