Zoya Ivanovna decided to go out to the dacha. The season had not really begun yet, but she was eager to at least do something around the house. She had always loved spending weekends there from early spring until late autumn, and now, with spring dragging on for far too long, she simply could not bear to stay home any longer.
Her husband, Valery Alekseyevich, was on duty, and she had grown tired of sitting alone within four walls. Valery was trying to build a financial cushion for the future so that when they both retired, they would want for nothing. That was why he took on extra shifts so often. He did his best to invest their savings wisely, and whenever Zoya complained that he was hardly ever home, he would smile and say, “One day you’ll thank me for it.”
Zoya grumbled from time to time, but she supported her husband in every way. She kept the house spotless, always welcomed Valery with warmth, and made sure a good dinner was waiting for him. Yet whenever she was left alone in the silence, she found herself thinking about how painfully incomplete their family felt without children, and she always blamed herself for that.
In their youth, she and Valery had been inseparable. They planned to marry. Zoya’s mother had opposed the match, but then Zoya became pregnant, and the two of them decided to secretly file their marriage application and only tell everyone afterward. They never got the chance. One day Valery failed to show up for their date. Zoya could not reach him by phone, and when she went to his home that evening, the neighbors told her he had died. His mother had been informed, and she herself had needed an ambulance and was now in the hospital.
Zoya rushed home in shock, barely able to stand. Her mother had to calm her with valerian drops, and in the end Zoya confessed that she herself was about to become a mother. Anna Stanislavovna behaved with restraint, but she tried to explain to her daughter that she did not need this child now. Her whole life still lay ahead of her. She would meet someone else, build a family. What man, after all, would want a woman already burdened with another man’s child? But Zoya did not want to hear a word of it. Another man? There would never be another one. She would remain alone all her life, because no one but Valery would ever matter to her.
After failing again and again to persuade her daughter to get rid of the baby, Anna Stanislavovna said one morning:
“All right. I have thought about it for a long time, and this decision was not easy. Since you are determined to become a single mother, then pull yourself together and stop grieving. You’ll go to the village to stay with my cousin. The fresh air will do you good, and you’ll be able to give birth there in peace. Ksenia worked as a midwife all her life, she’ll help. Meanwhile, I’ll exchange the apartment—I’ve been meaning to do it for ages. I don’t want the neighbors gossiping behind our backs. In a new place, nobody will know us, and we’ll simply say that your husband died, so you were left a widow with a baby.”
Zoya had no desire to leave the city, but she did not argue with her mother. Her mother had already made concessions, and besides, who else could help her if not her own mother?
Before leaving, she went to the hospital to see Valery’s mother, but the woman said she wanted nothing to do with her—her son was gone, while Zoya was alive and well. He had rushed to her like a madman on his motorcycle, and it was all her fault. She screamed that Zoya was not to dare appear at the funeral, or she would curse her. At that moment, Zoya realized there was no point in staying. She would not go to the funeral either. Perhaps that was for the best—there was no need for more emotional torment. She had to think about her child now.
But however hard she tried to convince herself that she had calmed down, her heart found no peace. She constantly replayed their meetings, their conversations, their dreams.
“We’ll live long and happily together, Zoyka!” Valery would say with a grin, draping his jacket over her shoulders as they walked along the river embankment.
“And die on the same day!” Zoya would laugh, wrapping her arms around him and resting against his chest.
Now those words rang in her mind like mockery. Tears flowed of their own accord, and inside her there was such turmoil it felt as though everything was burning with blue fire, yet nothing could extinguish it.
In the village, Zoya spent the first few days lying on the bed, turned toward the wall, staring into a single fixed point. Aunt Ksenia cared for her as best she could. The woman had never had children of her own, and when Zoya was little, she often took her in for a week during the summer. But now she simply did not know how to comfort her.
“Eat something, Zoinka,” she would say softly, stroking her niece’s back. “You’ll starve the baby if you go on like this. I made you some fresh juice, and chicken soup too. Eat.”
And Zoya, understanding that her suffering was harming the baby, forced herself to eat, drank the juice, went out into the garden, walked among the flowers, listened to the birds sing, and little by little began to understand: yes, the man she loved was no longer beside her, but their child remained—and for that child she had no right not to live.
