In childhood, Lena’s life seemed solid and unshakable, like a sturdy house built on a firm foundation. She grew up in the suburbs of the great city on the Neva, in a family where there was a mother, a father, and an older brother. Not far away, in the very heart of the northern capital, in a cozy two-room apartment overlooking a quiet courtyard-well, her grandmother was living out her years—a woman already advanced in age, yet incredibly active and full of life. The girl’s world was limited to school, household chores, and rare but vivid trips to visit her grandmother, where the air always smelled of apple pie and old books.
When Lena entered the fifth grade, the first change came to this settled world. Longing for peace and open spaces, the grandmother decided to return to her village, to an old little house that was worn but filled with an inexplicable charm. She gifted her Petersburg apartment to both of her grandchildren, insisting that they make use of this gift when the time came—when they finished school and stepped into adult life. For the time being, Lena’s parents rented the place out, and the modest income from the rent became a pleasant contribution to the family budget.
The first to claim that gift was the older brother, Maksim. After finishing school, he did his military service and, upon returning home, began to build a life with the girl who had waited for him all that time. The young couple got married, and soon it became known that they were expecting a child. Naturally, the brother’s family moved into that very grandmother’s apartment. Feeling a flutter of unease, Lena decided to have an honest conversation with Maksim.
“Max, you remember what Grandma wanted, don’t you? The apartment was meant for both of us. I really want to go to university in Petersburg after school,” her voice sounded timid, but there was hope burning in her eyes. “I have no prospects at all in our town.”
“Don’t torment yourself with pointless worries,” her brother reassured her with a smile. “As soon as you get your diploma, just come to us. We’ll live together, and we’ll help you with admission. You get along with my wife well enough, right? There won’t be any problems.”
Those words became a comfort and a support for Lena. With renewed energy, she threw herself into her studies, dreaming of the future, leafing through university guides, and picturing herself as a student at one of the Petersburg institutes.
The years flowed by relentlessly, and finally graduation approached. But standing on the threshold of adulthood, she was struck by a cruel blow. When Lena was in tenth grade, a storm broke out in her family. Her parents, who had once seemed like a single whole, suddenly shattered into pieces.
“If you only knew how sick I am of you!” her father’s voice thundered, and the crystal vase on the shelf trembled from his shouting. “You’ve poisoned my entire life!”
“Me? I poisoned it?” her mother shot back, her words ringing like a blade. “You stole my best years! May the earth swallow you up! I don’t want to see you again!”
They divorced quickly and mercilessly. Lena found herself between two fires, but neither of those fires was trying to warm her. Neither her mother nor her father showed any zeal in trying to win her over or fight for her heart. After the divorce came a cold, calculated division of property. The shared apartment was sold, and with the proceeds they bought two modest studio flats in different districts, far from each other.
The girl stayed with her mother, but not for long. A new man appeared in the woman’s life, and the growing daughter became a nuisance, an unnecessary reminder of a past she wanted so badly to forget. Lena had no choice but to turn to her father.
“Dad, can I move in with you?” she asked, trying to keep her voice from trembling.
“Sweetheart, you understand,” he mumbled, avoiding her eyes. “I have a different life now, a different woman. Where would we put you? On the kitchen—uncomfortable; in the room with us—also not an option.”
Then she remembered her brother and his promise. The solution seemed obvious: finish school in Petersburg and live in her grandmother’s apartment, which by rights belonged to her as well. But here, too, a bitter disappointment awaited her.
“What are you even talking about?” Maksim’s voice over the phone sounded cold and distant. “I have my own family, a small child. You’ll just be in the way. Besides, Mom re-registered the whole apartment in my name ages ago. So you have no rights here at all. Go find yourself another place to stay.”
In despair, Lena rushed to her mother, and she confirmed everything without hiding a thing:
“Yes, I put the apartment in Maksim’s name. He has a family, a job in the city, he needs it more. You should understand that.”
“And where am I supposed to be?” Lena whispered, feeling the ground slip from beneath her feet. “Where am I supposed to go now? Am I really not needed by anyone?”
“You’re registered in the village, in that same grandmother’s house,” came the calm, almost businesslike response. “So go there. You’ll finish school there. I’ll help with the paperwork. You’ll like it—quiet, peaceful, no one will bother you. You’re an adult now, Lenka, it’s time you learned to be independent.”
Her new “place of residence” greeted her without joy. The village lay sixty kilometers from the nearest relatively large settlement; there were no central utilities to speak of—she had to carry water in buckets from a well, wash in a bathhouse that had to be heated long and thoroughly, and the rickety wooden outhouse huddled in the far corner of the garden. Civilization had retreated, leaving her alone with harsh reality. But the girl, rejected by those closest to her, learned not to give in to self-pity. With stubborn determination, she lugged water, chopped firewood, and learned to manage the stove.
A new school year was approaching, and Lena transferred to the village school. To get there, she had to travel five kilometers; fortunately, a school bus ran in the morning and evening. Her parents regularly sent her five thousand rubles a month, constantly hinting that she would soon turn eighteen and it was time she fully supported herself. That money barely covered the bare essentials. She was saved by kind-hearted neighbors, especially an elderly couple living next door—they shared firewood and vegetables from their garden and didn’t let her freeze during that first, especially harsh winter.
Life seemed gray and hopeless. Lena was broken spiritually. How was it that every member of her family had found their place under the sun, while she, like some unwanted object, had been tossed to the roadside? What had she done to deserve such a bitter fate? On long nights she cried quietly into her pillow, muffling the sound of the blizzard howling in the stove pipe.
