“Sweetheart, I’m planning to move in with you soon—right after I sign my apartment over to your younger sister. So start getting a room ready for me with your husband!”
The words landed on the little table between them with a clink louder than a teaspoon against porcelain. They dropped straight into the saucer of almond cookies Katya had just been about to try. The aroma of freshly brewed espresso and cinnamon rolls that filled the cozy café suddenly felt suffocating. Katya raised her eyes to her mother. She was beaming like a polished samovar, her face radiating an unfeigned, almost childlike joy at her own brilliance. She even leaned forward a little across the table, as if sharing a great secret capable of making the whole world happy—and first and foremost, of course, Katya herself.
“Can you imagine?” her mother chirped, oblivious to how her daughter’s face had gone still. “Our Lenka is getting married. The guy’s good, serious. And where are they supposed to live? To bounce around from one rented corner to another? That’s no way to live! So I came up with a plan: I’ll give them my two-room apartment. Let them build a nest and have babies. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for my daughters’ happiness. And I’ll move in with you. You’ve got space, it’s a big apartment—there will definitely be a room for me. I’m quiet, I won’t take up much room, I won’t be a bother. On the contrary, I’ll help around the house, bake pies. We’ll thrive!”
Mother leaned back against the soft settee, took a sip of her latte, and looked at Katya with an expression that said she had just gifted her at least a villa on the coast. She waited for gratitude, delight, perhaps even tears of joy. But Katya was silent. The warm ceramics of the cup suddenly felt icy in her fingers. The smile she’d brought to the meeting didn’t just vanish—it slowly slid from her face like melting wax, leaving behind a mask of cold bewilderment. All the café’s sounds—the low hum of conversation, the clink of dishes, the muffled music—compressed into a single, monotonous, oppressive note.
All this time she had thought she had a mother and a sister. It turned out her sister had a mother, and her mother had two daughters: one for love and adoration, and the other for convenience and functional use. A backup airfield. A free hotel with full board that could be activated at any moment simply by presenting her with a fait accompli.
“So,” Katya said slowly, spacing out the words, and even to herself her voice sounded strange and creaky, “you’re giving Lena an apartment that by rights should have been divided between us. You’re depriving me of my lawful inheritance. And in exchange for that… I get you. As a permanent roommate in our three-room apartment. Have I got that right?”
The radiance on her mother’s face went out at once. Her brows knit, her lips tightened into an offended, indignant line. How dare Katya dissect her magnanimous impulse into such ugly, earthbound parts?
“What are you talking about? What inheritance? I’m still alive, for your information! And how can you think about money, about square meters, when we’re talking about family? About your own sister’s happiness! I’m your mother! I gave my whole life to you two, and you’re throwing ‘rights’ at me! You owe me simply by virtue of your birth!”
Something clicked. The last puzzle piece fell into place, and the ugly picture of reality stood before Katya in all its starkness. Her entire childhood, all her achievements—taken for granted—and all of Lena’s failures—demanding universal sympathy and instant rescue—had been nothing but a prelude to this day. She wasn’t a daughter. She was an investment project that was now supposed to start paying dividends.
Silently, Katya opened her handbag. Her movements were calm and precise, without a single superfluous gesture. She took out her wallet, counted a few bills, and neatly set them on the table beside her untouched coffee. The amount more than covered her order. Then she stood up.
“You’re right, Mom. You’ve made the right decision.”
Her mother, already primed for the next tirade, fell silent in surprise, waiting for the rest. Katya looked her straight in the eye, and there was no hurt or anger in her gaze—only a cold, measured statement of fact.
“Only there’s one flaw in your brilliant plan. I’m not in it.”
She turned and walked to the exit without looking back. She walked past the tables, past the smiling people, through the aroma of coffee and pastries that now smelled like hypocrisy. She left her mother sitting alone, mouth open, latte half-finished—alone with her grand plan, in which a huge, unforeseen hole had just opened.
