— Starting tomorrow, you hand over your card to me. And the password to the app. I’ll be the one allocating our money.”
Kirill said it while standing in the middle of the living room. He didn’t look at Anna; his gaze was fixed somewhere on the wall, as if he’d rehearsed the line in front of a mirror and was now reciting it from memory. He’d just come back from Sunday lunch at his mother’s, and he still carried a faint scent of her pies—and her determination. Anna sat in an armchair with her book set on her lap. She didn’t move; she only lifted her eyes to him slowly.
“— No.”
The word was short, quiet, and absolutely impenetrable. It carried neither a question nor a challenge. It was a dead end—solid as stone. It infuriated Kirill. He’d expected an argument, persuasion, emotion—anything he could break. But not this calm, final refusal. He paced the room; his footsteps on the parquet were too loud, too jittery.
“— What do you mean, ‘no’? Anya, you don’t understand? Prices are going up! We need to save, think about the future! And you… You’re always buying something! A dress, shoes, some kind of cosmetics. It’s all unnecessary! We should be thinking about big purchases, about long-term plans!”
He spoke fast, waving his hands as if he could physically pelt her with his arguments. Anna looked at him, and there was no anger in her gaze—only cold curiosity, like an entomologist studying the behavior of a fussy insect. She wasn’t seeing her husband anymore, but a puppet jerking desperately on its strings, trying to prove it was alive. He rattled off abstract goals: renovations at the dacha they visited twice a year, a new car even though theirs was nearly new, a hypothetical vacation three years from now. It all sounded like a badly memorized lesson.
“— My dresses and cosmetics don’t stop us from putting away a decent amount every month, Kirill. And they’re bought with money I earn. You know that perfectly well. So what’s the real problem?”
She didn’t ask to get an answer. She already knew it. She just wanted to watch him squirm. And he did. He started talking about inflation, instability in the world, how a man should control the family finances because he “thinks strategically.” Every word was чужой—borrowed—learned by heart, soaked in the worldview of Tamara Pavlovna, who considered any spending on female beauty a silly whim and waste.
“— Stop, Kirill. Just say it’s another brilliant idea from your mom. She never misses a chance to count how much my haircut or manicure costs. Was it her advice—to set up a financial dictatorship at home?”
Color flooded his face. He stopped abruptly in front of her, looming as if he could crush her with his height and righteous anger. That reaction said more than any words. He’d been caught, and it enraged him. He wasn’t angry at her—he was angry that she saw through him so easily.
“— What does my mom have to do with it? I decided myself that we need to save more! She only said you spend too much on clothes, and the decision that your salary will be with me now—I made that myself!”
That last sentence, thrown out with desperate conviction, hung in the air. Kirill himself believed what he’d said. He looked at Anna like a victor, as if he’d just produced irrefutable proof of his independence. But for Anna, that “confession” was the final brushstroke completing the picture. She saw the whole scheme: an innocent “suggestion” tossed in casually over Sunday lunch, then sprouting in her husband’s mind, hardening, turning into what he now thought was his own brilliant idea. He wasn’t the author—he was the incubator.
“— I see,” Anna said so calmly it sounded more insulting than any shout. She closed her book, set it on the coffee table, and stood up. “In that case, I’m rejecting your independently made decision—independently. Topic closed.”
She headed for the kitchen, intending to pour herself a glass of water and physically sever the conversation. But Kirill, furious at her dismissiveness, lunged after her. He grabbed her by the elbow—not hard, but insistently, turning her toward him.
“— No, it’s not closed! You’ll do what I said! I’m the husband in this house, and my word is law! Stop acting like you’re on your own and I’m just a roommate! We’re a family!”
His face had broken out in ugly red blotches; his breathing was ragged. He looked like a teenager having his favorite toy taken away. And at that exact moment—right as his voice cracked on a high note—the doorbell rang. Short, confident, proprietary. Kirill flinched and let go of her arm, as if he’d been caught doing something shameful. Confusion flickered across his face, replaced by something close to relief. A saving bell—ending a round he was clearly losing.
He went to open the door, while Anna stayed in the kitchen doorway. She knew who it was. Heavy artillery had arrived at the battlefield at the first call—or maybe it had been waiting for the signal in a car under the windows all along.
