The new three-bedroom apartment still smelled of fresh renovations and freedom. There was barely any furniture yet: a sofa, a child’s bed, two chairs, and cardboard boxes stacked on top of one another like a tower.
Vera sat on the floor, measuring a wall with a tape measure for the wardrobe they planned to buy. Beside her, her five-year-old daughter Asya was arranging colored markers into a fan.
“Mom, is the sea really big?”
“Huge, Asya. Bigger than this apartment and our whole building, elevator included.”
“Would the elevator fit inside it?”
“The elevator wouldn’t. But we will.”
Vera’s phone rang. Without letting go of the tape measure, she pressed the phone between her shoulder and ear.
 
Her father, Nikolai Igorevich, spoke loudly and cheerfully, as though reporting the successful completion of an important assignment.
“Verochka, did you get the documents? Everything is registered in your name, like we agreed?”
“I got them, Dad. Everything is in my name. Oleg decided that himself. I didn’t even ask him.”
“Good man. The money came from your grandfather’s house, so that’s the only fair way to do it. And the mortgage? Gone. Forget the word ever existed.”
“Already forgotten,” Vera laughed. “Now I remember it like some frightening spell from a children’s horror story.”
She put the phone on the windowsill and stretched until her shoulder blades cracked.
Six months. Selling their old two-bedroom apartment, moving, paperwork, boxes, daycare, colds, and then more boxes.
There was only one thing she wanted now: the sea, salt drying on her skin, and ten whole days when nobody demanded anything from her.
The doorbell rang.
Asya ran toward the entrance first, shouting, “Grandma!”
She was right.
Tamara Petrovna entered the apartment, looked around at the nearly empty rooms, and immediately found something to criticize.
“Well, look at this palace. Three rooms for two adults. Some people raise three children in a dormitory, and here you have enough space to parade around.”
“Hello, Tamara Petrovna. Slippers are on the left. Of course, we could have bought a smaller apartment, but then I’m not sure where you’d have room for such enormous opinions.”
Oleg had gone out to pick up an order and said he would be back in about an hour.
Tamara Petrovna sat on the only straight-backed chair, placed her handbag on her knees, and spoke in the tone people usually reserved for announcing bad news.
“I heard you’re going to the seaside. The three of you. Have you already bought the tickets?”
“We have. The hotel too. And even an inflatable flamingo ring. Asya personally chose it.”
“A flamingo, is it? My Kristina hasn’t seen the sea in four years. She has two little children and she’s completely alone. She needs that vacation more than you do.”
“Needing something more doesn’t make it yours. I need a wardrobe more than I need this tower of cardboard boxes, but I’m not knocking on my neighbors’ doors demanding theirs.”
Her mother-in-law put her handbag on the floor and leaned forward.
Her voice trembled, then quickly rose in pitch.
“You have to understand her, woman to woman! Life is hard for her! She cries in the evenings, can you imagine? And the three of you are going to lie around on the beach!”
“I can imagine. But tears aren’t a bank transfer, Tamara Petrovna. Money doesn’t move from one account to another because somebody cries.”
“You’re heartless! You could give up this vacation just once. Once! Give the money to Kristina. She would be grateful to you for the rest of her life.”
“The rest of her life sounds like a very long commitment. Our tickets are only for ten days.”
Tamara Petrovna flushed with anger, but then controlled herself and changed her approach. Her voice became slow and plaintive.
“Verochka, she’s a mother. Alone with two children. You’re a mother yourself. You should understand.”
“I do understand. And that’s exactly why I’m going to remind you where this money came from. My grandfather’s house. My father inherited it, sold it, and gave every last ruble to me.”
Vera spoke calmly, without raising her voice, almost as though she were reading prices from a catalog.
 
