Natalya called around lunchtime, just as Olga was pulling the third batch of pastries out of the oven. There was so much sympathy in her voice that Olga nearly dropped the tray.
“Ol, when was the last time you went to Tver?”
“Saturday.” Olga shifted the tray into her left hand because she had burned her right one through a hole in her oven mitt. “Why?”
“Oh, nothing. It’s just that Emma said something… Never mind. Come by sometime, all right?”
Olga stood beside the oven with the phone wedged between her shoulder and her ear, listening to the dead tone.
The dough on the third worktable was rising and needed shaping, but she remained where she was, staring at the red burn mark running across her palm.
Emma had said something.
What exactly Emma had said, Natalya had naturally chosen not to explain. People like her never did. They tossed a grenade into your life and hung up.
Behind the partition, the two girls Olga worked with rustled sheets of parchment paper. Everything around her looked perfectly ordinary.
Only something heavy and nauseating had risen into her throat.
Olga slipped the phone into her apron pocket and went back to shaping the dough. Her hands moved automatically through familiar motions: pinch off a piece, roll it, place it on the tray.
But one thought circled endlessly in her mind.
Emma had said something.
Olga had never been good at confrontations.
Some women, at the first hint that something is wrong, grab the phone, call immediately, shout, cry, demand explanations, and refuse to stop until they get an answer.
And then there are women who go silent.
Women like that are often solidly built, broad-boned, practical, with neat bob haircuts and a habit of clenching their jaws when nervous.
Olga’s cheekbones would turn pale whenever she was upset. That was usually the only visible sign that anything was wrong.
Otherwise, nothing showed.
Except that she knitted more.
Her scarves were thick and heavy, with large stitches, braids, and cable patterns. Two scarves during an ordinary winter. Three if the winter was difficult.
Last winter, she had knitted five.
She arrived home shortly after five, carrying a bag of pastries that had not sold.
Stas was sitting in the kitchen, already changed out of his work clothes, eating yesterday’s soup without bothering to heat it.
Olga placed the bag on the table.
“Hi.”
He nodded without looking up.
“Everything okay at work?”
“Fine.”
Olga opened one of the cupboards, stared into it for a few seconds, then closed it again.
She wasn’t hungry.
Stas finished his soup, put the bowl in the sink, and went out to the garage.
He didn’t even ask how her day had been.
He used to ask. Not every evening, but often enough.
This time, he simply got up and left.
Olga heard the metal door of his garage slam shut outside the five-story apartment building. It stood beneath a row of old poplar trees that should have been cut down years ago, though nobody had ever gotten around to doing it.
She sat at the kitchen table and placed both hands flat on the vinyl tablecloth.
Then she took her knitting needles from the cupboard, pulled out a skein of thick burgundy yarn, and began casting on stitches.
Emma, incidentally, wasn’t just some distant relative of Stas.
She was his younger sister.
Four years younger, slim and wiry, with dark hair she styled carefully every single time she left the house.
Emma sighed a lot. Long, dramatic sighs.
And every one of them seemed to mean the same thing: life had treated her unfairly.
Stas and Olga had their own home, a small plot of land, and a bakery nearby.
Emma and her husband rented a two-bedroom apartment off Leningradskoye Highway and were forever complaining that their landlady had raised the rent again.
Two weeks before Natalya’s strange phone call, something had happened.
Emma received a message from an old classmate in Tver, Lena Sorokina.
She was one of those school friends you haven’t actually seen in twenty years but still have saved in your messenger contacts. Every now and then they write something like:
“I saw your husband today. Tell him I said hello.”
But this time Lena wrote something different.
“Listen, I saw your Olga at Berezka, that café by the embankment. She was with some man. They were hugging.”
One evening was all Emma needed.
By the following morning, everyone knew.
Natalya knew.
Aunt Vera knew.
Their cousin Vitya and his wife knew.
Even Uncle Kolya from Vyshny Volochyok knew, although he usually stayed well away from family drama.
Emma had personally called every one of them.
And she told them all the same thing.
“I only want what’s best. I feel terrible for Stas. He doesn’t deserve that, does he?”
Then she would sigh as if the entire world owed her compensation.
Stas found out too, of course.
In Torzhok, keeping something like that secret was impossible. The town was small, half the relatives knew the other half, and gossip traveled from the bus station to the factory in a day and a half.
A week later, Lidia called.
Lidia Vasilyevna, Stas and Emma’s mother, lived alone in a small but sturdy private house on Kalininsky Lane.
In front of it was a tiny garden filled with phlox, which she replanted every autumn.
She was seventy-three and belonged to the kind of women who had been described as awkward-looking in their youth but somehow became dignified and substantial with age.
She wore her hair brushed smoothly back, buttoned her blouses all the way to the collar, and frowned slightly while speaking.