The silence in their apartment felt deafening after the café’s buzz. Katya came in, hung her coat on the rack, and went to the kitchen, automatically putting the kettle on. Her husband was on the sofa with his laptop, but he looked up at once, sensing the change in the air. He knew his wife. Her calm could be more frightening than any hysteria. It was the calm of the lull before the perfect storm.
“Everything okay?” he asked, closing the laptop.
Katya poured boiling water into a cup, dropped in a chamomile tea bag, and sat down opposite him at the big dining table. She didn’t recount the conversation with emotion or colorful epithets. She presented the facts. Dryly, concisely, as if reading a deposition. The brilliant plan. The deed of gift for Lena. The proposal to move in with them as a lifelong roommate.
Andrey listened in silence, his face growing harder. When she finished, he leaned back and smirked. The smirk came out bitter and joyless.
“Brilliant. Simply brilliant. So your sister gets housing at your expense, and as a consolation prize they offer us your mother—thrown in as a bonus. Have I got the logic of this spectacle of unprecedented generosity right?”
“You’ve got it right,” Katya replied just as evenly, watching the water slowly change color in her cup.
“And what did you say?”
“I put down money for the coffee and left. I said I’m not in the plan.”
Andrey nodded. Slowly, with satisfaction. He reached across the table and covered her hand with his.
“You did the right thing. This is our home, Katya. Ours. And only we decide who lives in it—and who keeps walking.”
At that moment the phone rang. “Mom” lit up on the screen. They exchanged a glance. Katya paused, took a sip of tea, and answered, putting it on speaker.
“What do you think you’re doing?!” her mother screeched without any greeting, her voice shrill and indignant through the speaker. “How dare you just get up and walk out while I’m talking to you! I already called Lenka and made her happy, and you pull this circus on me! Do you have any idea what position you’re putting me in?”
“I heard you at the café,” Katya said coldly and clearly. “My decision hasn’t changed.”
“What decision?!” her mother gasped in outrage. “That’s not for you to decide! I’m your mother, and I said how it’s going to be! You will apologize immediately and start getting the room ready!”
Katya calmly hit “end.” The apartment went quiet again. Andrey squeezed her hand a little tighter.
“First wave,” he said.
No more than ten minutes passed. The phone rang again. This time the screen said “Lena.” Katya put it on speaker again.
“Hi, Katyush,” came her younger sister’s honeyed, slightly tremulous voice. “Mom called me… she’s so upset, she’s crying… What happened with you two? She said you were against—against me and Igor being happy.”
Katya felt everything inside her tighten at that sticky, fake sweetness. The tactic had changed. The frontal assault was giving way to the smothering embrace of manipulation.
“Hello, Lena. Your happiness has nothing to do with this.”
“How can it have nothing to do with it?” her sister’s voice chimed with hurt. “We’ve dreamed so much of having our own place… Mom only wanted what’s best for everyone. So Igor and I could live in peace, and she could be looked after—by you. You’re the older one, you’re strong, you have everything—a husband, an apartment. We’re just starting out… Do you really begrudge it?”
That was the key word. Begrudge. Their entire family system fed on that feeling.
“Lena,” Katya’s voice turned to steel. “This is Mom’s plan, not mine. She had an apartment and decided what to do with it. That’s her right. But she has to bear the consequences of her decisions herself—not shift them onto me. Direct all your questions to her.”
Silence hung on the other end for a few seconds. Lena clearly hadn’t expected that. She’d counted on guilt, on pleading—on anything but this icy logic.
“So… you won’t help us?” she stammered, and there was no sweetness left in her voice now, only poorly concealed irritation.
“Not with this.”
Katya hung up again. The phone went quiet. For how long? She and Andrey sat in the silence of their kitchen, in their home, which had just repelled the first attack. And both of them understood this was only the beginning. The phone harassment was just a probing attack. Soon the enemy would come right up to the walls of their fortress.
