The evening sun was slowly drowning behind the glass façades of the city’s giant buildings, flooding the kitchen with a warm amber glow. Alice arranged wine glasses on the polished countertop, and the crystal chimed—thin, almost musical. That sound had always felt like a symbol to her: everything in her life now was fragile, transparent, expensive.
“Alright,” Maxim said without looking up. He sat on a tall barstool, buried in the glow of his tablet, the screen reflecting in his glasses. “The list is basically done. Denis from work and his wife confirmed. My dad’s boss too. And Kira, obviously, will be there.”
“Don’t,” he added at last, and there wasn’t a flicker of doubt in his voice.
“Why?” Alice stopped mid-wipe, the glass still in her hands. “They came to the last anniversary. It was fine.”
“Fine?” Maxim took off his glasses and set them on the counter with a soft click. He looked at her with tired, flat eyes. “Alice, let’s not play pretend. It was awkward. Your dad tried to talk to my father about spare-part prices, and my father hasn’t driven in twenty years—he has a driver. And your mom sat in a corner all night like she’d been invited as a formality.”
“They’re just modest,” Alice said quietly. Something warm and prickly ached in her chest at the same time. “They’re not used to this… scale.”
“Exactly.” Maxim put his glasses back on and returned to the tablet. “So let’s not put them in that position. Or put my mom in that position. This evening matters to her.”
Alice picked up the next glass, but she didn’t wipe it. She just held it. The cold crystal slowly warmed under her palm.
Silence fell suddenly—dense, ringing—like the moment after a slap. Alice heard a car pass somewhere outside, heard the refrigerator click as the compressor kicked in. Everything sounded too sharp, too distant, as if it were coming through thick glass. She looked at her husband and didn’t recognize his face. The features were familiar, but they felt foreign—like wax molded into the shape of a man.
“What… what did you say?” Her own voice came out muffled, from somewhere deep inside her.
“You heard me.” Maxim stood up, walked to the window, and turned his back to her. “Let’s not act like we’re one big happy family. We’re different. Different circles, different interests. My mother accepts you—she tries for you. But your roots… they’re not hers. And that’s fine. Just accept it as reality.”
Each word plucked a string inside her—precise, cold, without anger. That was the most brutal part: the casual, indifferent certainty.
“Reality?” Alice heard the tremor in her voice and couldn’t stop it. “My parents are ‘reality’? Like the weather or traffic jams? Maxim, they’re the people who raised me. The people who let us live in their apartment while we renovated this one. The people who—”
“The people who will stay home, perfectly comfortable,” he cut in, turning around. In his eyes she didn’t see rage—she saw impatience. Annoyance at an employee who couldn’t understand the obvious. “They’ll be better off there. And we will be better off here. Everyone wins.”
“I don’t win,” she blurted, louder than she meant to.
Maxim grimaced.
“Are you being selfish?” he asked softly. “My mother has been planning this evening for a month. Her blood pressure’s all over the place. You want to ruin everything because you’re offended? Out of principle?”
It was clever. The hit shifted. Now she was the guilty one—ungrateful, selfish, hurting a sick woman with her whims.
“It’s not principle,” Alice whispered. “It’s my mom and dad.”
“And this is my mother!” He slammed his palm on the countertop. The glasses rang. “And this is my home. And our life that we’re building. Or do you want to build it while looking back at some old concrete block and listening to your father explain how to save on utilities?”
His words hung in the air—sharp, heavy. Alice felt hot tears start sliding down her cheeks. She hadn’t even noticed when she began to cry.
Seeing her tears, Maxim softened. His face relaxed. He stepped closer, tried to pull her into an embrace.
“Alright, alright… stop.” His voice became the one he used when persuading a client into a concession. “I get it. It hurts. But you’re smart. You understand how things work. It’s not me or Mom against your parents. It’s just… the rules. So everyone’s comfortable.”
He stroked her back. His hand felt heavy.
“Listen, I’ll make you a deal. After the anniversary, we fly to Turkey for a week. Just the two of us. We’ll forget all of it. Okay?”
Alice looked straight through him to the city lights beyond the window. They blinked and shimmered like gemstones scattered on black velvet—beautiful, endlessly far away. His words still echoed in her ears: “My mom doesn’t like them.” “Reality.” “The rules.”
