Vera stood by the kitchen table, arranging slices of cold cuts onto plates. Maxim had promised to be home by seven, but the clock already showed a quarter to nine. She wasn’t angry. She was used to it. Three years of marriage had trained her in patience the way a trainer teaches an animal to live inside a cage.
The door clicked. Maxim came in, tossed his jacket onto the hook, and walked straight past the kitchen into the living room. Vera waited a minute, then picked up a plate and followed him.
“I made dinner. Your favorite — baked cod with lemon.”
“Mm-hmm.”
Maxim was lying on the sofa, buried in his phone. Vera set the plate on the coffee table and sat down beside him. She stroked his shoulder carefully, the way one touches something fragile and no longer truly one’s own.
“Max, I calculated everything. If we don’t slow down before March, we’ll have enough for the down payment. Three rooms, Max. A real home.”
“Yeah. Good.”
“Are you even listening to me?”
“I’m listening. Three rooms. March. I got it.”
Vera sighed and stood up. She cleared the table, washed the dishes, laid out two sets of clothes for the next day — hers and his — and sat down at her laptop. Reports were waiting. They were always waiting.
When she finally looked up from the screen, it was two in the morning. Maxim had been asleep for a long time. The television was muttering through some talk show, bluish flashes running across his face. Vera turned it off, covered her husband with a blanket, and went to the bedroom.
In the morning, she woke up at five-thirty, as usual. Coffee, sandwich, bag, keys. At the door, she turned around. Maxim was lying on the same sofa, in the same position. The blanket had slipped onto the floor.
“Have a good day,” she said into the emptiness.
No one answered.
At work, Vera sank into numbers like she always did. Two jobs, two shifts, sixteen hours a day. She had long stopped counting weekends. They had become something abstract, like vacations or hobbies. The only thing keeping her afloat was the number in their savings account, growing month by month.
That evening, her mother called.
“Verochka, did you have lunch today?”
“Of course, Mom.”
“You’re lying. I can hear it in your voice.”
“Well, I grabbed something. A sandwich.”
“Vera. A sandwich is not lunch. You’re running yourself into the ground.”
“Mom, just another six months. Six months, and we’ll submit the documents. Then I’ll be able to breathe.”
Tatyana Borisovna was silent for a moment. Then she asked quietly, without pressure, the way only she knew how:
“And Maxim? Is he working two jobs too?”
Vera closed her eyes.
“He’s… tired.”
“He got tired a year ago, Vera.”
“Mom, don’t start.”
“I’m not starting. I’m asking. Where do his evenings go?”
“He’s recovering. He needs time.”
“Time. You’ve given him a year. How much more?”
“Mom. Please.”
Tatyana Borisovna sighed and changed the subject. They talked about the weather, about seedlings, about how the neighbor’s cat had climbed onto the balcony again. Vera hung up and smiled faintly. Her mother knew when to stop. Unlike some people.
Saturday came. Vera allowed herself to get up at seven — a real luxury. She was cooking porridge when the doorbell rang. Maxim was asleep, so she opened the door herself.
Nina Vladimirovna stood on the threshold. Behind her was Liza, Zhanna’s daughter, an eight-year-old girl with braids and a permanently hungry look in her eyes. Nina Vladimirovna stepped inside and looked Vera up and down.
“Good morning, Nina Vladimirovna. Come in.”
“We’re here to see Maxim. Lizochka missed her uncle.”
“He’s still asleep. Would you like some tea while you wait?”
“What kind of tea do you have?”
“Black, green, sea buckthorn.”
Nina Vladimirovna grimaced as if Vera had offered her swamp water.
“No, thank you. We’ll wait for Maxim. Liza, sit down. And don’t touch anything.”
Vera stood by the stove and felt her mood slowly sink to zero. Her mother-in-law sat at the table, took out her phone, and began scrolling through something. Liza quietly drew in a notebook. The silence was filled with discomfort, the way a room fills with a draft.
Twenty minutes later, Maxim appeared, sleepy and wearing a wrinkled T-shirt.
“Oh, Mom! Lizka! Hey!”
“Maximushka, you’ve lost weight.”
“I’m fine, Mom.”
“No, you’re not. Someone should be taking care of you.”
Her mother-in-law threw a quick glance at Vera — short and sharp, like a pinprick.
“I am taking care of him,” Vera replied evenly.
“Oh, really?”
Maxim picked Liza up and spun her around. The girl laughed. Vera watched them and thought that if he put even half that energy into their shared goal, the apartment would already be real.
