Marina wiped her hands on her apron and looked over the terrace. The table was set perfectly—just like everything in her life. Olivier salad in a crystal bowl, herring under a fur coat cut into neat individual portions, homemade eggplant caviar in a ceramic pot she had bought especially for the dacha. Even the tomatoes were sliced into uniform wedges and arranged in a fan.
“Seriozha, they’re already on their way,” she called to her husband, who was fussing with the grill in the yard. “Did you at least light the coals?”
“I’m lighting them, I’m lighting them,” Sergey replied, blowing sweat off his face. “Don’t worry so much. Everything will be ready.”
Marina checked the table again. Three bottles of dry red—her brother Anton liked exactly that. Vodka for her father-in-law. Juices for the kids. She tried to think through every little detail. This was their first housewarming at the dacha, the first time they were hosting relatives at their country house. Small, of course—only fifty square meters—but their own.
A year ago, she and Sergey had only dreamed of a dacha. They rented a cottage in the village on weekends, visited friends. And finally they saved up, took out a loan, and bought this little house with a six-hundred-square-meter plot in a small settlement. Not fancy, but theirs.
“Marina, where are the napkins?” Sergey peeked into the house, his hands smudged black from the grill charcoal.
“They’re in the kitchen. And wipe your face, please, they’ll be here soon.”
At that moment two cars drove into the yard. Anton—Marina’s brother, a big man in a track jacket—climbed out of the first, followed by his wife Sveta and their two teenage children. From the second car emerged Sergey’s parents—Valentin Petrovich and Nina Semyonovna—as well as Sergey’s younger sister Oksana with her husband Denis.
“At last!” Anton was the first to approach Marina and give her a tight hug. “Show us your palace!”
Marina bustled about, taking everyone through the house. She showed the kitchen, the bedroom, the living room. The guests nodded politely, examining the furnishings. The kids headed straight for the computer.
“The plot is small, of course,” Nina Semyonovna remarked, peering out the window.
“But it’s ours, Mom,” Sergey answered gently.
“Yes, yes, of course,” his mother-in-law agreed quickly. “The main thing is that it’s yours.”
The tour took about fifteen minutes. The house really was small, and there wasn’t much to show. Everyone moved out onto the lawn.
“So, shall we sit down?” Marina suggested. “While the coals burn down, you can try my salads.”
The guests took their seats. Anton reached for the vodka right away, Sveta for the wine. The children settled on the edge, closer to the juices and cookies. Valentin Petrovich poured himself some vodka and clinked glasses with Anton.
“To the housewarming!” he proclaimed.
“To the housewarming!” the others echoed.
Marina sat down and watched with satisfaction as the guests tried her salads. She had prepared for this day for three days. She had cleaned the herring herself, made the eggplant caviar according to her mother’s recipe. She had even baked bread in the bread maker—fragrant, with seeds.
“Tasty,” Anton noted curtly, helping himself to another serving of Olivier.
The others chewed in silence. Marina waited for compliments, questions about recipes, some kind of feedback. But everyone was too busy eating. They didn’t even manage a proper conversation. Sveta complained about work, Denis told a joke that no one listened to the end.
“Sergei, how are the coals?” Marina asked when she noticed the salads on the table had diminished noticeably.
“Another ten minutes,” her husband answered, peeking into the grill.
“What, the meat isn’t ready yet?” Valentin Petrovich was surprised.
“No, the coals are just burning down,” Marina explained.
Half an hour later the salads had practically disappeared. The bread was gone too, not a crust left. The guests exchanged glances, clearly expecting the banquet to continue. Anton was finishing his second shot, Sveta was sipping wine, glancing at the empty plates.
“And when will the meat be ready?” Anton asked with his mouth full, finishing the last piece of herring under a fur coat.
Marina felt something twinge inside. It wasn’t that the question was inappropriate, but the tone… In that tone there wasn’t even a hint of gratitude for the food—only an impatient expectation for what was next.
“I’ll go check the coals,” Sergey said, getting up from the table.
“But you just checked them!” Oksana protested. “You should’ve put the meat on right away so there wouldn’t be breaks.”
“Yeah, the course change is dragging on,” Denis added, belching.
Marina stood up and went to help her husband. By the grill, she asked quietly:
“Sergei, I get the feeling they came just to eat.”
Sergey stirred the coals without raising his eyes.
“No, come on… They’re just hungry, probably.”
“Hungry?” Marina leaned against the fence. “Did you see how they swept through the salads? As if they hadn’t eaten for a week. And not a single compliment, not a single question about the house, about our plans…”
“Marina, don’t work yourself up.”
“I’m not working myself up. I’m observing. They’re not even hiding that they came just to stuff themselves. Anton’s pouring his third shot, and he’s driving. And that question about the meat…”
Sergey looked up at her. In his eyes she saw understanding. He’d noticed too.
“What are we going to do?” he asked quietly.
“I don’t know. We’ll grill the meat, feed them. And then… then we’ll say we have to get up early tomorrow.”
“For work?”
“For whatever. The point is—early.”
Sergey nodded. They understood each other without extra words. In fifteen years of marriage, they’d learned to.
The shashlik took another half hour to cook. During that time the guests finished all the wine Marina had set out for the entire evening. Valentin Petrovich was telling tales about work, Anton chimed in, the kids played on their phones. Sveta flipped through some magazine she found on the table. No one offered to help the hosts; no one asked whether help was needed.
