Vika learned that the grandmother had been relocated from a neighbor. Vika had always visited her on her name day. This time, too, she bought a cake and a bag of plums—the old woman adored plums. She paused by the entrance, trying to fish out her ringing phone, when the first-floor neighbor called out:
“Vikulya, is that you? Grandma moved out.”
Strictly speaking, she wasn’t Vika’s grandmother—she was the grandmother of Vika’s ex-husband. Vika met Nikita at college; back then he lived with his grandmother. When he brought Vika to meet her, Vika was terrified—she knew she was being evaluated. Nikita had no parents, only the grandmother who had raised him since he was five. But Vika had worried for nothing: the grandmother welcomed her at once, as if she were family.
They married in their fifth year, and the grandmother gave them an unbelievable wedding gift: a one-bedroom apartment. Yes, it was on the edge of town, on the fifth floor, with no balcony—but it was theirs. She had saved money her whole life, not wanting to intrude on the young couple.
Vika had never had anything of her own. Her stepfather strictly watched that Vika didn’t eat more than his biological children, didn’t use more water than “allowed,” and he constantly scolded her for wasting electricity. At seventeen, she became a waitress and rented a tiny room like a storage closet. She wasn’t eligible for a dorm—she had a city registration. So that one-bedroom apartment felt like a real mansion.
She didn’t live there long. A year after the wedding, she came home an hour early from her shift (she’d hurried so she could make Nikita breakfast) and found a snub-nosed blonde in her bed. The girl was smoking, sending thin streams of smoke toward the ceiling, while the bathroom echoed with running water. The blonde wasn’t embarrassed at all—she simply pulled the blanket over herself, the very blanket the grandmother had given them for New Year’s.
That’s how their five-year relationship ended. Vika didn’t start a scandal; they divorced peacefully. The apartment, of course, stayed with Nikita, and Vika didn’t claim it—though the blonde, who accompanied Nikita through every step of the divorce, kept hissing loudly, “Make her sign a statement, or she’ll get pregnant by some driver and sue for the apartment!”
“Where did she move to?” Vika asked, pressing the button to end the call.
“To your apartment! Their baby’s due any day now, so they swapped.”
Vika’s chest tightened. The grandmother walked badly after a broken hip, and that apartment was on the fifth floor with no elevator. How would she manage there? The day before Vika caught the blonde in the apartment, she and Nikita had actually decided they’d move in with the grandmother to care for her. And now it turned out the grandmother would be living completely alone—in an inconvenient place, with not a single familiar face. Here, everyone in the building knew her; there was always someone to ask for help.
The news about the baby scratched at Vika too: with her, Nikita had refused to have children, insisting they needed to “live for ourselves” first.
“Alright. Thanks, Aunt Katya.”
Vika had to walk to the stop, wait for the bus, and ride forty minutes, clinging to a peeling handrail and trying not to jostle the cake apart.
Returning to the apartment where she’d spent a year believing she was the happiest woman in the world felt heartbreaking. She followed the familiar route, noticing small changes—a new store sign, a fenced-off vacant lot… In the courtyard they’d built a new playground, and a boy of about six sat by a puddle with his bare feet in it.
“I’m at the beach!” he announced happily.
Vika smiled and pulled a chocolate bar from her pocket.
“Here, Robinson!”
Of course, the grandmother pretended everything was fine and insisted it had been her own idea.
“Nikita will stop by—buy groceries, drive me to the hospital if I need it,” she explained.
“And when was the last time he came?” Vika asked.
“Yesterday.”
Vika knew she was lying: the trash bag under the sink was packed full and already smelled, and the bread was so stale you could hammer nails with it.
“Let me run to the store,” Vika suggested. “I need to buy cheese anyway—I completely forgot.”
The cheese part was her lie.
The grandmother tried to protest, but Vika insisted. And when she left, she “accidentally” forgot her umbrella on purpose, so she could come back the next day to pick it up—and “go to the store” again. At first the grandmother resisted, saying it wasn’t necessary and that Nikita came by. But in the fall, when Vika came down with a cold and didn’t show up for a week, afraid of infecting her, the grandmother called herself and timidly asked when Vika could visit.
It was obvious that traveling back and forth often was hard, so Vika solved it her own way: she made a deal about the trash with that same boy who had been “playing beach”—for fifty rubles a week he took out the garbage every day. Vika ordered groceries by delivery, even bought the grandmother a smartphone and taught her how to use an app. Nikita always claimed the grandmother wouldn’t manage, but she did. Vika came once a week—sometimes more, sometimes less. The grandmother seemed to have forgotten that Nikita used to be Vika’s husband; she boasted about his first child and melted over the videos Nikita sent to her new phone.
