Eleonora stood before the mirror in her quiet apartment, and the reflection answered her with an unfamiliar, tired look. Tonight was the class reunion. Not just any reunion, but a milestone—forty years. An entire lifetime separating her, a fifty-seven-year-old woman with gray threading what had once been inky-black hair, from that girl she used to be: the straight-A student with blazing eyes and a braid down to her waist.
“Well now, you’ve gotten old,” her lips whispered soundlessly as her fingers, with a tenderness mixed with distaste, brushed her temples. “Your skin isn’t what it was, your eyes have gone dull—no shine like at the last bell. And your hair… it’s faded, thinned, as if life has drained all the strength out of it.” She reached for the expensive jar of cream she had bought especially for this evening, massaging it in with slow, soothing circles. A ritual of self-persuasion.
Then she threw her shoulders back, filled her lungs, and smiled at her reflection, willing a spark back into her eyes. “No, Ela, there’s still fire inside.” Yes, the lines had softened, the body had changed—plusher, maternal—but that had its own charm. And the dress fit beautifully. New, the color of ripe plums, it flowed along her figure, hiding what needed hiding and emphasizing the remnants of her former grace. The makeup was light, almost invisible—just enough mascara so her lashes wouldn’t disappear and a gentle pink lipstick. No point painting on bright colors now; age is age.
With one last encouraging nod to herself, she stepped out, and the door closed behind her with a quiet click, as if sealing her ordinary, solitary life under lock and key.
The restaurant hummed like a disturbed hive—voices, laughter, clinking glasses, and music pressing through the din. Their Class 10 “B” had turned out almost in full, thanks to their homeroom teacher, Nina Nikolaevna—white-haired now but as energetic as ever—the woman who had once managed to bind them into a single, close-knit family. The parallel 10 “A,” though, was just a handful, five people at most.
Eleonora’s gaze skimmed over faces, trying to find, in these wrinkled, sagging features, the familiar traces of youth. That stout, balding man—could that really be skinny, perpetually hungry Kolya, the one who roared around on a motorcycle? And that elegant, stylish lady with the perfect cut—was that the shy grind Galya? Life had ironed some smooth, crippled others, and some it seemed to have left untouched.
Eleonora’s heart tightened with a quiet, familiar ache. Andrei should have been sitting beside her. Her Andrei. Her husband, her classmate, her love. But he had been gone for three years. His heart had given out—too much work, too much worry. She was alone now in their large apartment, crammed with memories.
Her thoughts drifted back to school days. To Vera. Vera Stepanova, who had trailed after Andrei with dog-like devotion. Everyone had chuckled at his torment, at her pushy, blind infatuation. Andrei had been too kind to push her away, too gentle. And there had been that ill-fated May camping trip after which Andrei came back withdrawn and strange. No one ever knew why. A secret buried in a tent and in the young May forest.
After school their paths split. Eleonora and Andrei unexpectedly ended up at the same institute in the big city. There, far from home and prying eyes, they discovered kindred spirits in each other. Andrei opened up—he turned out to be not just a nice-looking guy but reliable, smart, decent. He helped her with her studies, walked her home, looked at her in a way that melted her inside. They married right after graduation and stayed in the city to build a new life. Neither wanted to return to their small hometown—too much there smelled of poverty and loneliness. Both had grown up in modest, single-parent families.
Andrei sometimes traveled on business to a plant in their hometown. His parents were gone; only a long-deceased grandmother remained in memory. Eleonora never felt like going with him—her own mother, forever ailing, had also passed away, and she had sold the apartment long ago. There was no one and nothing to go back to.
The feast slid into dancing. And then he walked up—Konstantin, from the parallel “A.” In school he had been a gray mouse, a quiet, unnoticed C-student whom girls ignored. Time had turned him into a man—solid, calmly confident in his movements, with an intelligent, piercing gaze. He introduced himself and said he worked in St. Petersburg at a major automobile plant, running a production shop.
“Eleonora, you can’t imagine how happy I am to see you,” his voice was low and velvety. “Since ninth grade I’ve carried an image of you—the girl with the long braid and a laugh like the gentlest bell. But to walk up to you? Not a chance. I was too awkward, too shy.”
He kept asking her to dance. And to the slow, lyrical songs, when her cheek nearly brushed his shoulder, Eleonora caught herself feeling, for the first time in three years of solitude, not alone. She felt wanted. A woman.
Near evening’s end, Konstantin leaned toward her.
“Elya, let me walk you back. I’ve dreamed of this for years. Where are you staying?”
“At the hotel two blocks away. I’d like that. And you? With your father?”
“Yes, the old man’s still going strong. Come by tomorrow—he’d be glad. When are you leaving?”
“Tomorrow evening. Bus.”
“Cancel the ticket. I’m driving right past your city on the highway. I’ll take you. You’ll ride in comfort.”
Flattered and intrigued, Eleonora agreed without hesitation. Something in this man woke warm, long-forgotten feelings in her.
The next day he picked her up from the hotel and they drove to the outskirts, to his father’s house. Pyotr Ilyich, though eighty, was spry and strong. He lived alone in a sturdy house with a big garden, chickens, even a goat. He doted on his son and welcomed the guest with joy.
