“Dash, are you coming or not? Mom baked pies, she’ll be offended.”
Misha was already standing in the hallway, fully dressed. He was wearing that very same blue jacket Dasha had given him for his last birthday. He shifted from foot to foot, glancing impatiently at her, curled up in the deep armchair in the living room. She didn’t even lift her head from the book; her fingers lazily turned a page. The very fact that she was so demonstratively immersed in reading while he was all ready to walk out the door was an answer in itself. But he decided to pretend he didn’t get it.
“I’m not going.”
The words came out dull, without her looking up from the printed lines. Misha sighed heavily, and that sound, so full of martyr-like exhaustion, made her tense up inside. He came closer, stopping by the armrest of the chair, looming over her. He smelled of the cool air from outside and cologne.
“What is it again now? It’s already been a week. We agreed…”
“We didn’t agree on anything,” she snapped the book shut with a loud thud and set it on the coffee table. Now she was looking at him straight on, and there was no hurt or anger in her eyes. There was something else, much worse—a cold, measured contempt. “You just decided everything had taken care of itself.”
“A week? Misha, for me nothing has passed. I can still hear your sister, Sveta, hissing to your mom in the kitchen that I’m a sly little hussy who’s trapped you. And how your ‘saintly’ mother agrees with her, saying, yeah, a little flirt like that won’t let go of what she’s got.”
She spoke quietly, almost casually, but every word was carved out of steel. She saw that scene as clearly as if it were happening right now. She had slipped quietly into their apartment, having just come back from the clinic where she’d taken his mother because her back had flared up again. Dasha had taken time off work, lost half a day, run all over the city from one specialist to another, listened to complaints, bought medication. And then, when she walked into their kitchen just to grab a glass of water before heading home, she froze in the doorway at that poisonous whisper. They were discussing her as if she weren’t part of their family at all, but some contagious disease their beloved boy had brought into the house. And the most disgusting thing was that half an hour later, seeing her out, Misha’s mother clutched the bag with her ointments to her chest, smiled sweetly and said, “Dashenka, you’re our guardian angel, what would we do without you.”
Misha winced as if from a sudden toothache. He looked away, staring at his shoes, at the rug, anywhere but at her.
“You know what Svetka’s like, she’s got a nasty tongue. They didn’t mean it.”
And that word—“didn’t mean it”—fell into the empty space between them like a stone, shattering the thin ice of her patience. It wasn’t just an excuse. It was a way of wiping out everything: her humiliation, her wasted time, her genuine desire to help. It was permission for them to keep doing it, because it was all, supposedly, “nothing serious.”
“Stop sulking, let’s go. The pies will get cold.”
He tried a conciliatory smile and reached out to touch her shoulder, but she slowly stood up. She rose and straightened, and now he was the one forced to look up at her. Her face was calm. Too calm.
“‘Nothing serious’?” she repeated his words, and her voice became quiet and dangerous, stripped of any warmth. “Fine. Then accept it as fact that I’m going to be very ‘not serious’ from now on too. About everything that concerns you and your family. Take off your jacket, Misha. You’re not going anywhere today. Or next Sunday. Or any Sunday after that.”
Misha never did go to his parents’. He took off his jacket, threw it onto the pouffe in the hallway with the look of a man personally betrayed by it, and locked himself in the living room in front of the TV. Over the next few days their apartment turned into a demilitarized zone where two opponents waged a silent war. They moved through the shared space without touching and almost without speaking. In the mornings, the kitchen was filled with icy silence, broken only by the clink of a spoon against a cup and the hum of the coffee machine. They had dinner at different times. He ostentatiously ordered pizza and ate it straight from the box, leaving greasy marks on the coffee table. She cooked something light for herself, ate, quietly cleaned up after herself and went to the bedroom with a book, walling herself off from his existence.
Misha waited. He waited for her to snap, to start a scene, to cry, to demand attention. He was used to her emotions being the lever he could always pull. But Dasha stayed silent, and that silence was more frightening than any tantrum.
The showdown came on Thursday evening. Misha, sprawled on the couch, was watching some stupid TV show. Dasha sat at the table with her laptop, working intently. Suddenly his mobile started ringing, lying next to her. “Sveta” flashed on the screen. Misha waved his hand lazily.
“Answer it, Dash, say I’m in the shower. Put it on speaker.”
She silently tapped the green icon and placed the phone on the table. Sveta’s voice, loud and demanding, filled the room.
“Mishka, hi! Listen, we’ve got an emergency. They’re delivering the new wardrobe tomorrow, remember I told you? And those movers, idiots, only bring it to the building entrance. Somehow we’ve got to haul it up to the fifth floor, and it’s really heavy. Dad won’t be home. Can you swing by after work and help?”
From the living room Misha shouted:
“Sveta, I’m at work until late tomorrow, no way. Totally swamped.”
There was a brief pause. Then Sveta’s voice rang out again, this time with a whiny impatience.