And suddenly, with painful clarity, a memory surfaced—not from childhood, but from only five years ago. She and Maxim had just met. He used to pick her up in his foreign car from that very “old concrete block.” Her father came outside to see her off, wearing an old jacket that smelled of engine oil and winter. He shook Maxim’s hand in silence, nodded, and then—after Maxim climbed into the driver’s seat—he leaned toward Alice and slipped a small bundle into her palm.
“Here, sweetheart,” he rasped. “Pies—your mom’s. And a little money… just in case. So he doesn’t think you depend on him.”
She kept that money for a long time afterward, unable to spend it. And they ate the pies in the car, laughing, crumbs scattering over the expensive interior. Maxim had said then, “That’s sweet. Homey.”
Where did that Maxim go? Or had he never existed? Maybe that was only an image—temporary clothing he wore until he realized she was already bought. Bought with attention, care, this apartment with a view, the quiet promise of a life without scarcity.
Alice wiped her face with the back of her hand and stepped out of his reach.
“Fine,” she said dully. “Don’t invite them.”
Maxim smiled, relieved.
“That’s my girl. Come on, I’ll show you what wine I ordered.”
He picked up the tablet and left the kitchen. Alice stayed standing in the gleaming space of white and steel. She walked to the huge window and pressed her forehead to the cold glass. Down below, car lights streamed through the dark. Thousands of lives moved and breathed. Somewhere on the other side of the city, in a small apartment with peeling wallpaper, the two people she loved most sat at their table—and had no idea that, with a quick swipe on a screen, they had just been crossed out of their daughter’s life like an inconvenient, ugly detail.
“The rules.” Someone else’s rules. Someone else’s table. Someone else’s life.
And where am I? she thought with sudden, icy clarity. Where is my place in this чужая life?
The week dragged on like thick, bitter syrup. Every morning Alice woke with a stone weight on her chest. Maxim behaved as if that conversation had never happened. He was politely affectionate, discussing the menu, flowers, dress code. His calm was worse than shouting. It erased her pain, made it look foolish, imagined.
One morning, after Maxim left for the office, Alice called her mother-in-law. Her palm sweated against the phone. She didn’t even know what she wanted—an apology, an explanation, a single drop of understanding.
The call was answered almost immediately.
“Hello, darling!” Svetlana Petrovna’s voice was velvety, honey-sweet—so familiar after five years. “Missing Mom? How are things? Getting ready for my modest little celebration?”
“Hello, Svetlana Petrovna… yes, we’re getting ready.” Alice swallowed the lump in her throat. “I wanted to… talk about my parents.”
A brief silence on the other end—not empty, but attentive, watchful.
“And what about them, dear?” the sweetness remained, but a steel thread slid beneath it. “Are they unwell?”
“No, they’re fine. It’s just… Maxim said you didn’t really want them at the anniversary.”
“Oh, Alinochka,” Svetlana Petrovna sighed with such practiced sorrow it sounded rehearsed. “You misunderstood completely. And Maxim—hopeless—can’t find the right words. Of course I feel the warmest affection for your parents. Such honest, simple people. That’s rare these days.”
Alice said nothing, jaw clenched. She had learned to recognize this sweet poison.
“But you understand,” her mother-in-law continued, lowering her voice into a confidential whisper, “the guest list is very… responsible people. Your husband’s superiors, business partners. They simply won’t know what to talk about with your mom and dad. Imagine how uncomfortable your poor parents would feel. I’m thinking of them. I don’t want them sitting there on pins and needles, feeling out of place. That’s torture for sincere, sensitive people.”
The logic was flawless—and merciless. They were being humiliated “for their own good.” Excluded “so they wouldn’t suffer.” Alice felt her words get stuck in her throat—heavy, powerless.
“We could… seat them somewhere comfortable,” she tried, but her voice sounded weak.
“Seat them?” Svetlana Petrovna gave a short, dry laugh. “Sweetheart, it’s not about seats at a table. It’s about places in life. They’re there. We’re here. And that’s normal. You’ve risen higher, you’re part of our family now. Don’t drag the past behind you like an anchor. That’s unfair to Maxim. He’s building a career—he needs support, not extra problems.”
“My parents are not a problem,” Alice forced out through clenched teeth.
“Not in your heart,” her mother-in-law replied instantly. “But in the reality of our world—unfortunately, yes. Accept it, dear. Grow up. We all want the best for you and Maxim.”