Two weeks passed in a thick, tense quiet. The phone was silent. Neither mother nor Lena tried again to break through the defenses. To Katya and Andrey, the lull felt unnatural—like dead calm at a hurricane’s eye. They lived their usual life—work, dinners, movies in the evenings—but unspoken expectation hung in the air. They didn’t talk about it, but both knew: this wasn’t the end. It was only a regrouping of forces before the decisive assault.
The denouement came on a Thursday. An ordinary evening that smelled of rain and fatigue. They had just come in and kicked off their wet shoes. Andrey headed to the shower, and Katya began unpacking groceries. That was when the intercom buzzed—sharp, insistent, slicing through the apartment’s stillness like an alarm. Katya froze with a carton of milk in her hand. On the little black-and-white screen, distorted by the camera but unmistakable, was her mother’s face. Beside her, on the wet asphalt, sat a sizable suitcase.
“Katya, open up, I’m here,” came a voice through the handset—not asking, but stating. The voice of someone who had arrived at the destination and expected every door to swing open at once.
Katya stared at the screen. At the raindrops sliding down her mother’s face, at her confident, almost defiant pose. She didn’t press the talk button. She didn’t press the door-release. She simply set the handset back on its cradle. The apartment went quiet again, but it was a different kind of quiet now. It rang with tension. Andrey came out of the bathroom with a towel over his shoulders. He saw his wife’s frozen face and understood everything without a word. He just stood beside her, looking at the silent intercom.
Five minutes passed. Then came a sound far more persistent and personal: a knock at the door. Not loud, not hysterical—methodical, measured. Knock-knock-knock. Pause. Knock-knock-knock. The sound seeped through the thick steel door, filling the entryway. It was brazen in its calm. It said, “I’m here. I know you’re there. And I’m not going anywhere.” Andrey clenched his fists. Katya stared at a single spot on the wall opposite. They didn’t move. They turned into living statues—part of their home’s defenses.
The knocking went on for ten minutes, then stopped. They looked at each other. Was that all? But then, from the hallway, their mother’s voice came through—loud, clear, pitched so not only they but the whole stairwell would hear. She was on the phone.
“Yes, Lenochka, I’m here… Standing at the door like a stray dog. No, she won’t open. My own daughter won’t let her own mother across the threshold… Yes, with a suitcase, soaked through in the rain… Of course the neighbors are watching, people are passing, giving me looks. What a shame… What should I do? I’ll keep standing. Maybe her conscience will wake up.”
It was theater. Cheap, primitive theater, but aimed at a foolproof weapon—public shaming. Katya felt heat rush to her face. Andrey took her by the hand and led her into the kitchen, farther from the door.
“Turn on some music,” he said quietly. “Or a movie. Loud.”
They did just that. They put on an old comedy on the laptop and cranked the volume to the maximum. Katya started making dinner, deliberately clattering the knife on the cutting board, onions sizzling in the pan. The aroma of frying meat and spices drifted through the apartment, creating an island of normal, cozy life in the midst of this absurd siege. They didn’t talk about what was happening behind the door. They discussed the movie, work, weekend plans. Inside their fortress they built a world no knock, no shout could penetrate.
After an hour, everything went quiet. Her mother’s voice fell silent. They turned off the movie. Listened. Silence. On tiptoe, Andrey went to the door and looked through the peephole.
“She’s gone,” he breathed.
Relief washed through Katya. She came up and looked through the peephole too. The stairwell was empty. Her mother was gone. But her promise to stay had been kept. Right by their door, leaned against the wall, stood that same large, dark suitcase. It looked like an unexploded shell, like a silent declaration of war. It was a symbol that the siege wasn’t lifted—it had merely shifted into a new, waiting phase.
“Is that going to stand there?” Andrey asked in the morning, nodding toward the entryway.
He meant the suitcase. It had stood outside their door all night, like a grim monument to a move that hadn’t happened. It had grown into their space, become part of the décor—a mute reproach and at the same time a time bomb. Katya finished her coffee, looking at it. The suitcase was the last thread tying her to her mother’s plan, the last anchor keeping her in this sordid story. And that anchor had to be cut.