“Ugh, fine. Then let Dashka help. Let her take the car, and the two of us can lug it up slowly. It’s not hard for her, is it? She’s at home anyway.”
Dasha, not taking her eyes off the laptop screen, slowly turned her head toward the living room and looked at Misha. He was staring back at her with the pleading eyes of a puppy. In them she could read: “Please, agree, don’t make trouble.” He even gave a slight, barely noticeable nod, nudging her toward the “right” answer. The phone lay silent on the table—Sveta was waiting for her problem to be solved.
“Misha,” Dasha’s voice sounded calm and clear, so that it carried perfectly both to the living room and into the phone. “My back hurts. I’m not going to haul wardrobes.”
Misha instantly stiffened, his face twisting.
“What are you talking about? What back?”
“Mishka, what’s going on over there?” Sveta asked anxiously.
Misha cleared his throat and tried to sound upbeat.
“It’s nothing, Sveta. Dasha’s… got a bit of a headache. Not feeling well. I’ll try to get off work early, we’ll figure something out.”
And then Dasha, looking straight at her husband, said the phrase that became the detonator. Her voice was still quiet, but her words were as sharp as shards of glass.
“Misha, I don’t have a headache. And my back doesn’t hurt either. I’m just not going. I don’t want to.”
There was a pause on the line. Even the noisy show in the living room seemed to quiet down.
“What do you mean, ‘don’t want to’?” Sveta blurted out. “What kind of news is that?”
Dasha picked up the phone.
“I mean exactly that, Sveta. Hauling your wardrobe upstairs is men’s work. I’m not going to ruin my health doing it. I’m sure you and your mom will manage just fine. You’re strong, independent women, after all. All the best.”
She ended the call and set the phone down on the table, screen down. Misha stormed into the room. His face was red, his nostrils flaring.
“You… What are you doing?! You did that on purpose! You humiliated me!”
Dasha slowly closed her laptop. Her gaze was cold and clear.
“No, Misha. I didn’t humiliate you. I just stopped being your family’s free, eager little fool. You’re the one who taught me that your family’s requests, just like their insults, are ‘nothing serious.’ I learned the lesson. So get used to it.”
After that conversation Misha didn’t speak to her for two days. He didn’t try to apologize, didn’t try to argue. He simply existed in the apartment like an annoyed ghost, leaving behind half-empty mugs of tea and clothes tossed carelessly around. He waited for Dasha to break first. She always had before. Her anger was bright but brief, like a flash of magnesium, after which all that remained was the ash of guilt and the desire to fix everything.
But this time there was no flash. There was only a steady, cold burn, like in a blast furnace where the toughest ore melts. Dasha didn’t react to his theatrical sulking. She lived her own life: worked, read, cooked for herself, and her calmness drove him crazy.
On Saturday morning, when Dasha, wrapped in a blanket, sat in the kitchen with her laptop and a cup of coffee, the doorbell rang. Insistent, two short, demanding rings. Misha, who had been staring gloomily out the window, jerked and went to open it. Dasha didn’t move. She knew who it was. This was their next move in the game she hadn’t started, but in which she had firmly decided to win.
Muffled voices sounded in the hallway, and then Misha’s mother, Galina Pavlovna, appeared in the kitchen doorway. In her hands she held a large platter covered with a towel, from which rose a thick, suffocatingly “homemade” smell of baked dough and cabbage. Behind her, like a shadow, hovered Sveta. On their faces were wide, friendly smiles that never reached their eyes.
“Dashenka, hello! We were just passing by and decided to drop off some pies for you. They’re still hot!” Galina Pavlovna trilled, stepping into the kitchen, onto Dasha’s territory.
“Hello,” Dasha replied evenly, making no move to stand up or help. She only gave them a quick, assessing look.
Sveta slipped past her mother and glanced around the kitchen with the air of an inspector. Her gaze lingered on Dasha’s single cup, on her laptop.
“Oh, still working, our little busy bee? When do you ever rest?” Her voice dripped with fake concern, under which it was easy to read: “You do nothing all day while we think about you.”
Misha bustled between them like a frightened shuttle. His face was a picture of desperate pleading.
“Dash, look, Mom baked your favorite pies! With cabbage! Let’s all have some tea together, yeah?”
He tried to take the platter from his mother, but she held onto it, clearly intending to hand it over personally to Dasha as a symbol of peace, as a demand for surrender. But Dasha didn’t even reach out. She just looked at them. At their smiles, at the pies, at her husband, who was ready to sell her out for the illusion of family harmony.
Realizing that the ceremonial handing over of the gift wasn’t happening, Galina Pavlovna, looking a bit less cheerful, set the platter on the table, right next to Dasha’s laptop.
“Why are you acting like strangers? We’ve missed you. We were waiting for you on Sunday, and you never came… Misha said you were feeling unwell. Are you better now?”