Nina Vladimirovna led Maxim into the other room. Vera stayed in the kitchen with Liza. Through the wall came muffled voices. She wasn’t eavesdropping, but separate phrases forced their way through anyway.
“…Zhanna is having a hard time, you know that…”
“…How much? Mom, I don’t have that much…”
“…You’re her brother, Maxim.”
Vera tightened her grip on the spoon. Then she loosened it. Then she carefully placed it on the table. The porridge was cooling, and there was no metaphor in that — just porridge, just morning, just another visit.
When Nina Vladimirovna came out, she was smiling warmly. Maxim followed her, wearing a guilty expression. Vera knew that look. She had seen it after every visit.
“Mom, I’ll walk you out.”
“Of course, son.”
Nina Vladimirovna passed Vera and tossed out casually:
“Your porridge burned.”
Vera looked at the stove. The porridge was perfect. Nina Vladimirovna knew that. That was the whole point.
When Maxim came back, Vera was sitting at the table. Liza had left with her grandmother. The apartment was empty, and in that emptiness it was easier to talk.
“How much did you give her?”
“Ver…”
“How much?”
“Fifteen thousand. Zhanna needs it for Liza.”
“Zhanna receives child support. Zhanna gets rent money from the apartment her ex-husband left her. Zhanna lives better than we do. Why does she need our money?”
“She’s my sister, Ver.”
“And I’m your wife. We have a goal. We have a plan. Every ruble matters.”
“It’s only fifteen thousand.”
“This month, fifteen. Last month, twenty. The month before that, ten. I count, Maxim. Counting is my job.”
Maxim looked away.
“I can’t say no to my mother.”
“You can’t say no to your mother. But you have no problem saying no to me every evening when you lie on the sofa while I work until two in the morning.”
“That’s different.”
“No. It’s the same thing. It’s called a choice. And it’s disgusting.”
Maxim said nothing. He picked up the remote and turned on the television. Vera looked at the screen, then at her husband, then down at her own hands — dry and red from constant washing. Then she quietly left the room.
A month passed. Vera came home later than usual after being held up checking documents. On the bus, she decided to check the balance of their savings account. She opened the app.
The number hit her like a blow.
Twelve thousand four hundred rubles.
There should have been four hundred eighty thousand.
Vera read it three times. Closed the app. Opened it again. Twelve thousand four hundred. She got off at her stop and headed home quickly, almost running. Something dark and hot was rising inside her, and she did not try to stop it.
Maxim was sitting on the sofa. The television was on. Everything as usual. Vera stood in front of him and held out her phone, screen facing him.
“Explain.”
Maxim looked at the screen. Then at her. Then back at the screen.
“Ver, I wanted to tell you…”
“Where is the money, Maxim?”
“I gave it to Mom. Zhanna urgently needed…”
“Four hundred sixty-eight thousand. Urgently. For Zhanna.”
“Well, it added up…”
“Added up? I saved that money. With my hands. With my nights. Eighty percent of it was mine. And you took it and gave it to your mother without even asking me.”
“Ver, try to understand. Zhanna really needed it. Liza’s birthday is coming up, and Zhanna wanted…”
Vera laughed. Short, bitter, with not a trace of amusement.
“A birthday. Four hundred sixty-eight thousand for an eight-year-old girl’s birthday. Do you even hear yourself?”
“Well, not only the birthday. There were repairs too, and Zhanna wanted to change her car…”
“Her car. She wanted to change her car. Should I cry or laugh?”
“Vera, don’t yell.”
“I’m not yelling. I’m speaking in a normal voice. You’re confusing a normal voice with the one you’re used to hearing — quiet, obedient, convenient. Well, Maxim, convenient Vera is gone. Return the money.”
“From where? Zhanna already has it.”
“I don’t care from where. Let Zhanna return it. Let your mother return it. Let Santa Claus bring it for all I care. The full amount must be back in that account by the end of the week.”
“Or what?”
“Or I file for divorce. And then I go to court over theft.”
Maxim stood up from the sofa. He looked at his wife as if he were seeing her for the first time — and this new Vera frightened him.
“You’re not serious.”
“I am absolutely serious.”
“Because of money?”
“Because of respect. Because you stole my labor and handed it to people who look at me like I’m a servant.”
“No one looks at you that way.”
“Your mother walks into my home and tells me my porridge is burned. Your sister hasn’t once said hello to me on the phone in three years. And you lie on the sofa and let them. That is exactly how they look at me.”