Not because she was unhappy.
It always looked as though she were calculating something in her head.
“Olga,” she said slowly and carefully. “Did you go to Tver on Saturday?”
Olga pressed the phone tighter against her ear.
Her chest tightened, and for several seconds she couldn’t answer.
“Yes.”
“On business?”
“Yes. On business.”
Lidia was silent for a moment.
“All right. Don’t fuss.”
Then she hung up.
Olga lowered herself onto a stool.
“Don’t fuss.”
That was one of Lidia’s favorite expressions.
She used it in every possible situation.
“Don’t fuss, the borscht isn’t going anywhere.”
“Don’t fuss, we’ll sort it out.”
It could mean anything.
Olga had no idea what it meant now.
Her mother-in-law had always treated her as an equal. There had never been excessive affection between them, but there had never been any hidden hostility either.
Lidia invited her to family celebrations, accepted jars of homemade jam, asked after her health.
She never interfered.
But she had never needed to defend Olga either, because until now there had been nothing to defend her from.
And now?
Three days after that phone call, their neighbor Anna Petrovna, who lived on the other side of the wall and knew absolutely everything about everybody, stopped Olga on the stairs.
“Your mother-in-law got on a minibus to Tver yesterday. I saw her myself. She had a bag with her. Must have had some business there.”
Olga nodded and closed the apartment door behind her.
That evening, Stas came back from the garage, sat opposite her at the kitchen table, and asked directly:
“Emma called me. She says someone saw you in Tver with a man. Is that true?”
Olga raised her eyes.
Stas was a large man with big hands, and at that moment both of them rested on the table on either side of his empty plate, clenched into fists.
He wasn’t shouting.
Stas didn’t really know how to shout.
He simply stared at her and waited.
“Stas…” Olga began.
“Is it true or not?”
Olga looked down at his fists.
Then at her own hands, roughened by knitting, with the red burn mark across her right palm that still refused to heal.
“I can’t explain it right now,” she forced herself to say.
Stas slowly shook his head.
Then he stood, pressed his lips together, and walked into the hallway.
A moment later, the front door slammed.
Olga remained at the table, listening to the silence.
Then she reached for her knitting needles.
Lidia Vasilyevna’s birthday was celebrated that Saturday.
She turned seventy-three.
It wasn’t a milestone birthday, but Lidia had said, “We’re getting together,” and when Lidia said that, everyone came.
The dining table was set in the main room, where an old carpet bought during her husband’s lifetime still hung on the wall.
Beneath it stood a glass-fronted cabinet filled with crystal shot glasses that were taken out perhaps once a year.
Lidia cooked everything herself: aspic, vinaigrette salad, cabbage pies, egg pies, roasted chicken.
She spent a long time arranging the plates, counting and recounting them.
Olga noticed when she arrived in the morning to help.
Her mother-in-law kept frowning and moving cutlery from one place to another as if something important depended on who sat next to whom.
“Lidia Vasilyevna, let me chop the salad,” Olga offered.
“Go ahead.” Lidia didn’t turn around. “The knives are in the top drawer. They’re sharp.”
The guests arrived around two.
Natalya came with her husband. Aunt Vera came. Vitya and his wife came.
Even Uncle Kolya came all the way from Vyshny Volochyok, although he usually disliked family gatherings.
But Lidia had invited him.
And then Emma arrived in a fitted turtleneck, her hair carefully styled, carrying a cake in a box.
She kissed her mother on the cheek, placed the cake on the sideboard, and said casually to Olga:
“Hi, Ol.”
Olga greeted her back.
But she noticed the way Emma’s eyes swept over her.
Quickly.
Judgingly.
Everyone sat down.
They drank to Lidia’s health, to family, to many more years.
Stas sat next to Olga, but there was distance between them.
Not much.
Perhaps the width of a hand.
But it was noticeable.
He passed her the bread and salad politely, without warmth.
Not like a husband.
After the second round of drinks, Emma started.
Not immediately, of course.
First she complimented the aspic.
Then she asked Natalya about the children.
Then she sighed and turned toward Stas.
“Stas.” She tilted her head and pressed one hand to her chest. “You’re a man. You can’t just let this happen.”
Stas looked up from his plate.
“What are you talking about?”
“Everybody knows.” Emma looked around the table, searching for support.
Natalya lowered her fork.
Aunt Vera stared at her plate.
“I just feel awful for you, Stas. I’m your sister. I only want what’s best for you. Everyone’s talking about it, and you’re just sitting there saying nothing.”
Olga felt her face burn.
Her hand instinctively reached toward the edge of the tablecloth, but she pulled it back onto her lap and clenched her fingers.
Then Lidia picked up a spoon and tapped it against her glass.
Just once.
Not loudly.
