“Your ex pays child support—so spend that, and I have to help my mother,” Igor said calmly, without looking up from his phone.
Anna stopped mid-sentence and absentmindedly ran the cloth over the table, though it already gleamed with cleanliness. A pot of pasta was cooling on the stove; a cup of half-finished tea sat forlornly on the windowsill.
She was tired after work, had rushed to pick up Dima from daycare, cook dinner, and still try to give her son at least a little attention. Igor came home later than usual, sat down at the table, and instead of thanking her for a hot meal, came out with that line.
“Child support is the child’s money,” Anna replied quietly, trying not to lose her temper. “It’s not for me.”
Igor shrugged, as if it were nothing.
A feeling of hurt mixed with fatigue spread through Anna’s chest. It seemed even the kitchen walls could hear and remember every indifferent word he spoke.
Anna met Igor two and a half years ago at a mutual friend’s birthday. She was thirty then; her son Dima was two and a half. A year had passed since her divorce from Sergey, and she had only just begun to crawl out of the shell of loneliness.
Igor won her over with his solidity. Broad shoulders, a confident stride, a measured, weighty way of speaking. After impulsive Sergey, Igor seemed like a rock.
“You have a child? That’s wonderful!” he said on their third date. “I’ve always wanted a family.”
Anna melted. Sergey paid child support on time—thirty thousand a month—but emotionally he’d distanced himself from his son. They saw each other once every two months, and only if he didn’t have “urgent matters.” And here was a grown man ready to accept her with her child.
They had a modest wedding—only close family. Lyudmila Petrovna, Igor’s mother, sat at the table with the face of someone attending a wake. But Anna chalked it up to fatigue—the woman was sixty-five, worked as a nurse at a clinic; it must be hard.
At first they lived peacefully: a bit of cosmetic repair in the rental, vacation plans, talks about the future. Anna breathed out: things do work when people want to be together.
But soon Igor insisted on buying a car. “Without a car, we’re like without hands,” he would say. Anna agreed: if her husband needed it, then that must be right. She herself didn’t drive. He reassured her then:
“You’ll learn. For now I’ll drive you and Dima. To the dacha, to the park, wherever you want.”
Only the dacha turned out to be at Lyudmila Petrovna’s, and Igor went there every weekend. Alone. “I have to help Mom, you understand.”
The loan payment turned out to be hefty, and every month they had to scrimp.
“Buckwheat again for dinner?” Igor would sometimes grumble, peeking into the pot.
“We can’t afford extras,” Anna would explain, though deep down it stung.
She spent the child support from her ex exclusively on her son: clothes, toys, activities. Sometimes she bought him sweets, and Dima rejoiced as if he’d received a treasure.
Anna didn’t check Igor’s salary or tally his expenses. “Family means trust,” she thought. But questions began to pile up in her head: why is there never enough money? Why do I have to hustle, hunt for sales in stores, put off purchases, while he seems unbothered?
The answer came unexpectedly. Anna ran into her mother-in-law at the store by the fruit section. Spry, in an expensive down coat, Lyudmila Petrovna was picking out pomegranates and started chatting on her own:
“Good thing Igor helps me out—sends money every month,” she said with a satisfied smile, dropping fruit into a bag.
Anna didn’t grasp the meaning at once.
“Helps?” she repeated cautiously.
“Well yes, with money. What else? He transfers thirty thousand. My son is golden.” The mother-in-law straightened her scarf and headed for the checkout, leaving Anna standing with an empty basket.
She went numb. She couldn’t wrap her head around it: was Igor really giving her money? And not small sums, judging by his mother’s tone.
Lyudmila Petrovna still worked, received a pension, lived alone, and denied herself neither clothes nor good food. Meanwhile Anna was facing a second winter in her old coat, counting coins at the register, and putting off buying boots “for later.”
A heavy thought stirred in her chest: Igor had been hiding the truth from her all this time. And, it seemed, deliberately.
That thought wouldn’t let her go long after the conversation with her mother-in-law. In the evening, when Igor came back from work, Anna looked at him with completely different eyes. He set his shoes by the door as usual, tossed his jacket onto a chair, and asked:
“What’s for dinner?”
“Soup on the stove,” she answered evenly, though inside everything was boiling.
Over dinner, Anna couldn’t hold back:
“Tell me, how long have you been sending money to your mother?”
Igor raised his eyebrows, as if surprised by the very question.
“So what? Yes, I help a little. She raised me alone. I owe her.”
Anna sat down.
“Thirty thousand a month is ‘a little’ to you? When we’re barely making ends meet?”
“Mom is sick; she needs medicine,” Igor said, pulling on his lounge pants and avoiding her gaze.
“Medicine,” Anna scoffed inwardly, recalling the mother-in-law’s new fur coat and photos from Sochi on her social media. Inside, the feeling grew that she’d been betrayed.
The next days dragged on heavily. More and more often Anna caught herself thinking they couldn’t go on like this.
On Saturday they went to the store together. At the register Anna pulled out coupons she’d prepared in advance. Igor rolled his eyes:
“My God, you’re like an old woman.”
She couldn’t take it:
“It’s your generosity to your mother that makes me an old woman. Maybe give her the coupons?”
Igor pressed his lips together and didn’t speak again until they reached the apartment.
The silence after that quarrel at the store hung in the apartment for several days. Anna pretended to be busy: cooking, doing laundry, caring for Dima. Igor left for work early, came back late, and hardly spoke to her.
One morning she couldn’t hold it in. She was frying pancakes for breakfast. Dima sat at the table drawing with markers. Igor drank coffee, scrolling through the news on his phone.