Misha latched onto this lifesaving lie.
“Yeah, Mom, she’s better! She’s totally fine now! We were just about to come over today, right, Dash? Make it up to you, so to speak.”
And that was the last straw. The lie. Blatant, shameless lying right to her face, in front of the very people who had caused all this. He wasn’t just trying to persuade her; he was trying to build an alternate reality in which she was obedient and compliant.
Dasha slowly shifted her gaze from Galina Pavlovna to her husband. The silence in the kitchen became so dense it felt like you could touch it. Then she spoke. Her voice wasn’t loud, but it cut through the air like a scalpel.
“I told you once that I’m not going to your parents’ anymore, Misha, and that means I’m not going! Stop trying to push me! I’m disgusted by how they smile to my face and then badmouth me behind my back! Let them stick to the second part, but I don’t want to see them ever again!”
The phrase, flung at Misha, hit everyone in the room like a ricochet. The fake smiles vanished from Galina Pavlovna’s and Sveta’s faces as if wiped off with solvent. His mother stared at Dasha with a cold, baffled expression, as if there weren’t a living person in front of her but a malfunctioning appliance. Sveta’s face sharpened, a malicious, triumphant gleam flared in her eyes—the mask was off, the fight could begin. Misha stood between them, pale, mouth open, finally crushed between hammer and anvil. The pies on the table gave off their cloying smell, no longer a symbol of reconciliation but physical evidence at the scene of a declared war.
The silence that fell in the kitchen wasn’t ringing or heavy—it was dead. Empty. It was as if all the air had been sucked out, leaving four people in a vacuum where every movement and glance was exaggeratedly clear. Galina Pavlovna stared at Dasha as though she had just started speaking some unknown, threatening language. Misha froze with his mouth half open, his face stiff and papery. Sveta was the first to snap out of her stupor. Her face no longer showed a trace of fake friendliness; it had turned into a predatory mask of spite.
“Oh, so you did hear, then?” Her voice was low and caustic, like acid. “Well, good. Maybe now you’ll get it through your head that nobody wants you here. You swanned in to everything ready-made, thought you’d get our Mishka under your heel and be queen, huh? Wrong, sweetheart. We see right through little hussies like you.”
She spit out that word—“hussy”—relishing it, flinging it at her like a lump of mud that, this time, didn’t need to be thrown behind her back. Misha jerked, about to say something, but Dasha was quicker. She didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t change expression. She simply turned her calm, studying gaze on Sveta.
“Yes, I heard. And you know what the funny thing is, Sveta? I wasn’t even surprised. Because it fits perfectly into your world view. In your world, I’m a convenient, multi-purpose object. An object that takes your mother to doctors, taking time off work, because you, Sveta, have a ‘manicure then.’ An object that spends two days with your son when he has a stomach bug and scrubs the entire apartment afterwards because you ‘have to go to a restaurant with your husband, it’s your anniversary.’ An object that spends every summer weekend helping your mom at the dacha with the vegetable beds while you and Misha ‘relax at the lake.’ And then this object is supposed to listen with a grateful smile to how she’s a cunning little parasite.”
She spoke in an even, almost monotone voice, listing facts the way an accountant reads out a year-end report. Each item was a nail she was methodically hammering into the lid of their family coffin.
“You’re so proud of your independence, Sveta. Of your job, your husband, your new car. You tell everyone how you bought it ‘all by yourself,’ what a go-getter you are, unlike some people.”
Sveta tensed, sensing where Dasha was heading.
“Don’t you dare stick your nose where it doesn’t belong!”
“But it does belong to me,” Dasha tilted her head slightly, and a dangerous glint appeared in her eyes. “Because the money for your ‘bought-all-by-myself’ car came from the account your parents were using to save up our down payment for an apartment. Misha himself let it slip a year ago when you bought it. He begged me not to say anything so as ‘not to spoil the relationship.’ So here’s the thing, Sveta: you’re driving around in pieces of my future apartment. You, who call me a predator, are actually just a common hypocritical thief who lies even to her own husband and lives off her parents while pretending to be some business lady.”
“Dasha, that’s enough! Shut up!” Misha finally exploded. He looked not at his sister, not at his mother, but at his wife. With fury and fear. He was trying to gag her. The one who had spoken the truth.
That was his choice. Final and irreversible. Dasha looked at him one last time. But she no longer saw her husband—just a stranger, a weak man terrified of the truth and ready to trample anyone who dared to speak it.
Silently, she stood up. Took the platter of pies from the table, their smell now making her feel sick. Walked past the stunned Galina Pavlovna, past Sveta with her hate-twisted face, past her husband. She went over to the trash can under the sink, opened the cupboard door and, with one smooth, deliberate motion, tipped the entire heap of pies inside. The platter remained in her hands, clean. She set it on the counter. Then she turned to Misha, who was staring at her as if she’d lost her mind.
“Go comfort them, Misha. That’s your only job now…