“Go ahead and hold a memorial gathering if you want. But nobody is canceling my anniversary. I’m turning forty, and that is my day.”
Viktor stopped in the hallway without even unbuttoning his jacket. A fine autumn drizzle still clung to his shoulders. It had rained all day while they were burying his father. In one hand, he held a bag filled with food containers the neighbors had packed for him after the memorial lunch. In the other was a folded umbrella in a wet cover.
Svetlana was leaning against the doorframe. The glow of her laptop lit up the kitchen table. Judging by the screen, she had been ordering something before he came home. She was wearing a new burgundy robe she had bought the week before, and the smell of nail polish drifted in from the bedroom.
“We buried my father today,” Viktor said. “The fortieth-day memorial falls on your birthday. November twenty-second.”
“So what?” Svetlana shrugged. “The restaurant is booked, the guests have been notified, and I’ve already paid the deposit.”
 
Viktor went into the kitchen, put the containers in the refrigerator, and sat down at the table. He still didn’t take off his jacket. He stared through the window at a streetlamp swaying in the wind and, strangely enough, found himself thinking not about his father, but about how everything with Svetlana had begun.
Twenty years earlier, Viktor had been twenty-three. He worked as an assistant engineer at a factory while finishing his degree through correspondence courses. He met Svetlana at a friend’s birthday party. She was loud, confident, and had a way of taking over any room she entered. She told him she was twenty-five and worked in advertising.
A month later, he discovered that she was actually twenty-one and had no real job in advertising. From time to time, she simply put up flyers for a small company.
“What difference does it make?” she had laughed. “It’s not important.”
What happened four months later turned out to be far more important.
Svetlana called Viktor and told him she was pregnant. He immediately proposed marriage, but she refused. Instead, she asked him for money. Viktor borrowed from two coworkers and gave her everything she requested.
Ten days later, Svetlana’s father appeared at his door. He was a broad, heavyset man in a leather jacket with a hard, unpleasant stare.
“So you abandoned my daughter? While she’s pregnant?”
That was when Viktor learned the truth. Svetlana had given the money to her mother to repay a debt. She had gone nowhere and had told her parents that Viktor wanted nothing to do with her.
They married three weeks later. There was no celebration. The four of them simply went to the registry office.
After the ceremony, Viktor’s mother quietly asked him:
“Do you know what you’re doing?”
Then Ilya was born. Two years later came Katya.
Viktor loved his children immediately and completely.
Living with Svetlana was another matter.
 
As the years passed, arguments became more frequent. She could start a scandal over anything: Viktor coming home late from work, buying the wrong cheese, or answering a question in a tone she disliked.
“I’m leaving,” he would sometimes say after one of those evenings.
“Then leave,” Svetlana would reply. “You’ll never see the children again. Not even through the courts. I know how to explain things.”
And Viktor stayed.
He stayed for Ilya and Katya, for the way they ran into his room on weekends with a tablet and asked him to help them solve a school problem.
Three days before his father’s death, Svetlana had shown Viktor an estimate on her phone.
“Look. I’ve approved the menu. Guests can choose fish or meat for the main course, plus appetizers. Forty people.”
Viktor looked at the final amount.
Two hundred and ten thousand rubles.
“Are you serious?” He handed the phone back. “Ilya has entrance exams in February. He’s been seeing a math tutor for three months. Katya needs a laptop for school because the old one barely works.”
“You always do this,” Svetlana snapped, taking the phone away. “Children, children, children. What about me? Am I not a person? You only turn forty once.”
“We could celebrate at home. Properly. Without spending a fortune on a restaurant.”
“At home?” she repeated, as though he had suggested something shameful. “Do you understand what people will say about me? Nadezhda rented a hall for fifty people last year. Her husband made sure everything was perfect. And what am I supposed to do? Sit in the kitchen with a bowl of Olivier salad?”
“Then take out a loan in your own name.”
 
