“Alright,” Ekaterina said, closing her laptop. “Then take only what you bought yourself.”
Andrei stood in the middle of the living room looking like a man who had stepped onto a stage prepared to deliver a grand monologue, only to receive neither tears nor shouting in return—just a dry, businesslike remark. Behind him, the new television cast a soft glow across the room. His jacket lay over the arm of the sofa. On the coffee table, a cup of tea had gone cold, untouched while he had been preparing to announce the beginning of his new life.
From Sonya’s room came the faint rustle of pages. Her niece was pretending to study her notes, but Ekaterina knew perfectly well that she could hear every word.
“Aren’t you even going to ask who she is?” Andrei asked with a strained, self-assured smile.
“No.”
“And you don’t want to know why I’m leaving?”
“I’m more interested in what exactly you plan to leave with.”
He blinked, as though it took him a moment to understand what she had said.
The apartment around them looked exactly the way Ekaterina had spent ten years making it. Light-colored walls without cheap decorative patterns. A gray-beige sofa from a new collection that she had managed to get through an employee discount. A tall hallway wardrobe custom-built to her measurements. A kitchen with matte cabinet fronts, which Andrei liked to describe to guests as “my taste,” even though he had visited the showroom only once and stayed for twenty minutes. In the bedroom stood a proper bed with an orthopedic base instead of the horrible squeaking thing they had slept on during the early years of their marriage. On the enclosed balcony were shelves for paperwork, storage boxes, and seasonal belongings.
Andrei had long ago absorbed all of it into the story he told about himself. It was convenient that way: living inside someone else’s carefully built order while presenting it as proof of his own success.
“So you’ve decided to humiliate me now?” he said through clenched teeth.
“No. I simply don’t want any confusion. You’re leaving, so take what belongs to you.”
“Everything in this apartment belongs to both of us.”
Ekaterina looked up at him.
“Then let’s start with the apartment.”
He gave a dismissive laugh.
“Don’t start with your accounting tricks. I’m not at work.”
“That’s a shame. At work, at least, you understand that numbers often speak more clearly than people.”
Andrei snatched his jacket from the chair, threw it back down, sat, and immediately stood again. He had expected a completely different reaction. It showed in the nervous tension of his shoulders and in the irritation rapidly breaking through the carefully staged dignity of his declaration that he was leaving.
He had wanted a performance after which he could walk away as the tragic hero—the man making a difficult decision, carrying the burden on his tired shoulders, saying something like, “I endured this for a long time.”
Ekaterina had destroyed the entire performance with one sentence.
“Have you had someone else for a long time?” Sonya asked quietly from the doorway.
She stood barefoot in a house sweater, her phone in one hand, wearing the expression of someone who could not decide whether to retreat to her room or stay.
Andrei jerked his head toward her.
“Stay out of adult conversations.”
“She lives with me,” Ekaterina replied. “And while she lives here, this is her home too. So she’ll hear exactly as much as you chose to bring into this living room.”
Sonya said nothing more. She leaned one shoulder against the wall and looked away.
Andrei suddenly softened his voice, almost patronizingly.
“Katya, don’t turn this into a marketplace argument. I’m not your enemy. I want us to separate like civilized people. No pettiness. No counting who bought which fork or stool.”
“You can keep the forks. I don’t care. But I have a feeling you’ve already promised someone the car, the television, the coffee machine, and half the furniture.”
He froze.
The reaction was almost imperceptible—a brief tightening in his neck, a heavy stare, a pause that lasted slightly too long.
But Ekaterina had worked in sales for fifteen years. She knew what a person looked like when they had not yet been caught but were already calculating how many exits remained open.
“What are you talking about?” he asked, too evenly.
“I’m talking about the fact that people don’t make announcements like yours empty-handed. You already have a picture in your head of your new life. And I doubt you imagined arriving there with one suitcase.”
“You’re imagining things.”
“My memory is very good.”
She stood, walked to the balcony, opened the upper cabinet, and took out a blue snap-button folder.
Andrei followed her with his eyes, his irritation growing. Sonya remained by the doorway.
