Galina Petrovna loved entertaining guests in her daughter-in-law’s apartment. She seated them, served refreshments, and proudly showed off the renovations—until one day Vera decided to clarify one small detail.
Galina Petrovna arranged the cups as though she were conducting an orchestra. Every cup went on a saucer, every saucer on a napkin. She had brought the napkins herself—linen ones, with blue cornflowers embroidered in the corners.
Vera stood in the kitchen doorway, watching her mother-in-law take charge. Her arms folded across her chest almost automatically. It had become a habit over the past two years.
“Verochka, pass me the sugar bowl. No, not that one. Mine—the crystal one.”
She had said mine.
Vera felt the word settle somewhere beneath her ribs, just below her throat. She handed over the sugar bowl.
The guests were supposed to arrive at four. They were Galina Petrovna’s friends: Zoya Ilyinichna and Tamara. Zoya had once worked at the same clinic as her mother-in-law, while Tamara had lived one floor above Galina Petrovna in the building where she had spent thirty years before her son got married.
Vera dried her hands on a towel and went into the bedroom. Her laptop lay on the nightstand. She ran a finger across the lid, wiping away a thin layer of dust, then returned to the kitchen.
The story of the apartment had begun four years earlier.
At the time, Vera worked for an architectural design firm and earned seventy-eight thousand rubles a month. She had been saving since she was twenty-four, putting aside fifteen to twenty thousand every month. She had gone without a vacation for two years in a row. At work, she ate buckwheat from a plastic container while her colleagues ordered business lunches.
Lyosha, her future husband, had not yet entered her life.
He appeared later, when the mortgage had already been approved, the down payment had been made, and the keys were resting in the pocket of her winter coat.
They met in line at a government services center. Vera was registering her ownership of the apartment. He was updating his official address. They stood beside each other for forty minutes and started talking.
He was two years older than she was, worked as an engineer at a factory, and wore glasses with thin metal frames. He was always touching the bridge of his nose to adjust them.
Eight months later, he moved in with her.
Six months after that, they got married.
Galina Petrovna came from Kaluga for the wedding. She examined the apartment the way a doctor examines a patient—with scrutiny, mild disapproval, and professional curiosity.
“The wallpaper wasn’t put up evenly,” she said, running her palm along the hallway wall.
“It’s decorative plaster,” Vera replied.
“Oh. Well, in that case, it’s fine.”
That phrase—well, in that case, it’s fine—would be repeated many times over the years, for many different reasons.
Lyosha was not a bad husband.
Vera often caught herself using that exact phrase: not bad. As though that alone were an achievement.
He washed his own plate, occasionally took out the trash without being reminded, and on Saturdays cooked macaroni with cheese, which he called “my signature recipe.”
The problem was not him.
The problem arrived from Kaluga once a month, carrying two bags and a crystal sugar bowl.
Galina Petrovna stayed for four or five days at a time. She slept on the sofa in the living room, even though Vera offered her an inflatable mattress in the study.
“I’m used to this sofa,” her mother-in-law would say.
The sofa Vera had bought the previous year during a clearance sale.
The mornings began with the kettle.
Galina Petrovna got up at six, switched it on, and loudly opened every cupboard in search of the tea, even though it was kept in exactly the same place as during her previous visit, and the visit before that.
“Verochka, where did you move my tea?”
Her “tea” was a box of Greenfield Earl Grey that Vera bought especially for her visits.
“It’s on the same shelf, Galina Petrovna.”
“Oh, I see it. You should label it or something.”
So Vera labeled the shelf.
In her own apartment.
She clenched her teeth. Not because she was afraid of an argument, but for Lyosha’s sake. He loved his mother, and that was the one thing Vera could never blame him for.
The first time Vera heard the lie, Galina Petrovna was speaking to Tamara on the phone in the kitchen.
“No, Tamara dear, everything’s wonderful here. The apartment is cozy—a little two-room place. I helped set it all up when Lyoshenka got married. We did the renovations ourselves. Well, I helped.”