“So please explain what your daughter has to do with my grandfather’s inheritance.”
“What does your grandfather have to do with this?”
“Everything. He built the house. Not Kristina. Not you. Not me. And if we’re going to start dividing his inheritance, the line begins with my father. He already made his decision.”
“Oh, so that’s how you’re twisting it!” Tamara Petrovna jumped to her feet, making the chair wobble. “Counting every penny like some market woman!”
“Yes, I count money. Counting isn’t a sin. It’s arithmetic. It becomes a problem when people start counting somebody else’s money.”
“You’ve completely changed my Oleg! He used to listen to every word his mother said!”
“He still listens. He just stopped obeying your words instead of using his own judgment.”
Tamara Petrovna grabbed her handbag, marched to the front door, and then turned around.
There was something almost like astonishment in her eyes. Clearly, she had not expected a conversation in which anyone would actually answer back.
“And why exactly are we supposed to rearrange our whole lives because of your daughter’s children?” Vera asked with a faint smile as she held the door open. “Asya, come say goodbye to Grandma.”
The door slammed before the girl could reach the hallway.
Fifteen minutes later, Oleg’s phone started vibrating in his pocket.
He was standing beside his car with a cardboard box in his arms while the familiar storm gathered on the other end of the line.
“Oleg, can you hear me? You have to help your sister!”
“I hear you. I have to help her according to whom?”
“According to me! According to her! She’s alone with two children while you’re running off to the sea! Either take her and the children with you or give her the vacation money. That would be the decent thing to do.”
“The decent thing is asking. When somebody starts demanding, that’s a different department.”
 
“Don’t get clever with me! Are you her brother or not?”
“I’m her brother. I’m not a bank.”
“Am I your mother or some nobody?”
“You’re my mother. That’s exactly why I haven’t hung up yet, even though I’m very tempted.”
That evening, Oleg put the box in the corner, sat down on the sofa, and told Vera everything.
She listened while winding a strip of electrical tape into a neat little ring.
“She already came here,” Vera said. “Same speech, word for word. Cancel the vacation and give Kristina the money.”
“So by the time she called me, she already had the script prepared?”
“Rehearsed. She even had the dramatic pauses in the right places.”
Oleg rubbed his chin and laughed quietly.
“And what did you tell her?”
“That arithmetic isn’t a sin. And that my grandfather built the house, not your sister.”
“You’re incredible.”
“I’m a woman with a suitcase. Speaking of which, we need to get ours down from the storage shelf. At the moment, it’s occupied by Christmas lights and hope.”
Tamara Petrovna returned the following evening without calling first.
Exactly at seven.
She knew that another day would pass and the airplane would carry away both the family and the money.
 
So this time, she did not come to ask.
“Right. I’ve made a decision. You’re giving the vacation money to Kristina. You can go somewhere by bus in the summer if you still want a trip.”
Vera opened her mouth, but Oleg gently raised a hand.
“Wait. I’ll handle this.”
He turned toward his mother.
“Sit down, please. Since we’re apparently making decisions for other people today, let’s organize everything properly.”
“What is there to organize? Your sister has children!”
“My sister had a husband. She filed for divorce herself. Nobody threw her out. She left on her own. She came back to live with you on her own, and you chose to let her stay. I didn’t ask you to do it, and I didn’t object either.”
“So what was I supposed to do? Let her live on the street?”
“No. Let her live with you. But that was your choice, not our responsibility. Next point. Kristina could have found work a long time ago. Her children aren’t babies. She lives on child support, and her ex-husband pays it regularly, like clockwork.”
“How dare you drag your sister through the mud?”
“I’m describing facts. There’s a difference.”
 