“You know I don’t have an official income. They’ll only approve it for you.”
“No.”
“What do you mean, no?” Her voice rose. “I’ve spent twenty years running around like a squirrel in a wheel. Cooking, cleaning, dealing with the children’s schoolwork.”
Viktor said nothing.
As far as he could remember, the last time Svetlana had cooked a proper dinner was sometime in May. Most evenings they ate packaged food or ordered delivery.
“I said no,” he repeated. “If you want this party, find another way to pay for it.”
“What other way?” Svetlana stood up so abruptly that the chair scraped across the tile. “You were the one who always said the children were little and their mother needed to stay home!”
“Katya is sixteen. Ilya is eighteen.”
Katya appeared in the kitchen doorway.
“Dad, are you going to eat? I fried some potatoes.”
The following night, Viktor’s phone rang at half past three in the morning.
He had become a light sleeper lately.
 
It was Nina Pavlovna, his father’s neighbor. She lived across the landing and sometimes checked on the elderly man.
“Vitya, I called an ambulance, but you should come too. Something’s wrong. He’s very ill.”
Viktor’s father died before the ambulance arrived.
A stroke.
Viktor didn’t make it in time.
The next three days disappeared into a blur of official procedures: the morgue, medical certificates, the death certificate, the funeral office on Rechnaya Street, where Viktor spent two hours waiting because of problems with somebody else’s paperwork. Then there was the bus, the cemetery plot, the funeral arrangements, and the memorial lunch at his aunt’s house.
During those three days, Svetlana barely left the bedroom.
When Viktor returned home after handling another round of paperwork, she was sitting with her phone, scrolling through something.
“Sweetheart, write down the address,” she was saying into the phone. “The Almaz restaurant, second hall. We start at eight. Dress nicely, but nothing too formal.”
On the dining table, among black ribbons intended for funeral wreaths, lay printed versions of her birthday menu.
Beside the photograph of Viktor’s father, which he had brought home to place in a mourning frame, was a sheet showing hairstyle options for Svetlana’s birthday photo shoot.
 
“Mom,” Ilya said from the doorway, holding his formal jacket, “do you even understand what’s happening?”
“I understand perfectly. Grandpa died, and that’s terrible. But it has nothing to do with my celebration.”
On the third day, while sorting through his father’s documents, Viktor opened the calendar on his phone.
The fortieth-day memorial would be on November twenty-second.
Svetlana’s birthday was also November twenty-second.
“You’ll have to move your celebration,” he told her that evening. “At least by a week. We’re remembering my father that day.”
Svetlana didn’t even look up from her phone.
“The deposit is non-refundable. Some of the guests already bought tickets. Masha is flying in from Yekaterinburg.”
“Mom!” Katya raised her voice, something she almost never did. “This is Grandpa. Dad’s father.”
“Katya, I understand how you feel. But I’m not canceling something I’ve been planning for six months because of an unfortunate coincidence in the calendar. Nothing we do now can help the dead.”
 
Ilya walked over and stood beside his father.
“Dad, Katya and I aren’t going to that party. It doesn’t feel right.”
“Then don’t come!” Svetlana threw her phone onto the sofa, then immediately picked it up again to check the screen. “I’ll manage without you.”
On the morning of November twenty-second, Viktor woke before everyone else.
He put the kettle on, took out bread, and sliced some cheese.
His mind felt unusually quiet. There was no uncertainty left, no endless “what if” running through his thoughts. Only a calm understanding that the decision had already been made.
Svetlana came into the kitchen around ten.
Her hair was styled, her nails freshly painted, and a shopping bag containing dress shoes stood beside the coat rack.
“I ordered a taxi for seven,” she said while pouring herself coffee. “Don’t wait for me.”
“You’re absolutely sure you haven’t changed your mind?” Viktor asked.
“Oh, for God’s sake. You sound like a broken record. No, I haven’t.”
The children were sitting in the living room. Katya held a framed photograph of her grandfather. Ilya was packing a bag with kutia, pancakes, and a bottle of vodka their aunt had asked them to bring.
“Let’s go,” Viktor said.
 