“Igor, let’s talk,” Anna began quietly.
“About money again?” He didn’t even glance her way.
“What else? We’re living on the edge; I’m counting pennies, and you give a third of your salary to your mother.”
He set the spoon down sharply.
“Don’t you get it? Mom raised me alone. I owe her.”
“But she has a pension and a job. She isn’t starving, Igor. And we have a loan and a child.”
He snapped his eyes up:
“A child? That’s your child, not mine! I’m raising someone else’s kid, and you still have complaints for me!”
Silence froze in the air. Dima stopped with a red marker in his hand, staring at the adults in fright.
“Go to your room, honey,” Anna said softly.
The boy slipped off the chair and ran out, forgetting his drawing.
Her husband’s words hit Anna harder than if he’d raised a hand. Everything became crystal clear: in his eyes, Dima would never be his.
The pancake in the skillet began to burn; smoke drifted toward the hood. Anna turned off the stove, wiped her hands on a towel, and said calmly:
“Don’t ever talk to me like that again.”
Igor snorted and went to the bedroom, slamming the door.
Anna was left alone in the kitchen. She tossed the burnt pancake into the trash and wiped down the stove. From the other room came Igor’s voice—he was on the phone with his mother, complaining.
She sat down at the table where Dima had just been drawing. On the paper— a lopsided little house, a sun, and three stick figures. In crooked letters it said: “MOM, ME, AND DAD.” The drawn dad stood apart from the mom and the boy.
Anna closed her eyes. Suddenly her head felt amazingly quiet and clear. No panic, no wavering. Just a firm understanding: it was over.
No more endless excuses for why Dima couldn’t play loudly in his own home. No more humiliating explanations for why she bought her son new sneakers from the “family” budget and not from child support. No more secret transfers to the mother-in-law swallowing a third of their income.
Her shoulders straightened on their own. She hadn’t even noticed how she’d been slumping these two years, trying to be smaller, less noticeable, more convenient.
“Mom?” Dima peeked into the kitchen. “Are you crying?”
“No, sunshine. It’s all right,” Anna smiled—and to her surprise, the smile was real. “Shall we finish the pancakes? Want jam?”
“Strawberry!”
She turned the stove back on. Her hands weren’t shaking.
The next morning Anna woke with a firm resolve. Inside there were no doubts—only calm and a plan of action. She tied her hair back, made porridge for Dima and, while he ate, took out a notebook. She decided to keep records in it: income, expenses, possible savings—down to the last kopeck.
After that, everything began to change. In the evenings she picked up extra work— a couple of remote gigs while Dima slept. She started setting aside a little at a time, tucking the money into a separate envelope.
Step by step, her life began to find a new rhythm. Anna no longer tried to draw Igor into conversations about the future—there was no point. She lived in parallel: work, side jobs, Dima, the household.
One evening Igor came home irritated.
“Why are you so quiet lately? Mom says maybe you’ve got someone.”
Anna looked up from the copybook where she was helping Dima with his penmanship.
“Everything’s fine. Dinner’s on the stove.”
Igor stood in the doorway, then went to the kitchen. Half an hour later the front door slammed—he’d gone to his mother to complain about his cold wife.
He spent more and more time at his mother’s. Her coolness annoyed him, but he wrote it off as “women’s whims.”
Anna, meanwhile, felt that each day brought her closer to freedom. She didn’t argue or prove anything anymore—she simply, step by step, built a different path for herself and her son. The future no longer felt hopeless.
Anna went to see a lawyer and learned the details about divorce and division of property.
“Divorce when there’s a minor child from a previous marriage goes through the standard process,” the lawyer, Elena, flipped through the papers. “Property acquired in marriage… Whose name is the car under?”
“My husband’s.”
“And the loan too?”
“Yes.”
“That simplifies things. The apartment is rented?”
Anna nodded, sipping sea-buckthorn tea. On the next table lay a forgotten newspaper with real-estate ads. Her eyes skimmed: “One-bedroom in a residential district; school and daycare nearby.”
That same evening, as Anna was putting Dima to bed, the boy hugged her around the neck:
“Mom, when are we going to our new home? You said you’re looking.”
Anna smiled and kissed the top of his head.
“Soon, sweetheart. Very soon.”
There was no doubt or fear in her voice. Only a firm certainty that the changes had already begun. And there would be no going back. Now she was just waiting for the right moment to put a final period.
The boxes of belongings still stood in the corner, but the new kitchen already smelled of pancakes. Dima sat on the living-room floor sorting building blocks by color—something Anna could never let him do in the old apartment, where Igor always grumbled about toys lying around.
“Mom, look, I’m going to build a tower! Taller than the one we had!”
“Go for it, architect,” Anna settled beside him on the couch, helping him find the right pieces.
A folder with documents lay on the coffee table. The divorce had gone surprisingly quickly—Igor didn’t put up a fight; apparently his mother had convinced him that “there’s no use in such an ungrateful wife.”
Her phone buzzed. Sergey wrote that he’d come by tomorrow to pick Dima up for the weekend. Normal relations with her ex—another plus of the new life. No more listening to Igor’s barbs after every visit from the boy’s father.
“Mom, why don’t we live with Papa Igor anymore?” Dima asked, snapping blocks together.
“Because this is better, honey.”
“It is better here,” the boy agreed. “I can play loudly.”
Anna stroked her son’s head. The apartment was rented, one room, and the commute to work was longer. But here, she was home. Truly home.
“Better to raise my son alone than be together and feel like I don’t belong.”