Maxim sat back down. He stared at the floor, and Vera saw it then — not shame, not remorse. Irritation. He was annoyed that his wife was not backing down. He was used to a different script: Vera would grumble, cry, and keep working. But today the script had changed.
“End of the week, Maxim. I’m not joking.”
She went into the bedroom and closed the door.
Three days later, the full amount appeared in the account. Vera checked it — four hundred seventy thousand. She called Maxim.
“I see the money. Where did it come from?”
A pause.
“I took out a loan.”
Vera sat down on a chair. Slowly, carefully, like someone whose legs had suddenly weakened.
“What loan?”
“A consumer loan. Eighteen months. Twenty percent.”
“You took a loan at twenty percent instead of making your sister give the money back?”
“She can’t return it. She already spent it.”
“In three days. Four hundred sixty-eight thousand. In three days.”
“Vera, I solved the problem. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“I wanted you to return my money. Instead, you took out a loan whose interest I’ll end up paying. Because you don’t work two jobs. Because you quit your side work a year ago. Because you don’t do anything, Maxim. You just exist next to me and take.”
“That’s unfair.”
“Unfair is when a wife breaks her back working two jobs while her husband hands her money to his relatives. That is unfair.”
She hung up.
Two weeks passed. The first loan statement arrived. The monthly payment was thirty-nine thousand. Vera placed the printout on the table in front of Maxim.
“This will be your payment. From your salary.”
“Ver, my salary is fifty-two thousand. If I pay thirty-nine, I’ll have thirteen thousand left.”
“Then find a side job. Like I did. Like I’ve been doing for two years without weekends or holidays.”
“I can’t do what you do.”
“Can’t? Or don’t want to?”
Maxim said nothing. Vera looked at her husband and tried to see the man she had married three years ago. The one who had promised they would build everything together. The one who had drawn the layout of their future apartment on a napkin in a café. She could not find him.
“Ver, maybe you can help for the first couple of months? Then I’ll adjust.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because your ‘then’ never comes. ‘Then’ is the word you use to patch every hole. Then I’ll find a side job. Then I’ll wash the dishes. Then I’ll talk to my mother. Then I’ll stop giving away our money.”
“Vera…”
“No, Maxim. I will not pay for your cowardice.”
At that moment, the doorbell rang. Vera opened the door. Nina Vladimirovna and Zhanna were standing there. Zhanna looked tanned and rested — apparently, four hundred sixty-eight thousand rubles had done her good.
“We need to talk,” her mother-in-law said and walked inside.
Zhanna followed. They sat down at the table as if they owned the place. Vera remained standing. Maxim came out of the room and stopped in the doorway.
“Maxim said you caused a scandal over money,” Nina Vladimirovna began.
“Not a scandal. I demanded the return of what was taken from me without permission.”
“‘Taken from me.’ Such beautiful words. The money was in a joint account. That means it was joint money.”
“Eighty percent of that money was earned by me.”
“When you got married, did you plan to count who earns how much? Or is a family supposed to be a shared effort?”
Vera turned to Zhanna.
“Zhanna, you spent almost half a million rubles in three days. On what?”
Zhanna leaned back in her chair and shrugged.
“What difference does it make? My brother gave it to me. Voluntarily. That’s our family business.”
“Family business. Interesting. You receive child support. You receive rental income from your ex-husband’s apartment. You live comfortably. Why do you need someone else’s money?”
“You’re not my mother. You don’t get to ask.”
Nina Vladimirovna raised one hand like a conductor.
“Vera, you’re taking too much upon yourself. Maxim is my son. And he decides for himself whom to help.”
“He decides using my money. That is the difference.”
“Your money, his money — you are one family unit. Stop dividing everything.”
“You started dividing things when you began pulling everything out of that family unit.”
Zhanna stood and came right up to Vera. She was taller, broader in the shoulders, and used to overpowering people.
“Listen, you. My brother was a normal man before he married you. You turned him into a slave. Work, work, save, save. When is he supposed to live? When is he supposed to breathe?”
“He’s been breathing on my sofa in front of the television for two years. Very deeply.”
Zhanna leaned closer.
“Maybe you should be simpler. Then your husband wouldn’t be running away from you.”
Vera looked her straight in the eyes. Three years. Three years of silence, patience, swallowed insults, and polite smiles. Three years — and now this woman, tanned on her money, stood in her apartment and taught her how to live.
Vera swung her hand and slapped Zhanna across the face.
