— “Just look at that body line, that deep cherry color!” cooed the manager, smoothly running his hand along the glossy curve of the fender. “This isn’t just a car, it’s a feeling. Japanese assembly, top trim. You’ve made the right choice.”
Inna didn’t hear him. She stood beside it, her palm resting on the cold, perfectly smooth door of the crossover. Three years. For three years she had denied herself everything: new dresses, vacations, coffee dates with friends. Every ruble saved, every bonus set aside had laid another brick in the foundation of this dream.
She breathed in that incomparable new-car smell—a blend of expensive plastic, leather, and the anticipation of freedom—and felt chills of delight race down her back. This was her personal triumph, her Everest, and she was standing on its peak, stunned by her success. The car was even better than in the pictures. Predatory, beautiful, hers.
Nearby, hands clasped behind his back, Vadim was pacing. He did his best to look like a serious buyer carefully inspecting the product. He nodded authoritatively at the manager’s words, peered under the hood with a knowing air—though he couldn’t tell a carburetor from a battery—and even gave the tire a light kick, as if checking the pressure by eye. He was pleased. Of course he was: such a beauty would now be in their family. He was already imagining how he’d roll up to the office, how the guys in his department would sigh with envy.
“Yes, not bad, not bad,” he drawled, circling the car and stopping at the trunk. He turned to the manager with the look of a man about to ask the key, decisive question. “Is the trunk sturdy? My mom needs seedlings taken out to the dacha, so it should be solid. Tomatoes, peppers, those crates… You know how it is.”
For a moment, Inna’s world froze. The sweet scent of the new interior turned into the acrid smell of something unfair and alien. Her husband’s words, spoken so casually, so easily, hit her like a gunshot. Seedlings. His mother. Crates. In her car. In her dream—hard-won, paid for with her own time and effort. She slowly lifted her hand from the door, as if afraid to smudge its glossy surface. The smile slid from her face, leaving a hard, cold mask.
“Hold it right there, darling! And who told you I’m buying a car for the whole family? This is my car and no one else’s! And your mother isn’t even going to sit in it!”
The manager froze with his mouth half open and a professional smile stuck to his face. A couple choosing a car at the next display turned to look. Even the security guard at the entrance straightened up and glanced their way with interest. The sterile, polished atmosphere of the showroom cracked.
Vadim flushed as if plunged into boiling water. In seconds his face took on the color of a ripe tomato—the very ones he had so carelessly mentioned. He took a step toward her, lightning in his eyes.
“What are you playing at?” he hissed, trying to keep his voice down, but rage bubbled in his whisper. “You’ve embarrassed me in front of everyone!”
“Me?” Inna gave a short, bitter laugh. “I’m just dotting the i’s.”
She ignored her reddening husband completely and turned to the stunned manager. Her voice was calm and businesslike again, but there was steel in it.
“We’re signing. And the insurance lists me only. Categorically.” Then she shifted her icy gaze to Vadim and added, enunciating so not only he but all the unwilling witnesses could hear: “And your mother can keep asking the neighbor to take her seedlings. Or you. By bus. That’s not my problem.”
The drive home from the dealership was a torture of silence. Their old sedan—until recently a faithful, reliable friend—now felt like a cramped, rattling tin can. Inna sat in the passenger seat, turned toward the window, watching the buildings slide by. But she didn’t see them. The image of that cherry crossover, gleaming and perfect, still stood before her eyes. The euphoria of the purchase, so bright and all-consuming just half an hour earlier, had completely evaporated, leaving a bitter ashy aftertaste. She knew the silence wouldn’t last long. She waited.
Vadim gripped the wheel of his old beater—creaking and sputtering over every bump as if it might fall apart any second—so hard his knuckles turned white. He drove in jerks, cutting lanes sharply and shooting angry looks at other drivers. Every squeak of plastic, every rustle in the cabin sounded deafening. Finally, he snapped.
“Proud of yourself?” he spat without turning his head. His voice was low and strangled, as if he were forcing the words through clenched teeth. “Put on quite a show. Made me look like a complete idiot in front of strangers. Was that what you wanted? To stroke your ego?”
Inna slowly turned her head. She looked at his tense profile, at the muscle twitching in his cheek. There was no guilt in her gaze, no regret. Only a cold, detached curiosity.
“This isn’t about your ego, Vadim. And it’s not about the manager, who won’t give a damn about us the second we walk out the door. It’s about you deciding how to use my property without even asking. You mapped out how your mother would use the thing I worked myself to the bone for over three years. You took it as a given.”