The conversation hovered in the air. Alice understood she couldn’t win. Any argument would shatter against the wall of “care” and “common sense.” She mumbled something polite and hung up. Her hands shook.
To steady herself, she went into the city, to a small café where she used to meet friends. Those friends had faded away—either she drifted, or her shiny new life had scared them off.
She ordered coffee and stared out the window. And suddenly she heard a familiar laugh.
“My God—Alice? Is that you?”
Kira, Maxim’s sister, stood over her table. Tall, with a perfect haircut, in an impeccable coat that didn’t match the season. A key fob to an expensive car dangled from her hand.
“Hi, Kira,” Alice managed a weak smile.
“Mind if I sit?” Kira didn’t wait. She dropped into the chair across from her. Her cool, assessing gaze skimmed Alice the way someone checks an outfit. “What a coincidence. Escaping my brother?”
“I just needed air.”
“I know, I know.” Kira ordered an espresso without looking at the menu. “Mom called. Told me about your touching conversation regarding… village relatives.”
Alice flinched. That fast.
“I wouldn’t call them—”
“I would,” Kira cut in, settling back. Her smile was thin, without warmth. “Alice, be realistic. Enough with the tenderness. Your dad in a tie is like a bear in the circus. Funny and sad at the same time. He’ll try to drink cognac from the right glass, mix up the stemware, talk about things you don’t talk about in decent company.”
“He’s not a bear,” Alice said quietly, but clearly. Anger boiled up in her chest.
“In his world, no.” Kira shrugged. “In ours, yes. And your mom… she’s sweet, sure. But her cabbage pies next to oysters and truffles? It’s a joke, I’m sorry. Do you want people snickering behind their backs? Do you want our father’s respected boss staring at them like some rare species from a museum?”
“Why do all of you talk like you’re doing this for them? For me?” Alice’s voice broke. “You’re doing it for yourselves. So your perfect little world doesn’t get stained by someone else’s simplicity.”
Kira didn’t blink. She sipped her coffee.
“Finally. Honesty.” Her tone turned businesslike, matter-of-fact. “Yes—we’re doing it for ourselves. For our family. Maxim is going places. He’s climbing. And you don’t drag anchors upward, Alice. You drag ladders—connections—the right people. Your parents are ballast. Kind, good ballast, but ballast. Mom does the dirty work for you so you don’t have to feel like a villain in your own eyes. She gives you an alibi: ‘It’s not me, it’s my mother-in-law.’ Use it.”
The espresso arrived. Kira added a little water to the tiny cup, stirring slowly.
“Love them from a distance,” she said, no longer mocking—just practical. “Help them financially if you want. But don’t bring them into our living room. That’s not how it works. Not by the rules.”
Rules. Game. Those words haunted Alice. She stood up so abruptly her chair scraped.
“Thanks for being honest,” she said, trembling now with cold resolve. “Now I understand everything.”
“I hope so,” Kira nodded, already looking at her phone. “And don’t you dare make a scene. You’ll ruin everything for Maxim. And yourself.”
Alice stepped outside. Spring wind slapped her face but didn’t refresh her. It carried dust and exhaust. She walked without knowing where she was going, Kira’s calm, cynical face floating before her—so certain of her right to arrange other people’s lives into categories.
She got into a taxi and blurted out an address without thinking. Not the one that smelled of polished wood and chrome. The one that smelled of pies, floor wax, and old books.
Her mother opened the door. Faded house dress, apron. Worry flashed instantly across her face.
“Sweetheart? What happened? You’re alone?”
“It’s okay, Mom,” Alice stepped into her embrace—and something inside her snapped. She cried. Quietly, soundlessly, in heavy tears that had never come in that sterile, expensive kitchen.
Her mother didn’t ask questions. She guided her to the kitchen, sat her at the table, set down a mug of chamomile tea “for nerves.” Then she sat across from her, took Alice’s hands in her own—rough, knotted from work, endlessly familiar.
After a while her father came home. He saw them and slowed, as if he didn’t want to break the fragile moment. He took off his work jacket and hung it carefully over the chair.
“Something happen?” he asked simply, sitting beside them.
And then Alice told them everything—choking on the words, spilling humiliation and rage and hurt: the party, Maxim’s cold certainty, the mother-in-law’s “concern,” Kira’s blunt cruelty. She didn’t hold back.
Her parents listened in silence. Her mother squeezed her hands tighter. Her father stared at the table, his broad, weathered face still, almost stone.
