“Hi! I was just thinking what to cook… Maybe pasta with mushrooms, the way you like it?”
Sasha walked into the kitchen, shrugging his jacket off onto a chair as he went, and froze. Lena didn’t turn around. She was sitting at the table with her hands on her knees, staring at one spot in front of her. Her phone lay on the table, screen up. Sasha went around the table to look at her face, and his cheerful smile slowly slid away when it met her rigid, absent gaze. She didn’t even blink.
“Len? Did something happen? At work?”
She didn’t answer. Slowly, as if it took an enormous effort, she raised her hand and turned the phone screen toward him. Sasha bent over, squinting at the glowing numbers. A bank notification. A dry, faceless message with just three words and five digits: “Debit: 50,000 ₽.” He straightened up, and his eyes darted around the kitchen—over the cabinets, the window, anywhere, as long as he didn’t have to meet her eyes.
“Mom needed it for the sea… she’s tired,” he mumbled, fiddling with a button on his shirt. His voice sounded dull and guilty, like a schoolboy caught misbehaving.
Lena stayed silent for a few more seconds that felt like an eternity to Sasha. He expected anything—shouting, tears, accusations. But she simply stood up slowly, walked around him as if he were a piece of furniture, and went to the fridge. The door opened with a soft hiss, spilling cold air into the kitchen. Sasha watched her movements, unable to understand what was happening.
She took out a large pot of yesterday’s soup. Set it on the table. Then she pulled out two identical plastic containers and placed them beside it. She lifted the lid, took a ladle, and began methodically—without spilling a drop—pouring soup. One ladle into the first container, one into the second. Another into the first, another into the second. With unnerving precision, she continued until the pot was exactly half empty. Then she closed it and put it back. Next came the cutlets. Four of them. Two into one container, two into the other. Then salad. She spooned it out, painstakingly dividing it in half.
Sasha watched this silent ritual, and an unpleasant chill ran down his spine. It was worse than any scandal. It felt like the work of a pathologist calmly dissecting the dead body of their shared life.
When everything had been divided, Lena snapped the lids shut. She slid one container to the edge of the table—toward him. The second she set in front of herself.
“This is mine,” she said. Her voice was even, not a single tremor in it. “This is yours. Our shared budget is closed as of this moment. We split utilities fifty-fifty—you’ll bring me your part in cash along with the receipts. Groceries—each of us buys their own.”
She paused, as if giving him time to absorb it.
“And I’ll be setting aside money for the baby in my personal account, which you won’t have access to. You chose your priority—your mother’s vacation. Now you can fund it yourself.”
Sasha finally found his voice. He stepped toward her, reaching out to hug her, to melt this ice with familiar affection.
“Len, come on—what are you doing? Stop it. It’s just money, we’ll earn more. Mom—”
She jerked away from him so sharply it was as if he were red-hot. Her eyes, empty until then, flared with a cold, prickling fire.
“And don’t you dare touch me. Ever.”
With that, she sat at the table, opened her container, took a spoon, and began to eat. Slowly. Methodically. Staring straight ahead. She didn’t look at him, didn’t acknowledge his presence. He simply stopped existing for her. Sasha stood in the middle of the kitchen, looking at his container with half their shared dinner, at the woman who had just crossed him out of her life with one movement of a spoon, and understood clearly: the cold war in their little apartment had just begun. And he didn’t know its rules.
Two days passed in a ringing, icy vacuum. The apartment that had once been their shared fortress turned into a demarcation line. In the mornings they moved around the kitchen in silence like two ghosts, invisible to each other. Lena took her own bottle of milk from the fridge—marked with a marker—poured it into her personal mug, and made coffee in her small moka pot. Sasha, pretending nothing was happening, took the communal milk carton and used the shared coffee machine. But his milk now stood on a separate shelf Lena had wordlessly assigned him, after moving all her products.
Sasha tried to break through the wall of ice. He didn’t understand—didn’t want to understand—the depth of the chasm between them. To him it was an annoying, drawn-out whim, intensified by pregnancy. On the first evening he brought her favorite pistachio cake. Put it on the table with his most disarming smile.
“Look what I brought. Let’s have some tea, Len. Come on, enough already.”
She walked out of the room, gave the cake box an indifferent glance, and without saying a word, picked it up and moved it to “his” half of the table, closer to the chair with his jacket on it. The gesture was more eloquent than a slap. She didn’t just refuse—she categorized his attempt as something that belonged exclusively to him, foreign to her world. The cake stood there all night, and in the morning Sasha, furious, swept it into the trash.
