“Why didn’t you go to my mother’s today?”
Vadim’s voice—sharp and stripped of all warmth—struck Valeria in the back. She was in the entryway, just slipping off her shoes, savoring the relief of freeing her aching feet from narrow office pumps. All day she’d dreamed of this moment: coming home, changing into a soft T-shirt, and stretching out on the couch. The smell of lasagna reheating in the microwave already filled the small apartment, promising modest but well-earned peace. His question shattered that fragile idyll in an instant.
She didn’t turn around.
“I was at work, Vadim. I forgot to tell you—the quarterly report. I stayed till the end,” she answered, trying to keep her voice even and not as tired as she felt.
He didn’t move, still blocking the doorway, massive and displeased. His jacket was unzipped but not taken off, as if he’d popped in for a minute just to deliver a complaint and leave. Lately this had become his habit—starting a conversation with an accusation, not giving her a chance to catch her breath.
“Working. Everyone works. And she was there waiting alone. We agreed you’d stop by every evening after your office.”
There was no question in his words, only a statement of her guilt. Lera finally straightened and looked at him. That same expression of righteous anger she’d been seeing more and more often was stamped on his face. As if he were a prosecutor and she the perpetually guilty defendant.
“I called her in the afternoon and told her I wouldn’t make it. She said it was fine,” Lera took a step toward the kitchen, instinctively trying to move out of the line of fire. “A social worker visited her this morning and brought groceries. I didn’t abandon her to her fate.”
“What else would she tell you?” Vadim followed her, his voice gaining force. “That she feels bad and can’t make it to the bathroom? She won’t complain—she’s proud. You’re supposed to understand that without words! You, as the future lady of our house, as my wife, should anticipate these things!”
He planted himself in the middle of the kitchen, filling all the free space. The microwave beeped to announce the lasagna was ready, but no one paid attention. Valeria looked at him, and her exhaustion slowly began transforming into something else—cold, sober irritation.
“Vadim, I’m not a mind reader. I’m a person who worked ten hours today with almost no break. I physically couldn’t be in two places at once.”
“That’s not an excuse. Those are pretexts,” he cut in, and a steely, unyielding gleam flashed in his eyes. “Caring for her is your duty. Your direct duty as my future wife. You need to understand that and accept it as a given.”
He said it with such confident, immovable certainty, as if quoting an article from a family code he himself had written. The word “duty” hung in the kitchen air, pushing out the smell of food and the cozy warmth. It was alien, bureaucratic—like a stamp on a document you sign without looking.
Lera froze. She stopped hearing the hum of the fridge, the traffic outside the window. She looked at the face of her fiancé—the man she was supposed to marry in two months—and she didn’t see love, care, or partnership. She saw an overseer who’d come to check whether she was doing her job properly. And in that moment, all the day’s fatigue evaporated, giving way to an icy, crystalline clarity.
“Duty?” she repeated. Quietly, almost tonelessly. But that quiet word sounded in the kitchen louder than any shout. She stared straight at him, with the gaze of someone who has just noticed the ugly detail on a familiar painting—the one that changes its entire meaning.
“Yes. What did you think?”
He nodded smugly, as if she had asked the stupidest question in the world and he, tired of her incomprehension, had finally set everything straight. That nod, that calm, confident tone became the trigger for Valeria. Not for hysteria—for something far colder and more final. Suddenly she saw the whole picture without the rosy filters of love and hopes for a shared future.
Snatches of their plans flashed through her mind: the white dress they’d chosen last week, their silly arguments about a honeymoon destination, his promises to carry her in his arms. And now, over those bright images, another picture laid itself—disgustingly clear and real: she, worn out after work, going not home but to his mother’s stuffy apartment that smelled of medicine and old age. She saw her hands changing a diaper, felt the dull ache in her back from lifting and turning someone else’s frail body. And in that picture there was no Vadim. He was somewhere in their cozy apartment, waiting for dinner, certain that his woman was “fulfilling her duty.”
Lera gave a bitter little smile, with no trace of amusement in it. It was the sound of a snapped string.
“My duty?” she repeated, and now there was metal in her voice. “So, according to you, I’m getting married to become a free caregiver for your mother? To wash her, spoon-feed her, and change her diapers for the rest of her days? Is that the happy family life you’re offering me?”
Vadim frowned, his face twisting in irritation. He hadn’t expected such pushback. In his world a woman was supposed to accept her role meekly.
“Why do you always exaggerate? She’s my mother! She raised me, lost sleep over me…”
“Don’t lecture me about her sleepless nights,” Lera cut him off sharply. “I’m talking about my life. About our life. Or is there not going to be any ‘our’ life? Will there only be your life and your mother, while I’m the service staff who should be grateful for the opportunity?”