When Alice finished, silence filled the room. The old hallway clock ticked.
Her father spoke first. He drew a long breath and rubbed his palm over his face.
“Well,” he rasped. “That’s clear.”
“How is that ‘clear’?” Alice burst out. “It’s unfair!”
“Life’s rarely fair, sweetheart,” her mother said softly. Her eyes shone, but no tears fell. “We always knew what kind of family you married into. They’re… different. Ambitious.”
“But you’re not worse!” Alice felt the burn of her own betrayal like acid. “You’re better. You’re kinder, more honest—”
“Kindness and honesty have nothing to do with it,” her father interrupted. His voice turned firm, uncompromising. “They have their laws. We don’t fit their world. Like trying to plug a square prong into a round socket. You’ll only make sparks—burn the whole thing down.”
He looked at Alice directly, steady and clear.
“Don’t torture yourself. Don’t go to that celebration. Tell them you’re sick.”
“I can’t,” Alice moaned. “It’ll be a scandal.”
“And what you have inside you right now isn’t a scandal?” her mother asked quietly. “Everything in you has turned upside down. That’s the quietest, scariest kind of scandal there is.”
“We’re not offended,” her father said. There was no lie in it—only bitter adult truth. “We’ll be fine. You take care of your life. Don’t ruin things because of us. We’re not going to make demands.”
Their self-denial hit harder than any accusation. They were surrendering their right to be near their daughter so they wouldn’t complicate her life. Stepping into the shadows. Voluntarily. For her.
Alice stared at their faces—the wrinkles, the fatigue, the silent pain they had hidden so carefully. And suddenly she realized: they had known for five years. Felt the chill, the condescension, the distance. And they’d stayed quiet. Always asking “How are you?” and never “How do they treat you?” They had protected her illusions because they believed she was happy.
“Forgive me,” she breathed. “I owe you… I owe you everything…”
“You don’t owe anyone anything,” her mother said sternly. “You’re our daughter. That’s it.”
Alice stayed the whole evening. They drank tea and talked about small things. Her father told a funny story from work. It was warm, real. And somehow that made it hurt even more.
When she left, her father walked her out as he always did, standing on the steps and waving until the car disappeared around the corner. In the rearview mirror his figure looked small and alone.
Back in her expensive, quiet apartment, Maxim was asleep. On the bedside table lay a printed menu with gold embossing. Alice passed the bedroom and sat down on the living-room floor, hugging her knees.
Something inside her had broken—and pain and fear turned into something else. Hard. Sharp. She looked into the darkness at the outlines of perfect, чужая furniture.
“Fine,” she thought without a hint of doubt. “I’ll go to your party. I’ll look at your oysters and your correct glasses. And I’ll tell you everything. Not for a scandal. For honesty—the thing this house has never had.”
She made herself that promise. And the promise brought a strange calm. Like the quiet before a fight.
The anniversary evening arrived like a rehearsed performance. In Svetlana Petrovna’s huge living room, the air smelled of lilies and expensive food. Guests shimmered in silk and patent leather, their voices chiming in soft phrases of “proper” Russian scrubbed clean of any rough edges. Alice stood by a tall window in a dress Svetlana Petrovna had chosen personally: strict, jade-green, costly, and slightly faceless. It hung on her like чужая skin.
She watched Maxim. He was in his element—sliding between guests, laughing in the right places, nodding thoughtfully. When his gaze caught hers, it paused, questioning, as if checking whether she’d break. Alice looked away. Inside, there was no panic. Only a cold, focused silence.
“Alice, sunshine! Come here!” Svetlana Petrovna called. She sat at the center of the couch like a queen on a throne, wearing velvet the color of burgundy wine. Beside her sat an important man with silver at his temples—her husband’s boss.
Alice walked over.
“Meet Viktor Sergeyevich,” her mother-in-law said, taking Alice’s hand and pulling her close, displaying intimacy. “Viktor Sergeyevich, this is our Alice—Maxim’s wife. Our treasure. We took her from such a simple, sweet family and practically refined her!”
Viktor Sergeyevich nodded, smiling with polite condescension.
“Very nice to meet you. Maxim speaks highly of you.”
“Thank you,” Alice said dryly.
“And how are your parents, dear?” Svetlana Petrovna continued, still holding her hand, sweetness dripping. Her eyes glittered like a predator’s. “Your father must have heart trouble from such hard labor. At a factory, wasn’t it? Such a harmful environment.”
