— “You got your confirmation? Wonderful. Now take this as well.”
Alina set an envelope with the DNA test results on the kitchen table, and beside it a second document—a divorce petition. Her voice was cold and distant, as if she were speaking to a stranger.
Artyom looked up from the papers. The numbers blurred before his eyes: 99.9% probability of paternity. He wanted to say something, but the words stuck in his throat.
Alina turned and walked out of the room. The sound of her steps down the hallway seemed deafening. Artyom stayed at the table, unable to understand how an ordinary doubt had turned into a catastrophe.
Just three months earlier their home had been filled with happiness. Artyom and Alina had been married for three years, and the birth of their son, Egor, was a long-awaited event for both families.
Artyom worked as an engineer at a construction company—calm, level-headed, a bit indecisive about everyday matters. Alina taught biology at a lyceum. Her students adored her for the way she could explain difficult things in simple terms and for her sincere interest in each of them.
When Egor was born, the first to see him after his parents were the grandparents—Ivan Pavlovich and Lyudmila Sergeyevna. Old-school people, used to having their opinions go unquestioned, they had raised Artyom in strictness and obedience.
“A healthy boy!” rejoiced Lyudmila Sergeyevna, rocking her grandson in her arms. “Takes after our side!”
But within a week, Ivan Pavlovich began to frown as he studied the infant.
“Black hair… where would that come from in our family?” he remarked once at a family dinner, without looking at his daughter-in-law.
“Don’t start—don’t spoil the celebration,” his wife whispered.
Alina pretended not to hear, but her hands trembled as she poured the tea.
With each visit, the hints became more insistent. Ivan Pavlovich would pull out old photographs, compare facial features, and shake his head.
“You had fair hair until you were five,” he told his son. “And so did your mother. But this…”
“Dad, stop,” Artyom would brush him off, but the seed of doubt had already been sown.
Artyom tried not to think about his father’s words, but they haunted him. In the evenings, while Alina was putting Egor to bed, he would study his son for a long time, comparing him with his own childhood photos. The nose seemed like his, but the eyes… or was he imagining it?
His sleep turned restless. He tossed and turned, and when he did fall asleep, he had nightmares—Alina with some stranger, people laughing at him.
“You’ve been acting strange lately,” Alina noted one morning. “Is something going on at work?”
“Everything’s fine,” he lied, keeping his eyes on his plate.
But nothing was fine. Every phone call from his father added fuel to the fire.
“Son, I don’t want to upset you, but it’s better to know the truth than live a lie,” Ivan Pavlovich would say. “These days it’s simple—you take a test and everything is clear.”
One evening Artyom stood a long time in the bathroom, staring at his reflection in the mirror.
“Have you lost your mind?” he whispered to himself. “This is your wife, your son. Why the hell are you listening to this nonsense?”
But after yet another conversation with his father, the decision was made. “Better to know for sure than torture myself for the rest of my life,” he convinced himself.
He chose an evening when Egor fell asleep early. Alina, in her robe, was sitting on the couch grading papers. She looked tired—the night feedings were taking a toll.
Artyom sat down beside her, fidgeting, unsure how to begin.
“Alinochka… I wanted to talk.”
She lifted her head from the notebooks.
“I’m listening.”
“You see… I was thinking… maybe we should… for peace of mind… do a DNA test.”
The pen slipped from her fingers. For several seconds she stared at him silently, and in her eyes Artyom saw something he had never seen before—disappointment.
“Is this your idea or your father’s?” she asked quietly.
“Mine,” Artyom lied, unable to meet her gaze.
Alina stood and walked to the window. The silence stretched out. At last she spoke, without turning around:
“Fine. Do your test. But remember this: if you go through with it, there’s no way back. You’re choosing between trusting me and a piece of paper with numbers. Think very carefully.”
“Alina, it’s just a formality…”
“No,” she turned, and he saw tears in her eyes. “It’s not a formality. It’s you saying to my face that you don’t believe me. That you think I’m capable of deception—of betrayal. It’s you casting doubt on everything we’ve had.”
