— “Svetlana Petrovna’s kids are kind of strange,” the concierge whispered, wiping the glass partition.
— “Very quiet,” the doorkeeper agreed, “like mice. They just dart their eyes around.”
I’d moved into the new apartment a month ago, and the boxes in the corners were still unpacked. Work took all my time—when you sit at home at the computer, it’s easy to stay there till night without noticing. The only place I’d managed to set up was the kitchen. Cooking was my way to unwind after a long day.
I hardly knew my neighbors. I’d just nod hello now and then on the landing. So when the doorbell rang, I didn’t immediately recognize the woman with the jittery look.
“Nataliya, sorry to bother you… I’m Svetlana, your neighbor. Here’s the thing…”
She spoke in a rush, constantly glancing back at her children, who were frozen behind her like two little sparrows. The boy—thin, with intelligent eyes; and the girl—a bit younger, with braids pulled so tight it seemed the skin at her temples might split.
“I need to leave urgently. Just for a couple of hours. Could you…”
“Keep an eye on the kids?” I finished the sentence for her. To be honest, I didn’t much like the idea. I was used to my solitude. But refusing felt awkward.
“Yes! I’ll be right back. There and back.”
The children slipped into the apartment so quietly it was as if they weren’t there at all. Svetlana whispered something quickly in their ears and disappeared.
“Well then, guys, what are your names?” I tried to smile as warmly as possible.
“Artyom,” the boy said softly.
“Anya,” the girl echoed.
“Want something to drink?” I asked, heading to the kitchen.
Artyom glanced at his sister and whispered:
“Um… may we?”
Something in his voice made me freeze. The question sounded as if asking for a drink of water were somehow forbidden.
“Of course you may! I’ve got juice, water, tea…”
While I was getting glasses, I noticed Anya sneaking a look at the cookie jar. But as soon as I turned, she averted her eyes.
“Go ahead and take some cookies, I baked them myself,” I slid the bowl closer.
“Is it really okay?”—again that strange whisper.
To lighten the mood, I started talking about my collection of cookbooks. I took out the prettiest one, with cake photos. The kids gradually edged closer, but they still flinched at every loud sound—a window banging, or a car alarm outside.
Svetlana returned four hours later. She burst in like a whirlwind:
“Artyom! Anya! Home, now!”
The children jumped up as if on command. Anya brushed the vase with her sleeve; it wobbled. The girl froze in horror.
“It’s okay, it’s fine,” I soothed her, but I noticed how she instinctively rubbed her wrist and tugged down her sweater. A bruise stood out on the pale skin, like the mark of a hard grip.
“Thanks,” Svetlana tossed from the doorway and practically pushed the children into the hall.
I stood in the entryway staring at the closed door. Something was wrong here. Very wrong.
You know how a nagging thought sometimes won’t let you go? That’s how the children’s eyes haunted me—frightened, wary, like those of cornered animals.
Within a week I began to notice a pattern—the windows in Svetlana’s apartment were almost always covered with heavy curtains, even on sunny days. I never heard the children playing or laughing. Only sometimes came the sharp bark of the mother’s voice and the sound of doors slamming.
“She’s strict, that’s all—raising the kids right,” a neighbor from the first floor waved me off when I gently inquired. “Not like the youngsters these days—everything’s allowed, anything goes.”
That Thursday I ran into Artyom at the store. He stood by the grains shelf, frantically counting small change in his palm.
“Hi, Artyom!”
The boy flinched so hard the coins scattered across the floor. We gathered them together, and I noticed his fingers were trembling.
“Please don’t tell Mom you saw me, please,” he whispered, clutching the cheapest bag of buckwheat.
“Why?”
But he was already running off, nearly bumping into other shoppers.
That evening Svetlana rang my bell again.
“Nataliya, help me out. I need to be away the whole day. I’ll pay whatever you want.”
I refused the money. Something told me I needed to watch these children a bit longer.
