They found the house through an advertisement that had three photographs and not a single bit of truth in it. The seller cheerfully described it as a “cozy country house, ready to move into,” but in reality there was a gaping hole in the entryway big enough for a cow to fall through. Ksenia stepped onto the porch, the board cracked beneath her, and one of her legs plunged into the darkness up to her knee.
“Ready to move into,” she muttered through clenched teeth, yanking her sneaker out of the crawl space. “The mice must really find it cozy.”
“At least the plot is flat,” Artyom replied as he walked around the shed, which was being held up by sheer luck and two rotten posts. “And there’s a forest beyond the fence. You couldn’t buy something like this in the city for any amount of money.”
“Artyom, the roof of the shed is lying on the ground.”
“Then at least it can’t fall any farther,” he said. “We’re buying it.”
And they did.
For two summers, they came here like prisoners reporting voluntarily for hard labor, from Friday until Sunday, armed with a thermos and aching backs. During the week, Ksenia worked at a museum making wax figures—shaping nostrils for military commanders and inserting glass eyes into empty sockets—and on weekends she mixed mortar and laid tiles. Artyom blew laboratory glass at a factory, then came to the country house and used up the last of his strength sanding the floors.
“Don’t you think we’ve lost our minds?” she asked him that first August while peeling a blister from her palm.
“I do,” he admitted. “But the flower bed came out straight.”
“The flower bed came out crooked, Artyom. The only straight thing we have is the pathway, and that’s only because I made you redo it three times.”
“But I redid it.”
“You complained so much the neighbors were taking notes.”
His mother came to see the place only once back then.
Valentina Yegorovna walked around the property with pursed lips, touched the wallpaper with one finger, and delivered her verdict like a quality inspector at a candy factory:
“Defective.”
“What you’re doing is foolish,” she said. “You’ve buried your money in the ground. No proper water, no store nearby, nothing but mosquitoes.”
“We have water,” Ksenia replied evenly. “A well.”
“A well,” Valentina Yegorovna repeated with an expression as though someone had suggested drinking from a puddle. “Ruslan would have bought a car with that money. He would have invested it more wisely.”
“Ruslan would’ve crashed it within a month,” Artyom said. “Mom, enough.”
By the third summer, the house had stopped being a wreck and had become a real home.
There were new plastic windows, fresh walls painted the color of warm cream, a veranda with wide railings, and a lawn Ksenia had measured herself using strings. The children occupied the property with the enthusiasm of conquerors: Gleb dragged boards around to build a hut, while Milana collected snails in a bucket and insisted on giving them names.
“Mom, this one’s called Raisa,” Milana announced, holding a snail right up to her mother’s face.
“Get Raisa away from my nose.”
“Are we going to have a campfire?”
“We are. If Gleb stops sawing pieces off the railing of my veranda.”
“I’m not sawing it off! I’m measuring it!” Gleb shouted from beneath the apple tree.
In the evenings, the couple sat barefoot on the steps, listened to some unknown bird screaming in the forest, and said nothing.
Neighbors walking past would peer over the fence and ask where they had bought the tiles or who had built the veranda.
“We did it ourselves,” Artyom would say with the pride of a man whose lower back still hurt.
“Ourselves,” Ksenia confirmed. “He complained, I measured.”
That was when Artyom first brought up the idea of having a housewarming party.
He said they should invite the relatives over, let them see the finished place, and finally show his mother that the whole project hadn’t been foolish.
Ksenia listened with her lips pursed exactly the way Valentina Yegorovna’s had once been.
“Artyom, your brother has three children, and they don’t walk anywhere. They demolish everything in their path.”
“Just once.”
“Once is enough. A hailstorm only happens once too, and then you have to replant the entire crop.”
“Ksyusha.”
“Fine,” she surrendered. “But I’m putting a fence around my flower bed.”
The guests arrived around noon, and the property immediately stopped being quiet.
Ruslan walked along the pathway, tilting his head up toward the roof, clicking his tongue and running his palm along the railings as though testing how they felt in his hand.
“Wow, you two really did something here,” he said. “Artyom, do you realize you basically have a resort?”
“I realize it. Two years of resort right here in my hands.”
“I’d live here permanently. Seriously. I’d pack my things and move in.”
Ksenia heard the sentence from the porch, where she was carrying a tray, and the words lodged beneath her skin like a splinter from one of those very railings.
She smiled politely, nodded, and remembered.
A woman who had carried sacks of cement with her own hands heard sentences like that very clearly.
“I’ve only ever seen a veranda like this in pictures,” Karina exclaimed, running her hand over the countertop. “Ksenia, did you hire a designer?”
“I did. Myself.”
“You really got lucky with this house.”
“Very lucky,” Ksenia said. “Especially my back.”
Even Valentina Yegorovna softened.
She toured the rooms, touched the new wardrobe, sat in the armchair by the window, and finally bestowed her highest approval.
“Well. Good job. I didn’t think you’d manage it.”
“Mom, neither did we,” Artyom said with a grin. “We just did.”
Meanwhile, the three nephews carried out their own land reform.
They raced across the lawn, trampled a strip through the grass as wide as the pathway, knocked over the garden stakes, and ran straight through the lilies.