By half past seven that evening, the three of them were sitting at Aunt Valentina’s table.
A few other relatives and friends had come as well: Viktor’s father’s cousin, Nina Pavlovna and her husband, and an old friend named Uncle Gena.
They spoke quietly and shared memories.
They remembered how Viktor’s father had repaired cars for anyone who asked, how he had taught Ilya to hammer nails properly, and how every New Year he brought the children mandarins in a mesh bag.
Viktor’s phone vibrated several times.
He turned it face down.
“Dad,” Ilya said, nodding toward it.
“Later.”
Uncle Gena raised his glass.
“He was a good man. A real one.”
After midnight, once the guests had left, Viktor finally checked his phone.
There were four messages from Svetlana.
 
“Only twelve people came out of forty.”
“Masha didn’t make it. Her flight was delayed.”
“Where are all of you?”
“You did this on purpose, didn’t you?”
Viktor put the phone back into his pocket.
Katya was helping her aunt wash the dishes. Ilya was stacking chairs.
Tomorrow morning Viktor would file for divorce.
He already knew which government service center he was going to.
Svetlana called the next morning while Viktor was frying eggs for the three of them.
He put her on speaker because the children were already in the kitchen.
“You deliberately told people not to come! Half the guests didn’t show up!” Her voice was hoarse. She clearly hadn’t slept.
“Svetlana, I’m filing for divorce. I’ve already made an appointment.”
There were about five seconds of silence.
“Have you lost your mind? I’ll take the children. And we’ll divide the apartment. Half of it belongs to me.”
“The apartment came to me through my father’s will,” Viktor said, removing the frying pan from the stove. “It’s inherited property, so it isn’t divided in a divorce. Ask any lawyer.”
“Mom, I’m staying with Dad,” Katya said. “I’m sixteen. I’m old enough to choose.”
“And I’m staying with him too,” Ilya added. “I’m nineteen now, in case you forgot.”
“He turned you against me!” Svetlana shouted.
“You have a month to collect your things,” Viktor said. “I’m not rushing you. But I don’t want any more scenes.”
She continued talking about the years she had sacrificed, the injustice of everything, and how Viktor supposedly owed her his entire life.
Viktor ended the call and divided the eggs between three plates.
 
Then he glanced at the photograph of his father that Katya had placed on the shelf the night before.
“Everything’s all right, Dad.”
The divorce proceedings lasted seven months.
Svetlana hired a lawyer and demanded a share of the apartment, the car, and monthly payments for her personal support. In the lawsuit, she described the latter as “compensation for maintaining the household.”
At one hearing, she cried convincingly.
“I gave everything to this family. Twenty years of my life. And now they’ve thrown me away like some useless object.”
The judge calmly examined the documents.
The apartment had been inherited by Viktor: there was a notarized will, an inheritance certificate, and an official property registry extract.
There was nothing Svetlana could realistically challenge.
Katya submitted a statement saying she wanted to live with her father.
 
By that time, Ilya had already rented a room near the college he had entered in September.
“You turned the children against their mother,” Svetlana said to Viktor in the courthouse hallway.
Ilya zipped up his jacket.
“Mom, we saw everything ourselves. Nobody had to turn us against anyone.”
The court rejected Svetlana’s claims to the apartment and the car.
Instead, she was ordered to pay child support for Katya. The amount was modest, but the obligation still stood.
Svetlana moved in with her mother in the Moscow region. At first, she complained endlessly to her friends. Then the phone calls became less frequent.
Eventually, they almost stopped altogether.
Viktor remained in his father’s apartment, which was now legally his.
In the evenings, he and Katya often cooked dinner together. Ilya came by from time to time, usually bringing groceries or something ready-made from a nearby shop.
One Sunday, the three of them went to the cemetery together. They cleaned the grave and replaced the old flowers.
“Dad,” Katya asked on the way home as they rode the metro, “do you regret that everything turned out this way?”
 
Viktor looked at his daughter.
Then he glanced at Ilya, who was scrolling through his phone while eating a pastry he had bought at the station.
“I regret that Grandpa didn’t live longer,” Viktor said. “As for everything else—no.”
Sometimes the hardest decision turns out to be the only right one.
The problem is that people often need a final push before they are ready to make it.
And sometimes that push comes from something that can never be undone.