“You ungrateful girl!” her mother’s piercing voice shrieked. “Come home this instant or I’ll—”
Svetlana hung up and blocked the number faster than she could blink. “Another one for the collection,” she thought with a bitter smirk.
Half an hour later the phone came alive again. A new number flashed on the screen—apparently her mother had decided to get creative.
“Sweetheart,” her mother began in a syrupy voice, “we’re all very worried…”
“Oh, really?” Svetlana shot back. “Isn’t it a little late to start worrying? Maybe you should’ve worried when your other darling daughter was fooling around with my husband?”
“Don’t you dare talk like that! She’s suffering more than anyone because of your selfishness!”
“Oh, she’s suffering?” Svetlana laughed. “Poor thing—must be in such agony in my former bed. My heart just bleeds for her.”
Her mother hissed on the other end of the line:
“You’ve always been a spiteful snake! Marina at least knows how to value family!”
“Especially someone else’s,” Svetlana parried, and hit “end.”
She tossed the phone onto the couch as if it were contagious. At that moment her father walked in, loaded down with bags like a camel in the desert.
“Looks like that’s everything,” he muttered, surveying his purchases like a man who’d just defused a bomb. “I don’t really know much about this stuff, but the store said it was all essential.”
“Thank you, Dad,” Svetlana said warmly. “You’re doing more for me than anyone has in my whole life.”
Awkwardly, the man patted her head, as if he were afraid she might crumble at his touch.
“Oh, come on. I’m just trying to make up for lost time.”
“Dad, none of this is your fault. You were always there when you could be.”
The phone rang again. Svetlana glanced at the screen and snorted.
“Oh, now sis has decided to chime in.”
“Don’t answer,” her father advised.
“No, I’m curious what the newly minted lady of my house has to say.”
She took the call and turned on speaker.
“Sveta, stop sulking already!” Marina’s petulant voice rang out. “We’re adults—we can discuss everything civilly.”
“Civilly?” Svetlana repeated. “Do you mean when a sister sleeps with her sister’s husband, or when people find out about it?”
“Don’t be so primitive! Love is a lofty feeling—you don’t choose it!”
“Cheating, on the other hand, is exactly a choice, my dear. And a pretty disgusting one.”
“You’re just jealous!” Marina flared. “Jealous that Sergei chose me!”
“Jealous?” Svetlana laughed. “Sweetheart, I’m grateful to you. You saved me the trouble of taking out the trash myself.”
Her father nodded approvingly, and Marina on the other end spluttered with indignation:
“How dare you! Sergei is a wonderful man!”
“Of course he is. Especially in bed with his wife’s sister. A model of integrity.”
“You’ve always been vicious!” Marina screamed. “Always jealous of me! Mom’s right—you’re rotten!”
“And you, darling, have always had a taste for what doesn’t belong to you,” Svetlana replied calmly. “Remember how you used to steal my toys? Then you grew up and moved on to husbands. That’s what I call progress.”
“I’ll go make us something to eat,” Svetlana began after hanging up on her raging sister, but her father cut her off:
“You sit tight. Over the years I’ve learned to cook for myself. I’ll whip up a dinner you’ll lick your fingers over!” He winked. “Though I can’t promise it’ll be edible. My culinary talents are about on the level of a rhinoceros in ballet school.”
“Dad, you’re an amazing person,” Svetlana said, genuine tenderness in her voice. “Thank you for taking me in.”
“My dear girl, a parents’ home is always open to their children. And as for your mother sometimes forgetting that…” He waved a hand. “Time will put everything in its place.”
In just half an hour, the kitchen was filled with the aroma of fried meat and herbs.
Svetlana sat at the table, watching her father work his magic at the stove.
“Dad, why are you alone?” she asked, breaking the cozy silence.
The man froze for a second, as if someone had hit pause.
“I was married a second time, but it didn’t work out,” he answered without turning around. “Seems my happiness is to be a bachelor. At least now no one scolds me for leaving socks around.”
The girl nodded in understanding, choosing not to pry. After putting her daughter to bed, she came back to the kitchen to help her father.
“Stay here with me,” he said suddenly, stirring a sauce in the pot. “Take your time sorting your problems out. I’m not throwing you out—you can live here as long as you need. Till retirement, if you like. Mine,” he added with a smirk.
“Thanks, Dad,” she replied softly.
And then it all came pouring out. The words spilled in a stream, broken by sobs and deep breaths. She told him about the husband she’d loved more than life, about the birth of her daughter, about how she’d wanted to surprise him by coming home early…
“…and I walk in on that jerk with my sister!” she burst out, clenching her fists. “And that… that… she’s even pregnant by him! And Mother—can you imagine—knew about everything! She covered for them like the worst…”
The man listened in silence, his face darkening with every word.
