Go back to your village then,” her husband said irritably, without turning to her.
Artyom’s voice was even, but in it she heard cold and exhaustion, as if all feeling had frozen over during the long years of silent evenings and unspoken grievances. He stood by the window, looking at the grey November sky, covered by a solid sheet of clouds, and Zhenya suddenly understood—this was it. Absolutely it. No excuses, no tears, no attempts to bring back the past would change anything at all. The door to their shared life had closed with a quiet, but final click.
“And that’s it? Just like that?” she asked softly, and her voice sounded like a whisper in an empty room where laughter had once rung out.
“How else did you expect? There’s nothing between us anymore. You can see that yourself.”
He said it and turned away, and in that gesture there was more ruthlessness than in the harshest words. He cut her off from himself the way you cut off an unnecessary scrap of fabric.
Zhenya sat down on the edge of the sofa and pressed her palms to her face. She didn’t even want to cry, as if every tear had already been shed long ago, drop by drop, day after day, dissolving in the bitter tea of loneliness she drank while sitting across from a man who had become a shadow. She remembered how, fifteen years ago, he had stood before her at this very window, only back then bright summer sun was pouring into the room, filling it with golden light, and he had smiled, looking straight into her eyes: “Zhenya, we can do anything. Together we’ll get through any hardship.” She believed him then. Believed so strongly she was ready to follow him to the ends of the earth.
Now those promises had faded, bleached out like old photographs left too long in the sun. Only ghostly outlines of past emotions remained.
“Alright,” she said simply, and in that word there was no brokenness, but a strange, newfound calm. “If that’s what you’ve decided.”
Her words came out smoothly and evenly, but inside everything twisted into a tight, painful knot. She rose, moving with a kind of detached grace, and pulled an old suitcase from the depths of the wardrobe. There weren’t many things—over the years Zhenya had never quite dared to fully claim her space, to live “her own way.” Everything seemed to be hers, and yet not, as if she were only a temporary tenant in someone else’s dream.
Footsteps scuffed in the hallway. Lena was standing in the doorway—their daughter, almost grown now, a student, with worry written in her eyes as it suddenly invaded her familiar world.
“Mum, what’s going on? Why do you look like that?”
“Nothing special,” Zhenya tried to smile, but the smile came out crooked and sad. “Mum’s just going home. To Grandpa, in the village. For a little while.”
Lena frowned, and in her clear young eyes tears glistened, ready to spill at any moment.
“Has Dad said something again? More of his endless complaints?”
“It doesn’t matter. Sometimes you have to leave so you don’t die next to someone,” Zhenya said, stroking her daughter’s shoulder and feeling the thin bone beneath her fingers. “I’ll come back. We’ll always stay in touch. It’s just that right now—I have to. I need to be on my own for a while.”
Her husband didn’t come out to see her off. He didn’t say a single word of farewell. The apartment lay in funereal silence, broken only by the ticking of the kitchen clock.
Only the entrance door downstairs slammed outside when Zhenya carried her meagre belongings down the stairwell, into a new, unknown life.
The train ran all night, swaying long and monotonously, as if lulling someone else’s aching pain. Zhenya rested her forehead against the cold glass and stared out the window without really seeing anything. Beyond the glass, endless forests loomed dark, little stations with empty platforms flashed by, where a few figures in coats stood huddled against the cold. Everything around was quiet and cold—just like it was inside her. She felt as empty as that suitcase, in which there were only echoes of the past.
In the compartment with her were a young woman with a sleepy child in her arms and a guy with a guitar, quietly plucking the strings. She barely heard what they were talking about. Only one word, dropped by one of them, hit her right in the heart: “home.”
She was going home too. Only this time—for good. Away from the noisy city that had never become truly hers.
Blurry yet precious scenes of childhood surfaced in her mind: the old wide-branched cherry tree beneath the window of her parents’ house, her mother kneading dough for pies, and her father bringing fragrant fresh honey from the apiary in a clay pot. Those years breathed serene calm, the warmth of the stove, and a clear certainty about tomorrow. And it struck her how long she hadn’t felt that peace, that quiet, deep joy of simply being.