“Are you serious?” Andrei gave a short laugh. “Are you going to calculate who screwed in how many lightbulbs now?”
Ekaterina placed the folder on the table.
“I’m going to calculate what is registered in my name and what I paid for. You can take the lightbulbs as a bonus.”
He stepped closer, opened the folder, glanced over the first document, and grimaced.
On top was the contract showing the sale of the room Ekaterina had owned before their marriage. Beneath it was the bank statement showing where the money had gone. Below that was the payment for this apartment. Then came the renovation estimates, the kitchen order, installment agreements for the appliances, and proof that she had paid off the car loan.
Everything had dates, amounts, and her signature.
“Why?” Andrei asked.
“Because furniture can be beautiful, but people can turn out to be very temporary.”
Ekaterina herself was surprised by how calm her voice sounded. She was not trying to hurt him with a clever line. She simply wanted him, perhaps for the first time, to see what he had actually been living on all these years—not comfort, but someone else’s payments, contracts, calculations, and late nights spent balancing numbers after work.
“I contributed to this family,” Andrei said, tossing aside the first document.
“Where exactly?”
“Everywhere.”
“Excellent answer. But a notary will probably want something more substantial than air.”
Sonya slipped her phone behind her back. She had apparently already started recording.
Andrei noticed.
“Put that away!” he barked.
“Don’t shout at her,” Ekaterina said quietly. “It isn’t helping you anymore.”
He spun toward his wife.
“You’ve decided to make me look like nothing just because I’m leaving?”
“No. You’ve been working very hard on that yourself.”
Ekaterina’s phone vibrated. The screen showed the name Tamara Ilyinichna.
Andrei saw it and immediately straightened with slightly renewed confidence.
“Answer it. Mom will explain to you that people don’t separate like this.”
Ekaterina accepted the call and switched on speakerphone.
“Katya,” her mother-in-law’s dry, habitually authoritative voice came through immediately. “Andrei told me everything. Don’t humiliate your husband for no reason. People can separate with dignity. There’s no need to count sofas and spoons.”
“I’m not counting spoons, Tamara Ilyinichna. I’m counting payments.”
“What difference does it make who paid? You lived together.”
“Maybe it makes no difference to you. It does to a notary.”
“There you go again with your documents. A man is leaving you and the first thing you do is cling to property.”
For one brief moment, Ekaterina closed her eyes.
A flat, unpleasant doubt crept in.
Perhaps from the outside it really did look petty. Perhaps Andrei would later tell people that his wife, out of revenge, had counted every shelf and every chair. Perhaps even Sonya would remember her not as a woman in pain, but as a woman standing with a folder full of receipts.
The doubt lasted only until Andrei, reassured by his mother’s support, exhaled and said:
“There. At least someone understands that we should separate without turning this into a circus.”
And at that moment Ekaterina understood the most important thing.
It was not the divorce he cared about.
It was not dignity.
He cared about retaining access to the things he had apparently already promised another woman.
“Fine,” Ekaterina said into the phone. “Then tomorrow we’ll meet at the notary’s office. And we really will separate properly. With documents.”
Tamara Ilyinichna fell silent.
“What notary?”
“Valery Petrovich. Andrei wants to do this like civilized people, doesn’t he? So we’ll sort out on paper what belongs to whom.”
She ended the call before her mother-in-law had a chance to object.
Andrei looked at her with noticeably less confidence.
“You’re seriously planning to drag me to a notary?”
“I’m not dragging you anywhere. I’m offering a convenient format. You like things to look proper.”
“You’re insane.”
“No. I’m simply not confused.”
That evening, he did not leave.
He slammed cabinet doors, made noise in the bathroom, smoked for a long time in the stairwell, nervously messaged someone, then came back and stared at the television as though he were already imagining taking it off the wall.
Ekaterina sat in the kitchen checking her department’s remaining sales figures and could hear Sonya whispering into her phone in the next room.
“No, I’m not coming out… It’s just really strange here… No, Aunt Katya isn’t crying…”
That hurt more than anything else.
Not the mistress.
Not the fact that he was leaving.
