“Natasha, just don’t get upset, okay? I think I’ve found a really good option for us.”
Natalia was putting work papers into a folder when Sergey called her from the living room. Vika was in her room doing homework. Natalia had only wanted to finish her reports and get to bed early.
“What kind of option?” Natalia asked tiredly.
“For us. For the whole family. Mom found a good apartment through someone she knows. Not here. Near her place. Literally in the building next door. Two rooms, bright, decent neighborhood. And the price is good if we move quickly.”
Natalia placed the folder on the table.
“Wait. What do you mean, near her place?”
“In Kamensk. Near Mom. She’s alone, you know how hard it is for her. And this apartment is practically a gift. We’d be right there beside her. It would be good for Vika too. Grandma could look after her after school.”
Natalia looked at her husband. He was completely serious.
 
Tamara Igorevna had been trying for a long time to persuade her son to move closer. Almost every evening she called, complaining about her blood pressure, her neighbors, and how lonely she was. Sometimes she asked Sergey to come fix a leaking faucet even though a repairman lived two houses away. Other times she took offense because he couldn’t leave work in the middle of the week to drive her to medical appointments.
Natalia had offered alternatives. She suggested bringing her mother-in-law to stay with them for a month, hiring someone to help around the house, paying for taxis to doctors, and arranging grocery deliveries. Once, Natalia even found a woman from a nearby building who was willing to visit Tamara Igorevna twice a week.
Tamara Igorevna dismissed her after three days.
She said she didn’t need a stranger.
She needed her son nearby.
“So we’re supposed to abandon everything and move to Kamensk because your mother wants you living in the building next door?”
“That’s not the only reason. Housing is cheaper there. The city is quieter. Mom could help with Vika. And with your experience, you’ll find another job.”
Natalia was a department manager and earned more than Sergey. For the past two years, her salary had been the family’s main source of income, especially during the periods when Sergey changed jobs or spent months going from one interview to another.
The apartment belonged to Natalia. She had bought it before they were married.
Vika’s school was nearby, along with the subway, the clinic, a park, and Natalia’s workplace, which was only forty minutes away.
“And what about this apartment?” she asked. “Have you already decided what to do with it?”
Sergey immediately brightened.
“Sell it. We’d get good money for your place here. We could buy the apartment in Kamensk, renovate it, and still have money left. Mom already introduced me to a real-estate agent.”
“Stop.” Natalia stared at him. “You’ve already discussed selling my apartment with an agent?”
 
Sergey hesitated.
“I was only finding out how the process works. Natasha, we’re a family.”
From Vika’s room came the sound of her reciting a poem for literature class.
Natalia was silent for several seconds.
“Were you ever planning to ask me?” she said quietly.
“I’m asking you now.”
“No. You’re presenting me with a finished decision. From the way you’re talking, the apartment has already been found, your mother has already approved everything, and all I’m supposed to do is agree and start packing boxes.”
Sergey frowned.
“Because you’re against everything immediately. Mom is getting older. It’s hard for her alone. I want to help her. What’s so terrible about that?”
They had had conversations like this before.
Whenever Natalia disagreed with Tamara Igorevna, Sergey immediately asked whether she simply didn’t care about his mother. Then he would sulk and spend several days walking around in silence.
In the spring, he had rushed to his mother’s country house to repair a fence on the same day they had promised Vika they would go to a water park.
In the summer, Tamara Igorevna insisted that Sergey meet her at the station after she returned from a health resort, even though the train arrived during working hours and there was a direct taxi service from the station.
Sergey took the day off.
Natalia never tried to stop him from helping his mother.
What bothered her was that every request from Tamara Igorevna automatically became more important than their own plans.
“I do care,” Natalia said. “I offered to let her stay with us. I offered household help and money for taxis. She doesn’t want help, Sergey. She wants you living under her windows.”
 
“Because she’s my mother!” Sergey snapped. “And she’s the only one I have. If your mother were alone, you’d think about what to do too.”
“My mother wouldn’t demand that everyone else destroy their lives for her.”
“Everyone else?” Sergey leaned forward. “See? You talk like I’m some stranger instead of your husband. This is our family.”
“Our family is you, me, and Vika,” Natalia said. “And right now you’re proposing a decision that benefits only your mother.”
Sergey let out an irritated sigh.
“It would be calmer there. You’re constantly buried in work here. I’m tired too. Vika is still young. She can change schools now and adjust. Mom would be nearby. What’s wrong with that?”
The more Natalia listened, the angrier she became.
Sergey had already mentally replaced her job with another one, Vika’s school with a new school, and Natalia’s apartment with money for the move.
He hadn’t even asked how much time she would need to hand over her responsibilities at work, what would happen to Vika’s art classes, or whether Vika herself wanted to live near her grandmother.
And he discussed all of it as though Natalia’s agreement were merely a formality.
 