Several months rushed by. Zoya barely noticed the passing of time. She spent hours remembering every minute she had shared with Valery—his eyes, his smile, the sound of his voice, his warmth. Ksenia scolded her, saying she could not keep sinking into herself, she had to live. Her mother came to visit and said she had already found an apartment exchange option, and that once the baby was born, Zoya would be able to return to the city. But Zoya no longer cared about such things. The only thing she longed for was to hold her child in her arms and go on living for him.
Then labor began too early. Zoya felt terrible that day, and when her son was born, she lost consciousness almost immediately. She spent several days in a feverish haze, and when she was finally able to speak her first word, she asked where her baby was—where her son was. Her mother was beside her. She sat silently on the edge of the bed, stroked her daughter’s head, and quietly said:
“Be strong, Zoinka. The baby was born too weak. They couldn’t save him.”
“And we warned you not to torment yourself like this, but no—you just kept suffering, and now the worst has happened,” Aunt Ksenia added before Zoya could even process what her mother had said.
Zoya screamed like a wounded animal and curled into a ball, begging them all to leave. Her mother and aunt tried to help her. They nearly forced calming tinctures down her throat. And when her mother’s leave ended, they returned home.
“Since everything turned out this way, I canceled the apartment exchange,” Anna Stanislavovna said with a trace of guilt in her voice, but Zoya scarcely heard her. What difference did it make where she lived? The only question now was how to live at all.
For more than a month, Zoya could not recover. She became a shadow of herself and hardly left her room. Then one day, while her mother was at work, someone rang the doorbell. Zoya did not want to answer, but the ringing was so persistent that she had to get up. On the doorstep stood Valery.
The moment she saw him, she fainted. When she came to, he was sitting beside her, and paramedics from the ambulance were bustling around the room.
“I’m here. I’m not a ghost,” he whispered, and Zoya felt the frozen weight of hopelessness inside her begin to thaw.
After the doctors left, they sat for a long time embracing each other. Valery told her that a terrible mistake had been made. He had in fact been in a crash, but had fallen into a coma. Someone had wrongly identified him as dead and rushed to tell his mother. He had spent several months in the hospital, and as soon as he could, he came to Zoya. The neighbors told him they had gone away somewhere. He returned a few more times, and only now had he finally found her at home. And Zoya, sobbing, begged forgiveness for failing to protect their son, for not being able to overcome her grief.
“It’s all right, we’ll get through it,” Valery comforted her. “The main thing is that we are together. We’ll still have children. We will never part again, no matter what happens. From now on—only together.”
But they never had children again. It simply did not happen. Zoya blamed herself all her life, while her husband tried to comfort her, saying that fate had simply chosen this path for them, and they had to accept it with dignity.
Lost in those sorrowful thoughts, Zoya did not notice that the bus had already reached the dacha settlement.
“Last stop!” the driver’s voice pulled her out of the past.
Zoya hurried out, drew in a deep breath of fresh spring air, exhaled loudly, and set off down her street.
As she approached her little house, Zoya Ivanovna came to an uneasy halt. Her heart gave a sharp, unpleasant jolt—there was no lock on the door. She clearly remembered that the last time she and Valery had come here, they had locked it. Her husband had even checked it twice, as he always did. Her pulse quickened. All sorts of thoughts flashed through her head, from ordinary theft to something much worse. These days, anything could happen. The news was full of it.
Slowly, Zoya stepped toward the door. Her hand hovered for a moment before touching the handle. She pulled carefully, and the door opened with a soft, almost soundless creak. A breath of cold, damp air drifted out of the house, mixed with something else—a faint trace of smoke and… food. Zoya grew even more alert.
“Who’s there?” she called, trying to make her voice sound steady.
There was no answer, but a second later a soft rustle came from deeper inside the room, as if someone was there but did not want to respond. A chill ran down her back. She stepped over the threshold cautiously. The floorboards creaked underfoot. The house was dim—curtains covered the windows, and only narrow strips of light slipped through the fabric. And then Zoya saw it: someone was clearly standing by the window, behind the curtain. The cloth shifted slightly. Startled, Zoya stepped back.
“Who are you? What are you doing here?” she cried, her voice much louder than she intended.
The curtain trembled, and from behind it emerged a young woman. She moved slowly, as if unsure whether to come forward, one hand awkwardly supporting her belly under an old stretched-out sweater that might once have been blue but had long since faded. Her face was pale and drawn, with dark circles beneath her eyes. Her hair was messy, tied back in a careless ponytail. She looked frightened and exhausted.