In the entryway, Tamara Pavlovna’s familiar, slightly cooing voice rang out—the one she always used when she wanted to play universal kindness.
“— Kiryusha, my son, I forgot my phone at your place. Oh—what’s going on here? Why are you two so worked up?”
She walked into the living room and her gaze latched onto Anna at once. Her face wore a mask of concerned worry, but her small, sharp eyes quickly assessed the scene: her son flushed, her daughter-in-law ice-calm. She hadn’t come for her phone. She’d come to administer justice.
“— Kids, don’t fight,” she moved to the center of the room, placing herself between them like a referee. Kirill immediately found his footing; his posture relaxed, as if he’d leaned against an invisible wall of maternal support. “Anechka, understand—we only want what’s best for you. A family is a shared pot. It can’t be that everyone pulls only in their own direction. A man has to feel like the head, responsible. It’s nature.”
She spoke softly, wrapping the room in her honeyed voice. She lectured about the family budget, the wisdom of generations, about how a woman is the keeper of the hearth, not an accountant. Every phrase was a thin needle aimed at Anna, wrapped in velvet concern.
Anna watched her in silence. She let her speak, letting the performance reach its peak. When Tamara Pavlovna paused, expecting an answer—or at least a reaction—Anna replied, not to her, but to her husband.
“— Kirill, your mom forgot her phone. Find it, please.”
The pointed disregard was so blatant that Tamara Pavlovna froze for a moment with a half-smile on her face. Then she turned back to Anna, and steel appeared in her voice.
“— Anya, I’m talking to you. Is it really so hard to understand simple things? Give the card to Kirill. It’ll be better for everyone.”
Anna lifted her cold, direct gaze to her.
“— Tamara Pavlovna, I already answered your son. My answer is no.”
The “no” Anna said dropped into the room like a chunk of ice onto a hot stove. It didn’t melt—it hissed. Tamara Pavlovna’s polite mask held for a heartbeat, then cracked like cheap plaster. Her smile slid away, revealing tightly pressed, thin lips. The caring worry in her eyes shifted first to bafflement, then to a cold, appraising glint. She took half a step forward, and her whole posture changed from peacemaker to attacker.
“— What did you say?” she repeated. Her voice was different now. The honey was gone; only a dry, scraping timbre remained.
Anna didn’t look away. She looked at her mother-in-law the way one looks at an unpleasant but predictable natural phenomenon.
“— I said I’m not giving my card to your son. I thought I was clear enough.”
That was it—the last drop. The mask fell completely. Tamara Pavlovna’s face twisted, turned чужое—alien, vicious. She stopped playing the wise mentor and became what she really was: an envious, dissatisfied woman for whom someone else’s happiness was a personal insult.
“— Who do you think you are?!” she hissed—and that hiss was far worse than any shout. She jabbed a finger toward Anna, manicured neatly but old-fashioned. “Think you’re a queen? A princess and the pea? You think you’re special? When I was your age, I wore one coat for ten years! Ten! Not because it was fashionable—because there was no money for a new one! We were saving for an apartment, counting every kopek, not running around cafés and changing outfits!”
She spat the words, choking on her own anger. This wasn’t an argument about the family budget. It was a spill of long-standing jealousy she’d kept hidden for years—jealousy of Anna’s youth, her ease, her good job, the fact that she could buy a new blouse not because the old one had worn out, but simply because it was pretty.
“— You think I don’t see? All your little bottles, creams, salon trips… You throw money into the wind! Just to stroke your ego! And my son works, he tries, and you don’t value him! Instead of building a nest, you’re draining him with your whims! I won’t allow it! I didn’t raise my son so some flirt could use him and live for her own pleasure!”
Anna stayed silent. She shifted her gaze to Kirill. He stood a little behind his mother, like a shadow. His face was no longer twisted with rage. It wore a strange, almost blissful expression of approval. He listened to his mother’s monologue, and at the moment Tamara Pavlovna said “flirt,” he gave the faintest nod. One short, crisp nod. Agreement. Approval. A verdict.