“How long have you been discussing this with her?” Natalia asked.
Sergey looked away.
“A few weeks.”
“A few weeks? And you said nothing to me?”
“I wanted to find everything out first so I could come to you with something concrete.”
“And the thought that I’m your wife, and decisions like this shouldn’t be prepared behind my back, never crossed your mind?”
Sergey stood up from the sofa.
“I wasn’t plotting against you. I talked to Mom, looked at the apartment, checked prices. I wanted to come to you with actual numbers.”
“You came with numbers. You just forgot to ask.”
“How much?” Natalia asked without turning around.
“How much what?”
“How much does that apartment cost?”
“Almost half what ours is worth. That’s why I’m telling you—it’s a great opportunity.”
“So an apartment half the value of this one, in a city where I have no job, where Vika knows no one, but where your mother lives nearby and daily phone calls still aren’t enough for her—that’s your great opportunity?”
“Don’t twist everything.”
Natalia turned toward him.
By now, it wasn’t even the idea of Kamensk itself that infuriated her.
It was how much Sergey had already decided without her.
“What difference does it make to me what your mother wants?!” Natalia shouted. “We are not moving anywhere! Our home is here, our work is here, our daughter goes to school here! And because your mother pressured you again, like she always does, you decided we should abandon everything and move to her? Maybe you should go there alone, then. Vika and I can manage without you.”
 
She said it loudly.
Almost immediately, Vika appeared in the doorway holding a pencil.
“Mom… Dad… what’s happening?”
Sergey turned sharply toward his daughter.
“See? Your mother started a scandal and frightened you.”
“I started it? You’re suggesting that tomorrow we put my apartment up for sale and drag our child to another city!”
“Kamensk isn’t some strange place! I grew up there. We sell this apartment, buy another one there. Why waste time when the opportunity is good?”
Vika looked from one parent to the other.
“Where are we moving?” she asked quietly. “I don’t want to go anywhere.”
Natalia walked over to her daughter.
“No one is moving anywhere, sweetheart. Please go back to your room.”
Sergey was no longer trying to calm down.
“Why are you already filling the child’s head with this?” he shouted. “Let her know! Families make decisions together!”
“Families?” Natalia spun around. “You spent two weeks making decisions behind my back with your mother, and now suddenly you remember we’re a family?”
Sergey grabbed a cushion and threw it into an armchair.
“Because there’s no other way with you!” he shouted. “You always decide everything yourself! Work, money, school, the apartment—it’s all yours! And I’m supposed to keep quiet and live by your rules?”
“Do you want me to remind you how many times I carried this family when you quit your jobs?” Natalia asked. “Last year you spent almost three months looking for work after leaving the warehouse. Before that, you left the service center because your boss ‘didn’t appreciate you.’ I paid the utilities, groceries, Vika’s classes, repairs on the car. I never once told you that you owed me anything. And now you’ve decided you have the right to dispose of my apartment too?”
Sergey yanked open a cabinet door.
“Yes, I do! Because I’m the head of this family, and my word should mean something!”
Natalia stared at him.
“The apartment is mine. I am not selling it. Not for your mother, and not because you’re still incapable of saying no to her.”
 
Vika began to cry.
Natalia immediately crouched in front of her.
“Vika, please go to your room and close the door. We’ll finish this conversation.”
“Dad, I don’t want to live with Grandma Tamara,” the girl whispered. “My school is here… and Lisa… and my art class…”
For a moment Sergey looked confused.
“No one asked you!” he blurted out.
Then he froze.
Vika ran back to her room.
Natalia watched her go and turned to her husband.
After his words—“No one asked you”—the argument about the real-estate agent suddenly seemed almost secondary.
At that exact moment, Sergey’s phone rang.
The screen lit up with one word:
 
