Every evening, the same people gathered on the bench by entrance three in the village of Zarechny. There was Valentina from apartment 42, Zoya Fyodorovna from the first floor, and Margarita Stanislavovna from 46.
“My Maksimka,” began Margarita Stanislavovna, adjusting her headscarf, “bought a two-room flat. In the city. In a good neighborhood, right by the park. He did it himself. Almost no mortgage involved.”
“No way,” gasped Valentina. “That’s at least six million these days, if not more.”
“At least that. He got into selling windows. The pay’s really good. Did all the renovations, got new furniture. Sent me pictures. I showed you before, remember?”
Zoya Fyodorovna pressed her lips together. Her own son had been living with his family in a rented one-bedroom apartment in the district center for the third year now.
“You’re lucky, Rita.”
“Lucky, that’s for sure. Wasn’t always like this. I thought he’d be moving from place to place until forty, like Kolya Pronin. But no. He’s become a real man.”
Stanislav, Margarita Stanislavovna’s husband, was squatting by the entrance tightening the chain on an old bicycle. He listened to his wife and stayed silent, just scowling.
That evening in the kitchen Margarita Stanislavovna said:
“Stas. Let’s go visit Maksim. Let’s finally see the apartment. It’s been three years, and we haven’t been there once. We’ll stay for a month. I need my teeth fixed in the city, no one here will do it. And you need to see a cardiologist.”
“We should warn him.”
“Warn our son? I’m his mother. We’ll make it a surprise.”
“Rita, his wife is there.”
“So what if his wife is there? The apartment is his.”
Stanislav stayed quiet. He rarely argued with his wife. After forty years, he’d learned not to.
Natalya finished with her last patient at 6:30. An eight-year-old ginger cat named Persik had a tooth removed. The cat handled the anesthesia well, and the owner, an elderly teacher, cried with relief in the hallway. Natalya took off her coat, washed her hands, and checked her phone.
There was one message from Maksim, sent at 4 PM: “Come home early if you can.”
She called him back. Maksim didn’t pick up.
Five years ago, when they got married, they had no money at all. Natalya worked as a vet at a small clinic on the outskirts, earning forty thousand. Maksim sold plastic windows. His salary was all over the place: sometimes seventy thousand, sometimes thirty, depending on the season.
They rented a one-bedroom on the ground floor of a panel building for twenty-six thousand. There were cockroaches, which Natalya had to deal with every three months, and a neighbor upstairs who flooded their apartment twice a year.
Natalya pinched pennies on everything. She’d buy groceries on sale and clothes at clearance events. Lunch was buckwheat she brought from home and ate at work. Every month Maksim promised, “Just wait — when the season starts, we’ll get lots of orders, and I’ll start saving for our own place.” The seasons came and went. Orders did too. He just couldn’t save anything. There was always a new phone, or the car needed fixing, or he lent money to his friends.
Natalya covered most of the expenses. They split rent, but she paid for groceries, cleaning products, his new winter coat when his old one ripped, and even his dental bills when his teeth hurt. She didn’t keep count. She thought that’s just how things were supposed to be in a family.
Three years ago, Grandma passed away. Vera Nikolaevna, Mom’s mom. It was Grandma who raised Natalia when her mother went to work in the North after the divorce. Grandma spent forty years working as a typesetter at the printing house. She lived alone in a two-room apartment in an old brick building near the park.
Six months later, the notary gave Natalia the certificate of inheritance. According to the will, the apartment now belonged to her.
Natalia remembered how her grandmother, already so weak, held her hand in the hospital.
“Natashenka. I left the apartment to you. Only you. So you’d have your own place. No men, no strangers’ corners. So no one could ever throw you out. Do you understand?”
“I understand, Grandma.”
After the inheritance was finalized, she and Maxim moved into the apartment. No more paying rent. Natalia renovated everything using her savings—six hundred and twenty thousand, which she had gathered over four years by setting money aside from every paycheck. New electrical wiring, pipes, windows, floors. Maxim handled the furniture. He picked out the sofa, wardrobe, bed. He delivered and assembled everything. He bought as much as he could with his own money. Natalia was grateful to him.