Vera stood behind the wall holding a wet cleaning cloth.
She had been washing the window. Water dripped from the cloth onto the linoleum, forming tiny, perfectly neat dots.
Galina Petrovna had not helped.
Not with a single ruble, and not with one useful piece of advice.
There had been plenty of advice, of course, but it mostly consisted of phrases like, “Back home in Kaluga…” and, “People never used to do it that way.”
Vera said nothing.
That evening, she asked Lyosha about it.
“Your mother tells people she helped us with the renovations.”
He adjusted his glasses.
“Well, she did come here. She helped hang the curtains.”
“I hung the curtains. She stood next to me and said the curtain rod was crooked.”
“Vera, don’t be so picky. She only says things like that so she won’t feel embarrassed in front of her friends. You know, because everything her son has came from his wife.”
He did not say it angrily.
There was even a hint of apology in his voice.
But something in that sentence caught inside Vera like a splinter—too small to see, but painful every time she moved.
Everything her son has came from his wife.
That was how he saw it too.
Vera put the cloth beneath the sink and went to take a shower. The water was hot, nearly scalding. She stood beneath it until her skin turned red.
The second time happened at New Year’s.
Galina Petrovna arrived on December twenty-eighth carrying Christmas ornaments. They were old Soviet decorations stored in a cardboard shoebox: glass balls with peeling paint, a star with one broken point, and tinsel that looked as though it had survived the entire 1990s.
“We’ll decorate the tree the way we did at home,” she announced.
Vera had bought the tree a week earlier and had already decorated it in a minimalist style: white ornaments, warm lights, and a wooden star.
She liked it.
“Galina Petrovna, we already have decorations.”
“Those aren’t decorations, Verochka. This is our family tradition. Lyoshenka loved this snowman when he was a child.”
The snowman had no nose.
Lyosha stood in the doorway and said nothing.
Eventually, he spoke.
“Mom, Vera worked hard on the tree. Let’s leave it the way it is.”
Galina Petrovna pursed her lips.
She did not put the box away. It remained in the corner of the living room throughout the holidays, like a silent accusation.
Then, on New Year’s Eve, when Vera stepped onto the balcony to watch the fireworks, she heard her mother-in-law speaking to a relative over video chat.
“Yes, our tree is beautiful. I chose everything myself—the white ornaments, the whole design. It looks like something from a magazine.”
The frost stung Vera’s cheeks.
She breathed out, and a cloud of vapor hung in the air for a second before disappearing, as though it had never existed.
There was a third time, then a fourth, then a fifth.
Eventually, Vera stopped counting.
One day at work, her colleague Inna asked her what was wrong.
Inna was fifty-two, wore her hair short, and had a habit of speaking the truth without wrapping it in anything soft.
They were sitting in a conference room waiting for a planning meeting to begin. Behind the glass wall, people walked past carrying folders and drinking coffee.
“What’s going on with you, Vera? Is it your mother-in-law again?”
“She tells people the apartment belongs to all of us. That she and Lyosha helped buy it.”
“And what does Lyosha say?”
“He says she doesn’t mean anything by it. She only says it so she won’t feel embarrassed.”
Inna tapped her pen against the table three times in quick succession.
“You know, my mother spent her whole life calling my father’s garden ‘our garden.’ My father dug it, planted it, and watered it. My mother only showed up to take pictures with the harvest. He stayed quiet. Then they sold the garden, and my mother kept all the money. Because ‘ours’ had always meant ‘mine.’”
“It isn’t like that with us,” Vera said.
“Not yet,” Inna replied.
The meeting began, and their conversation ended.
But Vera kept thinking about the words not yet for the next two days.
They sounded like a warning.
In February, Galina Petrovna called and announced that she was coming with her friends.
“Zoya Ilyinichna has wanted to see how we live for ages. Tamara too. You don’t mind, do you, Verochka?”
How we live.
Vera gripped the phone so tightly that her knuckles turned white.
“Of course not, Galina Petrovna. Come over.”
She ended the call and sat on the edge of the bed.