On the third evening he decided to be craftier. He was making dinner on his side of the kitchen when his phone rang. The screen showed: “Mom.” Sasha’s heart jumped with relief. Here it was—his chance! The voice of his happy, well-rested mother would melt this ice. He answered and, with a conspiratorial smile at Lena’s back, hit the speakerphone button.
“My golden boy, hello!” Svetlana Markovna’s brisk voice—soaked in southern sun—filled the whole kitchen. “Everything is just wonderful! I’m sitting here choosing a hotel—there’s one so luxurious, all-inclusive, can you imagine? Thank you, my generous one, my very best! I’m telling everyone what a caring son I have.”
Sasha beamed, nodding at the phone as if Lena could appreciate his triumph. But Lena didn’t move. She froze with a knife in her hand over the cutting board.
“Just tell your…” his mother’s voice stumbled for a second, searching for a word, “…Lenochka not to be mad. Money can always be earned again, but a mother only has one health. I’ll get a proper rest, recharge—maybe your Lenochka will soften up.”
Sasha hurriedly turned off the speakerphone.
“Well, see? Mom’s happy,” he began ingratiatingly, turning to Lena.
She slowly set the knife down. Turned around. Her face was white as canvas, her eyes darkened. The days of cold indifference were over. Something else began.
“Sasha, your mother isn’t even retired yet! She works just like we do—so let her earn her own trips instead of running to us for money! Especially since we’re going to have a child soon! When are you going to set your priorities—what matters more to you?!”
“Len…”
“Our car—the one I’ll be driving our son to the clinic in—or her ‘all-inclusive’?!”
He wanted to argue, to say something about duty, respect, but she didn’t let him.
“Today. Right now. You go to her and take that money back. Every last ruble. I’ll be waiting here. If you come back without it, you can pack your things and go back to your mother. For good.”
Sasha drove, gripping the steering wheel so hard his knuckles whitened. Lena’s ultimatum buzzed in his ears, mixing with the noise of the night city. But in his head he wasn’t building a plan to get the money back. He was rehearsing a speech. Choosing the words he’d use to explain to his mother that she simply needed to call Lena, say a few sweet things, promise that next time she’d ask permission. He wasn’t going to take the money—he was going to put out a fire with gasoline, naïvely thinking it was water. He saw himself not as an enforcer sent by his wife, but as a wise diplomat who would settle everything.
Svetlana Markovna opened the door herself, in a house robe, her face glowing with anticipation of the trip. Bright travel agency brochures were spread across the coffee table in the living room.
“Sashenka? What’s wrong? You’re so pale. Come in, I’ve just put the kettle on.”
“Mom, we need to talk,” Sasha walked in but didn’t sit. He stayed standing in the middle of the living room like an uninvited guest.
“Talk? Of course, sit down. I’m just choosing where to go for an excursion—pyramids or—”
“Mom, it’s about Lena. She… she knows about the money.”
Svetlana Markovna’s smile slowly slid off her face. She set the brochure down and looked at her son for a long, appraising moment. There was no surprise in her eyes. No guilt. Only a cold, calculating assessment.
“So she knows. And what? Did she send you to take back a gift you gave your own mother?”
Her voice turned stiff, like a starched collar. Sasha felt uneasy. His prepared speech about reconciliation crumbled before it began.
“No, not exactly… She’s very upset. She was yelling. Mom, I’m asking you—just call her. Say you’re sorry it happened like this. Say that—”
“Say I’m sorry?” Svetlana Markovna rose slowly. “Sorry that my son took care of his mother’s health? Sorry that after thirty years of work I can’t afford one miserable week at the sea while she sits at home saving for another piece of junk? Sasha, open your eyes!”
She stepped right up to him. Her voice didn’t break into a shout—on the contrary, it dropped lower, more confidential, and that made it even more poisonous.
“It’s not about the money, son. She’s just using it as an excuse. She’s always been like that, from the very beginning. She simply doesn’t like that you have me. That you love me and take care of me. And now she’s pregnant, and her character has completely spoiled. She wants you to belong only to her. Completely. For you to forget who gave birth to you and raised you.”
Sasha stayed silent, his head lowered. His mother’s words fell onto the fertile ground of his own resentment toward Lena. He had wanted the best. He was a good son. Why couldn’t Lena understand that?