“Ready!” Sergey finally announced, bringing in a platter of steaming meat.
The guests perked up. Anton was the first to reach for the shashlik, with Valentin Petrovich right behind him. Within a minute everyone was busy eating. The only sounds were chewing and smacking.
“Nicely done,” Denis assessed. “Well cooked.”
“You bought good meat,” Sveta added.
“What’s the marinade?” Nina Semyonovna asked.
“Mine, special,” Marina answered. “All right, I’m kidding, I’ll send you a link later to a cooking channel with amazing recipes.”
That ended the conversation. Everyone focused on the food again. Marina sat and watched as the pieces of meat disappeared—meat she had marinated yesterday, for which they had spent their last money before payday. Expensive lamb, not some ordinary pork.
“Sergei,” she said quietly to her husband, “maybe tell them about tomorrow already?”
Sergey looked at the time. Half past eight in the evening. The guests clearly planned to stay.
“You know what,” he said, putting down his fork, “I think I’ll start slowly winding the evening down. I’ve got important things in the morning tomorrow, have to get up early.”
“What business on a Saturday?” Anton was surprised.
“Well… various documents for the dacha. Need to go to the bank, to the administration. I have to get everything done before noon.”
“Ah, got it,” Anton didn’t press for details. “Well then let’s finish up and head out.”
No one expressed regret. No one suggested staying at least until ten. Everyone calmly agreed it was time to go home.
Another half hour went to finishing the shashlik, the salads, and drinking whatever was left on the table. The kids were the first to get bored and pulled their parents toward the cars. The adults slowly rose from the table.
“Thank you for the food,” said Nina Semyonovna, kissing Marina on the cheek.
“Yes, it was tasty,” added Valentin Petrovich.
“We’ll be going then, I guess,” Anton announced, hugging his sister. “Thanks for having us. You bought a nice house—good choice.”
Ten minutes later there wasn’t a single other car left in the yard. Only tire tracks on the grass and empty bottles in a trash bag.
Marina gathered the dishes, Sergey folded the chairs. They worked in silence. What was there to say? The housewarming had happened. The relatives came, ate, drank, and left. Just like it’s “supposed” to be.
“There are a lot of plates to wash,” Sergey noted.
“It’s okay, I’ll manage,” Marina replied. “Good thing I bought paper napkins and didn’t put out the cloth ones.”
“Otherwise you’d have to do laundry too.”
They carried the dishes into the house. The kitchen looked ransacked after two hours of cooking and setting the table. But now that the guests had left, it somehow felt cozier.
“You know,” Marina said, filling the sink with water, “maybe it’s for the best.”
“What is?”
“That they’re like this. Now it’s clear why they come. And we won’t invite them anymore.”
“We won’t?”
“What for? So they come again to eat and leave? We’re not some restaurant.”
Sergey sat down at the kitchen table and rubbed his face tiredly with his hands.
“I thought they’d like the house. That they’d be happy for us.”
“They don’t care about the house, Sergei. As long as the table is set.”
“Maybe I misunderstood? Maybe they really were happy?”
Marina turned off the water and looked back at her husband.
“‘And when will the meat be ready?’” she repeated Anton’s words. “Did you hear how he said it? As if I owed him. Not ‘thank you for the salads,’ not ‘how delicious,’ but ‘when will the meat be ready.’”
“Yeah, that was… awkward.”
“Awkward? Sergei, it was rude. Plain, habitual rudeness. They’re used to us feeding them, and them eating. That’s all.”
Sergey nodded. He remembered how Anton grabbed the first pieces of meat, how Valentin Petrovich assessed the table the moment he walked in, how no one offered to help with the cooking or the cleanup.
“We won’t invite them again,” he agreed.
“We won’t. Let them go mooch off someone else.”
Marina washed the dishes, Sergey took out the trash. By ten o’clock the house was in order. They sat on the terrace where, three hours earlier, the guests had been noisy. Quiet, peaceful. You could hear the crickets chirping, the leaves rustling in the trees.
“You know what,” Sergey said, “maybe that’s even better. Now we know the dacha is our place. Ours. Not a thoroughfare for anyone who wants a meal.”
“Exactly,” Marina agreed. “Next weekend we’ll invite Lyosha and Katya. At least they won’t come empty-handed and they’ll offer to help.”
“And they won’t ask about the meat with their mouths full.”
They laughed. For the first time all day—genuinely, without strain.
“Sergei, do you regret buying the dacha?”
“Not a bit. Do you?”
“Me neither. It’s just that now it’s clear this is our home, not a restaurant for relatives.”
The evening was warm, starry. Somewhere in the distance music was playing—probably the neighbors had a celebration too. But here it was quiet and calm. Their own celebration was over, and that felt right.
“Shall we mark out the garden beds tomorrow?” Marina asked.
“Garden beds tomorrow,” Sergey agreed. “And we need to plant the apple trees.”
“And put up the greenhouse.”
“And paint the fence.”
They had lots of plans. Plans for their dacha, their house, their life. Without intrusive guests, without obligatory feasts, without the question “and when will the meat be ready.” Just their home, where they could be themselves.
Marina took her husband’s hand. Tomorrow their real dacha life would begin. And today had been a good lesson—your doors aren’t open to everyone