She thought of this apartment as their home. Their family’s. Not once did she call it “mine” to Maxim—she always said “ours.”
She hung up grandma’s photos in the bedroom. Grandma looking young in the printing house by the typesetting drawer. Grandma with little Natasha on her lap at the dacha. Grandma on her last birthday, eighty years old, with a cake. Every morning Natalia woke up and saw her face.
“Mom,” Maxim said into the phone three years ago, standing on the balcony of their new apartment. “Hi, Mom. Listen, I have some news.”
His mother didn’t let him finish.
“Maxim. Tell me this. You’re thirty-one. Kolya Pronin, your classmate, built a house in Zarechny. Two stories. Sasha Lebedev bought a new car. And you? No property, no home. Living in someone else’s place. Your wife is probably supporting you. Your father had an apartment from the factory at your age. What about you?”
Maxim stood on the balcony. Down below, the park buzzed and yellow leaves fell on the asphalt.
“Mom,” he said. “I bought an apartment.”
Silence on the line.
“What?”
“An apartment. A two-room one. In the city. In a good neighborhood, near the park.”
“You? Yourself?”
“Myself.”
His mother was quiet for a moment. Then her voice changed. It became soft, in a way Maxim had never heard before.
“Maximushka. My son. Wow. That’s what a real man does. I’m proud of you. You hear me? Proud.”
Maxim stood on the balcony with the phone pressed to his ear and couldn’t say a word. Thirty-one years old. For the first time in his life, his mother told him she was proud of him.
Natalia went up to her third-floor apartment just after seven. She opened the door.
In the hallway stood two huge, old, brown suitcases strapped with belts. Next to them was a bag of potatoes. A jar of pickles sat on the shoe rack. A pair of men’s shoes, size forty-three, and a pair of women’s low-heeled shoes were on the floor.
Voices came from the kitchen. Natalia walked down the hallway and stopped in the doorway.
Margarita Stanislavovna was standing by the open fridge, unpacking its contents onto the table. Natalia’s oat yogurt. A jar of soy sauce. A bag of broccoli. A container with yesterday’s leftover pilaf.
“What is this disgusting thing?” muttered my mother-in-law as she eyed the yogurt. “Oatmeal? Who eats something like that? Just throw it away.”
Stanislav was sitting at the table, sipping tea from Natalya’s favorite mug with a cat on it. He saw his daughter-in-law, nodded, and things felt awkward.
“Hello, Natasha.”
“Hello, Stanislav Petrovich.”
Margarita Stanislavovna turned around.
“Oh, you’re here. Well, hello. We’re making ourselves at home here.”
Maxim came out of the room, his face pale.
“Natasha. Hi. Well, here you go. My parents showed up. Surprise. They’re staying for a month. Mom needs dental work done, dad has to see the cardiologist.”
“A month,” repeated Natalya.
“Yeah. I wanted to text you, but by then, they were already ringing the doorbell.”
My mother-in-law shut the fridge.
“Alright, Maxim. Your father and I will take the master bedroom. There’s a proper double bed in there. You two can have the small room and sleep on the sofa. You’re young, you’ll be fine.”
Natalya took off her jacket and hung it on the hook.
“Margarita Stanislavovna. Let’s sit down and discuss this. Calmly.”
“What’s there to discuss?”
“How we’re going to live together for this month. I start work at seven in the morning. Sometimes I get called in at night and come home late. Can we please make some agreements? The small room can be yours—the sofa opens up into a decent bed. I’d like us to keep the master bedroom. The fridge is shared, but please don’t throw away my food. That’s not garbage, that’s what I eat.”
Her mother-in-law stared at her for a long time.
“So you’re making the rules here?”
“I’m just asking. As one human to another.”
Margarita Stanislavovna didn’t answer. She turned and walked down the hallway to the bedroom. Natalya followed her. Maxim trailed behind.