He rounded the table and leaned on the counter, looking down at her. His favorite pose in arguments—a dominance pose.
“This is called family. This is called respect for elders. That’s how it’s done in normal families. A wife takes care of her husband and his parents. That’s the foundation. My father looked after his mother until her last day, and my mother helped him, and no one thought it was shameful. And you… you’re made of different stuff. All you want is comfort and entertainment.”
His words were like small, poisonous darts. He was trying to prick her, to make her feel selfish and wrong. But he was too late. The process had begun, and her soul was icing over in armor.
“Yes, Vadim, I’m made of different stuff,” she agreed calmly, meeting his eyes. “The kind where marriage is a partnership of two equals, not a lifetime slavery contract. I thought I was marrying a man with whom we would build our future together. Turns out I’m just interviewing for a nurse’s position. Unpaid.”
“Stop talking nonsense!” He slapped his palm on the table—but not hard, more to signal his anger than to express it. “You’re just looking for an excuse to shirk! It’s not that hard to swing by for an hour or two!”
“An hour or two? Every day? After work? And weekends too, I suppose? And when are we supposed to live, Vadim? When are we supposed to be together? Or will our evenings now go like this: you on the couch in front of the TV, and me on the phone reporting to you whether I changed Zinaida Viktorovna’s diaper?”
She said it with such cold, cutting sarcasm that he lost his tongue for a moment. He looked at her, bafflement in his eyes. He genuinely didn’t understand what the problem was. In his coordinates, everything was logical and correct. He was the man. She was his woman. His mother was part of him. Therefore, his woman should care for his “part.” It was as simple as two times two.
“I thought you loved me,” he finally managed, reaching for his last, cheapest argument.
Valeria slowly shook her head.
“I thought so too. And today I realized you’re not looking for love—you’re looking for convenience. A free bonus to your comfortable life. And love, in your understanding, is when I silently agree to everything you order. Well, darling, that’s not love. That’s exploitation.”
The word hit him in the face like a slap. Vadim recoiled from the counter, his features contorting. He wasn’t used to Valeria—his quiet, compliant Lera—speaking to him like that. Looking at him like that—cold, appraising, as if weighing him on an invisible scale and disliking the result intensely. Confusion flickered in his eyes, but it drowned instantly in a new wave of wounded pride. He was losing this battle, and that was unbearable.
So he decided to play his trump card. The one that was supposed to work unfailingly.
Without a word, he demonstratively pulled his phone from his pocket. His movements were deliberately slow, theatrical. He didn’t look at Lera, but he felt her gaze, and it gave him confidence. He found “Mom” in his contacts and pressed call, immediately switching to speaker. All-in—his last attempt to appeal to her conscience, to what he considered her feminine softness.
“Yes, son?” came the thin, trembling voice of Zinaida Viktorovna from the speaker. It was weak, as if muffled by a wad of cotton. The voice of a sick, lonely person.
Vadim shot Valeria a quick, triumphant glance. There, listen. Listen and be ashamed.
“Hi, Mom. How are you? I just wanted to check on you,” his own voice changed at once. The steel and hardness vanished; it became soft, velvety, full of filial care. It was a revolting, fake performance, and Lera saw it with frightening clarity.
“Oh, Vadimchik… Well… I’m lying here. My head is spinning today. I was waiting for Lerochka, she promised to stop by. She’s not coming? Did something happen?”
Every word from Zinaida Viktorovna carried an old woman’s hurt and anxiety. She wasn’t complaining directly, but her intonations painted abandonment better than any words.
“No, Mom, she’s not coming. She has… work,” Vadim paused meaningfully, loading that simple word with a whole world of accusation. “A lot of work. Important things.”
Lera stood with her shoulder against the cold refrigerator and kept silent. She didn’t move—hardly breathed. She listened to the dialogue and felt the last drop of warmth toward the man standing two steps away freeze inside her. He wasn’t merely arguing with her. He was cynically, cold-bloodedly using his sick mother as a battering ram to break her will. He had turned the old woman’s fear and loneliness into a weapon aimed at the woman he supposedly loved. That was beyond the pale. That was vile.
“Have you eaten anything?” Vadim continued his little play. “You need to eat, Mom. You know you mustn’t skip meals.”
“What am I going to eat here all alone… No appetite at all. My blood pressure’s up again, probably. I took a pill, just lying here staring at the ceiling. Good thing you called, son, otherwise it’s so bleak…”
He let that phrase hang in the air so it would soak properly into Valeria’s conscience. He looked at her, not hiding his sense of superiority. His gaze said: Well? Swallowed it? Do you see now what a heartless person you are?