He laid the table right there in the yard under a spreading apple tree. Konstantin, a master of all trades, had the grill going in no time, and soon the air was rich with the fragrant smoke of sizzling shashlik. It was cozy, simple, and genuine. They talked about everything—school days, their teachers. Pyotr Ilyich asked about the reunion with keen interest.
And then, as if in passing, he asked, chewing a juicy piece of meat:
“Was my neighbor, Vera, at the reunion? She studied with you, didn’t she, Eleonora?”
Eleonora stiffened. A shadow slipped through her chest.
“Vera? Stepanova? Yes. She sat off to the side and hardly spoke to anyone. Why?”
“Oh, nothing…” the old man waved it off. “She lives nearby. Always been on her own. When she was young, she drank hard—from loneliness, I suppose. Seems she’s quit now. Her son, Pashka, though, he’s a good lad—takes after his father. Your classmate Andrei visited them all the time. I saw him. Even though he had his own family in another city, he never abandoned them.”
The world froze. The sounds—the laughter, the crickets, the whisper of leaves—fell into a deafening silence. Eleonora felt the ground slide from under her, everything inside tightening into a hard, icy knot.
“Which… which Andrei?” Her own voice sounded distant, strange, hoarse.
“Why, Sokolov. Andrei Sokolov. Pavel’s father. Pashka’s the spitting image of him. I saw him every year—he’d come and they’d drive off somewhere. He was even at his son’s wedding! I was there too. Modest, sure, but merry. Ten, twelve people.”
A wave of ice crashed over Eleonora. She stared at Pyotr Ilyich, unable to form words. The pieces slid together with merciless speed into a single monstrous picture. Those business trips. Twice a year. Here. To his son. To Vera. Thirty years of marriage. Thirty years of lies. He’d known. He’d always known. And she—blind, trusting fool—had believed him. Preserved fidelity to his memory. And he… he had another family. Another life.
Her hands shaking, she dug through her purse and pulled up an old photo on her phone—Andrei smiling, little lines at the corners of his eyes. Her Andrei.
“Is this him?” Her voice broke into a whisper.
Pyotr Ilyich brought the phone close, squinted, and nodded with certainty.
“That’s him. Pavel’s father. A good man—shame he went so early.”
Konstantin saw the color drain from her face, the tremor in her hands. He rushed to her, put an arm around her shoulders.
“Eleonora, breathe. Easy now. It’s all in the past. He’s gone—don’t torture yourself.”
He sat her on a bench, gave her water, and, looking her in the eyes, said softly:
“You see, life is always messier than it looks. Two years ago I found out my wife of twenty years had been cheating on me with the next-door neighbor at our dacha. A friend sent me a video by accident. I had no clue. Everything seemed fine—money, comfort, respect. And she went and fell in love with some drunk. Now they’re at that same dacha, drinking away everything I left her. So I get your pain. We all carry our wounds.”
But Eleonora barely heard him. She had fallen into a black, sticky void. Her whole life, all her memories, had turned out to be counterfeit—a house of cards collapsed by a careless word. She had lived with a man for thirty years and had not known him at all.
Later, as Konstantin drove her back along the highway—to her city, to her empty apartment haunted by the ghosts of lies—he watched her stare out the window in silence while tears slid down her cheeks. His heart ached for her. For this beautiful, strong woman broken by a cruel truth.
When the familiar lights of her city appeared in the distance, he made a sudden, firm decision.
“Elya,” he said, his voice steady, “come with me. To Petersburg. You shouldn’t be alone right now. You’ll clear your head, see the city. You said your daughter lives near Petersburg—let’s visit them. Come on. I can’t leave you by yourself. I feel like that boy again—the one who was in love with the girl with the braid. Let’s head somewhere no one knows us, where there are no shadows.”
Eleonora turned to him slowly. Pain and confusion clouded her eyes, but deep down something still glowed—a spark of defiance. She shook herself free of the stupor, and for the first time that day, a real, unforced smile touched her lips.
“You know what? Let’s go. Why not? It’ll be quite a surprise for my daughter!”
Beaming with relief and joy, Konstantin didn’t take the exit to her city. He pressed the accelerator, and the powerful car surged north, toward a new horizon. He joked and told funny stories from the plant, and little by little Eleonora thawed. Her laughter, tentative at first, grew louder and clearer. She threw back her head and laughed at his jokes, and in that laughter there was release. She was shedding the weight of the past like a snake sloughing its old skin. Ahead lay the road. And a man who looked at her the way she deserved—to him, she was the only one.
Five years passed. Five years filled with new light, new travels, a new feeling—warm and steady, like Konstantin’s firm hand in hers. They often visit their children and grandchildren—his and hers—having made one big, noisy, genuine family. And sometimes, in the evenings on the terrace of their house near Petersburg, they think back to that reunion. To that terrible, painful talk with Pyotr Ilyich. And they understand that the bitterest truth of that night became the catalyst—the very starting point that gave them this chance. A chance at happiness they might have missed had they not dared to turn the wheel and race away from the ghosts of the past into a new, shared life. That is fate—strange, unpredictable, at times cruel, but always leading you to where you are meant to be.