“Hand over the apartment keys. A family is going to live here now!”
Tatyana Sergeyevna pushed past her former daughter-in-law with a firm shove of her shoulder and marched into the hallway as though she owned the place. She tossed her coat onto the bench without even glancing at the empty hooks, then began struggling out of her tight shoes, breathing heavily.
Ekaterina remained beside the doorframe with her arms folded, silently watching the performance unfolding in her home that morning.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“What’s so difficult to understand?”
Tatyana Sergeyevna cast a disapproving glance at the unfamiliar sneakers beside the door.
“Pack your things, Katya. Leave the keys on the cabinet. Dima will have a baby soon, and they need a decent place to live. Meanwhile, you’re enjoying yourself here, taking up an entire apartment all on your own.”
 
The phone on the cabinet suddenly vibrated against the wood. The familiar name appeared on the screen again: Dmitry.
It was his tenth call that morning, but Ekaterina had no intention of answering.
She slipped her hands into the pockets of her house cardigan and gave her uninvited visitor a cold look.
Only a month earlier, Dmitry had packed his few belongings into a gym bag and announced that he had found true love.
His new girlfriend was called Alina. She was twenty-three, wore long artificial nails, and was already expecting a child.
Before leaving, Dmitry had taken their shared savings, emptied his bank account, and gone off to build his happy new life. All he had left Ekaterina was a brief apology written on a piece of paper on the kitchen table.
Now his mother had arrived to put things right, according to her own peculiar understanding of fairness.
“Tatyana Sergeyevna, I think you’ve come to the wrong apartment,” Ekaterina said calmly. “This is my home. Your son and I are divorced, in case you’ve forgotten.”
“On paper, the apartment belongs to both of you!”
The older woman shouted so loudly that Barsik, the cat sleeping peacefully on the ottoman, flicked an irritated ear and jumped down.
 
Tatyana Sergeyevna straightened her silk scarf, which had slipped to one side.
“That means half of it belongs to Dima. And he’s practically a family man now. He needs the space more than you do. You’re a grown woman. You’ll manage somehow. Rent yourself a place. We can’t have a young mother and her baby drifting from one borrowed room to another!”
The phone vibrated insistently again.
Ekaterina watched the flashing screen without moving. Seeing her former husband’s name still hurt. Ten years together could not be erased in a month. But she had no desire to speak to the man who had betrayed her.
“Will you finally answer that thing?” Tatyana Sergeyevna threw up her hands. “It won’t stop buzzing. It’s giving me a headache. They’re probably trying to reach you from work, while you’re standing here doing nothing.”
“It isn’t work. Your son has been calling all morning.”
“All the more reason to get packing!”
Her former mother-in-law seemed to ignore the mention of Dmitry. She headed straight into the kitchen, the heels of the indoor shoes she had thoughtfully brought in a bag clicking across the floor.
 
“Alina is coming tomorrow to choose wallpaper for the nursery,” she announced. “She shouldn’t have to look at that sour face of yours. The poor girl mustn’t get upset in her condition. A proper family needs peace and comfort!”
Tatyana Sergeyevna ran a finger across the kitchen table to check for dust and clicked her tongue in disapproval.
Ekaterina followed her and stopped in the doorway.
“A proper family?” she repeated, tilting her head slightly. “Since when?”
“They’ve applied for a marriage license!”
The older woman lifted her chin proudly.
“Dima has decided to do everything properly this time. Unlike with you—you dated for five years before you finally got married. Alina is a serious young woman. She made her position clear from the beginning: either they get married officially, or she leaves.”
Ekaterina smiled inwardly.
The serious young woman in question worked as a receptionist at a nearby hair salon. Dmitry had been going there regularly for the past six months.
After every appointment, he came home suspiciously cheerful, smelling of someone else’s sweet perfume and talking endlessly about the wonderful people who worked there.
One of those wonderful people had apparently found it remarkably easy to lure him away from his marriage.
“And where, exactly, do you suggest I move?” Ekaterina asked with mild curiosity.
She leaned against the doorframe and watched her former relative make herself at home in someone else’s kitchen.
“That’s no concern of mine!” Tatyana Sergeyevna snapped. “Go to your mother’s place in the village. Fresh air, a vegetable garden—it would do you good. You’re so pale you’re almost frightening to look at. We’ll turn the bedroom into the nursery.”
 
