The evening sun, like molten metal, flowed down the walls of Maria’s room, flooding everything around with warm, glowing light. The rays slid over the spines of books lying in disarray on the shelves, played on the glossy surface of the guitar in the corner, as if awakening it from sleep. Every detail — from the dust particles swirling in the air to the old blanket on the sofa — seemed alive, filled with memories. Sixteen-year-old Maria sat on the windowsill, hugging her knees, and her eyes, large and clear, looked at her father with the expression he had known since childhood: a mix of mischief, pleading, and a childlike belief in miracles. Andrey sat in an armchair by the window, immersed in silence, but inside him, an old, painfully sweet image was beginning to stir — the image of that very night that changed everything.
“Dad,” she whispered, her voice sounding like music, “tell me again. Please. It’s my favorite story. The one everything started from.”
Andrey smiled, but the smile was uncertain, trembling. He knew that every time he repeated this story, it became more vivid, and the pain sharper. But how could he refuse that face? Those eyes, which reflected not only his daughter but also her — Olga, his first, only love.
“Maria, you’ve heard it a hundred times,” he said softly, averting his gaze to the window, where the sky had already turned crimson and purple. “You know every word, every pause, even the intonation.”
“But I still want to hear it the hundred and first time,” Maria insisted, pressing her palms to her chest. “About how you and Mom met. How your love ignited. How you became everything to each other.”
Andrey sighed deeply. His eyes clouded over, as if a portal through time had opened before him. He was there again — in the stuffy, smoke-filled hall of the House of Culture, where in the 80s vinyl records thundered and multicolored lights spun on the ceiling like drunken stars. Back then, he was a student, in love with his fiancée, with whom he was already planning a wedding. He had come there to spend the evening with her. And she — Olga — came with another. Their eyes met in the crowd like two lightning bolts tearing through the darkness. The music faded. Voices fell silent. People disappeared. Only she remained — with her tousled blonde hair, laughing mouth, wearing a calico dress, simple but incredibly feminine. It was not just attraction — it was destiny.
When they announced the slow dance, Andrey, without hesitation, approached her. He didn’t know what he was doing; he was just obeying the voice inside that shouted, “Only her! Only her!” Olga looked at her boyfriend, then at Andrey — and without hesitation, placed her hand in his. They spun under the slow melody, and the whole world ceased to exist. At that moment, they understood: they belonged to each other. No matter who was nearby, who was waiting, who was promised. Love asks for no permission — it just comes.
“We told them,” Andrey continued, his voice trembling like a string in the wind. “We told everything honestly. To my fiancée. To her boyfriend. It was awful. Painful. Ugly. Especially for her. She never forgave. Said I betrayed not only her but everything we believed in. Years later, I still feel that guilt. But I couldn’t do otherwise. I couldn’t live without Olga.”
He fell silent. The room hung heavy with silence, like marble. Maria looked at him, and in her eyes was not only curiosity but deep sadness — sadness for her father, for the mother she did not remember, for the family torn apart.
“And then…” she whispered, “Mom disappeared.”
Andrey nodded. Fourteen years. Fourteen winters and summers full of searches, hopes, breakdowns, sleepless nights. In the fall of 2009, Olga went with two-year-old Maria to a playground. Only the daughter returned. Mom — disappeared. Without a trace. Without evidence. Without warning. The police searched. Detectives scoured the city. Andrey spent a fortune, hired the best, offered a reward. But Olga seemed to have vanished. Only photographs, letters, her perfume on an old sweater he still kept in the closet remained. And the daughter — with her eyes, lips, freckles. Every day he saw in Maria not just a child — he saw her mother, returned from the past.
Summer came like a promise. The sun blazed, birds chirped, and Maria literally jumped with impatience. She dreamed of an internship at her father’s company — not just for the sake of a checkbox, but to feel the pulse of a real business. At breakfast, she reminded him again of her wish, and Andrey, smiling, poured her juice, watching her glow with anticipation.
“You promised — so it will be,” he said. “Today is your first working day, intern.”
The office greeted them with business noise, the smell of coffee and paper. But within a minute, the secretary, pale and worried, rushed into the office: Aunt Galina, the cleaner who had worked there almost twenty years, was hospitalized with a heart attack. Everyone was shocked. Andrey frowned. Then his gaze fell on Maria. She listened with such sympathy that he suddenly realized: this was her first real challenge.
“Maria,” he said, looking her straight in the eyes. “You have a task. The first. Important. Find out which hospital Aunt Galina is in. Find out what she needs — medicine, food, support. Deliver help from the company. And second — find a replacement. The office can’t stay dirty. Compare agencies, conditions, prices. Bring me three options. This is your exam. Show what you’re capable of.”
Her eyes flashed. She nodded like a soldier receiving an order. And within a few hours, she reported: everything was done. She visited the hospital, delivered money and fruits, arranged for cleaning service. Andrey looked at her with pride, like a little queen who had just won her first throne.