The sound was sharp and dry, like the click of a switch. Zhanna staggered back, grabbing her cheek, her eyes wide. Nina Vladimirovna gasped. Maxim froze in the doorway.
“Get out of my home,” Vera said. Her voice was even, quiet, without hysteria. “Both of you. Now.”
“You… you hit me!” Zhanna stared at her as if a cat had suddenly started speaking.
“Yes. And I’ll do it again if you’re still standing in the same spot in thirty seconds.”
Her mother-in-law jumped up.
“Maxim! Do you see what your wife is doing?”
Maxim stood silent. His eyes moved from his mother to his wife, and in that movement was everything — his entire life, all his choices, all his cowardice.
“Maxim, say something to her!”
“Mom… maybe you really should leave…”
“What?! You’re defending her?! She hit your sister!”
Vera went to the door and opened it.
“The exit is here. You know the way.”
Nina Vladimirovna grabbed her bag and headed for the door. At the threshold, she turned around.
“You’ll regret this, Vera. You have no idea how much you’ll regret it.”
“Maybe. But not today.”
Zhanna left silently, one hand pressed to her cheek. The door closed. Vera turned to Maxim.
“Divorce.”
“Vera, wait…”
“No. I’m done waiting. For three years, I waited for you to become a husband. You didn’t. You remained a son and a brother. But I needed a husband. An equal. Someone beside me. You were never beside me. You were never really there at all.”
“You can’t just…”
“I can. And I am. I’m filing the papers this week. The loan you took out is yours. You signed for it. The apartment is rented, so there’s nothing to divide. I’ll take my things tomorrow while you’re at work.”
“Where will you go?”
“To my mother’s. And then to my own place. I should have gone back to myself a long time ago.”
Maxim sat down on the sofa. His face showed nothing — no pain, no anger, no relief. Emptiness. Vera thought that perhaps this was what a person looked like when he had no arguments left because he had never had any in the first place.
“You’ll change your mind,” he said quietly.
“No, Maxim. I won’t.”
He got up. Silently, he packed a bag — phone, charger, jacket. At the door, he turned and looked at her for a long time, heavily, as if trying to memorize her. Or frighten her. Vera stood by the wall and said nothing. Not one word after him. Not one step toward him.
The door slammed.
Vera was left alone. She stood in the middle of the kitchen, listening to the silence. Then she took out her phone and called her mother.
“Mom, I’m leaving Maxim.”
“When are you coming?”
“Tomorrow. I’ll pack my things and come.”
“All right. The room is ready. Fresh sheets. And Verochka?”
“Yes?”
“You did well. It was long overdue.”
Vera smiled for the first time in months.
She put the phone on the table, took apples from the refrigerator, and began making shangi according to her grandmother’s recipe. Her hands moved confidently, automatically — butter, flour, sugar, cinnamon. While the dough rose in the oven, she brewed sea buckthorn tea. She poured it into a large mug — the same one Nina Vladimirovna had once called “peasant.”
The shangi came out golden and fluffy. Vera sat on the sofa — Maxim’s sofa — and took a bite. The apples were sweet and tart, the dough crumbly on her tongue. Outside the window, the autumn sun was setting, and its rays stretched across the floor in long warm stripes.
The phone rang. An unknown number. Vera hesitated, then answered.
“Vera? Hello. This is Oleg. Zhanna’s ex-husband.”
“Hello. What can I do for you?”
“Maxim called me. He said you’re getting divorced. I… want to tell you something. Consider it a parting gift.”
“I’m listening.”
“Zhanna didn’t spend a single kopeck of the money Nina Vladimirovna supposedly gave her.”
Vera froze with the mug near her lips.
“What do you mean, she didn’t spend it?”
“Nina Vladimirovna never gave her the money.”
“Wait. Maxim said he gave it to his mother for Zhanna.”
“That’s right. He gave it to his mother. But his mother kept all of it. I know this for certain because last month Zhanna asked me for twenty thousand for Liza’s winter clothes. She wouldn’t have asked if she had half a million.”
Vera slowly set down the mug.
“Wait. Nina Vladimirovna took the money from Maxim, said she would give it to Zhanna, but kept it for herself?”
“Exactly. I’m her ex-husband, but Zhanna and I communicate normally for our daughter’s sake. She told me her mother has been saving money for a long time. She wants an apartment in Anapa. A small one near the sea. And she isn’t saving from her pension. She’s saving from what she pulls out of Maxim.”