She waved toward the other room.
“Alina wants peach wallpaper. She says the color is soothing.”
“How interesting. And how does your precious Dima plan to pay for the renovations?”
“That’s none of your business! He has savings!”
Ekaterina gave a quiet snort.
She knew exactly which savings the woman meant. It was the money they had been putting aside together to buy a car. Dmitry had taken every last bit of it.
“What else would you expect?”
Without asking, Tatyana Sergeyevna opened the cupboard above the sink, took out Ekaterina’s favorite mug, and switched on the electric kettle.
“I’m finally going to be a grandmother! A real grandmother. Not like with you… Ten years together, and nothing to show for it. All you cared about was your career and spending money on clothes. You couldn’t even cook your husband a decent pot of borscht or give him a child!”
Ekaterina clenched her jaw.
 
Children were still the most painful subject of all. Two pregnancies that had ended in loss, endless tests, and doctors who could offer little more than helpless shrugs and advice to be patient.
Tatyana Sergeyevna knew everything. That was precisely why she always struck there, as though deliberately twisting a knife in a wound that had never healed.
“Your son wasn’t particularly focused on his career either,” Ekaterina replied dryly. “He kept changing jobs. One boss didn’t appreciate him, another workplace had terrible colleagues. I paid the mortgage almost entirely on my own for nearly seven years while Dima searched for his purpose in life from the couch.”
“Don’t you dare insult my son!” his mother flared. “He supported this family! He was the man of the house!”
“That man never paid a single household bill himself. You say half the apartment belongs to him? Let’s see what the court decides when I submit the records and receipts from all those years.”
The phone vibrated in the hallway once more.
In the sudden silence, it sounded louder than ever.
“Just answer it already!” Tatyana Sergeyevna shouted, slamming the mug onto the table. “You’re making my head pound! It’s probably Alina checking whether you’ve cleared out yet. She’s a determined girl, and she won’t wait forever. She said that if you haven’t moved out by this evening, she’ll come over with the local police officer!”
Ekaterina turned slowly and walked into the hallway.
 
Dmitry’s name was glowing on the screen again. He had been calling almost nonstop for two hours.
Something told her no police officer would be coming.
Dmitry had always avoided direct conversations. He preferred to let his mother fight his battles or send short, cowardly messages.
Ekaterina reached for the phone, accepted the call, and switched on the speaker.
“Katya! Darling, please answer me! I’m begging you!”
Her former husband’s frantic, pleading voice filled the hallway.
Traffic hummed around him, and strong wind buffeted the microphone.
Tatyana Sergeyevna came out of the kitchen and stopped halfway through a sentence. Her brightly painted lips parted in astonishment.
“I can hear you, Dmitry,” Ekaterina said evenly, keeping her eyes on his mother.
“Katya, please let me come back!” he wailed through the speaker at full volume. “That horrible woman threw me out!”
“Which horrible woman?” Ekaterina raised her eyebrows slightly.
“Alina!”
 