“I’m sorry…” she said in a hoarse voice. “I’ll explain everything, please don’t be afraid.”
Zoya Ivanovna said nothing, just studied her closely.
“I got into your house because I found the key,” the girl went on, nervously twisting a button. “Back in my grandmother’s village, they used to hide them the same way… under a tub. So I looked there… and found it. I just needed somewhere to hide for a while…”
Zoya let out a heavy breath. Her heart was gradually settling. Before her stood not a thief or a criminal, but a terrified girl—and a pregnant one at that.
“All right,” she said at last, more calmly. “We’ll talk now.”
She took off her coat, carefully hung it on a hook by the door, and went straight to the stove. It was cold inside. Zoya quickly opened the flue, stacked the firewood, struck a match. The flame caught lazily, crackling, and the house instantly became a little more welcoming. Then she set the kettle on the stove and took food containers out of her bag—cutlets, pies, salad, things she had brought with her. The girl stood by the wall, constantly lowering her eyes in guilt.
“Please forgive me…” she said again in a quiet voice. “I ate some of your food… and burned a lot of your wood… I’ve been living here for two weeks.”
Zoya raised her eyebrows.
“Two weeks?”
“Yes…” the girl nodded, visibly embarrassed. “I tried very hard to be careful, honestly… But it was so cold…”
Zoya waved a hand dismissively.
“Forget the firewood,” she said tiredly. “But who are you hiding from?”
A troubling thought immediately flashed through her mind. What if she was wanted by the police? What if she had done something? But the girl’s answer was so unexpected that Zoya straightened in surprise.
“From my mother…”
“What do you mean, from your mother?” Zoya asked.
The words simply did not fit inside her head. Wasn’t a mother the person you ran to in trouble? Wasn’t a mother supposed to be the one who protected you, helped you, held you close? And yet here this girl was, hiding from her own mother. Why?
The girl sat down on the edge of a stool and quietly said:
“I’m just… pregnant. And my fiancé, Anton… he disappeared. More than a month ago, we had arranged to meet near the registry office. We wanted to file our application… and then I was going to move in with him. Because my mother had forbidden me to see him at all. She says he came from an orphanage, that people like that are bad. But he… he’s wonderful. Better than anyone…”
Silence hung in the room for a moment, and Zoya used the pause to ask:
“What’s your name?”
“Vasilisa,” the girl answered softly, nodding as if confirming it to herself. Then she continued:
“I hid everything from my mother… even the pregnancy. But when Anton disappeared… I panicked… stopped being careful… and she found out. She forced me to go to the hospital with her so that… well, you understand…”
Zoya understood. Far too well.
“So I ran away,” Vasilisa whispered. “I have no money, my phone died… If I had gone to one of my friends, my mother would have found me right away. So I got on the first bus I saw and left. I walked through yards, checking where people might hide keys, and that’s how I found yours…”
Vasilisa lowered her eyes guiltily.
“Please forgive me… When Anton comes back, I’ll repay everything. I swear.”
For a while Zoya Ivanovna silently watched the girl, as though searching for words that would not wound her any further. Vasilisa sat with her hands clasped tightly in her lap, and there was so much weariness and anxiety in her posture that Zoya’s heart ached for her.
“Don’t talk nonsense,” she said at last, trying to soften her voice. “You should think of your mother too. She must be beside herself with worry. She is still your mother. Whatever happens, a mother’s heart aches for her child. You should have explained everything to her, talked to her honestly. Mothers can be strict, but if you sit down and speak calmly, sometimes they understand.”
She said it firmly, almost like advice, but inside her something old and painful stirred. For an instant she saw her own mother’s face as it had been then—the severe lips, the heavy stare… the long conversations, the tears, the fear. So many years had passed, and yet the memory still lived somewhere deep inside her.
Vasilisa shook her head.
“You don’t know my mother,” she said quietly but stubbornly. “Once she decides something… it has to be exactly her way and no other.”
The girl nervously ran a hand over her belly.
“That’s why my father left too,” she added almost under her breath. “He endured it for a long time, and then one day he packed his things and moved away… to another city. He said he simply couldn’t live under her pressure anymore.”
Zoya sighed. There was no point arguing, and judging by Vasilisa’s face, trying to convince her would be useless.
“All right,” she said at last in a conciliatory tone. “Let’s not talk about bad things for now. It’s no good for you or the baby.”
She placed the plates on the table and laid out the food.