The small station greeted her in the morning wind with the familiar childhood smell of coal and smoke. Her home places. Everything seemed somehow smaller now, like a toy—the low houses, the narrow streets, the familiar shop on the corner with its faded sign. Or maybe she had just outgrown that life, become too big for this small world?
But when Zhenya saw her father standing by the wrought-iron gate of their house, something inside her melted, broke open, and warm salty tears began to run down her cheeks on their own.
He raised his head, took in his daughter with her modest suitcase, and only sighed—and in that sigh was all the wisdom of his years:
“Well, here you are. Home.”
“I’m here, Dad. I’m sorry.”
They stood there for a long time without saying a word, just holding hands. Just standing there like two people who had come through a storm and found a quiet harbour.
The first weeks were strange, surreal. It was as if Zhenya were learning to live all over again, rediscovering simple things.
She woke up early in the morning—helped her father with the chores, went to the market for fresh produce, cooked borscht using her mother’s recipe. Then she would sit by the window in the living room and stare for a long time at the empty road. Silence. No city traffic jams, no endless hustle, no nervous calls from a boss. Only roosters crowing in the morning and the occasional car rumbling by, leaving a faint trail of exhaust in the cool dawn air.
Sometimes she sat for ages by the old wooden wardrobe where her school dresses had once hung, and ran her fingers over the faded fabric. Everything seemed so distant and yet so close at the same time, as if time had twisted itself into a curious knot.
On the third day their neighbour Tamara dropped by. Loud, cheerful, with her inevitable bucket in hand, full of freshly dug potatoes.
“Zhenyek! So you finally came back to us. City life didn’t suit you, eh?”
“It suited me, just… passed me by,” Zhenya smiled faintly.
“Don’t you worry, love. Life’s buzzing away here too, our own, the real thing. There’s a new principal at the school, they say, from the district, a widower. Still young, but handy, knows his business. We’ll go sometime, I’ll introduce you, eh?”
Zhenya just waved her off, feeling a shy awkwardness.
“I’m not up for meeting anyone just yet, honestly. I need to pull myself together.”
“Oh, come on,” Tamara flicked her hand. “People are different. You never know, maybe at least you’ll have someone to talk to instead of all this eternal loneliness.”
A week later Zhenya did go to the school—to help an accountant she knew sort out piles of old papers. And that’s where she met Mikhail.
He was tall and slim, with expressive grey eyes and a quiet, measured voice. One of those people whose real strength lies not in loud words, but in a deep, unshakable calm.
“You must be Yevgenia Petrovna?” he asked with a slight smile, and in that smile there was something incredibly warm. “Tamara Ivanovna said you can help with the year-end reports. We’ve got a bit of chaos here.”
“Yes,” she nodded, feeling an involuntary tension leave her. “I did accounting in the city for many years, I think I can manage.”
“Wonderful. We’re in great need of reliable, knowledgeable people like you.”
They started talking about the school, about the village, about simple things. And suddenly Zhenya felt something inexplicable—next to this man she felt calm. No need to pretend, no constant falseness like she’d felt all those recent years. Just calm, like in childhood.
Winter slipped by almost unnoticed. Zhenya gradually settled into her new life: she helped at the school, went with Mikhail to the district centre on business, and in the long evenings she would sit in a cosy armchair and knit, watching the firewood crackling in the stove.
Slowly, bright colours returned to her life: the rich smell of freshly baked bread, the soft glow of the kerosene lamp, the cheerful crackle of logs.
Her city anxieties and hurts were slowly but surely dissolving in this healing quiet, giving way to a new feeling—the feeling of home.