“Does Zhanna know her mother takes money supposedly for her?”
“She knows now. I told her yesterday. She’s furious. Her mother used her name to pressure Maxim. ‘Zhanna needs it, Lizochka needs it, they’ll be lost without help.’ But Zhanna didn’t even know her mother was asking for money like that. She really thought Maxim was occasionally helping her out as a brother with fifteen or twenty thousand. But this — half a million.”
Vera was silent. Then she asked quietly:
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because Maxim once helped me. A long time ago, before the divorce. He’s a decent guy, just weak. But his mother is a manipulator. I wanted you to know the truth. What you do with it is up to you.”
“Thank you, Oleg.”
“You’re welcome. Good luck, Vera.”
She hung up and sat motionless for a long time. Then she took out her phone and opened her chat with Maxim. She wrote one message:
“Call Zhanna. Ask her whether she received the money from your mother. All of it. Not fifteen thousand, the whole amount. Ask her directly.”
The answer came two hours later. Three words:
“She didn’t receive it.”
Then another message followed:
“Mom isn’t answering.”
Vera took another bite of shangi. The sea buckthorn tea was warm, tart, pleasantly sour. She finished the mug and leaned back against the pillow.
The phone rang again. Maxim. She declined the call.
A minute later, a message arrived:
“Vera, I didn’t know. I swear I didn’t know. Mom said Zhanna needed money. I believed her. I’m an idiot. Vera, please, let’s talk.”
She read it. Then she put her phone on silent mode. Behind the wall, the neighbors turned on music — something slow and jazzy, with a saxophone. Vera closed her eyes.
The next morning, Zhanna called her. Her voice was different now — no challenge, no arrogance. Quiet and shaken.
“Vera, it’s Zhanna. Don’t hang up.”
“I’m listening.”
“I talked to Mom. Or tried to. At first she denied everything, then she said it was ‘for a rainy day,’ and then she said we, her children, owed her for everything she had done raising us.”
“And where is the money?”
“In her account. All of it. She’s been saving for four years. Not just from Maxim — she took money from Dad before the divorce too, and from Aunt Sveta. I calculated it. There’s more than a million there.”
“The apartment in Anapa?”
“You know? Yes. She already paid the deposit. Vera, I… I didn’t know. I truly didn’t know she was using my name. I’m ashamed.”
Vera was silent for a moment.
“Zhanna, and the slap?”
“I deserved it. I behaved horribly. Not because Mom turned me against you. I did that myself. I was angry that Maxim had a wife who fought for him, while I had an ex-husband and an empty apartment. Stupid, but honest.”
“All right. I won’t take the slap back, but I accept the apology.”
“Thank you. And one more thing, Vera. Maxim is in a terrible state. He’s sitting in Mom’s kitchen and can’t get up. She locked herself in the bedroom and won’t come out. When he asked her about the money, she said, ‘It’s my money. I earned it because I raised you.’ It’s like he finally woke up. For the first time in years.”
“That’s his awakening, Zhanna. Not mine.”
“I understand. But maybe…”
“No. I’ve made my decision. I wish Maxim well. Sincerely. But we will not be together.”
“I understand.”
Vera hung up. Then she opened her notebook and wrote the number: four hundred seventy thousand. Money in the account. Her money, returned through a loan that now hung over Maxim.
She crossed out the number and wrote underneath:
“New life. Beginning.”
That evening, Tatyana Borisovna met her daughter at the door. She hugged her tightly, without words. Vera went into her old room — clean sheets, a soft pillow. On the nightstand stood a photograph: Vera at five years old, with braids, holding ice cream, laughing.
“Mom, I baked shangi. Want some?”
“Grandma’s recipe?”
“Grandma’s.”
“Then put the kettle on. Sea buckthorn tea?”
“What else?”
They sat in the kitchen — mother and daughter, two cups, one pie. The autumn sun had already set, but the kitchen was warm and bright. Vera ate shangi and thought that three years was a long time. And at the same time, it was nothing. An entire life still lay ahead.
And somewhere on the other side of the city, Nina Vladimirovna sat locked in her bedroom, rereading messages from her son and daughter. Both were the same — short, final, impossible to argue with.
“We know. Return the money.”
The deposit for the apartment in Anapa would expire in three days according to the contract. It could not be refunded. Her own children no longer answered her calls. Nina Vladimirovna dialed Maxim’s number again. Ring. Ring. Ring.
Silence.
Vera finished her tea, washed her mug, and smiled.
Everything had happened for the best.