Her mother-in-law stopped in the middle of the bedroom, taking it all in. A double bed with a gray bedspread. A built-in wardrobe. Windows facing the park. And the wall across from the bed, lined with grandmother’s photos in simple wooden frames.
Margarita Stanislavovna walked closer. She looked at the photo of grandma at her shop counter. Grandma with little Natasha. Grandma with a cake.
“Who’s that?”
“My grandmother.”
“Well, take them down then. I can’t sleep with strange old women staring at me from the walls. Feels like a morgue. Get rid of them.”
Natalya felt her hands go cold.
“No, Margarita Stanislavovna. I won’t take them down.”
“What?”
“I won’t take them down. That’s my grandmother. Those are her photos. And I’m asking you to respect my home. You’re guests here. I’m glad you came. But here, my rules apply.”
Her mother-in-law slowly turned to her, her face flushing red. Stanislav peeked out from the kitchen into the hallway.
“You can shove your rules wherever you want! We’re at our son’s house and we’ll do whatever we please!” declared Margarita Stanislavovna.
Natalya didn’t reply to her mother-in-law. She turned slowly to her husband. Maxim stood in the doorway to the bedroom.
“Maxim. Our son’s house?”
Maxim was silent.
“Maxim. Answer me. Since when did my grandmother’s apartment become yours?”
Her mother-in-law frowned.
“What grandmother? What are you talking about? This is Maxim’s place. He bought it. Three years ago.”
Natalya kept her eyes fixed on her husband.
“Maxim?”
Maxim’s face turned red, then white. Then he started to talk.
“Natasha, well, it’s… you see… here’s the thing… Mom misunderstood… I mean, I misspoke… I mean…”
“Maxim. What did you tell them?”
He was silent for a long time. Then finally exhaled.
“I told her I bought it. Myself. Three years ago. Mom called, started talking again about Kolya Pronin. About me being a loser. I was standing on the balcony. The new one. And I just said it. It slipped out. And she… Natasha, for the first time in my life, she said she was proud of me. The very first time. I was thirty-one. Do you get it? After that, I couldn’t tell her the truth. I was scared she’d go back to calling me a failure…”
continued in the comments.
Margarita Stanislavovna looked at her son, bewildered, as if she couldn’t understand what he was talking about.
“Maksim, what are you saying? You did buy it. You sent me photos.”
“Mom, I sent you photos. Of our apartment. Natasha’s apartment.”
Natalya stood by the wall with her grandmother’s photos. In the frame, her grandmother, holding little Natasha on her lap, gazed at her.
“So that you would have your own place. Without any men. So that nobody could ever kick you out.”
For forty years, grandmother worked typesetting other people’s books. She lived alone, saved every penny, put money away. She bought this apartment when Natasha was five, so her granddaughter would have a home. It was the last thing grandmother could do for her.
And Maksim just claimed it for himself. For three years, he told his mother he bought the apartment. His mother bragged about it to the neighbors. The neighbors envied them. But grandma’s picture on the wall spoiled the pretty story. “Other people’s old ladies.” “Like a morgue.”
“Natasha,” Maksim stepped toward her. “Listen. Let’s do this. Just don’t tell Mom. Let her think it’s mine. What’s it to you? They’ll stay for a month and leave. And my mom will feel at ease. Please. For her sake. She’s so proud.”
Natalya looked at her husband.
“You want me to pretend for a month that I’m the wife of a successful homeowner? In my grandmother’s apartment? And take down her photos so they won’t be in the way?”
“Well, we can just move the photos to the small room…”
“No, Maksim.”
Margarita Stanislavovna snapped out of it.
“Oh, so that’s what this is!” Her voice shot up. “So that’s how it is! You want to humiliate my son! In front of his family! In front of his father! That’s the kind of person you are! He’s been telling me for three years what a great man he is, and now you’ve ruined everything! You’re going to throw this in his face for the rest of his life!”
“Margarita Stanislavovna, I didn’t make up this story.”
“Doesn’t matter! You’re his wife! You’re supposed to support your husband! He’s the head of the family! He’s the master of this house! Accept it!”