A question disguised as concern hung in the air. Guests listened with half an ear. Maxim froze by the fireplace, a glass in his hand.
Alice slowly freed her hand. She felt everything inside her draw taut like a bowstring. There was no fear—only a strange, almost detached curiosity: how far would they go?
“My father’s heart is fine, Svetlana Petrovna,” she said clearly, a little louder than necessary. “And yes, the work is hard. But honest.”
Her mother-in-law’s brow tightened a fraction—she heard the wrong tone.
“Of course, honest… we all respect simple labor,” she hurried, but it was too late.
Alice turned to Maxim. He looked at her, and in his eyes was a clear, panicked plea: Not now. Not here.
Alice ignored him. She swept her gaze across the room—self-satisfied faces, courteous masks. In the corner, Kira lifted an eyebrow skeptically.
“I have a toast,” Alice said. Her voice rang unexpectedly bright in the tight silence.
“Dear, the toasts will be later,” Svetlana Petrovna tried, but Alice had already taken her own glass from the table. She hadn’t drunk from it all night.
“No. Now. Because later I won’t be able to say it.” She paused, letting the words drop into the stunned quiet. “I want to drink to family. To that family we all love to mention in beautiful speeches.”
Maxim took a step forward.
“Alice, what are you—”
“Be quiet, Maxim.” She looked at him directly—without softening her gaze for the first time in a long while. “You already told me everything. Last week. You told me my parents aren’t welcome because your mother doesn’t like them. That’s why they aren’t here.”
A ripple moved through the room. Someone cleared their throat. Viktor Sergeyevich set his glass down.
“What nonsense,” Svetlana Petrovna hissed, her sweet voice cracking, steel exposed.
“It’s not nonsense. It’s the truth.” Alice turned to the guests. “My father—a working man, a master with golden hands—and my mother, a schoolteacher, were not wanted here. Because they don’t fit the ‘proper’ picture. Because they’re ‘not the right circle.’ Because they might, quote, ‘say the wrong thing at the table.’”
Maxim went pale.
“You’re twisting everything! Stop embarrassing me!”
“Embarrassing you?” Alice gave a short, dry laugh. “Me? For five years I’ve lived to make sure you weren’t embarrassed. I changed how I dressed because your friends said my style was ‘provincial.’ I stopped seeing my own friends because they weren’t ‘serious enough.’ I pulled away from my parents because their simplicity hurt your perfect ears. I tried. I squeezed myself into that tight, suffocating box called ‘the wife of a promising man.’ And today I realized—I don’t fit. And I don’t want to.”
Svetlana Petrovna stood. Cold fury twisted her face.
“Enough! How dare you! In my home! I gave you everything! I pulled you out of that грязь, gave you education, connections, outfits! I bought you for my son, and you’re an ungrateful—”
The word “bought” hung in the air—heavy, naked. Even some of the guests looked away.
“So that’s the price,” Alice said quietly. She took off the thin gold chain with the diamond pendant—Svetlana Petrovna’s gift last New Year. She dropped it into her full glass. The gold knocked dully against crystal. “Is this what I was ‘refined’ for?” She looked up. “I don’t need your price. And I don’t need your gratitude that feels like a label on merchandise.”
She turned to Maxim. He stood with his hands lowered, and his face held none of the confident man who ran her life. Only the anger of a trapped animal caught in a snare.
“You knew,” she said without emotion. “You always knew they humiliated me. And you stayed silent. Because their rules, their world, their approval mattered more to you. My parents gave you their apartment while we renovated yours. They sold a garage to help me when I first moved in with you. They trusted you. And you called them ‘reality.’ Inconvenient.”
“Alice, for God’s sake, we can talk,” he tried, but his voice was empty, mechanical. “Don’t destroy everything over a stupid hurt.”
“This isn’t hurt, Maxim. It’s waking up. To you I was part of the décor—pretty, fitting. And my roots were dust under the carpet that had to be swept away so no one saw. I’m done.”
She set the glass on the piano. The sound was clean. Final.
“I’m leaving.”
“And good riddance!” Svetlana Petrovna shouted, shaking with rage. “Go back to your poor parents! We’ll see how you live without all this! You’ll rot in their Khrushchyovka!”
Alice was already walking to the door. Kira caught up with her in the hallway.