The whole day felt different. The kids gradually “thawed out.” I put on the old Prostokvashino cartoon, and Anya even let out a quiet giggle when Matroskin the cat argued with Sharik. Then we started baking cookies.
“It never smells like this at Mom’s,” Artyom said thoughtfully, helping cut shapes from the dough.
“What does it smell like at your mom’s?”
“Cigarettes. And also…” He fell silent when his sister tugged his sleeve.
A clatter from a lid dropping in the kitchen made them both throw their hands up to their faces in unison, as if to shield themselves. Something inside me snapped at that gesture.
“Mom scolds us when we make noise,” Anya said quietly, lowering her hands. “And when we eat at the wrong time. And when…”
“Anya!” her brother cut her off.
I pretended to be very busy decorating the cookies, but out of the corner of my eye I noticed a reddish line on the girl’s neck peeking out from her collar. Anya caught my look and hastily adjusted her clothes.
“We have to be good so Mom doesn’t get mad,” Artyom said, as if to himself, carefully tracing icing patterns on a cookie. “Then everything will be fine.”
“Fine.” I looked at these children—smart, sweet, yet hunted—and realized there was nothing fine in their lives. Nothing at all.
In the evening, as I handed the children over to Svetlana, I caught the smell of alcohol. She didn’t even ask how the day went. She just grabbed them by the hands and dragged them away.
I stood at the window for a long time after, staring at their darkened windows. Something had to be done. But what? I needed to talk to the authorities.
“And you’re not going to do anything?” I asked the district officer after a long conversation.
“What do you expect? There’s no case. The mother’s been checked, papers are in order. Maybe you imagined it?”
I couldn’t sleep for nights. After I called the police, Svetlana began to look at me differently—defiant, with a hidden threat. Worse still were the children’s looks: they no longer lifted their eyes when we met, as if I had betrayed them. How did she find out? Likely someone called her.
I decided to start with the neighbors. I went around to several apartments, but everywhere I ran into a wall of indifference.
“Why are you pestering the woman?” grumbled an old lady from the third floor. “She’s raising them alone, doesn’t drink… well, almost doesn’t,” she corrected herself. “And you…”
I had better luck at the store. The saleswoman Marina, a plump woman with kind eyes, started talking to me herself:
“You know, I see them a lot. The boy comes in, counts small change, buys the cheapest stuff. And then that… their mother… shows up and buys cognac. And not the cheap kind, mind you!”
“Have the kids been with her long?”
“Who can tell with them. They showed up about two years ago. Only—” she lowered her voice, “they don’t look like her at all. Not a bit.”
That evening everything changed. I was sitting at my laptop trying to work when I heard shouting. Muffled at first, then louder. The sound of breaking glass. A child crying.
I called the police. Again.
“Everything’s fine,” Svetlana smiled when she opened the door. “We just had the TV up too loud, sorry.”
The officers exchanged looks. One stepped into the apartment:
“Where are the children?”
“They’re asleep already. It’s late.”
“We’ll check.”
The children were indeed in their beds. Far too still for sleep. Anya turned her head slightly, and I saw a fresh scrape on her cheek.
“She fell,” Svetlana said quickly. “She’s so clumsy.”
The police left. And I was left with my helplessness and anger.
Two days later there was a soft knock at my door. Artyom stood there, pale, with bitten lips.
“Here,” he held out a crumpled sheet. “It’s from Anya.”
The note was short: “Help us. Please.”
“She’s not our mom,” Artyom blurted and immediately clapped a hand over his mouth, glancing fearfully at the stairwell. “We… we don’t remember how we ended up here. We only remember another house. And other…” He didn’t finish and bolted.
I unfolded the note. On the back, in shaky child’s handwriting, was added: “She says she’ll punish us very badly if we tell anyone.”
That night I didn’t sleep at all. In the morning, I started acting.
“You realize you’re meddling where you shouldn’t,” Svetlana hissed, pinning me to the wall in the stairwell. She reeked of booze. “Think you’re so kind? I know who called the police. And who brought in social services.”
