“Not that village again,” Dmitry muttered irritably.
He stood with his back to his wife, his palms pressed against the windowsill, scowling into the courtyard where his secondhand BMW was parked beside the building.
“It isn’t our most important expense. She’ll manage.”
Oksana stopped writing. She was sitting at the kitchen table, carefully copying figures from their banking app into a thick, dark-blue notebook. She had started keeping it as a kind of household ledger, hoping it would help restrain her husband’s sudden financial impulses.
“Dmitry, it’s already the middle of October,” Oksana said evenly.
She did not raise her voice. During their years together, she had learned that Dmitry would use the slightest hint of anger as proof that she was supposedly hysterical.
 
“My mother is already getting frost at night. Her house is old and loses heat very quickly. She has to light the stove every morning and evening.”
“Then she can put on woolen socks or switch on an electric heater,” Dmitry replied, turning toward her.
The familiar irritation had already appeared in his eyes.
“Our budget isn’t unlimited. I’m not going to throw money around.”
He walked over to the table and pointed at the open page of the notebook.
“You know perfectly well that I’m taking the car to the repair shop on Monday. Something is knocking in the suspension, and replacement parts cost a fortune now. Your mother receives a pension, doesn’t she? Then she can figure it out herself.”
Oksana pressed her lips together.
Only a month earlier, when they had drawn up a list of their autumn expenses, Dmitry had agreed without objection to the item marked “firewood for Galina Sergeyevna.”
Oksana worked one and a half shifts at a construction company, balancing other people’s accounts and staying late so their household income would remain stable. Now her husband had crossed out the money intended to keep her mother warm, all for the sake of repairing a car he had originally bought mainly to impress his colleagues.
“So my mother must fend for herself and risk freezing this winter, but your car’s suspension is untouchable?” Oksana asked.
 
“The car transports both of us!” Dmitry snapped. “It’s necessary transportation. Your firewood will simply burn, and then it’ll be gone. We’ll literally be sending money up in smoke!”
He did not get the chance to continue developing his remarkable financial theory.
A key turned in the front door.
Larisa Eduardovna had possessed her own copy of her son’s apartment key for years, and she never hesitated to use it without warning.
“Dimochka! Oksanochka! I’ll only stay for a minute. I was passing by on my way home from the theater,” came her pleasant, low voice from the hallway.
A moment later, Dmitry’s mother entered the kitchen.
She was wearing a perfectly tailored light-colored coat. A large pendant gleamed heavily over the new silk scarf wrapped around her neck. Oksana had long ago developed the habit of automatically estimating the cost of things, and she quickly calculated the approximate price.
It was considerable—certainly more than enough to buy several loads of chopped birch firewood.
“Would you put the kettle on, dear?” Larisa Eduardovna asked, settling onto an ordinary kitchen chair and glancing at the countertop with faint distaste. “I have terrible news, my boy. Simply dreadful.”
Dmitry immediately straightened up, as though he had not been discussing the repair of his car only seconds earlier.
“What happened, Mom? Are you ill?”
“If only it were that simple,” his mother replied, delicately touching the corners of her lips with a napkin even though she had not yet drunk anything. “The neighbors from the country house called me. The roof over the veranda is leaking terribly. Water is pouring in everywhere. I need to hire workers urgently, before the snow arrives. Otherwise, the parquet will swell by spring and the beams will begin to rot.”
Dmitry nodded sympathetically.
 