“Congratulations,” she whispered venomously. “You just buried your husband’s career. Hope it felt good showing off your principles.”
“Better than showing off your lack of a heart,” Alice snapped and stepped out into the stairwell.
Cold air struck her face. She walked down the elite, empty street without feeling her legs. Where to? To that very Khrushchyovka. Home.
She was pulling out her phone to call a taxi when she heard a familiar hoarse engine. From around the corner, clumsy and stubborn as a soldier, rolled up an old Lada—its faded lilac paint washed out by time. It stopped beside her. The front window lowered.
Her father was driving. Her mother sat in the passenger seat, pale but calm.
“Get in, sweetheart,” her father said simply. “Let’s go home.”
Alice didn’t ask how they knew. Didn’t ask why they came. She opened the back door and sat on the familiar sagging seat that smelled of vinyl, engine oil, and домашний comfort.
Her mother turned and held out a thermos.
“Drink. You’re probably freezing. Mint tea.”
Alice took it, warming her hands on the metal. She stared out the window. The prestigious district with its guarded gates and tall fences slid past and shrank into darkness. Ahead there were only city lights and a black ribbon of road.
The car moved off gently. Her father didn’t turn around. He drove straight ahead, away from that place. No one looked back.
The first days at her parents’ apartment passed in a heavy fog. Alice slept on a folding cot in her old room, where faint marks from childhood posters still lived on the walls. She woke to quiet voices behind the wall—her parents were afraid to disturb her. Her world shrank to the size of a small apartment, yet somehow it became easier to breathe there.
Her phone stayed silent the first day. Then it started.
First came Maxim’s messages—short, brisk, businesslike:
— Where are you? We need to talk.
— You completely lost it. You ruined everything.
— Call me. We have to sort things out.
She didn’t answer. Sort things out. What things? Dividing possessions? Explaining her “unstable behavior” to the right people?
On the third day he called. Alice stepped out onto the balcony, wrapped in her mother’s old robe. Below, children chased a soccer ball, and that simple sound felt impossibly far from her former life.
“Well, happy now?” Maxim’s voice was cold, stripped of emotion. “You got what you wanted. A scandal. Gossip. Mom’s in tears. My dad’s boss looks at me like I can’t control my wife.”
“I didn’t want a scandal, Maxim,” Alice said softly. “I just told the truth. The truth that was forbidden in your house.”
“The truth?” He snorted. “You staged a performance. Dropped a gift into a glass. That’s kindergarten.”
“It was a symbol,” she said. “One you didn’t understand. And you never will. You care more about how your father’s boss sees you than about the fact that for five years your wife felt like a servant—ashamed of her own family.”
He went quiet. She heard his heavy breathing.
“Fine. Maybe I was wrong. In the heat of the moment.” He delivered it like a memorized line. “Come back. We’ll forget this incident. Just come back and we’ll start fresh.”
Fresh. Erase everything. As if those words had never been spoken. As if humiliating her parents and shrinking her into silence could be wiped clean. As if she could forget the way he looked at her that night—not like a loved woman, but like an employee who’d gone off-script and threatened the project.
“No, Maxim,” she said evenly. “I’m not coming back. We won’t start fresh. Because you’ll stay the same. Your mother will stay the same. And I… I won’t be able to play by your rules anymore. They disgust me.”
“Do you even understand what you’re choosing?” anger flared through his voice. “Life in that… closet? Pennies? You’ve gotten used to better.”
“I have,” Alice agreed. “And that’s the worst thing that happened to me. I got used to being silent. Got used to hiding the people I love. Got used to buying comfort at the price of their dignity. I won’t do it anymore.”
She ended the call. Then she deleted his number. Then Svetlana Petrovna’s. Then Kira’s. It was strangely easy—like removing a heavy, uncomfortable hat she’d worn for too long.
On the desk in her room sat a laptop. She opened it. Deep in a folder named “Work” there was an old email. Her colleague and friend Lena—who had moved to St. Petersburg six months earlier to work at a big publishing house—once joked, “If you ever decide to run away from your cushy spot, we’ve got an opening. An entire department is losing its mind looking for someone with your feel for texts and your ability to negotiate with authors. The money isn’t Moscow money, but you can live.”
Alice had laughed it off. She had a different life then. Stable, well-funded, approved. A respectable job at a solid firm where she made reports nobody truly needed, but at least it sounded impressive.