The next day, a new cleaner appeared in the office. Anna. A woman about forty-five, in a black shapeless dress, with a scarf covering almost her entire face. She spoke little, moved silently like a shadow, and worked with frightening precision. Employees whispered: “She’s like a robot. Or a ghost.” Andrey and Maria watched her from the office. There was something strange about her. Not just silence — but some inner emptiness.
In the evening, when the office was empty, the secretary looked in:
— Andrey Viktorovich, Anna is asking if she can clean at your place.
— Yes, let her come in, — he replied, not looking away from the papers.
The woman entered silently, like the wind. Started wiping the shelves. And suddenly — a turn. The lamp lit her profile. Maria froze. The woman’s ear — an earring. A golden drop. With a blue stone. Like her mother’s. Exactly the same. The one in the photo taken on the day of disappearance.
“Dad…” Maria whispered, trembling. “Look… It’s the earring… Mom’s…”
Andrey raised his eyes. His heart stopped. He recognized them. Those earrings. He himself had designed them. Ordered from a jeweler. A unique design. Only one pair. He gave them to Olga on their second wedding anniversary. Golden tears — as a symbol of his tears on the day they met. Sapphires — the color of her eyes.
Blood froze in his veins. Fourteen years of pain, searches, hopes — and here she was. Here. In his office.
“Maria,” he croaked. “Take my phone. Call the police. Say: ‘Olga Vorontsova’s disappearance. She’s been found.’”
The daughter ran out. Andrey stood up. Went to the door. Locked it. The woman turned around. Fear in her eyes.
“Why did you lock me in?” she asked hoarsely.
He approached. Snatched the scarf off sharply. And there she stood. Olga. Aged. Haggard. With gray at the temples. With eyes that once burned with fire, now darkness. But it was her. His wife. His love. His past. His future.
“Olya…” Andrey exhaled, and the word sounded like a prayer, like the last breath of a drowning man who found shore. His hands, trembling with emotion, reached for her — for the woman he thought lost forever, for the love that did not die during fourteen years of despair.
But she recoiled as if struck. Her body pressed into the bookshelf as if trying to hide in the wall. Her eyes wide with primal terror. She looked at him like a monster, like a ghost from a nightmare.
“I’m not Olya!” she whispered, her voice trembling like a leaf in the wind. “My name is Anna. I don’t know who you are, what you want… Open the door! I’m scared! Please, let me go!”
At that moment, Maria burst into the office, phone in hand. She froze at the threshold, as if hitting an invisible wall. Before her stood a woman in black — a stranger, frightened, but with the same eyes, the same freckles she had in her childhood photos with her mother. And beside her — the father, with a face marred by pain, as if he was looking at a living image from his most tormenting dreams.
Olga — or Anna — shifted her gaze from Andrey to the girl. There was no trace of recognition in her eyes. No motherly warmth, no trembling heart. She looked at her daughter as a stranger, as a random passerby, as a life that had nothing to do with her. And that was the most terrifying. It was as if the soul was torn to pieces, and the heart frozen in icy emptiness.
Three people, bound by the deepest ties, found themselves in one room, yet separated by a chasm of alienation. The air became heavy, electrified. The office turned into a stage for a silent, cruel drama, where everyone was silent but screaming inside.
Half an hour later, police burst into the office. Among them — Petrenko, gray-haired, bent by years and sleepless nights. He had been investigating Olga Vorontsova’s disappearance from day one. It became his personal crusade, his sleepless shadow. Seeing the woman, he froze. His hand trembled. The resemblance was frightening. Every feature — like cut from old photographs. The same eyebrow shape, the same chin curve, the same slight crookedness of the nose left by a childhood fracture.
But the interrogation was useless. The woman calling herself Anna told her story with icy calm. She was a resident of a remote village near Pskov. Her husband and son died in a fire she started by not putting out a cigarette. Since then, she lived a vagabond life, hiding from people, working wherever she could, trying to be invisible. Her voice did not tremble. Her eyes did not wander. She spoke like a person who sincerely believes every word.
The next day — a lie detector test. The result stunned everyone: she did not lie. Not a single deviation. Not a single sign of deception. The police were ready to close the case. “Coincidence,” they said. “A tragic mistake of a father who lost his wife and could not accept it.”
Andrey knelt before the void. But he did not give up.
He grabbed the phone and dialed Sergey’s number — his childhood friend, one of the country’s leading neurologists, a man who had known his story from the beginning.
“Serge,” he whispered, holding back tears, “I found her. But no one believes. Come. I beg you. This is not just hope. This is her. I know it.”
Sergey flew in three hours later. Burst into the office like a hurricane. Cast a long, piercing look at the woman. Then turned to Andrey and, without blinking, said:
“It’s her. I’m ready to stake my career on it. Something was done to her. This is not amnesia. This is erasure.”
Andrey sat opposite her. He spoke softly, as if afraid to scare off a fragile bird that had landed on his palm.
