Natalya mechanically chopped an Olivier salad, staring through the kitchen window into the autumn courtyard. The guests were due any minute—Andrey had invited a few colleagues from work and a couple of friends from his university days. Another excuse to show off how “successful” they were, she thought, setting the knife aside.
“Natalya, how’s it going in there?” her husband’s voice floated in from the living room. “Want me to help?”
She smirked to herself. Help. In eight years of marriage, Andrey had never once chopped a single salad before company arrived. But once everyone sat down, he would always say something like, “Natalya and I put this together,” or “We cooked together, like always.”
“I’ve got it,” she replied shortly.
The doorbell rang. Natalya heard Andrey hurry to open it, heard his bright greetings and loud kisses on someone’s cheeks. Voices swelled in the entryway—Dima and his wife Lena, by the sound of it. Natalya wiped her hands on a towel, fixed her hair, and went out to welcome them.
“Natalya!” Lena held out a bouquet of chrysanthemums and a box of chocolates. “I’m so happy to see you! Have you lost weight?”
“No, same curves as always,” Natalya smiled, taking the flowers.
“Oh, come on—look at that waist!” Lena turned to the men. “Andrey, you’d better appreciate your wife! Such a beauty—and she cooks so well, I remember last time…”
“I do, I do,” Andrey waved it off airily. “Natalya’s my backbone. I’m out there spinning at work, earning money, and she keeps the home running. A proper division of labor, so to speak.”
Natalya felt irritation rising but said nothing. She put the flowers in a vase and carried the chocolates into the kitchen. Behind her, Andrey was already leading Dima into the living room, showing off their new TV.
“Check it out—OLED, seventy-five inches! Bought it last month. I figure you’ve got to treat yourself to quality things when you can.”
Dima whistled, eyeing the screen. Natalya came back with a pitcher of water and glasses and set everything on the table. Soon the rest arrived—Sergey with Olya, Max with Irina. Everyone sat down, Andrey poured wine, and made a toast to the gathering.
Dinner flowed in the usual way. Natalya topped up drinks, served food, cleared empty plates. The guests praised the appetizers and jumped from topic to topic. Andrey practically bloomed—wine loosened his tongue and gave him confidence.
“You know Andrey’s got the best numbers in the department?” Sergey began. “The boss said so at the meeting.”
“Oh, come on,” Andrey waved modestly, but his eyes gleamed. “I just do what I can. I’ve got a family, responsibility. You’ve got to provide a decent standard of living.”
“And you do!” Max chimed in. “New-build apartment, a car, you go abroad every year…”
“All me,” Andrey nodded, filling his glass. “No loans either, by the way. I decided from the start: if I buy something, I buy it with my own money. Worked, saved—here’s the result.”
Natalya froze with a spoonful of salad in midair. Sergey watched Andrey with admiration.
“Well done, man! Olya and I took out a twenty-year mortgage. That’s our life—every month we give the bank half our salaries.”
“I’m fundamentally against loans,” Andrey continued, getting into it. “It’s bondage. Better to endure, save up, and buy outright—no interest.”
“And the car too?” Irina, Max’s wife, asked.
“Of course!” Andrey grinned widely. “Picked it, drove to the dealership, signed everything in one day. Right, Natasha?”
He turned to his wife. Natalya slowly lowered the spoon to her plate. Everyone’s eyes shifted to her.
“No. That’s not true,” she said quietly, but clearly.
A pause fell over the table. Andrey blinked in confusion.
“What?”
“I said it’s not true.” Natalya looked up at him. A strange calm spread through her chest. Words she had rehearsed in her head for years now came out easily, precisely. “You’re lying.”
“Natalya, what are you doing?” irritation crept into Andrey’s voice. “What are you talking about?”
“Are you telling everyone again that you bought the apartment and the car all by yourself?” she asked, staring him straight in the eyes. “I bought the apartment. With my grandmother’s inheritance. Back then you’d just started working after university—you were making pennies. That new-build apartment cost six million. I sold my grandmother’s apartment and her dacha and paid the full amount.”
Dead silence. Lena dropped her fork and didn’t even bend to pick it up. Dima coughed awkwardly. Andrey turned pale.
“Natalya, what does that have to do with— We’re a family, it’s all shared…”
“Shared?” Natalya gave a small, sharp laugh. “Then why do you always say ‘I bought,’ ‘I picked,’ ‘I provide’? Where exactly is the ‘we’?”
