The sky hung low, as if pressed down by the weight of unspoken words and grief, tinted gray, almost leaden. It seemed to press not only on the earth but on the souls of those who stood at the edge of the fresh grave. Wet snow, heavy and sticky, fell onto the black lacquered coffin, as though nature itself could not hold back its tears. Each flake melted into drops—the sky’s tears—running down the polished surface as if trying to wash away what cannot be erased.
Alexander stood with his hands jammed into his coat pockets, fists clenched so tightly his knuckles had turned white. He watched as the coffin was lowered into the dark, damp earth with a slow, inexorable motion. Each turn of the winch echoed dully inside him, as if life itself were sinking down, leaving behind a void nothing could fill. The wind tugged at his hair, chilled his cheeks, but he didn’t feel the cold—only the weight pressing from within, like a stone in his chest.
“Well then, have you divided up the inheritance?” he muttered with a bitter smirk when his eyes fell on the grave marker, on which a name—no longer his to claim—was now engraved forever: Elena Aleksandrovna Gromova. Only forty-three. Heart. A word that sounded like a sentence. One short word—and life, love, years, dreams—everything cut off. He didn’t know why he said it. Maybe to drown out the pain. Maybe to prove he was still alive. But his voice trembled, and the sarcasm rang false, like glass cracking under a load.
Katya stood beside him. His daughter. Twenty-two—grown, yet at that moment fragile and lost, like a little girl who had wandered into a forest. Her lips were pressed tight, her eyes swollen from crying, her gaze fixed on the ground. She didn’t even turn toward her father. There was more accusation in her silence than in any furious quarrel.
Alexander gave a short, empty chuckle—dry as a dried-up well.
“May I say goodbye…?” came a quiet, shaking voice. An old man in a worn quilted jacket—one of the gravediggers—had approached them. His face was furrowed like a map of lives lived. He crossed himself, bowed to the coffin with slow dignity, and stepped aside, leaving them alone with their grief.
Katya suddenly turned sharply to her father, and anger flared in her eyes—not childish, but adult, bitter as medicine.
“You don’t care at all, do you?”
“What?” Alexander frowned, as if he didn’t understand what she meant.
“She isn’t even cold yet, and you’re already talking about the inheritance!” she cried, her voice breaking. “Mom is dead, and you—you’re making jokes!”
Alexander bit his lip until it bled. The wind caught the edge of a mourning ribbon and it flapped in the air like the wing of a wounded bird beating against a cage. He wanted to say it was a joke, that he simply didn’t know any other way to stay on his feet. But the words stuck in his throat, turned into a lump he couldn’t swallow.
Katya wiped her cheek with the back of her hand—a gesture he remembered from childhood, when she fell and tried not to cry. Then she walked away and joined the other relatives, leaving him alone.
Completely alone.
They had already covered the coffin with earth. The shovels scraped, the soil fell with a dull thud. Each handful was a blow to the heart.
“Lena… why did you…” he whispered silently, squeezing his eyes shut.
There was no answer. There would never be an answer.
And the inheritance… At that moment it seemed a paltry, worthless trifle. Money, the apartment, the car—all of it now smelled of dust, oblivion, betrayal. As if love could be measured in square meters and bank accounts.
The house became alien. Not just empty—deflated, sagging, as though someone had pumped out not just the air but its soul. Alexander wandered through the rooms like a ghost, bumping into Lena’s traces: her robe on the hanger, as if she were about to return; a half-finished bottle of mineral water by the bed; a volume of Akhmatova open to her favorite poem, as though waiting for its owner to come back and finish reading. Every object screamed of her. Every rustle recalled her steps.
Katya left right after the funeral. No goodbye. No glance back.
“And good for her,” he thought, pouring himself a third shot. The vodka was bitter, harsh, burning his throat, but at least it muffled that damned silence that weighed heavier than a gravestone.
The doorbell made him flinch as if at a gunshot.
“Who is it?!” he rasped without moving, as though hoping the sound would vanish like a bad dream.
“Open up, Alexander Viktorovich.”
The voice was familiar but cold, official, as if from another world. He knocked back the shot, staggered to the door, and opened it.
Sergey—the family lawyer—stood on the threshold. In a dark overcoat, a folder under his arm, like a bearer of sentence.
“You weren’t answering your phone,” he said gently, with a hint of reproach. “The inheritance needs to be processed.”
Alexander suddenly laughed—loud, hysterical.
“The inheritance again! Everyone only thinks about the inheritance! As if she were just property!”
Sergey said nothing. He held out an envelope. White, with a seal.
“The will.”
Alexander tore it open without looking. The paper crackled like dry leaves.
“Everything to Katya. The apartment, the accounts, the car. To you—only my books and photographs. Forgive me.”
He raised his eyes slowly, as if time itself had slowed.
“Is this a joke?”
“No,” the lawyer shook his head. “Elena Aleksandrovna made it a month ago. Sound mind, sober memory.”
Alexander crushed the paper in his fist like a heart about to burst.
“She… even after death…” He couldn’t finish.
Sergey sighed.
“Katya already knows. She’s waiting for your decision.”
“What decision?!” Alexander stepped forward sharply, his eyes bloodshot. “It’s already decided! She crossed me out!”
The lawyer didn’t back away.
“You can contest the will. But…”
“But what?”
“But Elena Aleksandrovna asked you not to.”