“Is it leaking that badly?”
“Very badly, Dimochka. I’ve already checked the prices and found an excellent foreman. Lyudochka recommended him. But everything is so expensive now—the materials, the labor, and the extra charge for urgent work. The total is enormous. Naturally, I can’t afford it on my pension, and no one will give me a loan. But we have to save the family property. We’re a family, after all, so everyone must help.”
“No problem,” Dmitry answered immediately, sounding almost cheerful. “We’ll find the money. I’ll withdraw the cash on Sunday and bring it to you.”
Oksana slowly looked from her husband to her mother-in-law.
Larisa Eduardovna’s expensive perfume filled the kitchen.
“Which money, exactly, are we going to use?” Oksana asked in a deceptively calm, businesslike tone.
She opened her dark-blue notebook and rested her palm on the page covered in figures.
Dmitry grimaced.
“Oksana, don’t start again. Mom needs help. The country house belongs to the whole family. We go there in the summer to have barbecues. You enjoy sunbathing there yourself.”
“Do I?” Oksana raised one eyebrow slightly. “Five minutes ago, there was no room in our budget for firewood that would prevent my mother from freezing in her own home. You said she should fend for herself because our budget wasn’t unlimited. Yet the moment your mother mentions repairing a veranda, money is suddenly ‘no problem’?”
Larisa Eduardovna pressed both hands dramatically to her chest.
“What a comparison! An old stove and a major renovation aren’t remotely the same thing. The country house is real estate. It’s an investment in the future. Your firewood will burn away and disappear through the chimney. Nothing but smoke will remain.”
“Exactly, Larisa Eduardovna,” Oksana said, looking directly into her mother-in-law’s carefully made-up eyes. “It will go through the chimney so that a living person can spend the winter in a warm home—not so someone can invest in future icicles.”
“That’s your problem,” Dmitry said dismissively as he moved closer to his mother. “I’ve already decided that we’ll pay for the repairs. It doesn’t matter where the money comes from. We’ll cut back somewhere. We can buy cheaper food, I can work some overtime, and we’ll take part of it from our savings. One way or another, we’ll find it.”
Oksana did not continue the argument.
 
During five years of marriage, she had learned that trying to appeal to Dmitry’s common sense while his mother was present was entirely pointless. At that moment, the calculating accountant inside her took control, replacing the hurt daughter who was worried about her mother.
Without saying another word, Oksana closed the notebook.
“Fine. Sunday, then.”
Dmitry gave a satisfied grunt. Larisa Eduardovna nodded condescendingly, clearly interpreting her daughter-in-law’s response as complete surrender.
Oksana rose from the kitchen table and went into the bathroom, leaving the mother and son to discuss roofing materials in peace.
On Saturday morning, Dmitry left for the garage. Oksana made herself coffee, picked up her phone, and called her mother.
“Hi, Mom,” she said, sitting on the edge of the sofa. “How are you doing?”
“Hello, sweetheart,” Galina Sergeyevna replied, her voice sounding slightly muffled. “I’m getting by. I’ve started sleeping in two woolen sweaters. We had a hard frost last night. When I went outside this morning, the water in the bucket on the porch had a layer of ice on it.”
Oksana squeezed her eyes shut.
“I’ll sort out the firewood in the next few days. I promise. Just hold on a little longer.”
After ending the call, she looked toward her laptop.
She could not stop thinking about Larisa Eduardovna’s new silk scarf. Her mother-in-law really did live on an ordinary pension. So where did all those expensive new possessions keep coming from?
 
Oksana opened the banking app and examined the transaction history of the account she shared with Dmitry.
Calmly and methodically, she reviewed the transfers from the previous several months.
May: a transfer from Dmitry. The note read, “For Mom’s seedlings and fence.” It was not a small sum.
July: another transfer. This one was labeled, “Repairing the pump at the country house.”
September: more money. “Preparing the pipes for winter.”
Oksana opened her contacts and found the number of Lyudmila Pavlovna, one of Larisa Eduardovna’s longtime friends and a regular companion on trips to theaters and exhibitions.
When Lyudmila answered, Oksana deliberately made her voice sound as friendly as possible.
“Hello, Lyudmila Pavlovna! This is Oksana, Larisa’s daughter-in-law.”
“Oh, Oksanochka, hello!” Lyudmila replied enthusiastically.
“Listen, we were hoping to contact the workers you recommended to Larisa Eduardovna. Yes, the team that is supposed to repair the veranda roof. Would you happen to have the foreman’s number? We need to arrange some work of our own, and Larisa spoke so highly of them.”
Lyudmila Pavlovna was talkative and loved feeling helpful, so she readily gave Oksana the foreman’s phone number.
Ten minutes into her conversation with Valery, the final pieces of the puzzle fell into place.
Valery was real. In fact, he and his workers had visited Larisa Eduardovna’s property several times.
There was only one problem: the veranda roof was not leaking.
“Nothing is leaking there, ma’am,” Valery explained in his deep voice. “Larisa Eduardovna hired us for something completely different. She wants to enclose the summer gazebo with panoramic glass panels. She insisted that the frames have a mahogany finish. Those materials are expensive, especially that particular type, so the total came to quite a lot. We’re starting to install the frame on Monday.”
Oksana thanked him calmly and ended the call.
For several seconds, she simply stared at the phone lying in front of her.
Panoramic windows for a summer gazebo.
 