Mom.
“Don’t you dare answer that right now,” Natalia said.
Sergey accepted the call anyway.
“Yes, Mom.”
Tamara Igorevna’s voice was loud enough to be heard across the room.
“Well? Did you tell her? What did she say? She’s resisting again, isn’t she? I told you, son, don’t tiptoe around her. If she’s a real wife, she’ll follow her husband. Just don’t give in.”
Natalia looked at Sergey.
From his expression, it was obvious he had not expected his mother’s words to come through so loudly—or at such a perfect moment.
“Give me the phone,” Natalia said.
“Don’t start.”
“Give it to me.”
He refused.
So Natalia spoke loudly enough for her mother-in-law to hear.
“Tamara Igorevna, if you’ve spent all this time discussing the sale of my apartment and our move with my husband, then at least stop trying to run my life from another city!”
Tamara Igorevna fell silent for a moment before immediately shifting into wounded outrage.
“So that’s how it is. I’m the enemy now. I only want to be near my son. Apparently, an old woman can die alone as long as everything is convenient for you.”
“Mom, don’t,” Sergey said nervously.
“No, son, I understand everything now. If that’s your wife’s attitude, do whatever you want. Just don’t complain later when your mother is gone.”
Sergey ended the call.
Natalia said wearily:
“That is exactly why I will never move there. We’d live beside your mother, but she would still be the one making all the decisions.”
“You’re heartless,” he breathed.
“And you’re afraid to tell her no. So today you decided it would be easier to pressure us instead.”
Sergey silently pulled a suitcase from the closet and threw it onto the floor.
“Fine,” he said through clenched teeth. “If that’s how you want it, I’m done trying to convince you. We’ll see what you say when you’re alone. Think you’re so strong? Think anyone needs a woman with a child? You’ll come running back within a week.”
Natalia simply looked at him.
“Pack your things.”
Sergey began stuffing clothes into the suitcase.
T-shirts, jeans, underwear, chargers—everything went in without order.
He kept saying that Natalia had always thought she was smarter than everyone else, that it was easy for her to talk because she had her apartment and her salary.
Natalia didn’t argue.
When they first met, Sergey’s gentleness had been one of the things she liked most about him. He didn’t argue over small things. He respected her work. When Vika was little, he helped with her.
Only later did Natalia begin to notice another side of him.
 
At work, Sergey could tolerate a bad boss for a month before suddenly quitting and announcing that the place was impossible.
With his mother, it was different.
The moment Tamara Igorevna became offended, Sergey immediately tried to make up for whatever he believed he had done wrong.
She asked him to come—he came.
She complained that he didn’t call often enough—he started calling every evening.
Once, they had already packed for a vacation when his mother announced that she was afraid to stay alone at her country house.
Sergey suggested canceling the trip.
They eventually compromised and let her stay with them for a week instead.
For years Natalia had believed that, with time, her husband would learn to distinguish genuine help from another episode of emotional pressure.
But now she understood that he had spent weeks discussing someone else’s apartment with his mother and still considered it an act of care.
“Mom,” Vika called from her room.
Natalia went in for a minute.
Vika sat on the bed with her knees pulled up.
 
“Is Dad leaving?”
“He is,” Natalia answered honestly. “But it isn’t because of you. Remember that. None of this is because of you.”
“Will he come back?”
Natalia didn’t know what to say.
“I don’t know, sweetheart. But you and I will manage.”
When she returned to the living room, the suitcase was almost closed.
Sergey grabbed his jacket and headed toward the door.
“Don’t say later that I didn’t warn you. You won’t last long alone.”
“The main thing is that it might finally be quieter without your warnings,” Natalia replied.
Sergey paused in the hallway as if still waiting for her to stop him.
Only after he stepped onto the landing did Natalia notice his passport lying on the console table.
She carried it out to him.
“You forgot this.”
Sergey swore under his breath, shoved the passport into his pocket, and left.
Natalia closed the door.
For several seconds she remained standing in the hallway.
 
A few minutes later, Vika came out and pressed herself against her mother.
“He really left.”
“Yes.”
“To Grandma’s?”
“Probably.”
Vika was quiet for a while.
Then she asked something Natalia hadn’t expected.
“Mom, Grandma Tamara doesn’t love us, does she?”
Natalia took a moment before answering.
“Grandma loves Dad. But she’s used to him doing whatever she wants.”
“Then why did she want to drag us there too?”
Natalia hugged her daughter.
That night, Sergey called and texted repeatedly.
At first the messages said:
“When you calm down, we’ll talk.”
“How’s Vika?”
Then came:
“You destroyed everything yourself.”
“Mom’s blood pressure went up because of you.”
“You’ll change your tune quickly without me.”
Natalia muted her phone.
An hour later, she received a voice message from Tamara Igorevna, followed by another.
Her mother-in-law accused Natalia of “tearing a son away from his mother” and claimed she was now preventing him from returning home as well.
Natalia didn’t listen to the rest.
The next morning, she still had to get Vika ready for school and go to work.
The same mugs stood in the kitchen.
The same school lunchbox sat on the counter.
 