Lena called rarely. At first, occasionally over video, her face on the screen looked tired and distant; then their contact dwindled to short messages: “I’m fine, studying, don’t worry.” Zhenya didn’t push, didn’t demand more. She understood: her daughter was now between two worlds, between two parents, and she had to decide for herself where she belonged.
Sometimes, on especially quiet nights, she still thought of Artyom. How in the beginning he used to hold her hand so tightly, as if afraid to let go. How years later he would leave silently for work in the morning, already a complete stranger. And one question kept circling in her mind: had he ever been real? Or had she spent all those years believing in a man she herself had drawn in her imagination, someone she so desperately wanted to love?
With every new day, with every sunrise she greeted in her father’s house, the answer became clearer and clearer.
Spring in the village came quickly and decisively. The snow melted, baring the black earth waiting for seed; at dawn the roosters called to one another, and the air smelled of wet soil and sweet memories. Zhenya decided to plant flowers in the front garden—lush dahlias and tender, fragrant tobacco. Her mother used to do this every spring, and somehow this simple, almost ritual act brought back to Zhenya something very important, something long lost.
Mikhail often dropped by in those days—sometimes to help with planks for the new flowerbed, sometimes just to bring nails. One day, when the spring sun was already leaning toward the horizon, painting the sky in gentle peach tones, he said, without looking at her:
“You know, Zhenya, I never thought I’d stay here for good either. I once left, after burying my wife, thought I’d never come back. But life turned out like this. A half-abandoned school, children in need of a teacher… and I came back.”
“The whole village knows everything about everyone,” she smiled, digging another plant into the soil.
“Let it know. The main thing is not to lie to yourself, not to pretend.”
He said it very simply, without any pomp, but in his voice there was that same warm certainty, earned through pain. Only people well acquainted with suffering and who have learned to live afterwards talk like that.
For the first time in many, many years, Zhenya felt not just that she existed, but that she was living. A full, conscious life. Not just waiting for better times, but living here and now.
Her hands smelled of earth, her hair of smoke from the stove, and her soul—of that long-lost inner peace.
On Trinity Sunday the village held a big celebration. Zhenya, who still remembered church songs from childhood, was invited to join the local choir. She was embarrassed, tried to refuse, but Mikhail gently encouraged her:
“Your voice is clear, Zhenya, and deep. Don’t hide it. Sing—as if life itself, as if spring itself is singing through you.”
After the concert, when the last chords faded away, the village club burst into sincere, hearty applause. And when she caught his gaze in the crowd—full of quiet approval and something else, warmer—she understood: this simple human warmth, this understanding was exactly what she had been missing all those long years.
Summer turned out unusually sunny and warm. The little village blossomed and exuded fragrance. Zhenya often went with Mikhail to the district centre—to handle documents for the school, to buy textbooks. On the drives they were often silent, but their silence was cosy, full. The kind of silence that only exists between people who feel good and at peace together without extra words.
Once, as they drove back along a dusty road lined with wildflowers, he suddenly said, still looking straight ahead:
“You know, you’re like spring itself for all of us. Ever since you came to the school, even the air in my office feels different, fresher somehow, brighter.”
“Don’t flatter me, Mikhail,” Zhenya smiled shyly, looking out the window.
“It’s not flattery. Just stating a fact. Like the sunrise.”
Her heart clenched—but not with the old familiar pain, rather with a light, almost childlike amazement. Could anyone really talk about her, an ordinary woman with grey streaks at her temples, so sincerely, so gently?
On her birthday Zhenya was woken by a persistent ringing at the gate. On the doorstep stood a courier she didn’t know, holding an enormous, luxurious bouquet of scarlet roses.
Attached to the stems was a small, neat card: “Forgive me. Maybe it’s already too late. But if you want—come back. I’ve understood everything. Artyom.”
She stood for a long time with the bouquet in her hands, looking at it without seeing. The roses were lush, extravagant, expensive—just like the ones he had always given her on holidays “for show,” to satisfy his own idea of a husband’s duty.
When Mikhail came by that evening, as he usually did, Zhenya simply handed him the bouquet without a word.