“Anna… or Olga… I don’t know what to call you. But I see you suffer. I don’t want to scare you. I want to help. My friend — a doctor — thinks you went through something terrible. That your memory… didn’t disappear on its own. That it was erased. We can help. We can try to bring you back. Please believe me. Please give yourself a chance.”
The woman looked at him, and for the first time in her eyes flickered not just confusion but a glimmer of doubt. Doubt about who she really was. And finally, she nodded.
“All right… I’ll try.”
A week later, Sergey sat opposite Andrey, his face darker than night.
“I ran all the tests. MRI, EEG, PET scans. Physically — the brain is perfect. No damage. No injuries, no tumors. But…” he paused, “there are signs of manipulation. Deep, systemic. Someone ran a series of hypnosis sessions on her, possibly with psychotropic drugs, to erase her personality and replace it with a new one. Her memory — not lost. Blocked. Walled off by a false biography like layers of concrete. This is not a disease. This is a crime. A mental murder.”
“There is one way,” he continued. “Regression hypnosis. Deep, controlled. We can try to penetrate that barrier. But it’s dangerous. If her consciousness can’t handle it — she may lose herself forever. Or… we can bring Olga back. The choice is yours.”
“I choose the risk,” Andrey said without hesitation. “I waited for her fourteen years. I won’t back down now.”
The session took place in a white room, where only the monotone voice of the psychotherapist broke the silence. Olga-Anna lay on the couch, her breathing slowed, her eyelids fluttered. Andrey and Maria sat in the corner, holding their breath, holding hands.
At first, she repeated her story about the fire, the guilt, the son’s death. But the doctor led her deeper, to childhood, to the earliest sensations. And suddenly — her voice changed. Became higher. Younger. Clearer. Like a spring brook.
“Mashenka…” she whispered, and a tear slid down her cheek. “My baby… You have such funny dimples… I’m rocking you on the swings… The sun is shining… You’re laughing, and the whole world becomes brighter…”
Sergey gave a sign. The therapist sharply brought her out of trance.
“Olga! Wake up!”
She jumped up like a wounded beast. Her eyes full of horror. She looked around, recognizing nothing.
“Where am I?! Who are you?! What’s going on?!”
The critical moment. Two personalities fought inside her. Consciousness was cracking.
And then Maria couldn’t hold back. She rushed forward, grabbed her mother’s hands, pressed them to her cheek, hot with tears.
“Mom! It’s me! Your Masha! Come back! Please, come back! I waited for you so long! I looked at your photos every day! I dreamed you’d hug me! Mom! I’m here! I’m near!”
Her voice broke. And at that moment — a miracle. Olga’s eyes stopped on her daughter’s face. The fog in them began to clear. Something clicked deep inside the soul. Something that no injections, no hypnosis, no years could break.
“Mashenka?..” she whispered. “Is that you?.. My girl?..”
Then her gaze slid to Andrey. And recognition flashed in it.
“Andrey…” she exhaled. “It’s you…”
Memory poured like a broken dam. Images, sounds, smells — everything returned. She remembered everything.
Later, when the shock subsided and tears turned to quiet joy, Olga told everything.
That day. The playground. The ex-boyfriend. Andrey’s ex-fiancée. The car. The injection. Darkness.
She woke up in the basement of a country house. They held her captive. And the woman Andrey left — now a doctor with a diploma and an icy heart — conducted experiments on her. Hypnosis. Injections. Psychological pressure. The goal — erase Olga and make her “Anna” — guilty, broken, alien. So Andrey would never find his wife. So he would suffer. So love would be destroyed.
But love does not die. It waited. It fought. It returned.
The family reunited. The house, which had been full of silence and memories for years, now filled with laughter, footsteps, embraces. Olga walked through the rooms like a traveler returned from a far country. She cried seeing Maria’s childhood room, now the room of a grown girl with a guitar and books. She held Andrey close, feeling the gray in his hair, the wrinkles on his face — marks of fourteen years of loneliness and fidelity.
The arrest followed quickly. The ex-fiancée and her accomplice were caught. During interrogation, the woman looked at Olga with hatred that hadn’t faded over the years.
“You stole him from me,” she hissed. “Now you stole my revenge too.”
One evening they sat in the living room. Olga rested her head on Andrey’s shoulder. Maria — at their feet, like in childhood. Outside, the sunset played.
“Tell me honestly,” Olga asked softly, “during all these years… did you have someone else?”
Andrey laughed — quietly, warmly, truly.
“Silly,” he whispered. “All these years, I had one woman who occupied everything: my thoughts, my heart, my life. Here she is.” — He touched Maria’s hand. — “I had to raise her, protect her, make her happy. I couldn’t think of anyone else.”
He looked at Olga. In his eyes was the same love as on the day of their first dance.
“I bought the tickets,” he said. “Next week — the sea. We’re starting over. Our honeymoon that lasted fourteen years. We have a whole life ahead to make up for lost time.”