But the sound cut through the room, and everyone fell silent.
Lidia Vasilyevna stood.
Slowly, supporting herself against the table because everyone knew her knees were bad.
She straightened her shoulders.
Her sharp elbows seemed to spread outward as though she intended to shield the entire table with her body.
“Emma,” she said quietly, her voice low. “Enough with the sighing.”
Emma opened her mouth.
“Mom, I was just—”
“I said enough.”
Lidia looked around the table.
“I know who Olga was with in Tver.”
No one moved.
Even Uncle Kolya put down his glass.
“The man’s name is Artyom. He’s forty years old. He works construction in Tver.”
She paused.
“And he is Olga’s biological brother. Her younger brother. They hadn’t seen each other in fifteen years.”
Olga stopped breathing.
She stared at her mother-in-law, unable to move.
“Olga found him online,” Lidia continued. “They met in a café by the embankment and hugged each other. She didn’t tell anyone because Artyom has a criminal record. He served his sentence, was released, found a job, and is rebuilding his life. Olga was embarrassed to tell our family. That’s why she kept quiet.”
Then Lidia turned toward Emma.
“And I know all this because I went to Tver myself. I found out Olga’s maiden name, asked around, located Artyom’s construction site, and spoke to him personally.”
She paused.
“He’s a decent man, by the way.”
Emma remained sitting upright, but her head seemed to slowly sink between her shoulders.
She stared at her plate.
“Mom, I didn’t know…” she began.
“No, you didn’t know,” Lidia cut her off. “And you didn’t try to find out.”
Her nostrils flared, and a dark flush spread over her cheekbones.
“You didn’t call Olga and ask her. You called Natalya. Vera. Kolya. Vitya. You called everyone except the woman you were gossiping about.”
Emma said nothing.
“You are my daughter, Emma, and I am ashamed of you.”
Lidia’s voice hardened.
“I am ashamed in front of my daughter-in-law.”
Uncle Kolya cleared his throat and stared into his glass.
Natalya shrank into her chair and looked somewhere beyond everyone at the table.
Aunt Vera twisted a napkin between her fingers.
Lidia sat down.
She exhaled sharply through her nose and picked up her fork.
“Eat. It’ll get cold.”
The guests left quickly.
They didn’t even stay for cake.
Emma was the first to go.
She didn’t say goodbye to Olga.
From the porch, Olga heard her whisper to her husband:
“Come on, Lesha. I don’t feel well.”
Natalya paused at the door as if she wanted to say something.
But when she looked at Olga, she immediately lowered her eyes and walked out.
Stas stood in the hallway, leaning against the wall and looking at his mother.
Then he looked at Olga.
And walked outside.
But he didn’t go to the car.
Instead, he went to the bench beneath the apple tree where his mother usually hung the laundry.
He sat down, stared at the ground, and clasped his hands between his knees.
Lidia Vasilyevna began clearing the table.
She stacked plates, scraped leftovers into a bowl, and worked slowly and methodically.
Olga stood in the doorway of the room for a moment.
Then she walked into the kitchen, took a towel from the hook beside the sink, and stood next to her.
Lidia washed the dishes.
Olga dried them.
Neither woman spoke.
Outside, evening was settling over the neighborhood. Somewhere on the next street, a dog barked. A car hummed along Leningradskoye Highway.
Water ran from the faucet.
The plates clinked softly against one another.
“Lidia Vasilyevna…” Olga finally said.
Her voice was hoarse because she hadn’t spoken a single word in nearly three hours.
“Thank you.”
Lidia didn’t turn around.
She rinsed another plate and handed it to Olga.
“There’s nothing to thank me for. I told the truth. That’s not the same thing as doing someone a favor.”
Olga took the plate and began drying it.
She bit her lower lip because her chin had started trembling, and she had no intention of crying in front of her mother-in-law.
She hadn’t cried in front of Lidia in thirty years.
She wasn’t about to start now.
“Invite Artyom for New Year’s,” Lidia said, still facing the sink. “He’s your brother, after all. Let him come.”
Olga clenched her jaw.
But this time it wasn’t because of fear.
It wasn’t because everything inside her felt tight and painful.
She clenched it to hold back something warm and unfamiliar that was rising in her chest and filling her throat, making her nose sting.
“All right,” she said after a pause. “I’ll invite him.”
Lidia nodded and turned off the faucet.
She dried her hands on her apron and looked through the window toward the yard, where Stas was still sitting on the bench beneath the apple tree.
For the first time that entire evening, the lines across her forehead softened.
“Go to your husband,” Lidia said, hanging the apron on its hook. “He was a fool for listening to Emma, of course.”
She paused.
“But he’s not a hopeless fool.”
Olga hung the towel back in its place, carefully straightened it, and stepped out onto the porch.