Not even the new apartment or new life he was clearly planning.
What hurt was realizing that apparently everyone had expected her to cry.
During the night, Andrei got up quietly.
Ekaterina was awake. She simply lay with her eyes closed and listened.
Footsteps.
The balcony.
The click of a cabinet.
Then the dull scrape of a box.
He had decided to remove some of the appliances before the meeting with the notary.
Ekaterina got up calmly and walked into the living room.
Andrei was already dragging the boxed coffee machine toward the front door. It was the same one she had bought on an installment plan after an especially successful quarter at work—the machine he loved showing off to guests while saying, “There’s no point being at home without proper coffee.”
“Put it down,” Ekaterina said.
He flinched.
“I’m taking what’s mine.”
“It’s registered in my name.”
“What difference does a piece of paper make? We both used it.”
“Using something isn’t the same as buying it.”
Sonya appeared in the doorway, her phone already in her hand.
Andrei saw her and finally lost his temper.
“You’ve turned the girl against me too?”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” Ekaterina replied quietly. “You’re doing a convincing enough job on your own.”
Sonya silently turned on the camera.
“Andrei,” Ekaterina said more firmly now, “if you try one more time to take something you didn’t buy, I’ll call the police. And then Diana’s evening probably won’t go the way she planned.”
His face went pale.
“Who is Diana?”
“You wanted me to ask who she was. It’s a little late for questions now.”
He put the coffee machine down.
Hard.
Almost angrily.
Then he grabbed his jacket and went into the stairwell.
The door did not slam. It simply closed behind him with a heavy, unfamiliar sound.
Sonya lowered her phone.
“Aunt Katya…”
“Don’t,” Ekaterina exhaled. “Just save the recording.”
In the morning, Andrei appeared as though nothing had happened. Clean-shaven, wearing a good coat, with the expression he used at meetings when he wanted to appear calmer than he really was.
Tamara Ilyinichna had arrived at the notary’s office before them. She sat in the corridor as straight as a ruler, radiating the attitude of a woman who had come not for a legal discussion but to discipline someone.
Valery Petrovich turned out to be exactly as people in the city described him: reserved, polite, and far more interested in signed documents than in emotions.
He listened while Andrei spoke about their shared life, mutual effort, moral contribution, and “building a household together.”
Then he turned to Ekaterina.
“Did you bring the documents?”
“Yes.”
She placed the folder on the desk and presented everything section by section.
The apartment: the contract for the sale of her pre-marital property, the bank statement, the apartment payment.
The renovation: estimates, orders, transfers from her account.
The appliances: installment agreements and receipts.
The car: the loan schedule, proof that the payments came from her salary account, registration papers.
Valery Petrovich did not hurry. He read. Made notes. Asked short questions.
At first, Andrei kept interrupting with phrases like, “But we were a family.”
After the second correction from the notary, he became noticeably quieter.
Tamara Ilyinichna sat beside him with her lips tightly pressed together.
“The apartment was purchased using funds belonging to the wife prior to the marriage,” the notary said calmly. “That is significant.”
Andrei shifted.
“I lived there for ten years.”
“Residence is not the same thing as payment,” Valery Petrovich replied.
“The car was used by both spouses,” Andrei quickly added.
“Who made the payments?”
Ekaterina handed over the statement.
The notary nodded.
“I see.”
Andrei’s irritation was no longer hidden.
“So what, I’m nobody here?”
Valery Petrovich removed his glasses and carefully placed them on the desk.
“I did not say that. I am only identifying who paid for what. You, Andrei Sergeyevich, are free to provide documents proving your financial contribution. At present, I have not seen any.”
At that exact moment, Andrei’s phone vibrated in his pocket.
He looked at the screen and automatically rejected the call.
Ekaterina had already seen the name.
Diana.
A minute later, a message arrived, and the phone lit up again while lying faceup on the desk.
Valery Petrovich appeared to notice it too.
The message read:
“When are you finally coming? I told them you’d be here today with the car and the appliances.”
Andrei covered the screen with his hand so quickly that it looked as if he were trying to hide not merely the message, but his entire new life.