“What do you mean your property? We’re a family!” He smacked the wheel with his palm and the old car gave a pitiful jingle. “Or did you forget that word already? A car in a family is a shared car! For shared needs! Did you even think how she’ll feel? She’s an elderly person, it’s hard for her to lug those crates on buses! Do you have no heart?”
“I have a heart. What I don’t have is any desire to haul her seedlings. And I never did.” Inna spoke calmly, almost monotonously, and that contrast with his boiling fury infuriated him even more. “It’s not about one trip, Vadim—you know that perfectly well. It’s about the approach. Today it’s seedlings. Tomorrow we drive her friends to the market. The day after tomorrow we move an old wardrobe from the dacha. I know how this goes. I’ve been through it already—when you promised, without telling me, to pay for her balcony repair out of my vacation money. Remember?”
He flinched, as if she’d jabbed a needle into a raw nerve. He really had forgotten. Or rather, preferred to forget. For him it was a grand gesture, a display of filial love. For her—it was a stolen vacation.
“You twist everything! Those are completely different things!” he shouted, losing the last shreds of self-control. “Money is one thing, and just helping out is another! Being human!”
“No, Vadim. It’s the same thing. It’s your habit of being generous and kind at someone else’s expense. In this case—mine. You didn’t ask whether I wanted this. You didn’t care about my plans. You just decided that my dream, my goal, which I achieved on my own, would now serve your mother’s needs. You left me no choice. So I had to make one myself. There, in the showroom. Loudly and clearly, so it would sink in the first time.”
The apartment greeted them with a hollow emptiness that only amplified the tension that had built up in the car. Vadim entered first, tossing the keys to the old sedan onto the hall table with force. The metallic clatter sliced through the silence like a signal for round two. Inna followed, quietly closed the door behind her, took off her light coat, and carefully hung it on the rack. She moved smoothly, unhurriedly, as if the storm raging in her husband had nothing to do with her. She went to the kitchen, took a glass, poured filtered water, and took a few slow sips.
Vadim stood in the hallway watching her. This deliberate composure enraged him more than any scream. He felt like a gladiator in the arena, craving a fight, while his opponent pulled out a book instead of a sword and began to read. He followed her, his steps heavy and echoing.
“So what now? You going to stay silent?” he stopped in the kitchen doorway, arms crossed over his chest. “Think that just because you put on a circus there, I’ll just swallow it here? You didn’t just humiliate me, Inna. You spat on my mother’s soul. In advance.”
“Your mother has nothing to do with it,” Inna replied evenly, setting the glass on the table. She didn’t turn to him. “She didn’t even know about my plans. Unlike you. You knew I was saving. You knew what for. You knew how important it was to me. And the first thing you did was try to turn my car into a cargo taxi for dacha needs.”
“That’s called ‘helping family’!” he barked, stepping forward. “A sacred concept that you apparently trampled with your money! You think that just because you paid, you get to dictate terms to everyone now? You can spit on relationships, on the people close to you?”
“And you think that just because you’re my husband, you’re automatically entitled to manage everything I own?” She finally turned, her gaze straight and sharp as a scalpel. “This isn’t about money, Vadim. It’s about respect. About the fact that you didn’t even consider asking: ‘Inna, how would you feel about helping my mother with some trips?’ You just showed up and announced it as a fait accompli. As if it were your car. As if I were merely an add-on to it—a driver function.”
He faltered for a moment. Her arguments were ironclad and he felt it, but admitting she was right was beyond him. That would mean admitting defeat. So he went all-in. He saw her phone on the table, his own beside it. A desperate, spiteful idea flashed in his eyes.
“You know what?” He ostentatiously pulled out his phone. “Enough talk. You won’t listen to me. Maybe you’ll listen to someone else.”
Inna silently watched him find the number in his contacts. She already knew what he was going to do. A strange, cold resolve filled her. She didn’t stop him. She let him take that step.
“Hi, Mom!” His voice changed instantly—loud, cheerful, indecently upbeat. He spoke so Inna would hear every word. “We’ve got amazing news! We got a car! A new one! Inna bought it! Yes, her dream came true! A crossover, cherry, big, everything we need! Of course we chose it together! I had to make sure it was reliable! Yeah, imagine! Now the dacha issue is solved once and for all! You won’t have to ask anyone anymore, we’ll drive you ourselves. The seedlings, the harvest—everything will fit!”