Outside, the February sky was turning gray. On the windowsill stood a cactus in a clay pot. Vera had bought it three years earlier when she moved into the apartment.
It had never flowered.
Lyosha came home from work at seven. As usual in winter, he smelled of machine oil and cold air. He took off his coat, hung it on a hook, and went to wash his hands.
“Mom’s coming on Saturday,” he called from the bathroom. “She’s bringing Zoya Ilyinichna and Tamara.”
“I know. She called me.”
“You’re not angry, are you?”
“No.”
He came out drying his hands on a towel. His glasses had fogged up from the temperature change, so he removed them and wiped them on the edge of his T-shirt.
“Vera.”
“What?”
“You are angry.”
“I said I’m not.”
He nodded, hung up the towel, and went into the kitchen.
A minute later, the kettle began to roar.
Vera lay down on the bed and closed her eyes.
She knew every detail of the ceiling by heart: the crack in the corner that had been repaired twice and always returned, the old water stain hidden beneath a coat of paint.
Every centimeter of it belonged to her.
On Thursday evening, Vera opened her laptop.
The folder titled “Documents” was inside another folder called “Apartment,” which was inside a third folder labeled “Important.”
Three levels of folders, as though she had been hiding the truth from herself.
The purchase agreement had been signed before the marriage.
Sole owner: Vera Andreyevna Korolyova.
The official property registry extract had been updated the previous November. Vera renewed it regularly out of habit.
Now that habit was going to be useful.
There was also a letter from the bank confirming that the mortgage had been paid in full.
The date of the final payment was March of the year before last.
The entire amount had been hers.
Vera closed the laptop.
Her hands were steady.
She surprised herself with how calm she felt.
On Friday, she went to the supermarket and bought chocolate-covered marshmallows, cookies, and a lemon for tea. She sliced the lemon into thin rounds and arranged them like a fan on a small plate.
The apartment filled with the smell of citrus and something crisp and wintry.
Lyosha asked, “Are you getting ready?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Thanks, Vera. Mom will appreciate it.”
She said nothing.
She put the plate of lemon slices in the refrigerator and went to iron the tablecloth.
Saturday.
Two in the afternoon.
Galina Petrovna arrived first, one hour before her friends, as always. She needed time to inspect the apartment, rearrange something, and establish herself as the woman in charge.
“Verochka, why did you remove the vase from the dresser? My vase used to stand there.”
That vase.
Galina Petrovna had brought it a year and a half earlier. It was blue, covered in gold swirls, heavy, and looked like something displayed in a provincial museum.
Vera had put it in a cupboard because it did not suit any room in the apartment.
“It’s in the cupboard, Galina Petrovna.”
“Take it out. Zoya will appreciate it.”
Vera took out the vase and placed it on the dresser.
The blue color was almost painful against the gray walls Vera had painted herself, in two coats, over a weekend while Lyosha was away fishing.
Lyosha sat in an armchair scrolling through his phone.
He did not look up.
At three, the guests arrived.
Zoya Ilyinichna was a small woman with a round face and a booming voice. Tamara, by contrast, was tall and quiet, with long fingers that were always touching something: a button on her cardigan, the edge of a napkin, the handle of a cup.
Galina Petrovna opened the door herself.
With her own key.
Vera stood in the hallway and watched her mother-in-law unlock the door, throw it open, and say:
“Come in, girls. Make yourselves at home.”
The “girls” entered.
Zoya Ilyinichna looked around.
“Oh, Galya, your home is so cozy!”
Your home.
Not “your family’s.”
Not “Vera’s.”
Yours.
Galina Petrovna blossomed. Her cheeks turned pink, and her back straightened.
She led her guests around the apartment like a museum guide.
“Here’s the kitchen. We redid everything last year. The backsplash is tiled—I chose the pattern myself.”
Vera had ordered the backsplash online. She had spent three evenings comparing designs and had traveled across the city to see samples in a showroom.
“And this is the living room. The sofa is new and very comfortable. I always say that a good sofa is half the comfort of a home.”