Alexander froze. The word “asked” cut into his mind like a knife.
Suddenly he heard her voice. Warm, a little tired, slightly husky. “Sasha, don’t…”
“Fine,” he whispered, lowering his head. “Let her have it.”
Sergey nodded and left, and the silence that followed grew even heavier than before.
Alexander was alone again.
He went to the window. Dusk was thickening outside. Somewhere out there was Katya. His daughter. And Lena’s books. And the photographs. And one short line: “Forgive me.”
He closed his eyes.
But there was no one left to forgive. Only himself. And that was the scariest thing of all.
“The Line”
Alexander drank. Drank as if each shot offered a chance to forget. He drank for a week, two, maybe a month—time had ceased to matter. Empty bottles lined up along the wall like soldiers on duty, witnesses to his collapse. They stared at him with glassy, silent, judging eyes. He didn’t answer calls, didn’t leave the apartment, just drifted through the rooms, touching things that now belonged to Katya.
Her daughter.
Her apartment.
Her life.
And he—a ghost. A miscalculation of fate. A man someone forgot to strike from the ledger.
On the eighth day (or the twentieth? he no longer remembered) the bell rang. Not the phone—the door. Insistent, stubborn, as if someone knew he wouldn’t open and knocked anyway.
He didn’t want to go. But the door was unlocked. It swung open by itself, as if the house were tired of his pain and had decided to let salvation in.
Katya stood on the threshold.
“Still alive?” she asked without preamble, challenging, yet with worry in her eyes.
He laughed hoarsely. “Unfortunately.”
She stepped inside, wrinkling her nose at the stale air, dirty dishes, alcohol. She looked severe—dark coat, hair pulled into a neat knot, a bare face, as if she had taken responsibility for everything.
“I came for Mom’s things.”
“Take them,” he waved a hand. “It’s all yours.”
She didn’t move.
“Do you really not want anything?”
He lifted his red, inflamed eyes to her.
“What would I want? Photos? Books? That’s not an inheritance, Katya. That’s…” He fell silent, jaw tight, as if afraid to say something that mattered.
“Memory?” she finished softly.
Alexander lurched to his feet, swayed, grabbed the back of a chair.
“Why did you come? To watch me die? Go ahead! Your mother did the right thing—left you everything, and me… me…” His voice broke.
Katya suddenly stepped close and gripped his shoulder.
“Dad.”
He froze. That word—like an electric jolt.
“Dad.”
She hadn’t called him that since she was fifteen. Since he started drinking. Since he stopped being a father.
“Mom didn’t want you to drink yourself to death.”
“How do you know?” he whispered.
“Because she told me.”
He stared at her, disbelieving.
“When?”
“Before she died.”
Katya opened her hand. In it lay a small, crumpled note. Alexander took it with trembling fingers and unfolded it.
“Sasha, forgive me. But you have to stop. For Katya. For yourself. I love you both.”
He didn’t know when he began to cry. The tears ran hot and heavy down his cheeks. He didn’t try to hold them back.
Katya hugged him. Tight. Like an adult. The way a mother hugs a child. Only now he was the child—lost, broken, but still alive.
“That’s enough,” she said. “Let’s live.”
Alexander closed his eyes.
And for the first time in a long while, he breathed in—deeply, freely. As if, after a long drought, water had finally reached a parched riverbed.
Three months later he stood at the grave again. In his hands—a bouquet of white roses. The snow had melted, but the March wind was raw and piercing. His heart was cold, but no longer hopeless.
“I brought you flowers,” he murmured. “You always loved them.”
The wind stirred the ribbon on a fresh wreath. Katya stood beside him, wrapped in a headscarf. They had come together. For the first time.
“Mom said you gave her white roses on your first date,” Katya said quietly.
Alexander nodded, clenching his jaw.
“Yes. She laughed, said it was clichéd. But she kept a pressed flower in her book…”
“In Anna Karenina,” Katya finished. “I found it.”
He looked at his daughter. Something stirred in his chest. Something old, almost forgotten—love. Tenderness. Remorse.
“Katya… forgive me.”
She shook her head. “I’m not the one you should be asking.”
Alexander drew a long breath and laid the roses on the marble slab.
“I know.”
They walked to the car in silence. But now the silence was different—not hostile, but heavy, like earth still to be turned. Hard, but no longer impossible.
“Dad,” Katya said suddenly, stopping. “I want… no, I have to give you something.”
She opened her bag and took out a shabby notebook in a blue cover.
“Mom’s diary.”
Alexander took it carefully, as if the paper might crumble to ash.
“Did you… read it?”
“A little,” Katya lowered her eyes. “There are pages… for you.”
He opened the notebook at random. The clear, familiar handwriting:
“Sasha got drunk again today. But when he sobered up, he brought me tea with lemon, like that time I was sick in our first year of marriage. God, how I want him just to stay alive…”
Alexander slammed the notebook shut, as if in pain.
“I can’t… not now…”
Katya nodded. “Don’t. Not now. Just know—she loved you. To the end.”
He gripped the notebook in his hands. Somewhere in the park the rooks cried—the first heralds of spring.
“Let’s go home,” Alexander said.
And in that word—home—meaning returned at last. Not just a roof over one’s head. A place to begin again. A place to forgive. A place to be oneself. A place where love, even after death, still lives.