But he’d miscalculated. He expected tears on her face, repentance, shame. Instead, he saw only a mask of ice. Her eyes—once warm and alive—had become two dark, impenetrable crystals. There was nothing in them—no anger, no hurt. Only emptiness. Emptiness where, an hour ago, there had been love.
She was looking through him, at the ugly essence of what he’d done. In that moment she understood completely: it wasn’t about his mother. It was about him. About his rotten, exploitative nature for which any person is merely a resource. His mother, and she—everyone was just a function, an instrument to ensure his personal comfort and peace.
“All right, Mom, get some rest,” Vadim said, wrapping up the call. “We’ll… sort it out here. I’ll talk to her. Everything will be fine.”
He hung up and, with a satisfied air, set the phone on the table. He was sure the game was played and won. He expected her capitulation. Expected her to come over, hug him, and admit he was right.
He expected in vain.
The silence that followed was dense and heavy. It didn’t ring or press; it simply existed, like a new, invisible object in the room. Vadim placed the phone on the table and crossed his arms over his chest, assuming the pose of a victor. He looked at Valeria with poorly concealed triumph, waiting for her to break, to come over and start apologizing. In his world this was checkmate. He’d pinned her to the wall with an irrefutable piece of evidence—his own mother’s suffering—and now awaited unconditional surrender.
He waited a minute. Two. Then he said loudly enough for her to hear it from anywhere in the apartment:
“Starting tomorrow, you’re resuming your duties! You will go to my mother and help her with everything, whether you want to or not! Clear?!”
Valeria slowly peeled herself off the refrigerator. She took one step toward the center of the kitchen and stopped. Her face was calm, almost lifeless, but deep in her eyes a cold, dark fire was kindling. She looked at him as if seeing him for the first time—not a fiancé, not a beloved man, but a stranger she found unpleasant.
Then she spoke. Her voice was steady, without a quaver, but there was such strength in it that Vadim involuntarily straightened up.
“On what grounds am I supposed to go to your mother every evening to wash her and change her diapers? Hire a caregiver for her, because I will not be doing this anymore.”
The words dropped into the kitchen like stones. Not like a shout—like a sentence. Vadim was caught off guard. He opened his mouth to object, to unleash his righteous anger—but she didn’t let him get a word in.
“Did you think your little performance would work?” She gave a mirthless smile—a grimace of contempt. “You decided to press on pity, to make me out to be a heartless monster? Congratulations, you’ve just shown me your true face. The face of a cheap manipulator who’s willing to use his sick mother as a cudgel to drive me into a pen.”
He stared at her, and his confidence began to crack like thin ice underfoot. This wasn’t Lera. This was some other woman—unfamiliar and frightening in her cold composure.
“So listen to me, Vadim,” she went on, taking another step toward him. “There won’t be a wedding. I’m not going to bury myself under your future mother-in-law’s diapers at the whim of a future husband who thinks it’s my direct duty. I wanted a family, not a life sentence.”
“How dare—” he began, but his voice drowned in her gaze.
“And now about your mother. You’re so worried about her, aren’t you? Such a loving son. Well, here’s a wonderful chance to prove it. You can put on an apron and fulfill your filial duty. You’re a man, the head of the future family. Go on. Every evening, after work. You’ll cook for her yourself, mop the floors, wash her laundry. And change the diapers, Vadim. Don’t forget the diapers. She’s your mother. That’s your duty. You said so yourself—it’s fundamental, it’s respect. So respect.”
She delivered it methodically, hammering each word like a nail. She took his own weapon—his words about duty, family, and respect—and turned them against him. She drew him a picture of his own future, the very one he had so easily prepared for her.
Finished, she turned without a word and walked toward the entryway. She didn’t run, didn’t slam doors. She simply walked. Vadim watched her back, and the realization began to dawn—not that he had hurt her, but that the perfectly arranged world in which he’d been so comfortable had collapsed in an instant. He had destroyed it with his own hands.
She picked up her purse and keys from the hall table. He heard her putting on her shoes. He wanted to shout something, to stop her, but no sound would come. His mouth was dry.
The front door clicked softly shut.
Vadim was left alone in the kitchen. He looked around, as if not recognizing the familiar surroundings. His gaze fell on the microwave with the forgotten lasagna inside. Dinner for two. He walked over slowly and opened the door. The smell of cooled, dried-out food drifted through the kitchen. The smell of a life gone wrong. And for the first time that evening, he felt neither anger nor resentment. He felt an animal, chilling fear of the reality in which he had just been left. Alone. With his duty…