Ksenia came outside just as the youngest child was standing with both feet inside the flower bed, digging at something with his bare hands.
“Stop!” she said so sharply that the boy froze. “Get out. Carefully. Backward.”
“Oh, come on, have you never seen children before?” Karina snapped. “You can buy new plants. They’re cheap.”
“I planted those plants in May while kneeling on the ground,” Ksenia replied. “And my knees aren’t cheap.”
“Why make such a big deal out of it?” Valentina Yegorovna frowned. “They’re children.”
That evening, after all the cars had driven away, the house became very quiet.
Ksenia washed the dishes, scraping the bottom of a pot with far more force than necessary, and said nothing because words would have been unnecessary.
“I’ll talk to Ruslan,” Artyom said, drying his hands. “Next time they need to keep an eye on the children.”
“Next time,” she repeated. “What a wonderful phrase.”
“Ksyusha.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
Summer rolled on.
In the mornings, Ksenia made porridge, Artyom watered the lawn and cursed the weeds, which kept appearing with the persistence of relatives.
On Saturdays, the children lit a campfire, baked potatoes in foil, and drew mustaches on each other with soot-blackened fingers.
“It’s decided,” Artyom said in August as he hammered one of the garden stakes back into place. “Every summer, we’re staying only here.”
“Only here,” Ksenia agreed. “And only us.”
The phone call came on Wednesday evening.
It wasn’t from Ruslan. It was from Karina.
Ksenia looked at the name on the screen and immediately felt tense without knowing exactly why.
“Ksenia, hello!” Karina cooed. “Listen, we have this situation. It’s impossible to breathe in the city, and the kids are miserable. Could we come stay with you for the weekend? I’ll keep quiet, and I’ll watch them myself.”
“For the weekend,” Ksenia repeated slowly. “Karina, my flower bed still has bald patches.”
“I’ll watch them, I swear. They won’t touch a thing. I’ll tie them to myself if I have to.”
“All right. But one condition: don’t trample the lawn, don’t touch the flower beds, and keep the children with you.”
“Of course! You’re so kind.”
If Karina had called Artyom, Ksenia would have refused outright.
But Karina had called her personally, which made saying no awkward, so she agreed—with one condition she repeated twice, clearly, like operating instructions for a stove.
On Friday, Ksenia worked until eight in the evening.
She was finishing the wax head of a merchant whose ear stubbornly refused to sit properly in place.
When she got home, dropped her bag, and heard what her husband had to say, she immediately disliked it.
“I gave Ruslan the keys,” Artyom said. “They’re already there. Karina and the kids.”
“You gave the keys to the house,” Ksenia repeated. “To Ruslan.”
“How else were they supposed to get inside?”
“They could have waited for me. I’m arriving Saturday morning.”
“Ksyusha, he’s my brother.”
“Exactly,” she said. “Your brother with keys. That’s a diagnosis.”
Ksenia arrived at ten on Saturday with the children and two bags of food.
There were two cars parked by the gate: Karina’s gray one and Ruslan’s white one.
Valentina Yegorovna was sitting on the veranda sorting currants in Ksenia’s enamel basin.
“Good morning,” Ksenia said. “Valentina Yegorovna, where did you come from?”
“Ruslan brought me. What, am I supposed to boil alive in the city?” her mother-in-law replied without looking up. “I took your basin. It won’t hurt you.”
“It won’t,” Ksenia agreed, and went inside.
There were other people’s belongings on the bed in her bedroom.
Valentina Yegorovna’s bag stood against the wall. Someone else’s sweater lay on Ksenia’s pillow. Ruslan’s neatly folded T-shirts occupied shelves in her wardrobe.
In the children’s room, other children were sleeping in Gleb and Milana’s beds, while mattresses lay scattered across the floor.
“What do you mean all the rooms are occupied?” the owner of the house asked in confusion, standing in the hallway with a bag in each hand. “Are you sure you haven’t mixed something up?”
“What is there to mix up?” Valentina Yegorovna appeared in the doorway holding the basin. “I’m in the bedroom because I can’t sleep on a mattress—my back. Ruslan and Karina are in the small room, and the children are in the kids’ room. You can settle yourselves in the walk-through room. The sofa folds out.”
“The walk-through room,” Ksenia repeated. “In my house. The room everyone walks through to get to the bathroom.”
“Well, you don’t expect an old woman to sleep in the walk-through room.”
“Valentina Yegorovna, that is my bedroom. My bed. I assembled it myself. With screws.”
“Ksenia, what difference does it make?” Karina interrupted, walking out of the smaller bedroom and adjusting her hair. “You’re young. You can sleep anywhere. We’re family, after all.”
“Exactly,” Ksenia said. “Strangers usually ask permission.”
“I did ask!”
“You asked for yourself and the children. Your mother-in-law and your husband were not part of the agreement.”
“What agreement?” Valentina Yegorovna snorted. “Are you going to start making relatives sign documents now?”
Ruslan came in from the garden barefoot and cheerful, with a towel around his neck.
He looked around the hallway, where Ksenia stood holding her bags, and smiled broadly like the owner of the house welcoming a late-arriving guest.