The only difference was that Sergey’s jacket was no longer hanging in the hallway.
On the way to school, Vika suddenly said:
“Mom, please, let’s not move anywhere. I don’t know anyone there.”
“We’re not moving,” Natalia said firmly. “I promise.”
Once Natalia made that promise to her daughter, there was no going back.
She couldn’t allow a man back into the house after he had prepared to sell her apartment without her consent and had already told their child that her opinion didn’t matter.
At lunchtime, Sergey called again.
This time, Natalia answered.
“Well?” he asked tensely. “Have you calmed down?”
“No. Was I supposed to?”
“Natasha, enough. I’m at Mom’s. She didn’t sleep all night. Her blood pressure is up. Thanks a lot.”
“Don’t pretend her blood pressure is my responsibility.”
“Whose responsibility is it, then? You caused a hysterical scene over nothing.”
“You spent weeks discussing the sale of my apartment and transferring Vika to another school. That is not ‘nothing.’”
Sergey was silent.
“I wanted to help Mom. She’s alone. I’m her only son.”
“Then help her. Visit her. Drive her to doctors. Send her money. Why does helping her require selling my home?”
“Stop being dramatic.”
“And stop pretending this is about my personality.”
Sergey began speaking faster.
“Fine. We don’t have to sell right away. I can go there alone first, look for work. Then we can decide.”
Natalia sighed.
 
“You’re still bargaining over the method of moving. I’m telling you the problem is that you made the decision without me. The next time your mother wants something, you’ll come to me with another finished plan.”
“So that’s it? You found your excuse?”
“You found it yourself.”
That same day, Natalia called a locksmith and changed the lock cylinder.
Sergey had left voluntarily, but he still had a key, and she didn’t want another late-night confrontation.
She packed his winter jacket, work documents, and medication separately so there could be no accusations that she was keeping necessary belongings from him.
Everything else remained in the closet.
Seven years of marriage could not be sorted out in a single evening.
Sergey appeared four days later.
He rang the intercom late at night.
“Open the door.”
“Why?”
“I want to talk. And I need a few things.”
Natalia went downstairs with a bag containing his belongings.
Sergey looked exhausted and sleep-deprived.
“Mom says you’ll calm down. I thought you’d get over it after a couple of days too.”
“Seriously?”
“Over one argument?”
“It wasn’t one argument. This one was simply the last.”
Sergey gave a bitter laugh.
“Of course. So now I’m some kind of monster.”
“No. You just chose your mother first again, then came to explain to me why that was the right thing to do.”
He shrugged.
“The problem is you. You’ve always controlled everything. The apartment is yours, your job is better, you earn more. My opinion means nothing.”
“It does mean something when it’s actually your opinion. But the apartment, the realtor, and the move were plans you made with your mother.”
Natalia handed him the bag with his clothes, documents, and charger.
“I’ll pack the rest later. But you’re not coming into the apartment without me.”
“You changed the locks?” he asked quietly.
“Yes.”
Sergey looked at her for a long time.
 
“What about Vika?” he finally asked. “Does she even ask about me?”
“She does. Just not in the way you’d like.”
“Can I talk to her?”
“Not tonight. She has only just started calming down.”
“You’re turning her against me.”
“After you told her, ‘No one asked you,’ I don’t need to turn her against anyone.”
He lowered his eyes.
Almost immediately, though, his mouth tightened stubbornly again.
“Fine. If you don’t want to handle this peacefully, then so be it.”
He left.
Natalia stood outside the building for a long time afterward.
Not because she wanted him back.
It was simply difficult to accept how quickly seven years of marriage could fall apart.
Then came the usual unpleasant stream of messages.
Sometimes Sergey asked to talk.
Other times he blamed Natalia.
Tamara Igorevna sent voice messages about a destroyed family and a child growing up without a father.
Once, Sergey’s aunt called Natalia and gently suggested that perhaps she should “give in for Vika’s sake.”
Natalia asked what exactly she was supposed to give in on.
Selling her apartment?
Quitting her job?
Moving her daughter to another school?
The aunt ended the conversation quickly.
A few days later, Tamara Igorevna told relatives that Natalia had thrown her husband out of his own home merely because he wanted to help an elderly woman.
Natalia made no effort to correct the story.
 