The sofa had cost forty-seven thousand rubles.
Vera had bought it with her annual bonus.
“We put up the curtains recently. Natural linen.”
Vera had sewn the curtains herself.
She owned a Janome sewing machine that she had bought before the marriage. It stood on a table in the study.
Once, Galina Petrovna had looked at it and asked, “What’s that? You sew?”
As though it were strange.
As though sewing curtains for her own apartment required an explanation.
Vera carried a tray of cups from the kitchen.
Her hands did not tremble.
Everything was going according to plan.
“Galina Petrovna, I’ve made the tea.”
“Thank you, Verochka. Sit with us.”
Vera sat down.
She poured the tea and pushed the plate of marshmallows toward the guests.
Zoya Ilyinichna stirred her tea with a spoon. Tamara remained silent, studying the walls.
“It’s a lovely apartment,” Zoya said. “Is the neighborhood quiet?”
“Very quiet,” Galina Petrovna replied. “When we were buying it, I made sure to check everything. I wanted a proper courtyard and a park nearby.”
Vera put her cup on its saucer.
The sound was slightly louder than necessary.
Lyosha looked up from his phone.
“Mom,” he began.
But Galina Petrovna did not hear him.
She was in her element.
“We paid two and a half million for it back then. Of course, we took out a mortgage. We helped Lyoshenka.”
Two and a half million.
The apartment had cost three million eight hundred thousand.
Vera had taken out the mortgage in her name.
The down payment had come from four years of her savings.
The monthly payments, the insurance, every document—everything had been in her name.
Every ruble had been hers.
“Mom,” Lyosha said again.
“What is it, son?”
“Nothing.”
He lowered his eyes to his phone.
His glasses had slipped toward the tip of his nose, but he did not adjust them.
Vera looked at him.
For four long seconds.
He did not raise his head.
She stood up from the table calmly.
Not a single muscle in her face moved.
She walked into the bedroom, picked up the laptop from the nightstand, and returned.
She sat down, opened the lid, and the screen lit up.
A shadow of confusion passed over the guests’ faces.
Tamara stopped touching her button.
Zoya Ilyinichna froze with her spoon halfway to her mouth.
Galina Petrovna frowned.
“Verochka, are you planning to work? We have guests.”
“No, Galina Petrovna. Just one moment.”
Vera opened the folder.
Three clicks.
The purchase agreement filled the screen.
“I only wanted to clarify something,” Vera said.
Her voice was even, with no pressure behind it.
“For Zoya Ilyinichna and Tamara. So there won’t be any confusion.”
She turned the laptop toward the guests.
“This is the purchase agreement. The date is March twelfth, 2022. The buyer is Vera Andreyevna Korolyova. Sole owner.”
Silence fell over the kitchen like a tablecloth settling across a table—heavy linen, perfectly smooth, without a single crease.
Zoya Ilyinichna slowly lowered her spoon.
“And this is the official property registry extract,” Vera continued, opening the second file. “It was updated in November. There is one owner. Me.”
“Vera,” Lyosha said.
She did not look at him.
“And here is the bank’s confirmation that the mortgage was paid in full. Every payment was mine. The down payment was mine. The marriage was registered one year after the purchase.”
She closed the laptop.
She did not slam it.
She lowered the lid gently and carefully, the way someone closes a book after reading the final page.
Then she pushed the plate of marshmallows toward Zoya Ilyinichna.
“Please, have one. They’re fresh.”
Galina Petrovna sat perfectly upright.
Her back was straight as a ruler.
Her cheeks, which had been pink with pleasure only a minute earlier, had gone pale.
Her fingers tightened around the cup, and Vera noticed that her knuckles had turned white too.
“Verochka,” her mother-in-law began.
Her voice trembled, though she quickly brought it under control.
“Why did you do that?”
Vera lifted her cup and took a sip.
“You said you bought the apartment. I clarified the facts.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
“What did you mean, Galina Petrovna?”
Tamara lowered her eyes.
