“So here’s how it’s going to be, sweetheart. I’m giving you exactly twenty-four hours to disappear from this place. Pack your junk and crawl back to your mother in the village!” Zinaida Pavlovna snapped, throwing her huge leather handbag straight onto the bench in the hallway, without even bothering to take off her muddy boots.
Her words hit me like a blow to the head.
I stood in the doorway of my own kitchen, clutching a dish towel so tightly that my knuckles turned white. The sharp, nauseatingly familiar smell of my mother-in-law reached me immediately: a mixture of heavy Soviet perfume, Krasnaya Moskva, and Corvalol.
“I think you’ve come to the wrong door, Zinaida Pavlovna,” I replied, trying to keep the traitorous tremble out of my voice.
My heart was pounding somewhere in my throat, echoing heavily in my temples.
“You’re the one who’s forgotten her place!” my mother-in-law barked, marching into the living room as if she owned it. “Igor told me everything. You decided to divorce him? Fine, divorce him! But the apartment stays with my son. He poured his whole soul into it while you were running around getting your little nails done! And now he needs to build a real family. Lenochka is pregnant. So put the keys on the table and get out. You have no shame, no conscience, you freeloader!”
Her shameless arrogance stole the breath from my lungs.
That was it. I had had enough.
God, how much had built up inside me over those long seven years.
My still-legal husband, Igor, was a classic mama’s boy. An unrecognized genius who had spent years “finding himself” while lying on the couch with his phone in his hand. All that time, I had carried our entire family on my back. I took endless side jobs. I could not even remember the last time I had bought myself a new coat, just so I could keep up with the payments.
And when I finally got tired of his affairs with underage “muses” and filed for divorce, he ran crying to Mommy.
And now the heavy artillery had arrived to throw the “insolent daughter-in-law” out into the street.
My mother-in-law dropped herself onto my favorite chair. The wooden legs gave a pitiful creak under her weight.
“Why are you standing there like a statue?” Zinaida Pavlovna twisted her lips into a victorious smirk, drilling me with a look of contempt. “The mortgage was paid during the marriage, which means everything is split in half. But since you drove my poor boy to a nervous breakdown, you’ll sign your share over to him. As compensation. Otherwise, I’ll drag you through every court until you don’t even have a pair of pants left! We’ve already spoken to a lawyer. We have connections! Do you understand? Family ties must be respected, and you spat on this family!”
Something inside me clicked.
The fear I had felt toward this domineering woman for all those years suddenly evaporated. In its place came a cold, crystal-clear fury.
I exhaled slowly, walked over to the dresser, and pulled open the top drawer.
“Well, Zinaida Pavlovna, it seems the lawyer you consulted was a bad one. A cheap one,” I said calmly, taking out a thick plastic folder.
“What are you mumbling about?” my mother-in-law narrowed her eyes in irritation, but for the first time, a note of uncertainty slipped into her voice.
I walked to the table and placed in front of her a fresh extract from the property register, stamped in blue — the very document I had picked up only yesterday.
“Read it. Preferably out loud,” I said, folding my arms across my chest as a sweet feeling of triumph spread through my veins.
Zinaida Pavlovna picked up the paper with two fingers, as if it were something dirty. Then she pulled her glasses from her pocket and perched them on her nose.
Her eyes began darting across the lines.
With every passing second, the color drained from her face, replaced by a deathly paleness.
“What does this mean… ‘deed of gift’?” she rasped in a hoarse voice. “What gift? There was a mortgage!”
“There was a mortgage, Zinaida Pavlovna. On the studio apartment we sold. But this three-room apartment was bought a month ago by my father. And he transferred it to me as a gift,” I said, leaning closer and looking straight into her confused, restless eyes. “By law, property received as a gift is not divided in a divorce. Your dear ‘Igorek’ is not even registered here. He has no rights to these walls whatsoever. None.”
My mother-in-law opened her mouth to say something, but only a strangled wheeze came out.
The document trembled in her hands.
“And now,” I said, my voice ringing with steel, “take your bag and get out of my apartment. I’m not giving you twenty-four hours. I’m giving you exactly three minutes. Otherwise, I’m calling the police, and you’ll be taken to the station for unlawful entry into someone else’s home. Your time starts now.”
I will never forget how that heavy, once all-powerful woman silently slid off the chair, suddenly hunched and diminished.
She did not say a word.
She only grabbed her bag in a flustered hurry and shuffled toward the door in her dirty boots, rushing out without even trying to slam it behind her one last time.
I walked to the door, turned the key twice, and slid the night latch into place.
For the first time in seven years, it finally became easy to breathe in that apartment.