All so Larisa Eduardovna could sit there drinking tea beautifully, with another new silk scarf draped over her shoulders.
And it was supposed to be paid for with family money—the same money that was somehow unavailable when Oksana’s mother needed firewood.
At Sunday lunch, Dmitry was in an excellent mood. He finished his soup, pushed the empty bowl away, and held out his open hand toward his wife.
“All right, transfer the money for the roof. I’m going to Mom’s place now. I’ll withdraw the cash and deliver it, just as we agreed.”
Oksana slowly finished her glass of water.
Then she took the dark-blue notebook from the pocket of her lounge pants and placed it neatly in the center of the table.
“There won’t be any transfer, Dmitry.”
Her husband frowned. His outstretched hand slowly dropped onto the table.
“Oksana, we settled this on Friday. Stop acting like a child over your precious village. I said my mother needs our help.”
“I’m not acting like a child. I’m simply balancing the accounts,” Oksana replied.
She opened the notebook to the correct page. A sheet of paper covered in handwritten figures lay folded between the pages.
“Yesterday, I called Valery—the foreman Lyudochka recommended.”
Dmitry froze.
 
It seemed to take him several seconds to understand what she meant.
“Why did you call him?”
“I was auditing our family’s real-estate investments,” Oksana explained coldly. “Valery sends his regards. He also wanted to know when the mahogany-finished frames for the panoramic glazing would arrive, because the workers plan to begin installing the structure tomorrow. Incidentally, the veranda roof is perfectly sound. It isn’t leaking at all.”
Dmitry opened his mouth, closed it, and then tried to speak again.
His face gradually turned pale.
“That… You must have misunderstood something. Mom couldn’t have—”
“She could,” Oksana interrupted sharply. “Just as she supposedly repaired the fence in May while actually spending two weeks at a health resort. I checked your transfers and compared the dates with the photographs she posted online. Your mother has been regularly draining money from our shared budget to pay for her entertainment and expensive whims. Each time, she invents some urgent disaster, and every time, you rush eagerly to rescue her. Meanwhile, you try to save money on the only thing I have requested in the past six months: basic warmth for my mother.”
“You’ve been spying on my mother?” Dmitry finally exclaimed, raising his voice. “And you went through my transfers?”
“I checked where my money was going,” Oksana replied calmly as she stood up. “Half of those transfers came from my salary, my bonuses, and the money I earned by working late into the night. I am not going to keep working to finance your mother’s whims. If she wants another silk scarf, that’s fine. If she wants panoramic windows around her gazebo, wonderful. But she will not be paying for them with my money.”
Oksana picked up her phone and pressed several buttons while her husband watched.
“The amount we discussed has just been transferred to my mother for firewood. I’ve also put aside some money to buy myself a pair of winter boots. As for our shared account”—she tapped one fingernail against the dark-blue cover of the notebook—“the only money remaining there is your salary, minus your share of the utilities and groceries.”
Dmitry stared at her as though she were a complete stranger.
“Do you even understand what you’re doing? You’re destroying the trust in our family over some firewood! Over something so trivial!”
“I understand perfectly,” Oksana replied, walking toward the doorway.
To her surprise, she suddenly felt extraordinarily light.
“My mother will spend this winter in a warm house. You and your mother may decorate the country house with solid gold if you like. You’ll simply have to pay for it yourselves.”
By the following Friday evening, Dmitry was silently eating plain pasta.
 
In the end, he had not had enough money left to repair the suspension on his BMW. Apparently, he had given the remainder of his salary to Larisa Eduardovna for the gazebo—either out of wounded pride or because he felt guilty about disappointing his mother.
The car now stood motionless outside the building, while Dmitry traveled to work by public transportation.
Sitting opposite him, Oksana calmly cut into a piece of baked chicken she had purchased with her own money.
The dark-blue notebook no longer appeared on the kitchen table.
She simply did not need it anymore.
Neither the supposedly urgent roof repairs nor the panoramic glazing of the gazebo was ever mentioned in their apartment again.