School was now behind her, and her dreams of Saint Petersburg and university dissolved like smoke. Lena enrolled in a local trade college to become a merchandiser, and in the evenings she worked part-time in the village shop just to make ends meet. The locals, seeing her diligence and desperate situation, looked after her in their own way: they would bring her a pie, some milk, or simply invite her over for a chat. Young people also began to gather in her modest little house, which soon became an involuntary point of attraction. It was warm there not only because of the stove, but also because of simple human contact.
In this new life, Lena found herself with admirers. At nineteen, she realized with horror that she was pregnant. The baby’s father, upon hearing the news, simply sneered:
“How am I supposed to know it’s mine? Who knows who you spend your time with around here. Deal with it yourself, I don’t need this.”
She never saw him again. Panicked, Lena called her parents.
“Please help me. I don’t know what to do,” she sobbed into the receiver.
“It’s your own fault, so you can figure it out yourself,” came the dry, detached reply. “You knew who you were messing around with, you knew what you were getting into.”
Her brother showed no interest either. Lena was completely alone. And once again it was the neighbors who offered a helping hand. That same elderly couple, Anna and Grigory, who had no children of their own, surrounded her with genuine care. They were the ones who brought Lena home from the maternity ward with her newborn son and helped prepare everything needed for his arrival.
When the question of who owned the house came up, it turned out that her mother had deceived her—Lena was only registered there, nothing more. It was time to grow up for real. Money was catastrophically short, and the baby required constant attention and care. After arranging things with Anna and Grigory, who were overjoyed to babysit the child as if he were their own grandson, Lena went off to earn money. First to Finland to pick strawberries. Then, having found her footing, to rotational work in the north, where she got a job as a cook in a workers’ canteen. She worked tirelessly, leaving again and again and then returning, bringing not only money but all the unspent motherly love she herself had been deprived of in childhood.
And so, in unceasing work, several years passed. Having put aside a small sum, Lena was able to buy her own, sturdier house in the same village. Her son was growing, and she burned with the idea of staying home and finding a source of income there so she could raise him herself. For a long time she couldn’t find the right occupation, until one day Anna said:
“Why don’t you take your garden seriously? Grow berries, greens, sell them. Our land is good here.”
The idea fell on fertile soil. By the next summer, Lena was selling her own lovingly grown strawberries at the market in the nearby town. Then came experiments with herbs, onions, cucumbers, and tomatoes, and one day she even dared to grow tulips for the spring holidays. Despite all her busyness, deep down she still cherished a fragile hope that someday the door of her house would open and those she had once called family would appear on the threshold. That they would return, embrace her, ask forgiveness, and everything would be as before.
But the years passed, and the phone stayed silent. Neither her mother, nor her father, nor her brother ever came or showed any interest in the life of her son, their grandson and nephew. From occasional posts on social media she learned that her mother had had another child in her new marriage, her father had changed several partners, and her brother was living his own comfortable life. Mutual acquaintances reported that her relatives spoke of her with contempt: “She’s gone to the dogs, nothing good came of her. And we tried so hard, invested so much effort…”
When Lena turned thirty, fate finally brought her together with Nikolai. A man four years older than she, he had moved to the village after a failed marriage, together with his son. He was calm, reliable, and in his eyes she saw the understanding and support she had lacked all those previous years. They married, and Lena’s life took on new, bright colors. She was no longer alone. A year and a half later, they had a son together, and now their big family lived as five. Nikolai worked as a machine operator at the local farm, while Lena, developing her business, got a small herd of goats and learned to make wonderfully tasty cheese that sold out quickly.
And then, in this new, well-arranged life, in their cozy house with all the amenities, an unexpected call came. It was her mother.
“Hi, dear, it’s been so long since we’ve seen each other. Maybe you’ll invite me to visit? I’d love to see my grandchildren. Why are we so far from one another? I could come over.”
Then her father’s voice sounded:
“Lenochka, I heard you had another little boy? Congratulations! Can we come see you? I want to introduce you to my new wife.”
And then a message came from her brother:
“Let’s start talking again. Maybe we could all get together at your place for a barbecue? Use the banya, have a good heart-to-heart talk.”
Lena was stunned. More than ten years of complete silence had passed. No one had asked about her life, her hardships, or her successes. And as if by magic, family feelings awoke precisely when she no longer needed them, when she had found her anchors and her happiness without their participation.
She thought long and hard about those invitations, sitting on the porch of her house in the evening and watching the children play on the lawn. She remembered the cold room in her grandmother’s crumbling house, the wheelbarrow full of firewood, her tears of despair and the crushing loneliness. She remembered how none of them had ever come, ever supported her, ever acknowledged her older son. And then she made a decision. She didn’t make a scene, she didn’t spill out all the hurt she had accumulated. She simply changed her phone number.
Now her life was like a well-tended garden she had grown herself, in defiance of the drought of neglect and the frosts of indifference. Every strawberry bush, every bucket of fresh milk, her children’s laughter and her husband’s firm handshake—all of this were bricks in the wall she had built between her happy present and her bitter past. She held no hatred in her heart, but she did not let back in those who had once left it of their own free will. Her family was here, in this house filled with warmth and the smell of freshly baked bread. And beyond its threshold her garden bloomed, birds sang in its branches, and in that lay her whole truth, her new, real kin. She had found not just shelter but roots driven deep into this land, and those roots gave her the strength to blossom every day, offering the world her quiet yet unbending beauty.