“She gave you an ultimatum, didn’t she?” Svetlana Markovna guessed flawlessly. “Her or me. Right? And you ran to me so I’d humiliate myself in front of her? So I—your mother—would beg forgiveness from that girl for the fact that you love me?”
She placed her hands on his shoulders, looking into his eyes with a maternal tenderness more skillful than any acting trick.
“Sasha, be a man. You’re the head of the family. And she is your wife. She should be wiser. Explain it to her. Calmly, without yelling. Tell her that a mother is sacred. She’ll understand. If she loves you, she’ll understand. And if she doesn’t… then it’s worth thinking about what kind of love that is.”
He looked up at her. The confusion was gone from his eyes. In its place was newfound certainty. He returned home not with the money, but with something far worse—with a firm conviction that he was right.
Lena was waiting in the kitchen, sitting on the same chair. She saw his empty, almost enlightened face and understood everything even before he opened his mouth.
“I talked to Mom,” he began in that patronizing tone she hated. “We discussed everything. Len, you have to understand. It’s not just money, it’s a matter of respect. Mom thinks you’re just too nervous because of the pregnancy. You need to be wiser, not make a mountain out of a molehill. It’s family. She’s your future mother-in-law, and you—”
Lena didn’t answer. She simply got up and went into the bedroom, leaving him standing in the middle of the kitchen with his “wisdom” and “respect.” After that, she stopped talking to him. Completely. He tried to speak, to explain, even to raise his voice—but he ran into an unbreakable wall of silence. She moved around the apartment like a shadow, did her chores, ate from her own dishes, and his existence ended for her the moment he returned without the money. To her, he was gone.
Two more days passed. In the evening, the doorbell rang. Sasha—glad for any disruption of the oppressive emptiness—rushed to open it. His mother stood on the doorstep, radiant and dressed up, a small suitcase at her feet.
“Sashenka, just for a minute! The taxi’s already waiting—I decided to drop by and say goodbye like family!”
She stepped into the hallway, looking around like a hostess expecting to see a repentant daughter-in-law who might even have baked a farewell pie. Sasha brightened, leading her into the living room. And there they both froze.
In the center of the room stood their dining table—but it looked completely different. It was set with a snow-white tablecloth for one person. On a beautiful porcelain plate lay sandwiches thickly layered with red caviar. Beside it sat a little bowl of large strawberries and slices of mango. In a tall crystal glass, dark cherry juice sparkled. And at that table, in an elegant silk dress Sasha had only seen her wear once at a restaurant, sat Lena. She was slowly spreading caviar onto another piece of bread, paying not the slightest attention to the people who had come in.
The silence in the room was so dense it felt touchable. Svetlana Markovna stopped smiling. Her face gradually lengthened.
“Len, what is this?” Sasha finally managed, pointing at the table. His voice sounded foolish and lost.
Lena finished with the sandwich, carefully dabbed her lips with a napkin, and only then turned her head toward him. Her gaze was calm and cold, like a surgeon looking at an amputated limb.
“Dinner. I’m celebrating.”
“What are you celebrating?” Angry notes crept into Sasha’s voice. The lavish table—caviar, fruit—looked like a personal insult against the backdrop of their conflict.
“The start of my new life. Independent. I calculated how much money I can save if I stop supporting you and your relatives. Turns out it’s a pretty decent sum. Enough not only for the baby, but for small joys for myself too. Here—trying it,” she nodded toward the caviar.
Svetlana Markovna made a strangled sound, something like a hiss. She wanted to say something, but Lena cut her off. Lena lifted her glass of juice and raised it, looking straight into her mother-in-law’s eyes.
“Svetlana Markovna—to your wonderful vacation. I hope your ‘all-inclusive’ doesn’t disappoint.”
She took a small sip, set the glass down, and turned to her husband. Her face held nothing but a tired statement of fact.
“Sasha, your things are packed. Two bags and a box of tools are in the hallway by the door. You can walk your mother straight home. And stay there to live.”
She turned back to the table, took a fork, and with visible pleasure speared a strawberry. Sasha and his mother stood as if struck by lightning. The woman sitting before them wasn’t their Lena—not a quiet pregnant wife and obedient daughter-in-law. Before them sat an absolute stranger, a woman who had just written them out of her life and was now having dinner on the ruins of their family, celebrating her freedom