Marina put the phone down on the kitchen table and looked at Alexey. He was sitting across from her, absent-mindedly poking at his now-cold dinner with a fork, but his tense shoulders made it clear he was listening to every word his sister said.
“You understand,” Svetlana’s voice came from the speaker with that familiar self-pitying tone Marina knew so well, “they were just waiting for a reason to get rid of me. That new boss disliked me from day one. And now what? I’m thirty-two, and I’m starting from scratch again.”
“Sveta, you said you wanted to try real estate,” Alexey answered patiently. “Maybe this is a sign of fate?”
“Easy for you to say! How am I supposed to pay for the courses? And for a car? Clients don’t ride the bus, Lyosha. Mom already gave me money for the courses—she can’t give more. Her pension is small.”
Marina sighed, stood up, and began clearing the table. In the year and a half she’d known her husband’s family, she had memorized this script. Svetlana was always at the center of some drama, always a victim of circumstances, and always needed help from her older brother.
“Sveta, we’d help, but you know—we have the mortgage,” Alexey cast a guilty glance at Marina. “Every month for us is accounted for down to the last ruble.”
“Of course, of course,” his sister’s voice took on those familiar notes of offense. “You have your life, your plans. And what about me—am I not family?”
Marina clenched her teeth. There it was. Emotional pressure, an attempt to guilt them. Svetlana was a master of such manipulation.
“You are family,” Alexey said gently. “But we really can’t right now…”
“All right, all right, don’t get upset,” Svetlana abruptly shifted to a martyrishly noble tone. “I’ll manage somehow. I always have.”
After the call ended, a heavy silence settled over the kitchen.
“Marin—” Alexey began, but she shook her head.
“Don’t, Lyosha. These are her problems. She’s thirty-two; she’s an adult.”
“But I’m the older brother. I feel responsible…”
“For what? For the fact that she was fired for skipping work and being rude to management?” Marina knew she sounded harsh, but she’d had enough. “Or for the fact that two years ago she blew her savings on some shady franchise?”
Alexey said nothing, and Marina realized he agreed with her, but family guilt wouldn’t let him admit it.
“Good thing we don’t have the money,” she sighed. “Otherwise we’d have to refuse.”
He nodded with relief, and she went over to hug him. Their small two-room apartment, which they had struggled so hard to buy, smelled like home and the future. Soon they would start planning for children, and then this place would be filled with the sound of kids’ laughter.
October turned out surprisingly warm. Marina walked home from work unable to suppress a smile. Her birthday had been completely unexpected.
She had worked at a small consulting firm for four years, and her colleagues had become almost like family. Everyone knew about her and Alexey’s situation—young couple, mortgage, plans for kids, working themselves to the bone for the future.
“Marinochka,” the secretary, Olga Petrovna, approached her in the morning, “we’ve got a surprise for you.”
It turned out the whole office, including the director, Igor Viktorovich, had chipped in for her thirtieth. The envelope held two hundred thousand rubles.
“We know how hard you and your husband work,” the director said, “and we decided you deserve a proper vacation. You haven’t had a real rest in a long time, have you?”
Marina could barely hold back tears. Such care, such support… She truly couldn’t remember the last time she’d been to the sea or simply had a chance to relax.
At home she burst in on Alexey, waving the envelope.
“Lyosha! You won’t believe what happened!”
He looked up from his laptop and smiled at her excitement.
“My colleagues chipped in for my birthday! Two hundred thousand, Lyosh! We can go to the sea, and there’ll still be enough left to cover a couple of months of the mortgage!”
“Seriously?” He stood up and hugged her. “That’s awesome! How much did you say?”
“Two hundred thousand! Even Igor Viktorovich pitched in. He said I deserve a vacation.”
Alexey fell silent, and she saw something change in his eyes. His happiness for her shifted into some sort of calculation.
“Marin,” he said slowly, “did you think…”
“Think what?”
“Since your work gave you money for a vacation—it means we have money for my sister,” he said, brightening, and that was the last straw.
Marina felt her joy instantly turn into icy anger.
“What did you say?”
“Marinochka, think about it. Sveta’s in such a hard spot right now. She needs a car to start working as a realtor. And we can help her! She’ll pay us back later, and then we’ll go on vacation together.”
“Alexey,” Marina’s voice sounded strangely calm, “this money was given to me. To me personally. For my work, for not taking sick days, for working overtime, for meeting targets.”
“But we’re a family! Everything is shared!”
“Shared between us? Or do your mom and sister also have a claim on my gifts?”
“Don’t exaggerate. Sveta is in a tough situation; she needs help to get on her feet. You’re smart—you should understand: the sooner she starts working, the sooner she’ll stop asking for help.”
Marina looked at her husband and suddenly realized she was seeing him as if for the first time. Here was a man who was ready to hand over her birthday gift to his sister without even asking her. Who considered it a given.
“And if I’m against it?”
“Marin, come on…” He tried to hug her, but she stepped away. “Don’t be so… greedy. It’s family.”
The word “greedy” landed like a slap.
“Greedy?” she repeated.
“Well, yes. Kind of cold. Sveta isn’t a stranger—she’s my sister. And she’s not asking for a gift, she’s asking for a loan.”