His cry was so pitiful that Barsik, who had just emerged from hiding, darted back beneath the shoe rack.
“I woke up this morning, and all my things were out on the landing in black garbage bags! While I went to buy bread, she changed the lock. I came back, and my key wouldn’t work. She shouted through the door that I should get lost because she didn’t need some aging loser!”
A strange, strangled sound escaped Tatyana Sergeyevna’s throat.
The color began draining from her face. The mug shook in her plump fingers, spilling hot tea onto the tiles.
“Dima…” she whispered, taking an uncertain step toward the cabinet. “Son… what happened?”
“The baby isn’t even mine!” Dmitry continued, too overwhelmed by the street noise to hear his mother. “It turns out her ex is the father! He came back recently, and she went straight back to him. She only wanted me as a temporary source of cash! Katya, and the money… The money I took from home…”
He broke off.
Instead of words, the speaker carried the humiliating sound of his sobs.
“What happened to the money?” Ekaterina asked coldly.
She felt neither rage nor triumph. Only a steady, almost icy calm.
“She transferred all of it into her account! A week ago! She said it was compensation for wasting the best years of her life on me! Katya, I have nowhere to go! I’ve got absolutely nothing left! I can’t even afford a bus ticket!”
Tatyana Sergeyevna rushed toward the cabinet as though she could shield the phone with her body and stop Ekaterina from hearing the rest of her son’s disgraceful confession.
 
“Dima! Sweetheart, where are you?” she cried, completely abandoning the commanding tone she had used only minutes earlier.
“Mom? What are you doing at Katya’s?”
Dmitry sounded bewildered.
“Dima, how could this happen? What about the wedding? The marriage application? The baby? The peach-colored nursery?” Tatyana Sergeyevna babbled, gripping the edge of the cabinet.
“What nursery, Mom?” Dmitry snapped. “I’m sitting at a bus stop! I don’t even have enough change to get to your place! That beauty took everything I had! Katya, please let me come home! I know I made a mistake! I must have lost my mind! I love you! We spent ten years together!”
Ekaterina gave the faintest shake of her head and looked at her former mother-in-law.
In barely a minute, every trace of Tatyana Sergeyevna’s confidence had vanished. Her shoulders sagged. Her elegant silk scarf had slipped sideways again, and her bright makeup now looked absurd.
The woman standing before Ekaterina was no longer issuing orders as though she owned the apartment. She was a bewildered older woman whose son had just been thrown out onto the street.
“I’m sorry, Dmitry. You can’t come back.”
 
Ekaterina spoke without mockery or satisfaction.
“As your mother just put it, a real family lives here now. Me and Barsik.”
She ended the call.
Dmitry’s voice cut off.
A heavy silence settled over the hallway, broken only by Tatyana Sergeyevna’s uneven breathing.
The space suddenly felt cramped.
Her former mother-in-law twisted the ends of her scarf nervously and shifted from one foot to the other. She could not bring herself to meet Ekaterina’s eyes.
When the call ended, so did her certainty that she had the right to dictate what happened in someone else’s home.
“Well? What are you waiting for?”
Ekaterina nodded toward the door.
“Go and collect your son, Tatyana Sergeyevna. He needs you more than I do right now. As I recall, you have an apartment with two rooms yourself. Dima can stay there. I need to get ready for work. There’s still the property settlement ahead, and a good lawyer won’t come cheap.”
Tatyana Sergeyevna said nothing.
She turned abruptly, shoved her feet into her tight shoes without properly fastening them, snatched her coat from the bench, and practically ran out onto the landing.
 
She even forgot to say goodbye.
The front door slammed behind her.
Ekaterina turned the lock, rested her forehead against the cool metal, and slowly exhaled.
For the first time that morning, she felt a little lighter.
A few months later, spring arrived.
Ekaterina and Dmitry’s divorce was officially finalized. The lawyer she had hired proved to be as capable as she had hoped. Because the mortgage payments throughout the years had come exclusively from Ekaterina’s salary account, Dmitry was awarded only a modest cash settlement.
Even that money did not last him long.
 
Several times, he waited for Ekaterina outside her building. He stood there in rumpled clothes, holding a cheap bunch of carnations and trying to look pitiful.
But whenever he met her cold gaze, his carefully rehearsed speech deserted him. He would shuffle awkwardly, lower his head, and leave.
Tatyana Sergeyevna never called again.
She never mentioned the apartment keys either.
Most likely, she was now busy making room for her grown son in her own home.
And this time, there would be no peach wallpaper.