The scrape of the lock made me freeze, a damp rag still in my hand. I’d been scrubbing a sticky jam stain off the parquet floor—jam brought by Irina Borisovna—and that sound was all too familiar to me.
Pasha was still asleep. Sunday, half past eight in the morning.
The door opened, and there stood my mother-in-law. In one hand, a net bag stuffed with something green; in the other, the leash of her tiny, perpetually trembling dog.
“Lerochka, are you still sleeping?” she chirped, stepping across the threshold. “I brought you some dill, my own, from the dacha.”
I straightened up, feeling the tension shoot through my back.
“Good morning, Irina Borisovna. We’re sleeping. Well—Pasha is.”
She ignored me, gliding toward the kitchen. The dog yapped perfunctorily and scuttled after her.
“Well, I came in quietly. Why make a fuss? I was running past on my way to the market and thought I’d drop it off. Otherwise you’ll buy that nitrate-laden stuff.”
I followed her. My morning—my one morning when I didn’t have to rush anywhere—was unraveling at the seams.
“We could have bought it ourselves. Or you could have called, and we’d have come down.”
Irina Borisovna turned. Her eyes hardened, assessing. She swept her gaze over my old T-shirt, bare feet, messy hair.
“Lerochka, don’t be silly. Why should you come down? I have keys, after all.”
She said it as if she were granting me the greatest blessing. As if those keys weren’t to my apartment, but to paradise.
That evening I finally spoke up. Pasha was watching some series, lazily scratching his stomach.
“Pash, we need to talk about your mother.”
He sighed without looking away from the screen.
“Ler, again? She just brought some dill.”
“She walked into our apartment at nine on a Sunday morning without knocking. She opened the door with her keys. That’s not normal.”
“What’s not normal about it? She’s Mom. She’s not a stranger.”
I sat beside him, took the remote, and switched off the TV. The silence that followed made my words sound louder than I’d expected.
“Pasha, this is our home. Our space. I want to be able to walk around naked here if I feel like it. I want to wake up to something other than the sound of a key in the lock.”
“Oh, come on, such extremes,” he grimaced. “Walking around naked… Mom just cares.”
“Then let her leave her caring outside the door. Or at least call before she comes in. Let’s ask her to give back the keys.”
Pasha jumped up as if burned.
“Are you crazy? Take Mom’s keys away? That’s an insult! She gave her life for me, and I’m supposed to strip her of her keys? She’ll think we’ve cut her out of our lives!”
“And right now she’s cutting us out of ours!” I snapped.
He looked at me as if I’d suggested robbing a bank. In his eyes were fear and total, absolute incomprehension. He didn’t see the problem. For him, Mom with keys was a constant—like the sun rising in the east.
And a week later, I woke to the bedroom light switching on.
It was five in the morning.
At our doorway stood Irina Borisovna in a coat thrown over her nightgown. She squinted at the bright light, holding Pasha’s phone in her hand.
“Pashenka, you forgot your phone at home,” she whispered conspiratorially. “I saw you drive off, and it was lying on the nightstand. I brought it over. You can’t be without it at work…”
I sat up in bed, pulling the blanket to my chin. My heart wasn’t beating—it was pounding somewhere in my throat, choking me. Pasha mumbled something in his sleep and rolled over.
My mother-in-law, ignoring me entirely, came to his side of the bed and set the phone on the nightstand. Then she cast a proprietary glance around the room.
“Oh, it’s dusty in here, Lerochka. Needs a wipe.”
And with that she left. I heard the click of the front door lock.
I sat in the blinding light, staring at my sleeping husband. He didn’t even stir. He didn’t realize what had just happened—that the boundary hadn’t just been crossed, it had been erased, trampled into the dirt.
When Pasha finally woke up and I, trying to keep calm, told him about the nighttime visit, he just waved it off.
“Ler, she meant well. She was worried about me.”
“Pasha, she walked into our bedroom. At five in the morning.”
“So what? She wasn’t naked. Mom’s not a stranger.”
That same day I called her myself. My hands trembled, but I was resolute.
“Irina Borisovna, hello. I’d like to talk about this morning.”
“Yes, Lerochka, I’m listening,” her voice carried not a trace of embarrassment.
“Please don’t come over without calling. Especially that early. Especially into the bedroom.”
Heavy silence. Then an icy voice, full of righteous indignation:
“My dear girl, I don’t understand your complaints. I raised my son, I invested the money I’d saved all my life into this apartment. So remember: I’ll come in whenever I want. I have the keys.”
And she hung up.
I looked at Pasha. He was standing right there, he’d heard everything. He averted his eyes.
“And you’ll stay silent?” I asked, as the dial tone droned on indecently long.
Pasha shrugged, staring intently at the wallpaper pattern.
“What do you want from me? You provoked her. Attacked her. Of course she reacted like that.”
“Provoked her? By asking her not to barge into my bedroom?”
“You could have said it more gently,” he finally looked at me. There was no support in his eyes—only weariness and irritation. “You’re never satisfied. Mom tries for us, and you…”
I didn’t listen further. I turned and left, closing the door firmly behind me.
That night a wall rose between us. He didn’t come to me. He didn’t apologize. He didn’t try to talk. He just went to sleep on the couch, sighing loudly.
Then came a lull. For a week, Irina Borisovna didn’t appear. But her invisible presence was everywhere.