“Well… I mean…” Andrey stammered, his eyes darting. “Listen, you don’t have to do this in front of people…”
“And you do?” Natalya’s voice strengthened. “You can tell them what a hero you are, how you earned everything yourself—but I can’t tell the truth?”
Sergey reached for the bottle as if wine might save him. Irina stared at her plate. Max studied the pattern on the tablecloth. Olya, on the other hand, didn’t take her eyes off Natalya—openly interested, with something like solidarity.
“As for the car,” Natalya continued, and now there was even a hint of mockery in her tone, “my parents gave it to us as a wedding gift. Remember, Andrey? Dad handed you the keys right there at the banquet. But even then you told everyone it was ‘our choice,’ that we picked it together. And later you sweet-talked my parents, saying you would’ve bought one yourself—they just beat you to it.”
Andrey shot up from the table. His face flushed red.
“Have you completely lost it?” he hissed. “Stop it—now!”
“Why should I?” Natalya stood too, but slowly, collected. “For eight years I’ve kept quiet. For eight years I nodded and smiled while you told everyone, again and again, how successful you are, how you achieved everything yourself. And what about me? I’m just a housewife, right? Sitting at home spending your money?”
“I never said that!” Andrey protested.
“You did. All the time.” Natalya swept her gaze over the frozen guests. “I’m sorry you had to witness this. But apparently there was no other way.”
Lena was the first to recover.
“Natalya, we understand,” she said carefully. “Don’t worry.”
“Exactly—no need to worry!” Andrey latched onto her words. “Discussing family matters in front of guests is—”
“You brag in front of guests,” Natalya cut him off. “What’s the difference? Bragging is allowed, but the truth isn’t?”
Andrey stood there breathing hard, fists clenched. Natalya watched anger, hurt, and something else fight in his eyes—fear, maybe? Fear that the façade had collapsed, that the pretty picture had crumbled?
“And I didn’t put money toward our apartment either,” Dima said suddenly. “Lena paid the first mortgage down payment from her savings. I was unemployed for half a year back then.”
Lena looked at him, startled. Dima shrugged.
“What? If we’re being honest, let’s be honest. I found work later and took over the payments, but the start was hers.”
Max huffed.
“Our car was a gift from my mother-in-law. Her old Toyota. But yeah—we tell everyone we bought it ourselves. Sounds smoother.”
Irina nodded.
“Yeah. Otherwise people start asking, ‘Your parents help you? So you can’t manage on your own?’ Easier to lie.”
Olya took a sip of wine and looked at Sergey with a crooked smile.
“And why don’t you tell us, dear, who paid for our renovation?”
Sergey shifted in his chair.
“Well… your bonus went toward it…”
“Not a bonus—three annual bonuses plus my savings,” Olya corrected. “And you were on a flat salary with no bonuses and spent half of it on beer with your friends.”
Sergey gave a guilty smile.
“Fine. I admit it. I didn’t really contribute much.”
Andrey still stood, staring at the guests like a man betrayed by his allies. Natalya sat back down, feeling something warm unfurl inside her—something she’d nearly forgotten. Relief. Release.
“Andrey, sit down,” she said quietly. “Let’s finish dinner and talk like normal people.”
He lowered himself into his chair slowly without looking at anyone. He grabbed his glass, drank it in one gulp, poured more.
“I didn’t want to deceive anyone,” he muttered. “It’s just… I don’t know. It happened.”
“You wanted to look successful,” Natalya said calmly. “You wanted respect. Admiration. And that’s normal, you know? Wanting recognition is normal. But not at the price of lying.”
“I wasn’t lying,” Andrey insisted stubbornly. “I really do work a lot. I bring money home. I support the family.”
“You work—yes. You bring money—yes. But you don’t ‘support’ us alone. You contribute your part, and I contribute mine. I have a job too, or did you forget?”
Andrey lifted his head.
“What job? Freelance, working from home…”
“Which brings in good money,” Natalya interrupted. “Almost as much as you earn. But for some reason you’re the only one who ‘supports the family,’ and I’m the one who ‘sits at home.’”
“I never said you sit at home!”
“You did. Not directly, but you implied it. ‘Natalya’s my backbone,’ ‘I’m out there earning money.’ Like I don’t earn. Like my contribution doesn’t count.”
Andrey fell silent, turning his glass in his hands. Natalya could see the tension in his shoulders, in his jaw. But she no longer felt the urge to pity him, to smooth the sharp edges.
“Do you know what hurts the most?” she went on, softer. “Not even that you take credit. It’s that you genuinely believe your version. You tell those stories so convincingly it’s like you’ve forgotten what really happened.”
