Sergey had grown up among vegetable beds and apple trees, and even after years of city life, the land still pulled at him like a magnet. When he and Marina bought a small country house with a little plot of land, he finally felt he had a corner of the world beneath the open sky that truly belonged to him.
But his joy did not last long.
Tamara Ivanovna appeared on the property and immediately began speaking as if she were the owner. That morning, Sergey arrived and found her standing in the middle of the yard with a watering can in her hands.
“Good morning, Tamara Ivanovna. I see you’re already running things here,” he said calmly, placing his bag on the porch.
“And who else would?” she replied, watering the flower bed he had leveled just yesterday to turn into a lawn. “You can’t manage this place on your own. A proper eye is needed here.”
“I actually wanted to make a lawn here. Something neat and even. Why did you plant flowers?”
“A lawn!” she snorted. “Grass is for lazy people. Land should grow something you can put in your mouth.”
Sergey sighed and sat down on the step. He did not want to start arguing on the first fine day.
“Let’s do this,” he suggested gently. “That side by the fence can be yours. Plant whatever you want there. But this area near the house, I’d like to arrange myself. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” she nodded far too quickly. “By the fence, you say. Fine.”
“Good,” Sergey said, relieved. “I just want everyone to be comfortable.”
“You should want me to be comfortable,” his mother-in-law suddenly snapped. “Instead, you show up here giving orders.”
He said nothing and went to unload the seedlings he had brought with him early that morning. He still believed a kind word could settle everything. He sincerely thought adults could share one yard without turning it into a battlefield.
“Sergey!” she called out an hour later. “What have you shoved in here?”
“Tomatoes. I’ve been growing them since winter on the windowsill.”
“Dig them up. Carrots are going here.”
“Tamara Ivanovna, we just agreed. This is my side.”
“I changed my mind,” she cut him off. “It’s shady by the fence. Carrots need sun.”
Summer followed summer, but peace never came.
Sergey brought young trees — his mother-in-law pulled them out. He built a gazebo — she dragged the boards away to use them around her vegetable beds. Once he arrived and discovered that the neat little path he had spent two weeks laying had been taken apart down to the very last stone.
“Where are the paving stones?” he asked, feeling the softness leave his voice.
“Under the barrel. They were in the way. I walk there.”
“It was a path. For walking.”
“And I walk. On the ground. Walking on the ground is healthier,” she said, pressing her lips together. “You’re a city man, Sergey. You don’t understand anything about this.”
That evening he called Marina, hoping for support. She was silent for a long time, then spoke in a tired voice.
“Sergey, what is it now? She’s my mother. If she wants to dig around, let her dig.”
“Marina, she isn’t just digging around. She’s destroying everything. I spent weeks making that path.”
“So what? It’s just a path. You can buy new stones.”
“It’s not about the stones. It’s about the fact that I feel like a stranger there.”
“Don’t make things up,” she dismissed him. “Find a compromise.”
“I have tried. Ten times. She agrees, then does the opposite.”
“Then you didn’t try hard enough,” Marina said sharply and hung up.
Sergey sat for a long time in the dark kitchen, replaying the conversation in his head. He understood then that disappointment was not a sudden burst of anger. It was a slow cooling. Everything he had believed in was falling apart grain by grain, like dry soil slipping through his fingers.
“Sergey, I’ve been thinking,” Tamara Ivanovna announced on his next visit. “Why don’t you transfer the house to me? You barely come here anyway.”
“Excuse me?” He stopped in his tracks.
“The house. Put it in my name. I practically live here. You just drop by once in a while.”
“The country house is registered to me. It’s mine.”
“Yours, yours,” she nodded mockingly. “And who takes care of it? I do. So, by fairness, it’s mine.”
“What kind of fairness is that? I bought it. With my own money.”
“Oh, he bought it,” she muttered, pursing her lips. “And what good did that do? Your vegetable beds were crooked before I came along.”
Sergey’s patience finally ran out, and he did what he had been putting off for a long time: he changed the locks on the door and the gate. He hung a new, heavy lock and left almost feeling calm.
A week later, when he returned, he found the latch broken and a tent standing in the middle of the yard — bright orange, like the flag of an invader.
“Tamara Ivanovna, what is this?” he asked, standing beside the tent and barely holding back his anger.
“My house,” she answered proudly, sticking her head out. “If you won’t let me into yours, I’ll live here. All summer.”
“You broke the lock. The new one.”
“Then don’t lock out family!” she raised her voice. “Do you have no conscience? Throwing an old woman into the street!”
“I didn’t throw you out. I locked my own house.”
“Your own, your own,” she mocked. “That’s all you ever say. I’ll complain to my daughter that you’re freezing me out.”
Sergey called Marina right in front of her, not moving a step away.
“Your person,” he said, deliberately twisting the phrase, “has put up a tent in my yard. And she broke the lock again.”
“Sergey, let the tent stand there,” Marina replied through the phone. “Is it really such a big deal?”
“The tent isn’t the problem. The problem is that no one in this family hears me at all.”
“Don’t start,” Marina sighed. “You always want a scandal.”
“I’m the one starting a scandal?” he laughed coldly. “I put up a lock, someone breaks it, and somehow I’m guilty again.”
“Just give in. Is that so hard?”
“You know, Marina,” he said slowly, “I think I finally understand. Neither of you wants peace. You want my land.”