Her long fingers found the edge of the tablecloth and began folding it.
Zoya Ilyinichna looked from one woman to the other, as though watching a tennis match.
“I meant that we’re a family,” Galina Petrovna said. “Everything belongs to all of us.”
“No,” Vera replied. “Not everything.”
Lyosha stood up from the armchair.
At last, he adjusted his glasses.
He came over to the table but did not sit down. He stood there like a man who could not decide which of two chairs to choose.
“Vera, maybe you shouldn’t have done this in front of everyone.”
“And when should I have done it, Lyosha? I stayed quiet for two years. Your mother tells her friends, neighbors, and relatives that this is her apartment. You stay quiet. I stay quiet. Everyone stays quiet. Meanwhile, the apartment goes from ‘ours’ to ‘Mom’s.’ What comes next?”
He did not answer.
He sat on an empty chair and rubbed the bridge of his nose.
It was a habit that appeared only when he was deeply uncomfortable.
Zoya Ilyinichna coughed.
“Verochka, I honestly… I didn’t know. Galya said…”
“I know what she said,” Vera interrupted gently. “That’s why I showed you the documents.”
Another pause followed.
Water dripped from the kitchen faucet.
Vera stood, walked over, and tightened the handle.
The dripping stopped.
When she returned to the table, Tamara suddenly spoke.
“My daughter went through the same thing.”
Everyone looked at her.
Tamara rarely spoke, so each of her words carried more weight than usual.
“She bought her apartment on her own. Her husband moved in later. Then her mother-in-law started telling everyone, ‘The children live in our apartment.’ My daughter stayed quiet for five years. Eventually, she couldn’t take it anymore and said everything she thought. Only she didn’t do it like Vera. She shouted. She cried. Her husband took his mother’s side. They divorced six months later.”
Tamara fell silent and drank some tea.
Zoya Ilyinichna gently placed her cup on the table.
“Galya,” she said, “did you really tell people that the apartment belonged to you and Lyosha?”
Galina Petrovna said nothing.
Her chin rose slightly, the way it always did when she was preparing to argue.
But there was nothing to argue with.
The documents were inside the laptop, and the laptop stood closed on the table like a full stop at the end of a sentence.
“I never said it was mine,” she finally replied. “I said it was ours.”
“Galina Petrovna,” Vera said, sitting across from her, “‘ours’ and ‘yours’ sound very different when the owner is sitting in the room. Especially when the owner stays silent.”
Lyosha swallowed.
The sound was clearly audible in the quiet kitchen.
“Mom, Vera is right,” he said.
His voice was soft but clear.
“I should have said something earlier. This is Vera’s apartment. She bought it before there was an ‘us.’”
Galina Petrovna looked at her son.
Her eyebrows drew together over the bridge of her nose.
For a moment, it seemed she might say something sharp.
Instead, she exhaled and loosened her grip on the cup.
“There was no need to do it in front of people,” she said.
It was not a question.
It was a statement.
“You said something different in front of people,” Vera replied.
Zoya Ilyinichna was the first to begin preparing to leave.
She pulled on her coat and fastened it all the way to her chin, even though the February weather was not especially cold.
“Thank you for the tea, Verochka. You have a wonderful apartment.”
She placed clear emphasis on the word you.
Vera nodded.
Tamara lingered in the hallway.
She leaned toward Vera and spoke quietly enough that only she could hear.
“You did the right thing. My daughter wishes she had done it that way.”
Then she left, walking down the hall in long strides while fastening her buttons.
Galina Petrovna remained seated in the kitchen.
She did not leave.
Lyosha stood nearby, leaning against the doorframe.
There was a meter and a half between them and twenty-seven years of age difference, but at that moment they looked alike: the same line of the shoulders, the same downward curve at the corners of the mouth.
“Mom, would you like more tea?” Lyosha asked.
“No.”
She was silent for a moment.
“Vera.”
“Yes?”
“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
Vera returned to her place at the table and looked at her mother-in-law.
There were thin wrinkles around her eyes, delicate as pencil lines.