Oleg spoke quietly, slowly relaxing his fingers against his knee.
“Now let’s talk about helping family. In six years, she hasn’t helped us once. Not with money, not by watching Asya for a day, not even with a phone call while Vera and I were carrying all these boxes ourselves. I gave Kristina two hundred thousand rubles for her wedding. It wasn’t a fortune, but I gave it willingly and never asked for it back.”
Tamara Petrovna jerked her shoulder and raised her voice as though volume could compensate for the lack of an argument.
“That’s what family is for!”
“Exactly,” Oleg agreed. “But family is supposed to be a roundabout, not a funnel where everything flows in one direction.”
He continued.
“Vera has wonderful parents. Her father inherited his own father’s house, sold it, and gave the money to his daughter. We paid off our mortgage. Then we sold our old apartment without debt, added our savings, and bought these three rooms where you’re currently sitting on our one and only chair.”
“So you do have money!”
“We have plans. We want a second child. And our daughter has been dreaming about the sea for six months. She has twenty jellyfish drawn in her notebook. I’m not allowing anyone to change my family’s plans because of my sister and her children.”
He looked directly at his mother.
“That is the end of the discussion.”
Vera walked over and stood beside her husband, resting a hand on his shoulder.
Tamara Petrovna looked from one of them to the other, and her voice suddenly rose into a shrill cry.
“You’re greedy! Both of you! She pulls your strings and you dance like an idiot!”
“Tamara Petrovna, if I really controlled him with strings, I’d have started with your chair,” Vera replied. “We only have one, and you’re sitting on it while making an impressive number of demands.”
Bare feet slapped against the floor in the hallway.
Asya came running out, holding a sheet of paper in both hands.
 
Across it were a blue stripe, a yellow circle, and three crooked birds.
“Grandma, look! It’s the sea! I’m giving it to you!”
Tamara Petrovna stood up without even looking at the drawing and walked around her granddaughter as though avoiding a puddle.
The door slammed.
Asya remained standing there for a moment. Then she slowly lowered the picture.
“Grandma didn’t like the sea?”
“She did,” Vera said, crouching beside her and taking the drawing. “It’s just that some grown-ups have their eyes too busy with other things. We’ll put it on the door so the sea will be the first thing we see.”
Outside, Tamara Petrovna immediately called her daughter.
She started talking before Kristina could even say hello.
“He refused. Your brother looked his own mother in the face and refused.”
“What do you mean he refused?” Kristina’s voice instantly sharpened through the phone. “He’s my brother!”
 
“What do you expect me to do? It’s Vera. She controls everything. She’s turned him against us. He obeys every word she says. He used to be such a good boy.”
“I need the sea too! Me! I haven’t had a vacation in four years! Let them give me the money. They have it. I know they do!”
“Kristina, stop shouting in my ear.”
“Who else am I supposed to shout at? Go back there and demand properly! You’re his mother, aren’t you?”
Tamara Petrovna pulled the phone away from her ear, stared at the screen, and ended the call.
She walked toward the bus stop, furious.
Furious with her daughter for screaming.
Furious with her son for remaining calm.
Furious with her daughter-in-law for never once stumbling over her words.
And somewhere beneath all that anger, buried so deeply that she barely wanted to acknowledge it, something painful stirred.
That young woman had defended her own family in a way Tamara Petrovna herself had never managed to do when she was younger.
Back at home, Vera pulled the suitcase down from the storage shelf.
It landed on the floor with a heavy thud.
Asya immediately climbed inside and announced that she intended to travel that way.
“Swimsuit, sun hat, flamingo ring,” Vera listed while packing. “Jellyfish included free of charge.”
“The sea! The sea! We’re going to the sea!” Asya squealed, bouncing inside the suitcase.
Vera straightened up and looked at her husband.
Oleg was standing in the doorway, turning the tickets over in his hands. He had the calm expression of a man who considered the matter completely settled.
 
“You’re okay?” Vera asked. “She said some awful things to you.”
“I’m fine. Kristina has her own family and her own life. I’ll help her if she genuinely needs something, but I’ll do it my way. Not by paying for her to lie on a beach. If there’s a real emergency, that’s different.”
“And if they come demanding things again?”
“They can come back in ten days. Right now, we’re going on vacation, and this subject is closed.”
He tossed the tickets onto the sofa and scooped his daughter up under the arms.
“Asya, ready to fly?”
“Ready!”
Vera zipped the suitcase shut.
Then she taped her daughter’s drawing to the inside of the front door—the blue stripe, the yellow sun, and three crooked birds—and turned the lock.
For the first time in months, it felt as though they were no longer running away from boxes, debts, demands, and other people’s expectations.
They were simply going to the sea.