She went into the bedroom, leaving him alone. Artyom sat in the darkening room, persuading himself that everything would be fine. The test would show the child was his, and they would forget this foolishness.
The two weeks waiting for the results were torture. Alina was polite but cold. She handled the housework, cared for the baby, but an invisible wall seemed to have grown between them.
At last a message came—the results were ready. Artyom picked up the envelope from the lab and, unable to wait, tore it open right in the car. 99.9% probability of paternity. Egor was his son.
Relief washed over him in a wave. On the way home, he stopped at a pastry shop for Alina’s favorite cake and bought a bouquet of white roses—her favorite.
“Alinochka!” he called joyfully from the doorway. “I’ve got great news!”
She came out of the nursery where she’d been putting Egor down for his nap. She took the envelope and studied the results carefully.
“I knew you wouldn’t believe me without a piece of paper,” she said evenly. “Do you believe me now?”
“Of course! Everything’s fine! I was a fool—please forgive me!”
“No, Artyom. It’s the opposite. Now nothing is fine.”
She went to the bedroom and returned with a folder of documents.
“I prepared these two weeks ago. I was just waiting for your confirmation.”
“Alina, listen…”
“No, now you listen. I carried and gave birth to your child. I don’t sleep at night when he has colic. I loved you and trusted you. And you? You doubted me because of hair color and your father’s words. You humiliated me with that test. You showed me that to you I’m a potential cheat.”
The next few days passed in a fog. Alina methodically packed her things—and Egor’s. Artyom pleaded, begged forgiveness, swore he would never doubt her again.
“It’s not that you doubted,” she explained, folding the baby’s clothes into a box. “It’s that you chose your parents’ opinion over faith in me. That you needed scientific proof of my fidelity.”
“But my parents… they were so insistent…”
“Your parents?” Alina stopped. “And where were you? Where was the man who swore to protect me? Who promised that we were one family?”
Egor began to cry in his crib. Artyom picked him up, and the baby calmed at once. His heart clenched—soon he wouldn’t be able to hold his son like this anymore.
“I was in labor with your child for twelve hours,” Alina went on. “I screamed in pain, but I was thinking about how happy we’d be, the three of us. And you were already doubting me then? Or did you start doubting when I was breastfeeding him? When I wasn’t sleeping at night?”
“I’m sorry,” was all Artyom could repeat.
“I’ll forgive you. Someday. For Egor—he isn’t to blame that his father turned out like this. But I won’t live with someone who doesn’t trust me.”
Three weeks passed. Artyom lived alone in their former apartment. The walls still held the photos—the wedding, the discharge from the maternity ward, Egor’s christening. In all of them they were smiling, happy and carefree.
He cut off contact with his father. Ivan Pavlovich tried to call, but Artyom didn’t answer. Only his mother sometimes sent messages asking him to reconcile, to forgive.
“We wanted what was best,” she justified herself.
“You destroyed my family,” Artyom replied.
On weekends he would go to the park where Alina walked with Egor. He stood behind the trees, watching from afar. The baby was growing, starting to smile, reaching his little hands toward his mother. Sometimes Alina sat on a bench, and Artyom saw her wearily close her eyes. He wanted to go over and help, but he didn’t dare.
One day she noticed him. Their eyes met across the path. Artyom took a step forward, but Alina shook her head and turned the stroller the other way.
He stood there as the rain began, an envelope with the test results in his pocket—the piece of paper that confirmed his paternity and destroyed his family. The price of truth had turned out to be too high. But he realized it too late.
Raindrops mixed with the tears on his face. Somewhere in the distance he heard Egor’s laughter—his son, whom he now saw only on weekends, and like this, from afar. The son he had doubted. The son whose trust in his father was broken even before the boy learned to speak.
Artyom took out his phone and typed a message to Alina: “I’m sorry. I love you both.” But he didn’t send it. What would be the point? Some words lose their power when spoken too late. And some actions can’t be undone by any words.