“Better that we eat something, have tea, charge your phone,” she said, nodding toward the socket as she took a charger from her bag. “Then we’ll think about what to do next.”
Vasilisa nodded gratefully.
“And for now,” Zoya Ivanovna continued, “write down all the information you have about your Anton. His surname, full name, where he lives, his date of birth, maybe his phone number… everything you know. I’ll send it to my husband. He’s resourceful and has connections everywhere… maybe he’ll be able to find something out.”
While Zoya busied herself at the stove, pouring hot tea into mugs, Vasilisa typed on her phone. Her fingers were still trembling slightly, but she concentrated carefully as she entered the details: first name, surname, birth date, street, house number. Then she reread everything, took a deep breath, and pressed send.
After lunch, Vasilisa was the first to stand up from the table.
“Let me clean up,” she said. “You’ve already done so much for me.”
Zoya did not argue. It seemed important to the girl to feel useful in some small way.
While Vasilisa carefully collected the dishes and stacked them by the sink, Zoya stepped out onto the porch and called her husband. Briefly, she explained the meaning of the message he had received, the unexpected guest, the pregnancy, the missing fiancé, and the strict mother.
“I understand,” Valery said. “I got the details. I’ll try to find out something… Maybe Filippov can help.”
“Thank you,” Zoya answered quietly.
When she came back inside, Vasilisa’s phone had already charged a little. The girl switched it on, and immediately notifications flooded in—missed calls and messages from friends, from her mother… but none from Anton. Then the phone rang again. On the screen appeared: Mom. Vasilisa went pale, but still pressed the answer button.
“Mom… forgive me…” she began at once, her voice shaking and barely audible. “But I’m not coming home… and I’m keeping my baby.”
Zoya Ivanovna could hear the voice coming through the speaker—sharp, cold, commanding.
“We’ll see about that!” the woman snapped. “People are already looking for you! If you don’t come back to the hospital willingly, it’ll happen the hard way! You know me!”
Zoya saw Vasilisa begin to tremble. Her hands had gone white, her lips were tightly pressed together. Without thinking, Zoya gently took the phone from her.
“Please, calm down,” she said carefully into the receiver. “Your daughter is in a safe place. She’s all right.”
“She’ll be all right when she gets rid of that bastard child!” the voice shot back. “And you’ll answer for kidnapping! I’ll make sure of it!”
A cold shiver passed over Zoya’s skin. Her own past suddenly lit up in her mind. How terrified she had been then. How desperately she had needed support. How much it had mattered to hear even one kind word. And if her own mother had turned away from her back then… Zoya did not even want to imagine it. She looked at Vasilisa, and her heart tightened with pity.
Then the girl suddenly burst into tears and held out her phone.
“Here… this is my Anton… look…”
On the screen was a photograph.
A young man was smiling openly. Warm eyes. A confident smile. Slightly tousled hair.
“Can a person like this really be bad?” Vasilisa sobbed. “Just because he grew up in an orphanage, that doesn’t mean anything, does it?”
Zoya Ivanovna took the phone—and in that very second, she went deathly pale. She instinctively tugged at the collar of her sweater as if she suddenly could not breathe, and swallowed hard. Looking back at her from the photograph was… Valery. Her Valery—young, fair-haired, wearing that exact same smile… the one he had worn at the age when he and Zoya had once stood at the threshold of the very same story. Zoya felt dizzy. How could such a thing be possible?
“That is… your fiancé?” she asked quietly, not recognizing her own voice.
“Yes, Anton,” Vasilisa answered. “He’s the best… truly.”
Then she looked at Zoya more closely.
“Are you feeling ill?… Do you need water?”
That evening, as soft spring dusk thickened outside the dacha house and the wood crackled gently in the stove, the phone rang. Zoya Ivanovna flinched—she had been on edge all day. It felt as if her heart had never recovered from that strange discovery in the photograph.
“Zoya, I found this Anton,” her husband said without preamble.
“Where is he?” she whispered.
“He was at the police station. They’ve already released him.”
Zoya sank onto the edge of a chair.
“At the station? How?”
“It turns out Vasilisa’s mother had a hand in it. She found out her daughter was still seeing him despite all her bans… so she used her influence. Found a pretext, pulled some strings…”
Zoya involuntarily glanced at Vasilisa, who sat by the window, gently stroking her belly as though trying to calm both herself and the baby.