“No,” she said calmly. “It’s not going to stand here.”
They moved in sync, without unnecessary words. Andrey, being stronger, took the heavy suitcase by the handle. Katya opened the door and checked the landing. Empty. They stepped out, and Andrey carried the suitcase down the stairs. Katya followed, locking the door behind them. Each flight they descended was a step toward freedom. With each step, the weight of other people’s problems, imposed decisions, and brazen demands seemed to grow lighter. They weren’t going to throw it out. They were simply taking it down to the front door—where it had been left. Its owner would turn up.
They had almost reached the ground floor when the heavy entrance door swung open. On the threshold, as if rising out of the gray morning light, stood her mother and Lena. They were clearly waiting. Their faces were neither pleading nor distressed. They were contorted with fury—with the righteous anger of people whose sacred rights had been trampled. The ambush had worked.
“I knew it!” Mother exploded first, pointing a trembling finger at the suitcase in Andrey’s hand. “You’re throwing out my things! Throwing your own mother out on the street with her belongings! People, look!”
“We’re putting it where you left it,” Andrey replied evenly, taking the last step and setting the suitcase down by the entrance.
“Katya, how can you?!” Lena jumped in at once, her voice ringing with hurt, but cold rage lapping in her eyes. “You’re ruining everything! Mom can’t sleep at night because of you! I can’t start a normal life with my fiancé because of you! You’re just jealous that Mom gave the apartment to me and not to you!”
Katya looked at them in silence. At her sister, who had so easily accepted her share of the inheritance and now demanded full service for the gift. At her mother, whose face had flushed crimson with indignation. She was no longer performing for the neighbors. All masks were off. This was the final battle, and it was being fought with no rules.
“You’re ungrateful!” her mother shouted, stepping almost nose to nose with Katya. “I gave you my best years, I raised you, and you… You were obligated to take me in! You were obligated to be happy for your sister! It’s your duty!”
Andrey stepped forward to shield his wife, but Katya gently stopped him, laying a hand on his shoulder. She took a step forward, out from behind him. She looked her mother straight in the eye, then shifted her gaze to Lena. There was no yelling or tremor in her voice. Only absolute, almost inhuman cold.
“All right. Let’s discuss your brilliant plan, Mom. It really was clever. Give everything to the beloved younger daughter, and move yourself onto the full support of the unloved older one. A perfect scheme.”
Mother and Lena were thrown by such a calm, analytical tone. They’d expected excuses, tears, screams—anything but this.
“But there was one critical miscalculation from the start,” Katya went on, and her quiet voice filled the echoing entryway louder than any shout. “It depended entirely on me—on my consent. And I did not consent. And your plan collapsed. But you know what? I figured out how to fix it.”
She paused, savoring the confusion on their faces.
“You wanted everything to be good for Lena. For her to have an apartment. You achieved that. The apartment is hers now. Congratulations, Lena, you’re a homeowner. And you, Mom, wanted to move in with your daughter so she would take care of you. That wish will come true too.”
Katya raised her hand slowly and pointed straight at Lena.
“There’s your daughter. The one you gave everything to. The one who now owes you. Move in with her—to your former, now her, apartment. There’s plenty of space—enough for everyone. You wanted what’s best for her, didn’t you? You gave her a home, and now you’ll give her… you. Your brilliant plan worked. Just without me.”
She lowered her hand. Dead silence fell in the stairwell. Mother looked at Katya, then at Lena, then at the suitcase. On Lena’s face, horror was slowly giving way to realization. The realization that the gift she had so happily accepted had just revealed its true, back-breaking price.
“Goodbye,” Katya said.
She took Andrey’s hand, and they simply walked out of the building into the street. They didn’t look back. They didn’t hear what was happening behind them. They walked toward their own life, leaving behind the two people closest to her—and most alien—alone with their shared “perfect plan,” which had just turned into their shared, insoluble problem.