Natalya looked at her husband.
Maksim stood next to his mother. He didn’t say, “Mom, that’s enough. Natasha’s right. It’s her apartment. I lied.” He turned to his wife and said:
“Natasha. Really. Mom’s right. What’s so hard about it? Just say I’m the man of the house, at least in front of my parents. Please.”
Natalya looked at him—and suddenly, she understood everything.
For five years, she’d saved. On yogurt, on clothes, on vacations. She paid half the rent for a tiny roach-filled place, bought him a jacket, fixed his teeth. Six hundred twenty thousand, four years of savings, she spent on renovating this apartment. She’d never once said, “It’s mine.” Never reminded anyone whose inheritance it was. She thought it was their home together.
For Maxim, it was all just props. Decorations for a story he told his mother. And in that story, she was no more than a background character, like her mother’s old photos. Her years of saving, her renovations, her quietness, her use of “ours” instead of “mine”—none of it mattered. All that counted was whether his mom was proud of him.
Natalia pulled her phone out of her pocket. She opened a folder with documents, found the saved ownership statement from the property registry that she had made for herself after inheriting. She turned the screen towards her mother-in-law.
“Margarita Stanislavovna, please have a look.”
Her mother-in-law looked at the screen. Natalia watched her lips move silently as she read.
“Owner: Kovalyova Natalia Andreevna. Ownership type: property. Grounds: certificate of inheritance by will.”
“I received it through inheritance,” Natalia said. “From my grandmother—Vera Nikolaevna Kovalyova. From her.” She nodded at the wall. “He didn’t buy the apartment. I did the renovations with my own savings. He only bought some of the furniture—a couch and a wardrobe.”
Margarita Stanislavovna stared at the screen for a long time. Then she looked up. Natalia saw that her mother-in-law was about to say exactly the wrong thing.
“Liar!” Margarita Stanislavovna shouted. “You’re a liar! You deceived my son! You deceived all of us! You kept silent for three years! You did it on purpose! You wanted to humiliate him!”
“Rita,” came a voice from the hallway.
Stanislav was standing in the bedroom doorway, holding a mug with a cat on it.
“Rita. She isn’t the liar here.”
“Be quiet, Stas!”
“Rita, it was Maxim who lied to us. Not her.”
“Be quiet, I said!” Margarita Stanislavovna turned to her husband. “You’re always like this! Always taking someone else’s side! Our son is in trouble, and you’re dragging him down!”
“Rita, I…”
“Quiet!”
Stanislav fell silent. He looked at Natalia, and in his eyes was something like an apology. He set his mug down on the nightstand and left for the hallway.
Natalia put her phone away.
“Margarita Stanislavovna. Stanislav Petrovich. I’m asking you to pack your things. Today. And leave.”
“What?!” Her mother-in-law gasped. “You’re kicking us out? At night? We’re elderly people!”
“It’s eight in the evening. The last bus to Zarechny leaves at half past ten. I’ll order you a taxi to the bus station and pay for it.”
“We’re not going anywhere! We came to see our son!”
“You came to see me, Margarita Stanislavovna. You just didn’t know it.”
Her mother-in-law yelled for another half an hour. Complaining about her ungrateful daughter-in-law, declaring that her son was a gem, and threatening to tell everyone in Zarechny what Natalia was really like. Maxim stood silently by the bedroom window. Natalia sat in the kitchen and listened.
Stanislav quietly went to the hallway. He fastened the straps on the suitcases, set the bag of potatoes by the door, grabbed a jar of pickles from the shoe shelf, paused, and put it back.
“These are for you, Natasha,” he said softly, entering the kitchen. “Pickles. Rita made them herself. They’re good.”
“Thank you, Stanislav Petrovich.”
He stood in place for a moment. He wanted to say something else.
“Please forgive us. I really did think… I knew something was off. Maxim never had much money. Where would he get six million? But Rita was so happy. So I kept quiet. I’ve stayed quiet for forty years.”
Natalia nodded.