Two weeks later, Sergey really did move to Kamensk.
The apartment next to his mother’s building had already been sold to someone else, so he moved in with Tamara Igorevna and took a temporary job at a service center.
He messaged Vika almost every day.
He asked about school, sent pictures of the neighborhood, and promised to visit on weekends.
Vika answered briefly.
Once, Sergey suggested she spend the school holidays with Grandma.
Vika refused.
She spent the entire evening unusually quiet afterward.
“Mom,” she finally asked, “if Dad loves us, why did he have to go live with Grandma?”
Natalia didn’t try to explain who her father loved more.
She only told her that Dad had chosen where he wanted to live.
In the autumn, Natalia filed for divorce.
The apartment remained hers.
Vika continued attending the same school.
Sergey was still living in Kamensk.
Financially, things became harder.
The utility bills didn’t decrease. There were legal fees and trips related to paperwork.
Natalia took on several additional projects at work.
But at least no one was discussing the sale of her apartment behind her back anymore.
At the first court hearing, Sergey looked confused and somehow diminished.
He tried to bring up reconciliation.
“Maybe we don’t have to do this. After all these years… Vika…”
“I don’t want Vika growing up believing her entire life can be rearranged without anyone asking her.”
“I could come back.”
“Come back where?” Natalia asked. “To me—or away from your mother?”
Sergey said nothing.
A month after the divorce, Sergey rented a room in Kamensk.
Living with his mother turned out to be difficult.
She expected him to be home immediately after work, drive her to doctors, shop for groceries, and explain where he had spent his money.
If he came home late, Tamara Igorevna called him five times.
If he bought himself something expensive, she asked why he hadn’t thought of her first.
 
Eventually, he moved in temporarily with a coworker, then found a room near his job.
He told Vika the new place was more convenient for commuting.
Natalia resisted reminding him that he had once planned to move his entire family next door to his mother.
She had enough to deal with herself.
Work, school, homework, parent meetings, bills.
The first months were hard.
Sometimes, out of habit, she bought Sergey’s favorite yogurt.
Sometimes she saw something funny and almost forwarded it to him.
Fridays were the worst because the silence in the apartment felt especially noticeable.
Vika missed her father but was also afraid he might start talking about moving again.
Natalia took her several times to meet Sergey in cafés or parks.
She never interfered with their relationship.
She asked only that he not discuss his conflict with Natalia or Tamara Igorevna in front of the child.
Before New Year’s, Vika was assigned an essay about family.
She brought the page to Natalia herself.
“Can I leave it like this?”
There were only a few lines:
“Family is the people you feel safe and peaceful with. It’s also when nobody forces you to leave the place you call home.”
Natalia read it and didn’t change a single word.
In January, Sergey came for Vika’s birthday.
He brought a cake and an expensive building set.
Vika thanked him, but she stayed close to Natalia throughout the evening.
Sergey helped set the table, took out the trash, then spent a long time looking at old photographs on the refrigerator.
He didn’t mention moving even once.
When it was time to leave, Sergey crouched in front of his daughter.
“I’ll call you more often, okay?”
“Okay.”
“You know I love you, right?”
Vika looked at her father.
“You probably do. You just love Grandma more.”
Sergey said nothing.
On the staircase, his phone rang.
Tamara Igorevna was asking whether he had bought her medicine and what time he would be home.
Natalia closed the door.
After the guests left, she and Vika cleared the table, put the building set back into its box, and checked Vika’s schoolbag for Monday.
No one in their home talked about moving to Kamensk anymore.
Vika continued going to the same school.
On Wednesdays, she went to art class.
On Fridays, she visited her friend Lisa.
In the spring, Natalia finally replaced the old sofa she had wanted to throw away for years.
This time, she didn’t ask anyone where the new one should go.
Life alone was still difficult sometimes.
When Vika got sick, Natalia was the one who had to leave work.
When the washing machine broke, Natalia found the repairman herself.
But the apartment remained their home.
Her daughter didn’t have to change schools.
And decisions about work, money, and weekends were Natalia’s responsibility again.
It didn’t make life easy.
At least now she understood exactly what she was responsible for.
Sergey suggested several more times that they try starting over.
Once, he even said he was willing to move back to their city and look for work there.
Natalia asked him what would happen if, a month later, Tamara Igorevna called and said she couldn’t bear being alone.
“We’ll figure it out,” Sergey replied.
For Natalia, that wasn’t enough.
She knew too well who had always made the first decision.
 
By spring, Sergey had finally settled permanently in Kamensk and continued renting a room.
Tamara Igorevna still called him several times a day.
Natalia knew this only from Vika.
Her own life moved forward.
Work.
School.
Her daughter’s art classes.
Ordinary weekends.
Natalia never sold the apartment.
And one day, when Vika asked if they could go back in the summer to the park where the three of them used to spend time together, Natalia smiled and said:
“Of course.”
And that summer, they went there together.
Just the two of them.