“Oh, you made it! Ksyusha, the water in the tank is cold. You should’ve turned the pump on earlier.”
“I should have,” Ksenia said. “Ruslan, where are you sleeping?”
“In the small room. Why?”
“No reason. Just clarifying the geography.”
She carried the bags back out of the hallway, put them into the car, called her children over from the lawn, and opened the door for them.
“Mom, are we leaving already?” Gleb asked, confused.
“We’re leaving.”
“What about the campfire?”
“We’ll have one. Later.”
“What about the snails?” Milana cried in alarm. “Raisa is still there!”
“Raisa will survive,” Ksenia said as she slammed the trunk shut. “Raisa is persistent. Like some people.”
At their city apartment, she found Artyom standing in his underwear with a soldering iron in his hand. He had been fixing something on the balcony.
He saw his wife and their two children carrying bags and slowly lowered the soldering iron onto its stand.
“Why are you here?”
“Because there’s no room for us there,” Ksenia said, placing a bag against the wall. “Your mother is in our bedroom. Ruslan and Karina are in the small room. Their children are in the kids’ room. They offered me the walk-through room. The sofa folds out.”
“What?”
“You heard me. I didn’t make a scene, Artyom. I didn’t say one unnecessary word. I simply refused to sleep in the walk-through room of my own house.”
“Wait. My mother is in our bedroom?”
“Her sweater is on my pillow. Your brother’s T-shirts are in my wardrobe. And there are currants in my basin.”
Artyom stood silently for a moment.
Then he put the soldering iron on the table and went to get his trousers.
He didn’t ask any more questions and didn’t search for excuses, which was the right thing to do because there were no excuses.
“I’m going there.”
“Go,” Ksenia said. “They’re your relatives. Deal with them yourself. I’m not going back there while someone else is lying in my bed.”
“Ksyusha, I’ll fix everything.”
“You already fixed things. You gave them the keys.”
“I did,” he said, putting on his shoes. “And I’m taking them back.”
Ksenia didn’t know what he said once he got there, and she didn’t want to know.
She fed the children, turned on a cartoon for them, and sat down on the stool in the hallway with her fingers clasped together.
Her phone remained silent for two hours.
Then it rang.
“The country house is empty,” Artyom said. “I have the keys. I heated the bathhouse. The firewood is good. Come over.”
“Everyone left?”
“Everyone.”
“Your mother too?”
“My mother too. I explained who owns this place. I explained it very clearly.”
Meanwhile, two cars stood on the country road, and inside them everyone was deciding who was to blame.
Valentina Yegorovna sat in the front seat of Ruslan’s car with a bag of belongings on her lap.
She wasn’t angry at the son who had carried her suitcase out onto the porch.
She was angry at her daughter-in-law.
“She could have slept in the walk-through room,” she complained. “Nothing would have happened to her. But no, she had to run straight to her husband and report everything. What a tattletale.”
“Mom, enough,” Ruslan muttered.
“Artyom was never like this before. She changed him.”
“Mom.”
“And you said nothing! Your brother threw his own mother out the door, and you stood there saying nothing!”
Ruslan remained silent now too.
He was angry with Artyom, his lip tightly bitten, but he hadn’t said a word to him because Artyom had been standing on his own porch with a look that made it obvious there was no point arguing.
In the second car, Karina angrily zipped her bag shut and hissed at the children to sit quietly.
She had practically been escorted out of the children’s room, told to gather the mattresses, and shown the gate.
She immediately blamed Ksenia for the humiliation.
“I asked permission,” she said to her husband through the open window. “I asked politely! And this is the thanks I get.”
“You asked for yourself and the children,” Ruslan replied. “But all of us came.”
“So what? The house is big!”
“It’s not our house, Karina.”
“You said you wanted to live here. I remember.”
“I did,” Ruslan said, closing the window. “Which is why I’m leaving now.”
Ksenia returned that evening.
The gate was closed, the lawn had been swept, the mattresses had been put away, and the currants sat in a neat pile inside her enamel basin.
A steady stream of smoke rose from the bathhouse chimney.
Inside the house was the same silence they had paid for with two summers of labor and twenty sacks of cement.
The children ran across the yard squealing.
Gleb rushed toward his hut, and Milana ran to the bucket to check whether Raisa was still alive.
Artyom came out onto the veranda, wiping his hands on a towel, and hugged his wife without saying anything.
“Did you really tell them everything?” Ksenia asked.
“Everything. About the keys, the rooms, and the fact that you are the owner here.”
“Your mother isn’t speaking to me now?”
“My mother isn’t speaking to me,” he said with a grin. “It’s the only punishment she knows how to invent.”
“I’ll survive.”
“You will. Come on before the bathhouse cools down. And, uh…” He hesitated. “I’m sorry about the keys.”
“Bring the basin. The other one. Not the one with the currants.”
She climbed the steps of her own porch and ran her hand along the railings she had painted herself.
And only then did she finally understand what the question she had asked in the hallway that morning had really been about.
Nobody had mixed up the rooms.
They had mixed up who the owners were.
And in this house, that mistake had been corrected the very same day.