“I remember,” Andrey answered dully. “I remember everything.”
“Then why lie?”
He looked at her—and something unguarded flashed in his eyes, almost childlike.
“Because I want to believe I did it. That I made it. That I’m not some loser whose wife bought him an apartment.”
Natalya felt a sting of pity, but didn’t let it spread. Not now. Not after eight years of silence.
“You’re not a loser,” she said firmly. “You’re a normal person living a normal life. You have a job, a family, friends. We’re building something together. Together, do you hear me? Not you alone, not me alone—together.”
Dima carefully raised his glass.
“To honesty?” he предложил. “And to less lying in families.”
Lena nodded and raised hers. The others followed. Andrey slowly lifted his glass, looked at Natalya. She raised hers too.
“To honesty,” voices echoed.
They drank. The mood loosened a bit—Max made an awkward joke that now everyone would be afraid to embellish stories around Natalya. Irina said it’s actually useful to hear the truth sometimes. Olya topped up the wine and steered the conversation back to work.
Andrey ate in silence, occasionally flicking quick looks at his wife. Natalya felt his gaze but didn’t rush to meet it. Let him process it. Let him think.
By the end of the evening, the mood had largely leveled out. The guests relaxed, started laughing, chatting about news, making plans to meet again. When they said goodbye, Lena hugged Natalya tightly, for real.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “You did great.”
Olya, as she walked out, said:
“You know, I actually liked it. Honest. Human. I’m tired of putting on shows.”
When the door closed behind the last guests, Natalya went to the kitchen and started clearing dishes. Andrey appeared in the doorway, leaning on the frame.
“Why did you do that?” he asked, with no aggression—only fatigue and confusion.
Without turning around, Natalya kept loading plates into the dishwasher.
“Because I’m tired, Andrey. Tired of hearing the same thing. Tired of being a prop in your play about the successful man.”
“I didn’t want to make you a prop.”
“But you did.” She finally turned to him. “Every time you say ‘I bought,’ ‘I achieved,’ ‘I provide’—you make me invisible. Like I’m not here. Like my work doesn’t exist.”
“My work…” Andrey rubbed his face with his hands. “God, Natasha. I honestly didn’t think about it like that. I just wanted… I don’t know. To feel normal.”
“And now you don’t?”
He let out a short laugh with no joy.
“Now I feel like an idiot. Everyone knows I’m a braggart and a liar.”
“Not a liar. Just a person who wanted to seem better than he is,” Natalya said, closing the dishwasher and wiping her hands. “Like everyone.”
“You say it so simply.”
“Because it is simple. You’re not the only one. Everyone polishes their life a bit. But when it becomes a habit—when you start believing your own legend—that’s where the problem is.”
Andrey walked closer and sat on the stool by the kitchen table.
“I’m ashamed,” he admitted. “In front of you. In front of friends.”
“Not in front of friends. They get it. But in front of yourself—yeah, in front of yourself you should be.” Natalya sat opposite him. “Andrey, I don’t want to humiliate you. I don’t need your blood. I need us to be honest with each other. I need you to see me. The real me.”
He looked into her eyes—carefully, seriously.
“I see you,” he said softly. “I always did. I was just afraid to admit that… without you I wouldn’t have managed.”
“We both wouldn’t have managed alone,” Natalya said. “That’s the point. We’re a team. Or we should be.”
“We should,” Andrey agreed. He fell quiet, then said, “I’m sorry. For everything. For the lying, for the bragging. For devaluing your work.”
Natalya nodded, feeling something inside her finally unclench.
“Okay. Just don’t do it again.”
“I’ll try,” he smiled with a slightly guilty look. “Though if I start again… you’ll correct me, won’t you?”
“Oh, I’ll correct you,” Natalya smirked.
They sat in the kitchen silence, while the autumn wind outside drove yellow leaves along the asphalt. Somewhere a building door slammed, and the swings on the playground creaked. Ordinary sounds of an ordinary evening. But something had changed—subtle, yet irreversible.
“Going to bed?” Andrey suggested.
“Let’s go,” Natalya nodded.
They got up. Andrey turned off the kitchen light. In the living room, a lamp still glowed over the remains of the meal—empty glasses, napkins, plates with leftover salad. They’d clean it tomorrow. Today was enough.
They walked down the hallway toward the bedroom, and Natalya suddenly felt Andrey take her hand. Just like that, without words. He squeezed her fingers—uncertain, questioning. She squeezed back.
And that was enough