“But everything has been cleared up,” Valery continued. “There were no grounds to hold him. They let him go. Filippov said he’s on his way to you now. He’s coming for Vasilisa.”
“Valera…” Zoya said quietly. “I saw his picture… He looks like you. Very much.”
There was a pause on the other end.
“What do you mean, he looks like me?” Valery asked slowly.
“Like two drops of water,” Zoya whispered.
“I’m coming,” Valery said.
By the time they all met at the dacha, night had fully settled over the settlement. The lamp by the gate lit the path, still damp from the evening moisture, and when a tall young man approached the house, Zoya felt her knees tremble.
He stepped inside, hesitated awkwardly on the threshold… and lifted his eyes. The same eyes. The same smile. The same features that had once made her heart race… Zoya instinctively gripped the back of a chair.
Valery, standing beside her, slowly ran a hand through his hair and also could not take his eyes off the young man.
Anton, meanwhile, embraced Vasilisa so tightly it seemed he was afraid of losing her again.
Then, once they had all gathered themselves, they sat down at the table, and Anton began to speak.
“I grew up in an orphanage,” he said calmly. “Not far from the village… maybe twenty kilometers from here.”
Zoya felt everything inside her turn cold. It was the same village.
“A woman used to visit me sometimes…” Anton continued, trying to remember. “Her name was Aunt Ksenia. She brought sweets, toys, sometimes books. She was kind. Very kind. And then… when I was about ten… she suddenly stopped coming.”
Zoya looked at the young man and felt her heart pounding so violently it seemed ready to burst. Aunt Ksenia had died exactly ten years after Zoya gave birth. Which meant… But how? Why? Her thoughts tangled. There were too many questions and not a single answer. She looked at Valery, and he looked back at her. They said nothing, but they were both thinking the same thing.
They drove Anton and Vasilisa back to the city. The young couple sat in the back seat, holding hands and speaking softly to each other, while Zoya and Valery rode in silence.
And when the car stopped outside the familiar building where Anna Stanislavovna lived, Zoya could not bring herself to get out for a long moment.
Her mother did not answer the door right away—she was already asleep. She rubbed her eyes, looked once at their faces, and understood at once that they had not come at such an hour without reason.
“Come in,” she said quietly.
Zoya stood in the middle of the room, not knowing where to begin, and finally asked:
“Why did you and Aunt Ksenia do this?”
Without saying a word, Anna Stanislavovna went into the kitchen, took out a bottle, poured herself some drops, and only then came back.
“You should have listened to me,” she said wearily. “I always believed he was not the right man for you…”
She nodded toward Valery.
“I thought you would find a decent man. Build a worthy family. But then he came back and ruined everything.”
“But why…” Zoya’s voice broke. “Why didn’t you tell us the truth after we got married? After you saw how we dreamed of a child… and couldn’t have one?”
Her mother was silent for a long time, and then said quietly:
“Because by then I could no longer confess. And Ksenia reassured me… said the boy had been placed with a good family. Probably just so I wouldn’t worry. I never even knew where she had taken him. As for the grave… we just restored an old one. Some distant relative had been buried there.”
Zoya found no words. Not one. She simply turned and walked out of the apartment. Valery followed behind her. In the course of those few hours, he seemed to have aged years.
The next day they called Anton and asked him to come to the clinic.
“Just don’t ask questions yet,” Valery said. “All right?”
Anton agreed. When the results were ready and the doctor calmly announced that the biological relationship had been confirmed, Zoya and Valery sat in silence for a long time. They looked at the young man and could hardly believe their eyes. And yet it was true. Their son. Alive. Anton himself was stunned, but then he suddenly smiled—that same smile Zoya had remembered all her life. Vasilisa burst into tears and said through them:
“I’m so happy I’ll have such a kind family…”
Valery put an arm around her shoulders.
“Don’t be afraid of your mother,” he said firmly. “We’re here now, and we won’t let anyone hurt you.”
They did not hold a grand wedding. They simply got married, began preparing for the baby’s arrival, and life suddenly took on new, brighter colors for all of them.
Anna Stanislavovna tried to ask her daughter for forgiveness, but Zoya said only one thing:
“I forgive you. But I will never forget.”
After that, she almost stopped speaking to her mother.
But new заботы and new joys entered her life. Now Zoya Ivanovna was not only a wife, but also a mother, a grandmother, and a mother-in-law, and she did her very best to be worthy of each of those roles.