“A loan from me—using the money my colleagues gave me for my birthday—to buy a car for your sister, who in thirty-two years has never once managed to stand on her own two feet.”
“You’re being unfair…”
“You know what, Alexey?” Marina went into the bedroom and pulled out a suitcase. “I’m going on vacation. On principle.”
“Where are you going?! Marin, don’t make a scene!”
“No scene. I’m just using the gift as intended.”
She started packing while he stood in the doorway, pale and flustered.
“Are you seriously willing to fight with me over money?”
Marina straightened up and looked at him.
“It’s not about money, Lyosha. It’s about the fact that you didn’t even think to ask my opinion. You decided for me that I should give my gift to your sister. And when I objected, you called me greedy and cold.”
“But we’re planning to have kids! How will you be a mother if you can’t feel sorry for your husband’s own sister?”
“Precisely because we’re planning kids, I don’t want them to grow up in a family where Mom is a second-class person whose gifts automatically become communal property and whose opinion doesn’t matter.”
She closed the suitcase and headed for the door.
“If you change your mind, call me,” he said after her.
She turned back:
“If you change your mind, you call me too.”
Antalya greeted her with sun and salty breeze. For the first two days Marina just lay on the beach, letting years of accumulated tension melt into the warm sand.
She had no regrets about her decision. For the first time in a long while, she felt like herself—not part of someone else’s plans, not a function in another person’s coordinate system, but simply Marina, who had a right to her own wishes.
On the third day a message came from Alexey: “How are you? I miss you.”
She replied: “I’m fine. Resting.”
He didn’t write again for two days.
On the sixth day of her vacation, just as Marina had begun to plan how she might rebuild her relationship with her husband after returning, a long message arrived:
“Marina, I’ve done a lot of thinking. If my family means nothing to you, then what kind of family can there be between us? I’ve filed for divorce. We’ll split the apartment according to the law. I’ll sell my share to help Sveta. I don’t want to live with someone who doesn’t understand family values.”
Marina stared at the phone screen for a long time. Then she slowly typed her reply:
“Okay.”
And for the first time that week, she cried. Not out of anger or hurt, but out of relief. She realized she was getting divorced at the right time. Raising children with a man who considered her opinion less important than his sister’s whims, who was ready to sell the family apartment for someone else’s ambitions—she didn’t want that future.
When she returned from vacation, Marina went straight to a lawyer. The divorce was quick and civilized—Alexey really did want to get his share as soon as possible to help Svetlana.
“You know,” he said to her at their last meeting in the apartment, when he came to pick up his things, “I don’t regret it. Sveta really did buy a car and got a job at an agency. She’s already closed her first deals.”
“I’m glad for her,” Marina answered sincerely.
Igor Viktorovich helped her buy out his share. When Marina came to ask for a salary advance, he listened to her story and offered an interest-free installment plan.
“Marina Sergeevna,” he said, “I’ve been watching you for four years. You’re a responsible, honest employee. And if your husband couldn’t appreciate that, that’s his problem.”
Gradually their communication went beyond work. Igor turned out to be an intelligent, tactful man. At forty-five he was unmarried, having devoted himself entirely to business after an unsuccessful first marriage.
“I thought I’d never want a family again,” he confessed to Marina one evening over dinner. “But with you… with you I want to build something real.”
Their romance developed slowly and gently. Igor didn’t rush her; he gave her time to recover after the divorce and to make a decision without pressure.
A year later, when he proposed, Marina said “yes” not because she sought stability or wanted revenge on her ex, but because she genuinely fell in love with this calm, reliable man.
“Mom, look, an airplane!” Four-year-old Danila tugged Marina toward the window.
She hugged her son, breathing in the scent of his hair. Their spacious three-room apartment was quiet and cozy. Igor was in his study, preparing for a meeting with partners the next day.
“Marinochka,” he called from the study, “can you come here a moment?”
She found him at his computer, looking thoughtful.
“What is it?”
“I just saw a photo of your ex in social media. He’s with his sister and mother. The caption says: ‘Family is everything.’”
Marina looked at the screen. Alexey, Svetlana, and their mother stood in front of an old Lada. They all looked tired and not particularly happy.
“What happened to the car he bought his sister?” Igor asked.
“I don’t know,” Marina replied honestly. “And I don’t want to know.”
She turned to leave, but Igor called after her:
“Marin, do you have any regrets?”
“About what?”
“About not giving them the money back then. Maybe things would have turned out differently.”
Marina thought for a moment, then shook her head.
“It wasn’t about the money, Igor. It was about the fact that he thought my opinion didn’t matter. And that to him I wasn’t a wife but an add-on to his family system. Sooner or later, that would have shown itself anyway.”
“And now—are you happy?”
She kissed him on the forehead.
“Very. Go finish your work; it’s time to put Danya to bed.”
In the evening, after their son was asleep and Igor was reading in the living room, Marina stood on the balcony and looked out at the city. Somewhere out there, in a small two-room flat, lived her ex-husband, his sister, and their mother. Svetlana was probably still complaining about life, and Alexey still felt responsible for everyone except himself.
And she was here. In her home, with her family, with a husband who would never call her greedy for wanting to decide what to do with her own gifts.
Sometimes the most painful decisions turn out to be the right ones.
Marina smiled and went back inside. Tomorrow would be a new day, and it would be a good one