In how Pasha pressed his lips together when I suggested we go out. In how he spent long evenings on the phone, answering my questions with a curt: “With Mom.”
I felt like a stranger in my own home.
On Wednesday I caught a cold. My throat hurt so badly I could barely speak, my head was splitting.
I took the day off and decided the best cure was a hot bath. I filled the tub, added lavender salt, and sank into the steaming water, hoping it would chase away the illness.
I was nearly dozing when I heard it—the familiar scrape of a key in the lock.
I froze. My heart plunged. Pasha? No, he should be at work for at least another five hours.
The door opened quietly, then shut. Shuffling steps, a yap I knew too well.
“Well now, Zhusha, let’s see how our Lerochka’s managing the household,” crooned my mother-in-law. “Bet it’s dusty again.”
I sat in the bath, afraid to move. The water cooled, but I didn’t notice. I heard her walking around, opening the fridge, clicking her tongue.
“Just as I thought. Empty. What do they eat? Poor Pashenka must be starving.”
She was only a few meters away, behind the thin bathroom door. I imagined her opening it, and terror gripped me.
The feeling of vulnerability was physical. This was my home, my fortress—and an intruder had entered while I was defenseless.
I waited until she went into the kitchen, then crept out, wrapping myself hastily in a robe.
She was in the living room, examining my bookshelves.
“Oh, Lerochka, you’re home?” she said with no trace of shame. “I brought you some chicken broth. Healing. Pasha said you weren’t well.”
She pointed at a jar on the coffee table.
“Thanks, that wasn’t necessary,” I croaked. My voice barely worked. “I asked you to call first.”
“Oh, don’t be so distant!” she cried, hands raised. “I only want to help! Who else will look after you? Pashenka’s at work, earning for the family, and you’re here alone, sick.”
She came closer, reaching to feel my forehead. I recoiled.
“Don’t.”
That evening, when Pasha came home, I was resolute.
I told him everything—my fear, my humiliation, the jar of broth that felt like mockery.
He listened silently. Then said:
“Ler, I don’t get what’s wrong with you. Mom brought you broth. She cared. And you only see the bad. Maybe the problem isn’t her, but you?”
That night I lay awake, staring at the ceiling. Beside me, my husband slept peacefully. The man who was supposed to be my protector. But he had made his choice.
And I made mine.
The next morning, once Pasha left for work, I picked up my phone. My hands were steady. I typed in: “Lock replacement. Urgent. 24/7.” And hit call.
The locksmith arrived within an hour. A stocky man with tired eyes. He worked fast and silent. The whine of the drill was music to me. Each metallic shriek was a cry of liberation.
When he finished, he handed me two shiny new keys.
“There you go, mistress. Job done.”
I took them. They were heavy, real. Keys to my fortress. I paid him, and the door shut behind him with a deep new click. I turned the lock. And again.
It worked perfectly. For the first time in ages, I felt safe.
All day I waited for Pasha, like a soldier in a trench waiting for an attack. I cooked dinner, tidied the apartment. I rehearsed the words I would say.
He came home tired, dropped his briefcase on a chair.
“Hi.”
“Hi,” I said, stepping up to him and handing him one of the new keys. “This is yours. I changed the locks.”
He stared—first at the key, then at me.
“What do you mean? Why?”
“Because I decided so. I don’t want anyone entering our home without asking. No one.”
His face flushed crimson.
“You… you did this behind my back? You threw my mother out?”
“I protected our family. Our home.”
“You destroyed our family!” he shouted. “What am I supposed to tell her?!”
“The truth. That her son grew up and has his own life.”
We screamed at each other. I said everything I’d bottled up: the fear, the humiliation, his betrayal. He didn’t hear. He ranted about duty, about respect for his mother, about my coldness.
And in the middle of our fight, we heard it.
The scrape. Hesitant, puzzled—the sound of a key failing to fit a foreign lock. Then again. And again. The scraping turned furious, grating.
Then came furious pounding on the door.
“Pasha! Lera! Open up! What’s with the door?!”
Pasha froze. He looked at me, then at the door, where his mother was hammering in hysteria. He was cornered.
The pounding became a drumroll.
“I know you’re in there! Open at once! Lera, this is your doing?!”
Pasha drew a deep breath and went to the door. I stayed where I was, heart stopped. Everything would be decided now.
He opened it. Irina Borisovna, disheveled, face twisted with rage, burst in.
“What have you done?!” she screeched, pointing at me. “You threw me out! Me, who—”
“Mom,” Pasha said quietly.
She stopped short.
“What do you mean, ‘Mom’? Don’t you see what she’s doing?!”
“I see,” his voice was calm, but there was steel in it I’d never heard before. “I see that my wife was forced to do this because no one listened to her. Least of all me.”
He turned to her.
“This is our home. Mine and Lera’s. And you will never again enter it without calling first. Understood?”
She stared at him, mouth open. She couldn’t believe her ears.
“Pashenka…”
“No more ‘Pashenka.’ I’m a grown man. I decide who comes into my home, and when. Now, please—go home.”
He spoke calmly, but with such finality that she recoiled. She shot me a venomous look, turned, and left.
Pasha locked the new door behind her. Then turned to me. His eyes were wet with tears.
“Forgive me,” he whispered. “I was blind.”
He came to me and embraced me. And I realized I had won. I hadn’t just changed the lock. I had gotten my husband back. I had reclaimed our family. And our life.