The brooch on her cardigan had shifted slightly to one side, and Vera thought automatically that someone should straighten it.
“I know,” she said. “But you did hurt me. Maybe not deliberately, but you did. And I stayed silent. That was my mistake.”
“You could have spoken to me.”
“You wouldn’t have listened. You only listen when there are witnesses.”
It was harsh.
Vera knew it was harsh.
But the words came out before she could soften them, and she decided not to take them back.
Galina Petrovna stood up.
She tugged her cardigan straight and adjusted the brooch herself.
“Lyosha, call me a taxi.”
“Mom, you were going to stay until Monday.”
“Call the taxi.”
He took out his phone.
His fingers tapped the screen, and the quiet clicking of the keys could be heard.
Galina Petrovna left at six in the evening.
She spent the two hours between the guests’ departure and the taxi’s arrival sitting in the living room on “her” sofa, holding her phone.
She did not call anyone.
She simply held it.
Vera washed the cups.
Four cups, four saucers, the teapot, and the milk jug she had taken out but no one had used.
The water was warm.
The dishwashing liquid smelled like apples.
Outside, darkness gathered.
Lyosha came into the kitchen.
“Are you satisfied?”
Vera turned off the faucet and placed the last saucer in the drying rack.
“No.”
“Then why did you do it?”
“Because feeling satisfied and doing the right thing are not the same.”
He was quiet.
He removed his glasses, wiped them, and put them back on.
It was his familiar gesture, but this time he did it more slowly, as though trying to delay the conversation.
“I should have done it myself,” he said.
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry.”
Vera looked at him.
He stood at the kitchen entrance, with light from the hallway falling across one shoulder while his face remained in shadow.
She could not see his eyes, but she could hear in his voice that he was not merely saying the word.
He meant it.
“All right,” she said.
“All right, you forgive me?”
“All right, I hear you.”
He nodded and left.
A minute later, Vera heard the television switch on in the living room.
It was an ordinary sound.
The evening was ordinary too.
But something had shifted.
Like a piece of furniture moved two centimeters from its usual place: everything looked the same, yet you had to walk differently.
For the next week, everything was quiet.
Galina Petrovna did not call.
Lyosha called her himself every evening. He took the phone onto the balcony and returned without saying anything, then sat down to dinner.
Vera did not ask what they discussed.
Not because she did not want to know, but because it was his conversation, his mother, and his part of the work.
On Thursday, Tamara called.
Vera did not recognize the Kaluga number until the caller identification appeared.
“Verochka, this is Tamara. We met at Galina’s last Saturday.”
“I remember.”
“Galina called me yesterday. She was crying.”
Vera pressed the phone more firmly to her ear.
The sounds of the street faded.
“I didn’t want her to cry.”
“I know. But she isn’t crying because she’s offended. She’s crying because she’s ashamed. For the first time in her life, Verochka, she is ashamed. She’s a strong woman. She’s used to everything being done her way. Then suddenly—documents, facts, and not even a shouting match. No scandal. You were calm and businesslike.”
“I didn’t want to be businesslike. I wanted it to stop.”
“And now it has stopped.”
Tamara was silent for a moment.
“She said to me, word for word, ‘Tamara, I’m an old fool.’ I told her, ‘Galya, you aren’t a fool. You’re simply used to your son tolerating everything.’ Then she started crying again.”
Vera stood beside the window.
The cactus sat on the windowsill—green, stubborn, without a single flower.
“Thank you for calling, Tamara.”
“Call her yourself. Not for her sake. For yours. So you won’t have to carry this around inside you.”
After the call ended, Vera remained at the window for a long time, looking down into the courtyard.
The swings moved on their own in the wind.
No one was there.
Vera called Galina Petrovna on Friday morning before work, while Lyosha was in the shower.
The call was answered after the fifth ring.
“Hello.”
Galina Petrovna’s voice sounded duller than usual, as though she were speaking from beneath a blanket.
“Galina Petrovna, it’s Vera.”
“I can see that.”
A pause followed.