Now she wrote a new email. Short. No drama. “Hi. Is your offer still on the table? If yes, I’m ready to consider it seriously. I need a change.”
Two hours later: “Alice?! Are you serious? Of course it’s still on. Send your résumé, I’ll put it directly on the boss’s desk. He’s panicking—project’s on fire.”
Alice sat down to write her résumé. She described her real work, not the polished label on her business card. Not “project coordinator at a prestigious firm,” but “organized translation and layout for fifteen books, negotiated with ten difficult authors, built a process from scratch.” Those were her real wins—small, honest victories she’d learned to downplay because in Maxim’s family “publishing” was considered not serious, almost a hobby.
Three days later, St. Petersburg called. A man’s voice—energetic, sharp. They spoke for forty minutes. He asked pointed questions about tricky work situations. Alice answered, and with each answer a feeling returned: she could do this. She was worth something—on her own.
“You’re a fit,” he said at the end. “We’ll hire you remotely for a probation period. In a month, if everything’s good, you move here. We’ll help you find temporary housing. Salary same as Lena.”
Alice agreed without hesitation.
That evening she told her parents over tea. Her mother sighed, worry in her eyes.
“St. Petersburg… that’s far, sweetheart. Damp. Cold. Strangers.”
“Not strangers,” Alice smiled. “Colleagues. People who value my work—not my ability to keep quiet.”
Her father nodded silently. Then he asked:
“You have enough money for the start? We can—”
“I’m fine, Dad. Thank you.” She laid her hand on his rough palm. “I owe you so much.”
He shook his head.
“You don’t owe anyone anything. Go. Real work—that matters.”
Another week passed. Alice went back to the apartment she’d shared with Maxim and took a few things—mostly books, her laptop, a handful of dresses she truly loved and had bought before marriage. Everything else—gifts, expensive trinkets, jewelry—she left behind. That place needed a different kind of décor. Something lifeless.
A ticket for a night train lay on the table. Her bag was packed. The apartment smelled of her mother’s pies—she’d baked for the trip.
Alice stood in her room and watched the sunset over the concrete blocks. Her phone buzzed. Unknown number. But somehow she already knew.
“Yes?”
“It’s Maxim,” his voice was thick. “From another phone. Are you really leaving?”
“Yes.”
A long silence.
“So… it was all for nothing? Five years.”
“No, Maxim,” Alice said wearily. “Not for nothing. It was a lesson. Expensive and painful. For me—about how you can’t sell your soul, not even for a beautiful wrapper. For you… I hope you learned something too.”
“I offered to fix everything!” irritation sparked again.
“You offered to forget. That’s not fixing. That’s pretending. Goodbye, Maxim.”
She ended the call and turned the phone off. She took out the SIM card and snapped it neatly in half. The old number—the one that made her reachable to all of them—died.
The station was loud and empty at once. Her father carried her bag. Her mother adjusted Alice’s coat collar as if she were a girl going to summer camp.
“Call when you arrive. Any hour,” her mother said, stroking her cheek.
“Push through,” her father said, and in his spare words was an entire universe of support. “If anything— we’re here.”
Alice hugged them tightly and breathed in the familiar, beloved smell of home. Then she took her ticket and walked to the carriage.
The train was modern, with glass doors. She found her compartment and set her bag down. Through the window she saw her parents on the platform, still standing there though it was late. Her mother leaned against her father’s shoulder.
The train started smoothly, almost silently. Platform lights slid past, flickered, melted into a golden thread. Her parents waved and dissolved into the dark.
Alice pressed her forehead to the cool glass. Night rushed beyond it—black, dense, full of unfamiliar lights and unknown roads. There was no panic in her chest. There was a strange, wide emptiness—big enough for everything: grief for what she once called love, bitter shame for years of silence, and a new, quiet tremor—anticipation.
She didn’t know what awaited her in the new city. Hard work, a rented room, the loneliness of the first months. Strange streets, new faces. But for the first time in a long time, she was carrying the most important thing with her: herself. Awkward, sometimes sharp, unwilling to fit the rules—but real.
The train gained speed, pulling her away from the past. Alice closed her eyes and breathed evenly, deeply.
She was going home—without yet knowing where home would be tomorrow. But now she knew this much: home would be wherever she didn’t have to hide her face and could speak the truth. Wherever she could simply be Olga and Igor’s daughter. Simply Alice.
That was enough to begin.