I met her gaze calmly.
“You know what I think? Those children aren’t yours.”
She recoiled as if slapped. Fear flickered in her eyes.
“Nonsense! I’ve got documents!”
“Forged, I’d say.”
The day before, I’d spent hours on the phone. I called child protective services, human rights organizations, even found a private detective. And I left reports everywhere.
“Bitch,” Svetlana spat. “You’ll regret this.”
That evening social services called me.
“Nataliya Andreevna? We verified the information. Five years ago in Nizhny Novgorod two children disappeared. A brother and sister. The ages match. And… the appearance, too.”
My hands shook.
“What happens next?”
“We’re bringing in the police. Be ready to give a statement.”
Svetlana must have sensed something. In the night I heard her bustling—cupboards banging, keys clinking. I called the district officer immediately.
An hour later the stairwell was jammed: police, child services, investigators. Svetlana darted around the apartment, slamming windows and doors.
“You’ve no right! They’re my children!”
“Then explain why they match the description of Konstantin and Vera Samoylov, who went missing five years ago,” the investigator asked evenly.
Artyom—no, now Kostya—was clutching his sister’s hand. They stood in the corner, pressed to each other.
“This woman… she isn’t…” the boy began.
“Shut up!” Svetlana screeched and lunged at the children.
The police reacted instantly. Handcuffs clicked.
“Svetlana Igorevna Semenova, you are under arrest on suspicion of abducting minors…”
I watched them lead her away and felt a strange emptiness inside. All those weeks of tension, fear, uncertainty—and just like that?
“Natalya!” Vera—formerly Anya—suddenly flung herself at me and hugged me. “You saved us! Saved us…”
And then I finally burst into tears.
Two days passed. The children were temporarily living at a social adaptation center, but I visited them every day. Gradually they thawed, learning to smile again, to speak in full voices.
When their real parents arrived, I couldn’t hold back the tears. A slender woman with completely gray hair—Anna Mikhailovna—just stood and stared at the children as tears streamed down her cheeks. Her husband—a tall man with kind eyes—hugged them tight.
“We never lost hope. Never.”
Svetlana’s story turned out even more horrifying than we imagined. A mental disorder, the loss of her own children in a car accident, and then—kidnapping someone else’s. She took them to another city, terrorized them, made them forget their past life.
“Nata-shenka,” Anna Mikhailovna held my hands in hers. “You understand that you didn’t just save the children, don’t you? You saved our whole family. Our whole life.”
Little by little the children began to remember their past. It turned out Kostya had played chess and even won city tournaments. And Vera loved to draw.
“Look, this is you,” the girl handed me a picture. “You’re like a guardian angel.”
I often think back to that evening when I first noticed something was wrong. How easy it would have been to walk by, to shrug it off, to pretend it didn’t concern me. How many people did just that?
Six months later I received a letter. The children wrote that they’d started at a new school, that Dad takes Kostya to chess, and Vera signed up for an art studio. That they’re no longer afraid of loud noises and the dark. That they’ve learned to trust people again.
There was another drawing in the envelope—bright, sunny. A family at a picnic, everyone smiling. In the corner a caption: “Thank you for teaching us not to be afraid to be happy.”
I hung the drawing on the wall. Every time I look at it, I think: sometimes great good begins with a small act of caring. You just have to not walk past. Just notice. Just help.
And recently I went to visit them. Vera was on the swings, laughing—clear and carefree, the way children are meant to laugh. Kostya was excitedly telling his father something, waving his hands. Anna Mikhailovna, with no more gray in her hair, smiled as she watched them.
“Natalya!” Vera shouted, jumping off the swing. “We’re moving closer next week! We’ll see each other more often now!”
And I realized—life really is getting better. For them. For me. For all of us.
Because sometimes you just have to believe: even the darkest story can have a bright ending. You just have to find the courage to take the first step