“Have they brought the great-grandson to you?” Vika asked once.
“What are you talking about—he’s still so little!”
They did bring the baby for his first birthday—the grandmother asked Vika to withdraw ten thousand rubles from her card for a gift. That’s how Vika knew every time Nikita visited: for his birthday, for the baby’s day, for New Year’s, and once more in April—apparently the blonde’s birthday. For every holiday the grandmother withdrew a hefty sum for a present. She tried to push money on Vika, too, but Vika refused.
“I’ll be really upset with you,” she would say.
One day the grandmother told her:
“Fine. But then promise you’ll fulfill one request of mine. And I won’t pester you with money anymore.”
“What request?”
“I’ll tell you later.”
Later meant later, and Vika agreed.
When Pavel—Pavlik—appeared in Vika’s life, the grandmother was the first to know. Vika hardly spoke to her mother anymore: her mother started drinking alongside the stepfather and did nothing but scold Vika, calling her a failure.
“You let a man with an apartment slip through your fingers—how can you be so foolish? You’ll spend your whole life cramped in your little boxes!”
Pavlik didn’t have an apartment. But he promised he’d earn one. He was five years younger, and Vika refused his attention for a long time, until finally she gave in. He was kind and cheerful, and his family accepted her immediately—they lived in a private house on the outskirts of town, and besides Pavlik, there were five more brothers in the family.
“I didn’t dare try for a girl a seventh time,” his mother told Vika with a sad smile. “I’ll wait for granddaughters. What about you—do you want children, or are you one of those career women?”
“I want them,” Vika admitted.
“Then I’ll be waiting for a granddaughter from you. Pavlik is our most serious one—the rest are still such troublemakers!”
They married modestly, without a big celebration, and used their savings to go traveling. Vika worried terribly about how the grandmother would cope without her, but there was nothing to be done.
Her worries weren’t for nothing. No one knew exactly how it happened—maybe she suddenly felt unwell and went out to get help, or maybe she decided to go down to the trash bins herself… They found her on the stairwell, already cold.
Vika knew she wasn’t supposed to cry or stress too much—only the day before she had taken a test, and she was so happy, thinking she would come and tell the grandmother… But how could she not cry? If she hadn’t left, none of this would have happened. She didn’t even make it to the funeral: Nikita didn’t tell her, even though he knew she still kept in touch with the grandmother. But Vika didn’t call him to scream.
Instead, a few days later, Nikita’s wife called.
“What, you think you’re the smartest? We’ll take this to court and prove she was out of her mind when she wrote that!”
Vika couldn’t understand what she was talking about. The blonde shouted, hurled insults, and only near the end did Vika realize the argument was about some apartment.
The next day the notary called too, inviting Vika to come in and review the will. It turned out the grandmother had also left her a letter.
Vika read it with tears in her eyes. The grandmother wrote so many warm words, thanked her so deeply, that Vika felt embarrassed—she hadn’t done any of it for gratitude, but because she truly loved her like family. And there was nobody else to love. “Here is the request I told you about: accept this apartment as a gift. I have nothing else to repay you with.”
Vika assumed the letter meant the apartment where the grandmother had lived. But the notary explained that it referred to the two-bedroom apartment where Nikita and his wife lived. The one-bedroom apartment belonged to Nikita—his grandmother had gifted it to him.
Vika asked for time to think and discussed everything with Pavlik. She didn’t want any apartment if it meant threats and constant calls; the last thing she needed was to risk losing the baby. But ignoring the grandmother’s final request felt wrong. They talked it through for a long time, and in the end, they agreed on one decision.
They invited Nikita and his wife to meet at the notary’s office, after first consulting the notary. The notary said Vika wasn’t very savvy, but he didn’t argue with her.
Nikita’s wife lunged at Vika verbally—and would have done it physically if Pavlik hadn’t been standing beside her. She spewed venom, made threats.
“Shut up!” Nikita suddenly snapped. “She got it fairly—she cared for Grandma for three years.”
For a moment Vika was speechless—she’d prepared an entire speech for Nikita.
“And there’s nothing to talk about. I don’t even know what we’re discussing. We’ll move our things and clear out,” he added, not looking at Vika.
That was when Vika laid out her plan. She didn’t want to destroy their household. A one-bedroom place on the outskirts was enough for her. She and the notary had already figured out how to do it legally; all that was left was Nikita’s consent.
For the first time, he raised his eyes and looked at her. He looked guilty.
And his wife instantly calmed down and started demanding coffee and cookies—she was tired from the trip, and Vika could have said everything right away instead of dragging people out here.
Vika had a baby girl. She named her Sonya, after the grandmother. Pavlik’s mother was over the moon—she would have more granddaughters later. But Sonya would always be the most beloved of them all.