“Look, a present from the past. I don’t even know what to do with all this splendour.”
“Probably just let it go,” he said just as simply, looking at the red petals. “Since it’s found you itself, now you need to make a choice.”
“And I will. Thank you.”
She put the flowers in water on the windowsill, where they stood for two days, filling the room with a heavy, cloying scent, and then, without looking and without regret, she threw them into the compost pit.
In autumn, when the leaves turned yellow and whirled in a farewell waltz, Lena suddenly arrived. She stood at the gate, confused, more grown-up, but still her little girl, with pain in her eyes.
“Mum… Can I stay with you for a while? It’s become unbearable in the city.”
“Of course, sweetheart. You can always come. Everything here is yours. This is your home.”
In the evening they sat by the stove, and Lena, wrapped in an old blanket, said:
“Dad lives with that Alina now. But, Mum, he doesn’t look happy at all. Always gloomy, edgy. He told me once, ‘Everything turned out differently, daughter. Not at all the way I thought.’”
Zhenya only nodded, tossing another log into the fire.
“No one ever gets ‘something different,’ Lenochka. It’s just that, over time, everything becomes honest. And either you accept that honesty, or you go on living in illusions.”
Lena suddenly began to cry, softly, like a child:
“Mum, all this time I secretly hoped you and Dad would make up. But now, looking at you here in this house, I realize you’re probably… better off without him. You’ve changed. You’re calm.”
“I’m calm now, darling. And believe me, that’s the greatest happiness there is. Just a quiet, peaceful morning. Just knowing someone is waiting for you.”
Winter came slowly, bringing with it soft, sparkling snow and a feeling of complete, deep peace. The house smelled of dried apples and pine from the decorated fir tree in the yard.
Zhenya celebrated New Year in a close family circle: with Lena, her father, and Mikhail. The table was set with simple but delicious homemade food, and outside the window the snow spun in the night air, majestic and silent.
When the clock struck midnight, announcing the start of a new chapter, Mikhail raised his glass of homemade berry drink:
“I’d like to make a toast. To never being afraid to start over. At any age. In any situation.”
Zhenya looked at him, at her daughter, at her old, wise father, and suddenly, with piercing clarity, realized—here it was, her real home. Not somewhere out there, in a strange city apartment with mirrored sliding wardrobes and a perpetually displeased man, but here, among these people with clear, honest eyes and open hearts.
She smiled, and her smile was light and bright:
“Thank you, life. Thank you for all the lessons. You’ve put everything in its place, like a wise gardener.”
Two years passed. In the village people whispered quietly as they watched them: “The wedding will be soon. And have you seen how good Zhenya looks? Like she’s twenty-five again.”
Lena enrolled in an agricultural college nearby and happily came home on weekends, finding here the support she’d lost in the city. Mikhail had become almost family to her—a kind, steady, reliable friend and mentor.
Zhenya now fully ran the school’s accounts, took an active part in village fairs, cooked unbelievably tasty cherry jam using her mother’s recipe, and no longer thought of the years she had spent in the city as wasted. They were simply a lesson—hard, but necessary.
Sometimes in the mornings she would step out onto the porch with a mug of hot herbal tea in her hands. The sun rose over the endless snowy field, the winter breeze stirred the frost on the birch branches, and it seemed to her that all of this was her well-earned reward. A reward for having had the courage to leave in order to find herself.
She remembered Artyom’s last words, thrown at her back once:
“Go back to your village, then!”
And silently, without anger or resentment, she answered:
“Thank you. If not for you, for your sentence, I might never have understood, never found my real place in this world.”
Zhenya no longer searched for happiness somewhere else—she had built it herself, with her own hands, from simple, timeless materials: love, trust, work, and loyalty.
And each of her new days began with a quiet, almost invisible miracle: to simply live, simply breathe deeply, simply love and be loved—and to know, to feel with every fibre of her being, that this time it was all real, and for good