“A nest of vipers,” he ground out between his teeth when Svetlana finished.
That simple, succinct verdict made her feel a little lighter. It was as if the heavy stone pressing on her soul had shrunk a bit.
“You won’t believe it, kiddo,” her father said suddenly, turning to her. “I was thinking… maybe we should send your ex a package? With live cockroaches, for example. Or we could sign up for a voodoo course. I hear it works wonders in situations like this.”
Svetlana couldn’t help it—she laughed.
“Dad, you’re incorrigible!”
“What?” he frowned in mock offense. “I’m just concerned with justice.”
They went on cooking dinner, teasing each other and hatching revenge plots that grew ever more ridiculous and funny. And though the pain didn’t disappear, Svetlana realized that with her father beside her, she felt safe.
Toward evening, the young mother’s phone was burning hot from the incessant calls, like some infernal machine about to explode.
Every so often, Svetlana would snatch up the receiver.
“Oh, to hell with all of you!” she cried, rejecting yet another call. “Enough already, you vultures!”
With every new ring her voice grew more irritated. First the cheating husband, then the snake of a mother. And every last one of them demanded she come back, as if she were some runaway mutt.
“Yeah, right! As if!” she snorted, adding yet another number to the blacklist. “Sure, I’ll just dash right back to your nest of snakes!”
By evening, Svetlana’s contact list looked like a graveyard of blocked numbers. She had no idea her “loving” relatives had so many spare phones.
“What a family, damn them,” she muttered, rocking her softly snoring little daughter. “It’s okay, baby—we’ll make it. Without those two-faced creeps.”
Evening slowly melted into night. The fridge hummed quietly in the kitchen, a cozy backdrop to the unhurried conversation between father and daughter. With a sigh now and then, Svetlana talked about school, her friends, and what she planned to do next.
A week had passed since the young mother had fled the cheating husband and taken her baby to her father’s place.
In that time the phone had rung hundreds of times. Margarita Stepanovna, as if possessed, called from different numbers, demanding her daughter return.
“Have you lost your mind?! Go back to your husband immediately!” her mother screeched into the phone.
Without responding to the demands, Svetlana hung up and blocked yet another number. She could have ignored the calls entirely, but deep down she wanted to hear an apology—from her mother or her husband. Apparently, pride wouldn’t let either of them take the first step.
One day, coming back from the clinic, the young mother froze on the threshold of the living room, seeing a mountain of boxes. Strange sounds drifted from her room—someone was busily assembling something.
Peeking in, Svetlana gasped. Her father was putting together a beautiful crib. A stroller stood finished beside it.
“Daddy, you’re a miracle!” was all his moved daughter could manage.
“What won’t a man do for his granddaughter,” he chuckled into his mustache.
Svetlana went over and kissed him on the cheek, then brought little Arina over so she could kiss her grandpa too. But the willful little girl only snorted like a kitten.
That night Arina slept in her new crib. After tucking her in, Svetlana switched on the nightlight, stepped out, and pulled the door to.
The kitchen was half-dark.
The gray-haired man sat at the table, turning a cup of cold tea in his hands, deep in thought. Svetlana sat down across from him.
“Dad,” the girl began hesitantly, “I’ve been meaning to ask… Why did you leave Mom?”
The man stood and walked to the window. The long silence felt like an eternity.
“You’re not my daughter,” he said at last, quietly.
Svetlana gasped.
“I found out three years later,” he went on, his voice trembling. “Forgive me for leaving you. I just couldn’t… couldn’t live with it.”
Not knowing what to say, Svetlana rose and went to the hunched figure. Gently, she touched his back.
She pressed herself to him, wanting to dissolve into this person who was at once dear and strange. On impulse, she kissed him between the shoulder blades.
“Dad,” she breathed.
“Just don’t leave,” he said hoarsely. “Live here.”
“But Dad, I’m a stranger to you, then,” Svetlana answered softly.
“No,” the man said firmly. “Just live here. That’s all.”
At that moment, the baby’s cry drifted from the nursery. The young mother started.
Time slipped by, and soon Arina was busy in the sandbox—a chubby-cheeked tot with curious eyes.
“Hey, you little squirt! Don’t you dare eat that sand!” Svetlana wagged a playful finger, crouching beside her.
The baby only burst into ringing laughter and kept patting out sand cakes with her pudgy hands.
“You know, sunshine,” Svetlana said gently, adjusting her daughter’s sunhat, “your mom was a very smart girl at your age. Sometimes a bit too stubborn, though.”