At half past nine, Margarita Stanislavovna finally put on her coat. Stanislav carried the suitcases out to the landing. At the door, her mother-in-law turned to look back.
“Maksim. Are you coming with us?”
Maksim looked at his mother. Then at his wife.
“Mom, I… I’m going to stay here. I live here.”
Margarita Stanislavovna pressed her lips together and left. Stanislav closed the door behind her.
Maksim went back to the kitchen and sat down across from Natalia.
“Natasha. Well, that’s it. They’ve left. Let’s talk now. I apologized, didn’t I? I lied to Mom, so what? Who doesn’t? We’re husband and wife. Five years. Let’s just forget everything.”
Natalia looked at him.
“Maksim. You didn’t apologize. You asked me to keep lying.”
“I just got confused.”
“You lied for three years. You called my grandmother’s apartment your own. You stood next to your mom when she called my grandmother ‘that old stranger.’ You asked me to call you the head of the house. In her home.”
“Natasha, come on, we’re a family…”
“I’m filing for divorce, Maksim. And I’m asking you to move out.”
Maksim looked at her for a long time.
“Are you serious?”
“Serious.”
“All because of some apartment? Because I lied a bit to my mom? You’re cruel, Natasha. I didn’t know you were like this. For five years, you put on a show.”
“Pack your things, Maksim.”
He spent two hours packing. Making a show of it, loud on purpose. Slamming closet doors. Dropping things. Muttering under his breath that she’d regret this. That she’d end up alone. That no one would want someone like her. That her grandmother was probably the same way.
Natalia sat in the kitchen and said nothing.
At half past eleven, Maksim brought two bags and a backpack out to the hallway. He put his keys on the dresser. Stood there for a moment.
“Fine, then, stay here with your old ladies,” he said, and walked out.
Natalia walked to the door. She closed it. Turned the lock. Stood leaning against the door for a moment.
Then she went to the bedroom. Her grandmother’s photos were still hanging in their places. Grandma at the grocery counter. Grandma with little Natasha. Grandma with a cake.
Natalia straightened the frame that her mother-in-law had bumped with her shoulder. Turned off the light and went to bed.
They didn’t have any children together. A few days later, Maksim agreed to file for divorce together. A month later, the marriage was dissolved at the registry office. There was no dispute over property. The apartment was inherited, Maksim took the sofa and the wardrobe. Natalia bought herself new ones.
A week after the divorce, an unknown number called. Natalia answered the phone.
“Natasha? This is Stanislav Petrovich. Maksim’s father.”
“Hello, Stanislav Petrovich.”
“Sorry to bother you. I just wanted to say—I’ve explained everything to Rita, as best I could. She still doesn’t believe it. She says you planned all of this. But I want you to know—I’m on your side. Your grandmother must have been a good woman if she left you something like that.”
“She was a good woman, Stanislav Petrovich.”
“Well, there you go. Take care of the apartment. And yourself.”
On the bench by the third entrance in the settlement of Zarechny, it was cold in early December. They didn’t sit long, bundled up in their puffer jackets, but they sat all the same.
“Rita,” said Valentina. “So, how was your trip to Maksimka’s place? I never did ask. Is the apartment nice?”
Margarita Stanislavovna adjusted her scarf. Looked at the entrance across the way. Was quiet for a moment.
“It’s nice,” she said. “A two-bedroom. Next to the park.”
“And how’s the renovation? Did he do it himself?”
Margarita Stanislavovna opened her mouth.
Stanislav, who was just coming out of the building with a bucket of trash, stopped by the bench.
“He doesn’t have any apartment, Valya,” he said calmly. “It was his wife’s apartment. Her grandmother’s, actually. She inherited it. He just put his name on it. But now they’re divorced. He’s renting a room near the metro now. That’s the whole apartment story.”
Valentina’s mouth fell open. Zoya Fyodorovna slowly turned to Margarita Stanislavovna.
Margarita Stanislavovna sat on the bench, looking at her mittens. She didn’t say a word.
Stanislav nodded to his neighbors and headed to the dumpsters.