The door of the expensive SUV swung open, and a rush of cold wind mixed with rain flooded the interior.
“Get out! I’m already late for my meeting because of you!” Igor snapped, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel and checking the time with growing irritation.
Galina Petrovna blinked in confusion, trying to make out anything familiar through the gray sheet of rain. Around her there was nothing but an empty lot and a half-collapsed bus stop with a rusted frame. The city was at least five kilometers away.
“Igoryok… son, please, just take me a little farther… at least to the metro. I still have my hospital papers with me… my blood pressure has been unstable all day…” Her voice trembled with helplessness.
“Mom, I’ve already spent an hour crawling through traffic with you! I’m about to sign a contract! A bus will come in fifteen minutes. You can wait!”
“Igor, it’s a suburban bus… it only comes once every hour and a half…”
“Then sit and wait! I’m not your free chauffeur!” he barked, leaning across her and tossing her bag straight into a muddy puddle.
Galina had no choice but to step out before she fell after her belongings. She did not even have time to pull the door shut. Her son slammed it from the inside. The car shot away, spraying her with dirty water.
She slowly lowered herself onto the soaked bench. Rain streamed down her face, mixing with her hot tears. Inside her, something cracked sharply and completely.
Just three months earlier, she had sold her summer cottage. The very place where every apple tree had been planted by her own hands, where little Igor used to run barefoot through the grass. She sold it because her son had dropped to his knees and begged her:
“Mom, my business is collapsing, I desperately need money! Lend it to me, I’ll pay you back in six months, with interest! Without you, I’m done for!”
She gave him eight hundred thousand hryvnias. Every last bit of it.
And now that same “saved” son had thrown her out into the rain like something useless.
Her phone vibrated in her pocket. An unfamiliar number flashed on the screen.
“Galina Petrovna? This is Veronika. Igor’s girlfriend. We need to meet urgently.”
The next day, Galina sat in a cheap coffee shop. Across from her was a well-dressed, beautiful young woman. Beneath her loose coat, the curve of her pregnant belly was impossible to miss.
“You’re… expecting?” Galina asked softly.
“Five months. Didn’t your son tell you?” Veronika gave a bitter little laugh. “Of course he didn’t. He’s very good at hiding the truth.”
She took a folder out of her bag and placed it on the table.
“Yesterday I was looking for my test results in his desk… and I found this instead.”
Galina looked down. In front of her lay a purchase agreement for a luxurious three-bedroom apartment in a new building. Registered solely in Igor’s name. The date matched exactly the day she had transferred him the money from selling the cottage.
“He told me it was from his bonuses… that he had earned our home himself,” Veronika said, her voice shaking. “And yesterday one of his coworkers told me how he laughed and said he had ‘dumped the old woman by the roadside so she wouldn’t ruin his mood before the meeting.’”
Galina’s vision darkened.
“My mother has been gone for ten years…” Veronika suddenly burst into tears. “I would give anything just to hold her hand again… and he left his own mother out in the rain. I left him today. I don’t want my child to have a father like that.”
Back at home, Galina sat in the dark for a long time. There were no tears left. They had all run out the day before. In their place came a cold, iron-hard anger.
Then the phone rang. On the screen: My Son.
“Mom, send me five thousand until payday. Veronika lost it and moved out… I need to blow off some steam.”
“Igor. I know about the apartment. And I know what happened to the money from the cottage.”
Silence filled the line. Then came a laugh, mean and cynical.
“So what? I bought it! Are you really sorry for your own son? You gave me the money yourself!”
“You promised it was a business loan.”
“Mom, what kind of loan is there between family?” he snapped. “You wanted to help, so you helped. Stop making a drama out of it.”
“You left me standing in the rain. My blood pressure was nearly two hundred.”
“Oh, stop acting like some victim! Buses exist! I never asked to be born so I could spend my whole life taking care of you! I don’t owe you anything!”
He hung up.
Galina Petrovna slowly lowered the phone.
I never asked to be born.
I don’t owe you anything.
The next morning, she was already in a lawyer’s office.
“Do I have a chance?” she asked calmly, placing printouts of the transfers on the desk.
“There’s no formal loan agreement…” the lawyer said with a frown. “But if there’s a witness…”
“There is. His former partner. She’s ready to testify.”
The lawyer gave a grim smile.
“Then we can press him hard.”
When Igor received the court summons and a copy of the lawsuit demanding repayment of the debt and accusing him of fraud, he rushed straight to his mother’s apartment.
He pounded on the door, but Galina did not let him in. She spoke to him through the chain lock.
“Have you lost your mind?! You’re suing your own son?!”
“And you left your own mother in the rain.”
“You’re going to ruin my career! I’m already being investigated because of you! Open the door!”
“My pension is five thousand, and I have hypertension. I can barely afford my medicine. But you never asked me to give birth to you, remember? So now I’m finally living for myself. Either you return the eight hundred thousand, or I’ll see you in court. And yes, I sent a copy of the claim to your company’s security department.”
“You… monster!”
“No, Igor. I simply stopped being convenient. Leave.”
A month later, the money appeared in her account. Igor had taken out a loan with crushing interest just to keep the matter from reaching court.
In the payment note he wrote:
Choke on it. You are no mother of mine anymore.
Galina read it calmly… and deleted his number.
Now she sat in her newly refreshed, cozy apartment. Good vitamins stood on the table, things she had once considered too expensive for herself. Inside her passport was a ticket to Truskavets. For the first time in forty years, she had allowed herself a stay at a health resort.
Then the doorbell rang.
Veronika stood on the threshold. In her arms slept a tiny baby girl in a pink onesie.
“I’m sorry for coming without warning…” she said with a soft smile. “We just came from the maternity hospital. I wanted to show her to you… I named her Galina.”
Galina Petrovna froze. Tears rose to her eyes—but these were tears filled with light.
“Why Galina? You don’t have any relative by that name…”
“No,” Veronika said quietly. “But I do have an example of a woman who defended herself and kept her dignity, even when she was betrayed by the people closest to her.”
Galina gently took the baby into her arms. The little girl opened her eyes and wrapped her tiny fingers around Galina’s chain.
“You know, Veronika…” Galina said softly, looking at the child, “the most frightening thing is not loneliness. The most frightening thing is spending your whole life for people who are ready to wipe their feet on you the moment it suits them.”
Outside, the sun shone brightly, drying the last puddles. For the first time in many years, Galina Petrovna breathed freely. She had lost her son… but at last, she had found herself.
What would you have done in her place? Would you have forgiven him for the sake of family, or gone all the way?