Arina looked up at her solemnly and held out a sand cake.
“For me?” Svetlana was touched. “Thank you, my love.”
The phone chimed insistently for the third time that evening. Rocking a fussy Arina, Svetlana walked over and picked up.
“Svetlana?” came Margarita Stepanovna’s familiar voice. “At last! I thought you’d forgotten the telephone existed.”
“Good evening,” Svetlana answered evenly. “Arina’s fussy—her teeth are coming in.”
“Ah, teething!” her mother drawled with acid. “And here I was thinking you were simply too busy to answer.”
“If you have something important to say, say it,” Svetlana said, swaying the child to soothe her.
“Important? What could be important for an old woman! I merely wanted to know how my granddaughter is. But apparently that’s too much to ask for a grandmother.”
“Let’s skip the theatrics. Arina’s healthy and developing well. Her first teeth have already come in.”
“Theatrics!” her mother protested. “I’m the one putting on a show? I’m just trying to remain part of the family!”
Svetlana counted to ten in her head.
“Goodbye.”
She set down the receiver, realizing this conflict wasn’t going to resolve itself.
That same evening, when Arina was asleep in her crib, Svetlana sat in the kitchen across from her father.
“Dad, I want to take a DNA test.”
The man only nodded, showing neither surprise nor objection.
A week later the result arrived, and it was negative. Her father’s story was true—he was a stranger to her by blood.
“I may not be your biological father,” he began as calmly as he could, “but I’ll always be your dad.”
“Of course,” she answered, resting her head on his shoulder.
A few more months flew by.
Svetlana went out for a walk; in the stroller her daughter Arina slept peacefully—a little angel with plump cheeks and golden curls.
“Well, kiddo, ready for new adventures?” Mom winked at the sleeping baby.
Suddenly her phone trilled in her pocket. “Ex” lit the screen. Svetlana rolled her eyes and declined the call.
“Oh, may devils drag you, Dmitry,” she muttered through her teeth.
After the fourth court hearing—none of which this “prince on a white horse” had deigned to attend—they were finally divorced. Now there was the matter of the apartment, which Svetlana had bought before the marriage, working her fingers to the bone.
“Hello, ‘A Roof Over Your Head’ agency?” she called the next day. “I’ve got a little problem. An especially stubborn ram—er, my ex-husband—has holed up in my apartment. Could you, I don’t know… delicately smoke him out?”
A couple of days later Svetlana’s phone was red-hot with calls.
“Good grief, what is this, Groundhog Day?” she groaned. “Mother, sis, or the ex—pick your poison!”
At last the agency called:
“Ma’am, your property has been cleared of undesirable elements. There are people interested in renting your apartment.”
“Wow, just like a spy movie,” Svetlana snorted. “You didn’t happen to cart the ex off in a trunk, did you?”
The next day she contacted a moving service. She was met by an elderly lady with a gray bun and a crafty squint.
“So, dearie, you want to collect your things without running into the ex?” the old woman clarified. “Oh, men—I hear you. I’ve been married three times, and all three were jerks!”
Svetlana laughed.
“And here I thought I was just unlucky. Turns out it’s an epidemic!”
A couple of days later all of Svetlana’s things had been delivered to her new address.
“Well then, little one,” she said, looking at sleeping Arina. “Looks like we’re starting a new life. No deadbeat daddy, but with our own income. Believe me—that’s way better than family life with a womanizer!”
And the next day, an unusual little procession strolled down the green alley.
Up front, pushing the stroller, strode Mikhail Nikolaevich. Beside him, barely keeping pace with his long stride, scurried Svetlana.
“Hey, Dad, slow down!” she called. “This isn’t a marathon, you know!”
“Sorry, kiddo. Forgot you’re not an athlete—more of a… couch critic.”
“Very funny,” Svetlana sniffed. “We’ll see who gets to the ice cream stand first!”
Several months after the divorce, Dmitry—deprived of the apartment and forced to face reality—bolted from the pregnant Viktoria the minute he realized the free ride was over. Viktoria, left alone with a baby on the way, went back to her mother with her tail between her legs. Now, in Margarita Stepanovna’s apartment, curses aimed at Svetlana were a regular occurrence—Mother and her husband blamed her for everything, calling her a heartless daughter who had thrown her own sister out on the street.
Meanwhile, Svetlana was enjoying the peace at her father’s house. Every morning she woke to the ringing laughter of a grown Arina, who was already toddling confidently from room to room and delighting her grandpa with her first words. The young woman found a remote job, rented out her apartment, and felt truly happy. No one lied to her, no one betrayed her, and beside her was a person who accepted her as she was and gave her what she had always lacked—unconditional love and support.