Vera could hear a clock ticking somewhere.
Probably the old wall clock with the pendulum that Galina Petrovna had once shown her in a photograph.
“I’m not calling to apologize,” Vera said. “Because I have nothing to apologize for.”
“I know.”
“But I’m calling to say that you can still visit. The way you did before.”
Silence.
Long and heavy, with the ticking clock filling the empty space.
“I’m not sure that would be a good idea,” Galina Petrovna said.
“Why?”
“Because I’m ashamed, Vera. In front of you, in front of Zoya, in front of Tamara. I’m an old woman, and I’m ashamed. It’s… unpleasant.”
“I understand.”
“No, you don’t. You’re young. You don’t know what it feels like to be put in your place in front of your friends and realize you deserved it.”
“Galina Petrovna.”
“What?”
“Come and visit. Just leave the sugar bowl at home.”
Silence.
Then came a sound Vera did not recognize at first.
Galina Petrovna was laughing.
Quietly and unevenly, as though laughter and tears were standing side by side, unable to decide which one should come first.
“Without the sugar bowl,” she repeated. “All right.”
In March, her mother-in-law came alone.
No bags.
No crystal sugar bowl.
She carried a plastic bag from the supermarket.
“I brought some marshmallows,” she said from the doorway. “The chocolate-covered kind.”
Vera took the bag.
It was warm.
Galina Petrovna had probably held it against herself for the entire journey.
Nothing in the apartment had changed.
The same walls, the same plaster, the same tiled backsplash.
The vase remained in the cupboard.
Galina Petrovna noticed, but said nothing.
They drank tea together.
Lyosha was working a shift.
“Vera.”
“Yes?”
“I called Zoya. I told her the apartment belongs to you. That you paid for everything yourself.”
Vera looked up from her cup.
“Why?”
“Because it was the right thing to do.”
She said it plainly, without drama or emphasis, the way people state obvious truths.
The sky is blue.
Water is wet.
The apartment belongs to Vera.
Vera took a sip of tea.
Outside, the snow was melting. Drops ran down the window in crooked paths that looked like routes leading nowhere.
“Thank you, Galina Petrovna.”
“There’s no need to thank me. I told the truth. For the first time in two years.”
They were quiet.
The kettle on the stove crackled softly as it cooled.
“Vera, where do you buy these marshmallows? At an ordinary Pyaterochka?”
“An ordinary one.”
“Well, imagine that. We don’t have anything like these in Kaluga.”
“You do. You’re just looking in the wrong aisle.”
Galina Petrovna snorted.
Then she smiled.
Not the smile she put on for guests—wide, polished, and performative.
This smile was different.
Small, slightly crooked, and real.
That evening, Lyosha returned from work and found his mother sitting in the kitchen.
He looked surprised.
“Mom? I thought you were coming on Saturday.”
“I changed my mind. I missed you.”
He looked at Vera.
She was peeling potatoes.
The knife moved steadily, and the skin fell into the sink in one long spiral.
“Is everything all right?” he asked.
“Everything’s fine,” Galina Petrovna replied. “Vera gave me tea and marshmallows.”
“My marshmallows,” Vera corrected.
Lyosha froze.
He looked at his mother, then at his wife.
Both women wore perfectly serious expressions.
“Was that a joke?” he asked.
“Yes, Lyosha,” Vera said. “That was a joke.”
He took off his glasses, wiped them, and put them back on.
“Thank God.”
He sat at the table and reached for a marshmallow.
“Don’t touch it,” Galina Petrovna said. “It belongs to Vera.”
Then she laughed.
Quietly and briefly, covering her mouth with one hand.
Vera laughed too.
Not because it was especially funny, but because sometimes laughter arrives after a long silence, and when it does, it means more than any words could.
The potatoes lay half-peeled in the sink.
The faucet dripped softly.
Outside, the March sky was turning pink and then gray, as though it could not decide what color it wanted to be.
The laptop stood on the nightstand in the bedroom.
Closed.
Dust had not yet had time to settle on its lid.