In that instant Anna saw them not as two separate people, but as a single whole—a two-headed creature bound not by love, but by shared weakness, shared resentment, and a shared hatred for anyone who dared to be different. To them she was a foreign element. A bright stain on the gray background of their dreary world built on thrift and self-denial. And they’d decided to erase the stain—not because it harmed them, but because its brightness made their own grayness unbearable. All the pieces clicked into place. Every half-said thing, every sideways look, every poisonous compliment from her mother-in-law, every spineless excuse from her husband—everything gained meaning. They didn’t want her well-being. They wanted her to become like them.
That nod—barely visible, shorter than a heartbeat—yet Anna saw it as clearly as if it had been projected on the wall by a floodlight. In that microscopic moment, everything fell into place. There was no offense left, no anger, no disappointment. Those feelings simply evaporated, replaced by something else: cold, absolute clarity. As if all the sediment in murky water had suddenly settled and she could see the bottom, with all the trash collected there. The noise in the room didn’t stop—Tamara Pavlovna kept talking, now listing the “sins” of the entire female sex—but to Anna her voice turned into background hum, like the sound of a running refrigerator or traffic outside. It no longer had anything to do with her.
She turned and, without saying a word, walked into the bedroom. Her movements were smooth, unhurried. Behind her, silence fell for a moment—then Kirill’s confused voice: “Where are you going?” She didn’t answer. Tamara Pavlovna likely took it for retreat and threw something biting after her—about how the truth stings—but Anna wasn’t listening anymore.
In the bedroom she went to the wardrobe, opened the door, and took Kirill’s dark-blue jacket from the hanger—the one he’d been wearing these past days. Then she went to the bedside table on his side of the bed and picked up his wallet. It was heavy with coins and cards. Her fingers didn’t tremble. She didn’t look inside, didn’t sort through its contents. She simply picked up an object belonging to a чужой—someone else. Finally, she returned to the entryway and took his set of keys from the key holder. The keychain shaped like an engine piston—a gift from his father—clinked dully.
With those three items in her hands, she went back into the living room. Mother and son stood in the same positions, but now they looked at her with bewilderment. The performance had been interrupted; the actors were waiting for a line from their scene partner who’d left the stage. Anna walked to the small table by the entrance and carefully set the jacket down, then placed the wallet and keys on top.
“— What does this mean?” Kirill finally found his voice. There was no anger in it, only confusion.
Anna looked him straight in the eyes. For the first time all evening she saw not a husband, not someone she had once loved, but simply him—separate. And his mother—also separate. Two strangers in her apartment.
“— Kirill, take your things,” she said. Her voice was perfectly even, ordinary—as if she were asking him to pass the salt.
He stared from her to the little pile of items on the table, his brain desperately trying to connect the dots—and failing.
“— What things? What are you doing? We’re talking!”
That’s when Tamara Pavlovna exploded. Her face went blotchy red again.
“— You…! How dare you! Throwing your husband out of the house?! After everything he’s done for you? Why, I—”
“— And you too, Tamara Pavlovna,” Anna cut her off in the same calm, emotionless tone. She turned her head and looked at her mother-in-law. “Take your son and leave.”
It wasn’t said as a request or an order. It was a statement of fact. The way one says evening has come, or that it’s started to rain. Undeniable. That killing lack of emotion disarmed them far more than any shouting could. They stood with their mouths open, unable to find words. Their world—where everything was solved by scandals and manipulation—had collided with something else, and they had no tools to deal with it.
Kirill took a step toward her, reaching out his hand.
“— Anya, stop. Let’s talk.”
Anna retreated half a step, and that gesture spoke louder than a wall. She simply looked at him. And in her gaze he saw his reflection—pitiful, lost, чужой. He lowered his hand. He stood for another second, shifting his eyes from her unreadable face to his mother, who for the first time that evening was silent, crushed by that cold calm. Then he slowly walked to the table, scooped up his things, and, without looking back, went to the door. Tamara Pavlovna, throwing Anna a look full of undiluted hatred, hurried after her son with quick little steps. The front door clicked softly.
Anna remained alone in the middle of the living room. She stood there for about a minute, listening to the silence—which was no longer heavy or ringing. It was simply silence. Her silence. Then she went back to the armchair, picked up her book from the coffee table, found the page where she’d left off, and sat down again. The light from the floor lamp fell on the pages, and she continued reading…