Tamara Ilyinichna went pale.
Not theatrically.
Deeply and unpleasantly, the way people do when they suddenly realize that they were not being treated as an ally, but merely used as background scenery for someone else’s lie.
“Andrei,” she whispered. “Who did you promise all of this to?”
He said nothing.
And that was when the doubt Ekaterina had carried since the previous evening finally disappeared.
Not because she suddenly felt better.
But because the facts had risen above all the family rhetoric. Above awkwardness. Above the fear of appearing greedy.
Valery Petrovich tapped his pen lightly against the desk.
“The situation is clear to me. The apartment, most of the furnishings, the appliances, and the vehicle are all supported by documentation linking them financially to Ekaterina Igorevna. Unless the parties reach another written agreement, I see no basis for treating the items listed as your personal property.”
Andrei stared down at the desk.
“Wonderful,” he said bitterly. “So what am I supposed to do now? Leave with one suitcase?”
Ekaterina looked at him calmly.
“That’s what I suggested yesterday. Take what you bought yourself.”
“And what exactly is that, according to you?”
She opened the final transparent sleeve in the folder.
“The drill. The old blue one. You bought it before our renovation, back when you worked at the warehouse. Two shirts from that shop in Tomsk that you bought during a business trip and proudly pointed out were purchased without using my card. And the suitcase. Your mother gave it to you, so I don’t claim ownership of it financially or morally.”
Tamara Ilyinichna lowered her eyes.
“Katya,” she said heavily. “You didn’t have to be so harsh.”
For the first time during the entire conversation, Ekaterina turned toward her.
“No. I was gentle for ten years. You can see the result.”
When they left the notary’s office, Andrei strode ahead quickly and angrily.
Diana was standing in the parking lot beside the neighboring building.
She wore a light-colored coat and a bright scarf, with the expectant expression of a woman who had not come to comfort a man after a difficult conversation, but to receive the life he had promised her.
At first, she saw only Andrei.
Then she noticed his empty hands.
Then the old drill sticking out of the suitcase and the two shirts draped over his arm.
At home, Sonya opened the door before Ekaterina even had time to ring.
“Well?” she asked, then immediately stopped when she saw her aunt’s face. “Sorry. Stupid question.”
“It’s fine,” Ekaterina replied quietly. “Everything ended the way it was supposed to.”
That evening, Andrei returned to collect the rest of his belongings.
There were no more attempts to argue.
No dramatic speeches.
He slowly packed the drill, the two shirts, his razor, and his charger into the suitcase.
He lingered in the hallway as though waiting for some small sign of human softness.
But the atmosphere of the apartment had already changed.
It had not become hostile.
It had not become cold.
It had simply stopped belonging to him.
“That’s everything?” he asked, taking hold of the suitcase handle.
“That’s everything,” Ekaterina said.
He nodded.
He looked as though he wanted to say something else, but could not find the right words. Perhaps in the version of events he had imagined, a different woman should have been standing there—confused, crying, grateful for whatever scraps of attention he was willing to leave behind.
Ekaterina had refused to play that role.
When the door finally closed behind him, Sonya looked out from her room.
“Aunt Katya, do you need help with anything?”
Ekaterina listened.
The television was no longer murmuring in the living room.
No one was dropping a razor into the bathroom sink.
His car keys were no longer lying carelessly in the hallway, attached to a car he would no longer touch like its owner.
For the first time in years, the spacious three-room apartment sounded free of someone else’s presence.
“No,” she said. “Just stay home.”
Sonya nodded and went into the kitchen.
Ekaterina slowly walked through the rooms.
She touched the back of the chair she had chosen herself.
Ran her palm across the arm of the sofa.
Straightened the blanket on the chair.
In the kitchen, she switched off the bright work light and left only the soft light above the table.
Everything was still exactly where it belonged.
Only now it no longer looked like scenery arranged for someone else’s comfort.
She opened the cabinet on the balcony, returned the blue folder to its shelf, and let her fingers rest for a moment on the snap button.
The silence in the apartment did not frighten her.
It simply no longer felt like something she was paying for on behalf of another person.