“Don’t talk nonsense.”
“It isn’t nonsense. It’s the conclusion.”
That summer, Sergey gave up gardening. He visited less and less often, and began taking long work trips to distant cities, repairing park fountains — a rare, painstaking job that kept him away for months at a time.
When he returned, his marriage had crumbled as quietly as that dismantled garden path.
“So we’re getting divorced,” Marina said almost indifferently as she signed the papers. “You destroyed everything yourself.”
“I did?” He raised an eyebrow. “Fine. Let it be that way. I won’t argue.”
“And don’t divide the country house. My mother put work into it.”
“The country house will remain mine,” he said calmly. “And what happens to it later — we’ll see.”
Several years passed, and Sergey felt drawn back to the land again, just as he had been in his youth. He drove to the old property and, at the gate, saw the same Tamara Ivanovna with a watering can, as if time had stopped. The lock had been broken again, and the vegetable beds were lush, neat, and already blooming.
“Oh, look who finally showed up,” she greeted him without the slightest embarrassment. “What are you doing here? I’ve been the owner here for a long time.”
“Tamara Ivanovna, Marina and I are divorced. You know that.”
“So what?” She shrugged. “You got divorced, but what does the land have to do with it? I brought this place back to life. Fixed the house, put in new windows. I poured plenty of money into it.”
“Who asked you to? This is my property.”
“It used to be yours. Now it’s shared,” she snapped. “By fairness. I’ll complain to my daughter, and she’ll deal with you. Better yet, transfer the country house to me.”
“Complain if you want,” he smiled. “Actually, I think I’ll call her too.”
He called Marina in front of her, just like in the old days.
“Your person is at the country house again. She broke the lock, planted a whole garden, and says it belongs to her.”
“Sergey, what do you want from me?” Marina replied irritably. “Those are your problems. The country house is yours, so deal with it.”
“A minute ago it was her land. Now it’s my problem. Convenient.”
“I’m not buying her a new country house,” Marina added. “And don’t call me over such nonsense.”
“Fine,” he said with unusual ease. “I won’t bother you again.”
He hung up and looked at the blooming vegetable beds, at the orange edge of the old tent sticking out from the shed. And in his mind, a plan was born — quiet, clean, and almost cheerful.
“You know, Tamara Ivanovna,” he said, “you’re right. I hardly come here. Let everything grow.”
“There!” she said triumphantly, lifting the watering can. “Finally, you’ve come to your senses. Always walking around here giving orders.”
“Let it grow,” he nodded and left without looking back.
She took it as surrender.
That very evening she called her acquaintances and boasted that her son-in-law had finally accepted the situation, and that the house would soon be completely hers. She was already planning how to persuade him in the autumn to sign a deed of gift, and she was calculating where all her latest investments would go. She believed the battle had been won for good.
Meanwhile, Sergey found what he had been dreaming of.
A spacious plot of land in a pine forest, quiet and set far away from the noisy road that had long poisoned the air near the old country house. A small wooden home, resin-scented air, soft pine needles beneath his feet — he fell in love with the place immediately.
After completing everything legally, he made his final move: he sold the old property to another family.
“The house is yours,” he told the new owners as he handed them the keys. “There’s just one thing. There’s an uninvited guest dug in out in the yard. My former mother-in-law. Vegetable beds, a tent, the whole thing. Handle it your own way — gently.”
“We’ll handle it,” the head of the family smiled. “We have two dogs. They like space. No one will stay long.”
A few days later, the phone rang. Marina was shouting so loudly that Sergey had to move the phone away from his ear.
“Sergey! There are strangers at the country house! With dogs! They threw my mother out! What is going on?”
“Nothing special,” he said, unable to hold back a small laugh. “I sold the property. Everything was done legally. There are new owners now.”
“You sold it?!” Her voice shot upward. “Where is she supposed to go now?”
“Not to me,” he answered calmly. “The land is no longer mine. And it isn’t shared either. The matter is closed. You said it yourself — the country house was mine, so my problems were mine to solve. I solved them.”
“Do you understand what you’ve done?” she gasped. “She invested money in that house! Windows, repairs!”
“And who asked her to?” he repeated in the same tone she had once used with him. “I didn’t. For several years, I asked for the opposite.”
“Now she’s demanding money from me! She says I’m to blame for not defending the country house! Sergey, she’s driving me insane!”
“How interesting,” he said slowly. “When I asked her to stay out of my country house, it was called fairness. But now that someone has to pay, it’s suddenly my problem?”
“Sergey!”
“Goodbye, Marina.”
A week later, she wrote to him from an unfamiliar number, pretending to be an old acquaintance and casually asking where he had settled now. Sergey recognized the trick immediately. The stubborn tone was far too familiar.
He did not answer angrily. He did not explain anything. He simply blocked that number too, just like the previous one.
That weekend, he stood on his new land among the tall pine trees and breathed in the resin-scented air with his whole chest. The soil was soft and loose, and it smelled of freedom.
He knelt down and planted a young tree without glancing back at anyone’s shadow behind him.
“There will be apple trees here,” he said to himself. “And over there — no fences at all. Just because.”
No one broke his locks. No one pulled out his seedlings. No one set up an orange tent in the middle of his life.
At last, he was alone with his land — and it was the best thing that had happened to him in a very long time.
THE END