He paced the kitchen, radiating fake enthusiasm, shooting sidelong glances at his wife. He saw her motionless face and took it for shock, for confusion. He thought he had driven her into a corner, presented her with a fait accompli. Now refusing would mean declaring war on his mother.
“Yes, of course, Mom! We’ll definitely stop by on the weekend and show you our beauty!” he finished triumphantly and hung up.
He set the phone on the table and looked at Inna with poorly concealed triumph.
“Well then. That settles it. Mom’s happy; she’s expecting us. I hope you’ve got enough decency not to make a scene now.”
“Well then. That settles it,” Vadim set the phone down, and the clack of plastic on the tabletop sounded to him like the thunderous chord of victory. “Mom’s happy; she’s expecting us. I hope you’ve got enough decency not to make a scene.”
He looked at her defiantly, expecting anything: a fresh wave of shouting, accusations, maybe even a helpless retreat. But Inna was silent. She wasn’t looking at him; she was looking at his phone on the table. And at that moment the device vibrated and rang. “Mom” lit up on the screen.
Vadim smirked triumphantly. The coup de grâce. He picked up and, with theatrical flourish, tapped the speaker icon.
“Yes, Mom!” he cooed. “Yes, Inna’s here, you can thank her yourself!”
From the speaker came Valentina Petrovna’s breathless, enthusiastic voice:
“Innochka, sunshine, congratulations to you both! Vadik told me everything! What a smart girl you are, what a car you snagged! I’m so happy, so happy! Finally my son won’t have to break his back on those buses, and I’ll be able to take everything out to the dacha in peace. Thank you, daughter!”
Vadim beamed at his wife. His face shone. He held the phone closer to her, as if inviting her to say something in response, to confirm his words, to seal their shared joy. He had built the perfect trap from filial love and family values.
And Inna stepped right into it. Only not as the victim, but as the executioner.
She took a step toward the table; her face was perfectly calm, even friendly. She leaned slightly toward the phone.
“Hello, Valentina Petrovna,” her voice rang clear and steady, without the slightest tremor. “I’m very glad you called. I think there’s been a small misunderstanding, and it’s best to clarify everything right away so there won’t be any hurt feelings later.”
A questioning silence hung on the other end. The smile began to drain from Vadim’s face.
“Vadim is, of course, a wonderful son,” Inna continued in the same level, almost amiable tone. “Sometimes he gets so carried away with his generosity that he’s ready to give away everything around him. Especially things that don’t belong to him. The car really is new and very beautiful. And it’s mine. I bought it for myself.”
She paused, letting the words sink in for both her listeners—one in the room, one on the line. Vadim froze, his eyes wide with horror. He understood what was happening, but it was too late. He himself had put it on speaker.
“Therefore, Valentina Petrovna, I’m afraid I won’t be able to help you with transporting seedlings and harvests. I have completely different plans for this car. But don’t worry,” a nearly cheerful note crept into her voice. “Your son Vadim promised you all that himself. I’m sure he’ll figure something out. He’s a responsible man; he doesn’t throw words to the wind. I’m certain he’ll find a way to solve your dacha logistics. From now on it’s best to direct all such questions to him.”
A muffled sound—like a sigh—came from the other end. And Vadim… Vadim stood there as the color slowly drained from his face, leaving it ashy-gray. He looked at Inna as if seeing her for the first time. Not as a wife, but as a natural disaster he himself had foolishly summoned. He wanted to say something, to snatch the phone away, to shout—but it was as if he were paralyzed. He had been exposed publicly, before his most important audience—his mother—not just as an idiot, but as a windbag, a liar, and a man with no weight or authority in his own home.
“All the best, Valentina Petrovna,” Inna concluded, and with a finger she herself tapped the red hang-up button on the screen.
Click.
The silence that followed was neither ringing nor heavy. It was empty. Dead. The silence of a field scorched by fire. Vadim stared at his wife, his lips moving but making no sound. At last he managed to force out a quiet, hoarse whisper stripped of anger and rage. Only emptiness remained.
“What… have you done?”
Inna picked up her apartment keys from the table, turned them in her hand, and slipped them into her pocket. She looked him straight in the eyes, and there wasn’t a drop of triumph in her gaze. Only a cold, final statement of fact.
“Me? Nothing. I just put everything in its place. And now you can deal with your own problems and your mother’s yourself. You won’t see a single kopeck from me again. And yes—if you decide to file for divorce, you won’t get one percent of that car, because I registered it in my mother’s name. I knew you were capable of this. And now, I’m going to take my ‘baby’ for a spin and test her out, and you… you can sort out your problems on your own, darling…”