Lena’s message arrived in the morning, just as the porridge was boiling over on the stove and Katya was asking me for the third time whether I had seen her charger.
“Sergey, Artyom, and I are coming on the third. We’ll be staying for a month. Get Katya’s room ready and clear out some space in the wardrobe. Think about meals too, so we don’t have to eat at cafés every day.”
Another message followed almost immediately:
“Sergey needs porridge in the morning. Artyom doesn’t eat soup.”
I turned off the stove, wiped up the spilled milk, and reread the messages from the beginning.
There wasn’t a single question mark anywhere.
Then I opened the website of a hotel near our apartment. I found a family room with a small kitchenette and sent Lena the link.
 
“But we’re staying with you”
She called almost immediately.
“Marina, why did you send me a hotel?”
“So you can choose a room.”
“What room? We’re staying at your place.”
She said it so calmly that you would have thought we had agreed on everything a month ago and I was now pretending I had forgotten.
“We don’t have room for three extra people for an entire month.”
“What about Katya’s room?”
Katya was sitting across from me, spreading butter on a slice of bread. When she heard her name, she looked up.
“Katya lives in Katya’s room.”
“Oh, come on. We’d only be sleeping there. We’ll be out around the city during the day. She can sleep in the living room at night.”
I looked at my daughter’s desk. It was covered with notebooks, textbooks, and printed assignments. In a few weeks, she would begin extra lessons to prepare for her exams.
“No, Lena. Katya is not moving out of her room.”
“Are you serious? We’re family. Why should we pay strangers when your own brother has an apartment?”
“You have the hotel address.”
Lena went silent for a moment.
“Does it at least have a kitchen?”
“Yes.”
“Could we come over to your place for meals? I’m on vacation. I’m not planning to spend it standing over a stove.”
That was the moment I finally understood. She wasn’t asking for anything.
In her mind, everything had already been decided: the rooms, the shelves in the wardrobe, and even my responsibilities.
“You are not going to live and eat at our place for a month.”
And I ended the call.
The last four-day visit lasted eleven
 
Lena had stayed with us several years earlier. That time, she came alone and promised she would stay for only four days.
On the fourth day, she suddenly needed to meet a friend.
On the sixth, she said train tickets had become too expensive.
Then she decided to wait until the weekend so Dima could drive her around the shops.
I would leave for work in the morning while Lena was still asleep. When I came home in the evening, I would find cups, plates, and open food packages scattered across the table.
“What are we having for dinner?” she would ask as she came out of the room.
As though dinner appeared by itself.
As though groceries climbed out of the refrigerator, peeled the potatoes, cooked themselves, and then washed the saucepan afterward.
One day I asked Lena if she could at least put her dirty dishes in the sink.
 
“Marina, I came here as a guest,” she said, genuinely surprised. “I’ll have plenty of time to clean when I get home.”
On the ninth day, she cleared an entire lower shelf in the wardrobe for herself. She put my scarves and handbags into a plastic bag and left it on the floor.
“You had nothing important there anyway,” she explained.
I said nothing.
Dima asked me not to start an argument over little things. His sister would be leaving soon, he said. We just needed to be patient for a little longer.
She finally left on the eleventh day.
The bag containing my things was still sitting beside the wardrobe after she was gone.
The room had already been promised
That evening, my husband came home irritated.
Instead of hanging up his jacket, he tossed it onto the bench in the hallway. Lena had already called him at work.
“Couldn’t you have said it more gently?” he asked.
“For example?”
“I don’t know. You could’ve made something up. Said we were renovating or that the apartment was too busy. Why send her straight to a hotel?”
“Because we’re not renovating. I simply don’t agree to have three people staying here for a month.”
“She’s my sister.”
 
“I know.”
“She doesn’t visit every year.”
“Last time, her four-day visit turned into almost two weeks.”
Dima went into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and stared inside for several seconds. Then he closed it without taking anything.
“We could manage somehow for one month.”
“And where exactly were you planning to put Katya?”
“On the sofa in the living room.”
He answered far too quickly.
“You already promised Lena Katya’s room, didn’t you?”
Dima looked away.
 
A floorboard creaked in the hallway.
Katya was standing in the doorway holding a mug.
“Dad, why can’t Aunt Lena sleep on the sofa?”
“She’s a guest,” he replied.
“So what does that make me?”
Dima frowned.
“Katya, the adults are talking.”
“I’m just trying to understand. My extra classes are starting soon. Am I supposed to sleep in the living room every night and pack up my bedding every morning so I don’t get in everyone’s way?”
“We haven’t decided anything for certain yet.”
“But you already told Aunt Lena that you had.”
Katya went back to her room and quietly closed the door.
I placed a plate of dinner in front of Dima.
He didn’t touch it.
“I thought you and Katya would understand,” he finally said.
“But it never occurred to you to ask us.”
He didn’t answer.
He just sat there, pushing a piece of potato from one side of his plate to the other with his fork.
Staying with their mother suddenly wasn’t convenient
 
The next day, my mother-in-law called.
She spent a long time explaining that family members were supposed to help one another and that Lena had been upset all night after our conversation.
“She’s coming to visit her own brother, not some strangers,” my mother-in-law said.
“Then her own brother can take a month off work, cook breakfast every morning, and clear out his wardrobe.”
“You always turn everything into an argument.”
Dima was sitting beside me, so I switched the call to speakerphone.
“Mom, could Lena stay with you?” he asked.
His mother also had a two-bedroom apartment. She barely used the second room.
“Of course she can. I would never refuse my own daughter.”
That seemed to settle it.
For a while, I honestly thought the problem had been solved.
But an hour later, Lena called her brother again.
Dima went out onto the balcony. He left the door slightly open.
“Lena, Mom agreed… So what if it’s far away?… There are buses… No, she isn’t required to cook for you every day…”
Then he stopped talking.
I could hear Lena’s voice coming through the phone, although I couldn’t make out the words. She spoke for quite a while.
When Dima came back inside, he placed his phone face down on the table.
“Staying with Mom won’t work for her.”
“Why?”
“She’s too far from the city center. Mom goes to bed early. And they’d have to cook for themselves.”
He opened my conversation with Lena and found the hotel link.
He looked through the photographs of the room.
Then he checked the price.
Then he looked at the photograph of the kitchenette again.
“I see,” he said.
And he forwarded the link to his sister.
A moment later, he sent another message:
“Katya is keeping her room. Choose either the hotel or rent an apartment.”
 
His phone vibrated almost immediately.
Dima read Lena’s reply and slipped the phone into his pocket.
This time, he didn’t ask me to be patient.
The suitcases ended up behind someone else’s door
Lena eventually arrived with her husband and son.
Instead of staying with us, they rented an apartment on the other side of the city. It was cheaper than the hotel and had a kitchen as well.
She never gave us the address.
During the entire month, she met her brother only once. They spent about two hours together in a café.
When Dima suggested that all of us get together over the weekend, Lena replied that their schedule was already full.
She never came to our apartment even once.
Katya continued studying at her own desk.
 
In the evenings, she closed her bedroom door and spread her textbooks across the bed.
Nobody had to sleep in the living room.
Nobody had to fold away bedding every morning so the rest of the household could use the sofa.
And nobody had to give up their privacy simply because someone else had decided that being family entitled them to it.
On the final day before Lena left the city, I was reorganizing the wardrobe when I found a spare set of bed linen on the top shelf.
I had never needed to take it down.