They finished the dacha at the tail end of summer, in the worst of the heat, when all they wanted was to lie still and do nothing. But they could not afford that kind of laziness. The terrace still needed paint, the trim around the windows had to be nailed in place, the last baseboards in the hallway had to be replaced, and curtains still had to be hung in the small room Olya had already started thinking of as her office.
Maxim painted and hammered. Olya patched walls and hung fabric. In the evenings, they sat on the still-unpainted steps with mugs of tea, watching darkness settle over the pines. And Olya kept thinking the same thing: this is it. This is my place. At last.
The dacha had come to her from her aunt, the only relative who, it seemed, had truly loved her. Her aunt had died two years earlier, and ever since then the house had stood shuttered and abandoned, slowly decaying, swallowed by wild vine on the outside and loneliness on the inside. Then she and Maxim had come there together, walking from room to room, studying what might still be saved. Maxim had looked around and said, “We’ll save all of it,” and Olya had burst into tears right there beside her aunt’s old glass-fronted cabinet.
Then came a year of renovations that turned into a year and a half. Then that final summer, the last details, the finishing touches. And finally, it was done.
Olya worked remotely. She edited texts, wrote articles, juggled several projects at once. Her work demanded quiet and focus. Their apartment in the city gave her neither. There were neighbors, traffic, the constant hum of urban life you barely notice until you are somewhere without it. The dacha had different sounds: pine trees, birds, distant thunder. Those sounds she could work with. In that kind of silence, she could think. She could write.
The office turned out exactly as she had imagined it: white walls, a wooden desk by a window facing the garden, a narrow shelf lined with the books she reread again and again because she could not live without them. Nothing unnecessary. Only work and air.
Her mother-in-law came in mid-September. She had invited herself, saying she had long wanted to see what they had done with the place. Olya did not object. The renovation was finished, the dacha looked beautiful and cared for, and there was no reason to refuse. If her mother-in-law had been searching for flaws, she would have had a hard time finding any.
She did not come alone. With her came Nastya, Maxim’s sister, and her children. There were two of them: a boy of about eight and a girl a little younger. Both were loud, restless, bursting with that endless kind of energy children seem to have. The boy immediately bolted into the garden and started climbing the apple tree. The girl burst into tears demanding something no one could quite make out. Nastya snapped at them both with no visible effect.
Their mother-in-law, Vera Pavlovna, stood in the middle of the living room looking around as if she were conducting an inspection. Her gaze had always been like that: sharp, probing, quick to notice anything out of place. But now it was difficult even for her to find fault, because the place truly did look lovely.
“Well now,” she said at last. “You’ve made it… cozy.”
She said the word in a tone that could mean almost anything: praise, surprise, or mild disapproval that they had gone to so much trouble.
“Maxim did a lot,” Olya said.
“Maxim, of course,” Vera Pavlovna replied, with that subtle implication that Maxim’s part in it was obvious, natural, expected. After all, he was her son.
Nastya wandered from room to room, peeking into corners, touching the curtains.
“This is great,” she kept saying. “Seriously great. I’d live here.”
“I will,” Olya said. “In the summer.”
“It must be paradise here in summer,” Nastya said dreamily. “Quiet, nature… In the city we can barely breathe when it gets hot.”
Olya felt something then, just a pinprick of foreboding. Nothing more. She said nothing.
They drank tea on the terrace. The children raced around the garden, crashing back every few minutes with demands: give us something tasty, let us climb where we should not, settle an argument. Nastya responded every other time. Olya tried not to pay attention.
“You should come here more often,” Vera Pavlovna suddenly said to Nastya, clearly referring to the children. It was not really an invitation. It sounded more like a decision already made on everyone’s behalf.
Olya answered politely, but very clearly.
“I’m always glad to see you. But please let me know in advance. I work here, and I can’t always make time for guests. It’s better to arrange things beforehand so I can plan.”
Vera Pavlovna gave her a look of mild, almost gentle bewilderment.
“But we’re family,” she said. “Not strangers.”
“I understand,” Olya replied. “I’m still asking you to give notice.”
“Oh, come on,” Nastya said with a careless wave. “We wouldn’t stay long. We won’t get in the way.”
Olya said nothing. Maxim looked off to the side.
After they left, Olya stood for a long time looking out at the garden, where the boy had managed to snap a branch off the apple tree and the girl had dumped the soil out of a flowerpot of geraniums by the porch.
“Don’t worry about it,” Maxim said. “They only came to take a look.”
“I’m not worried,” Olya answered. “I’m giving a warning.”
Winter passed in the city, swallowed by work. The dacha stood under the snow, and Olya thought of it with tenderness and impatience, the way you think about something that is waiting for you and will not disappear. By February she had already begun counting the weeks until spring. In March she bought seeds for the vegetable beds. At the beginning of April, when the first seedlings pushed up on the windowsill, she realized she was ready. It was time to go back. Soon.
They drove out for a weekend to check how the house had survived the winter. Everything was fine. The garden was still asleep, but the buds on the apple tree had swollen, and the air carried that particular feeling of April when the ground is still cold but the sun is already warm, both sensations at once, and somehow that makes everything feel miraculous.
Olya walked through the garden thinking: in a month I’ll move here. Maxim will come on weekends, and I’ll stay. I’ll work, dig in the garden, read on the terrace in the evenings.
On Sunday evening Vera Pavlovna called. Maxim put the phone on speaker while they were eating dinner.
“So, how’s the dacha? Did it survive the winter?”
“It’s all fine,” Maxim said. “In about a month we’ll be coming for a longer stay.”
“I’ll be moving there,” Olya corrected.
“Yes, good,” Vera Pavlovna said. “By the way, I wanted to tell you something. I already told the nieces and nephews they’ll be spending the summer at your dacha, so make sure everything is ready for the children!”
Olya slowly set down her fork.
The voice on the phone kept going on about fresh air, about how good country life is for children, about how Nastya was overwhelmed with work and could not take them to the seaside, and how the dacha was perfect: close, safe, and with Olya there anyway to keep an eye on them.
Maxim was nodding, though it was not clear why.
“Wait,” Olya said.
Her voice came out calm. Even she was surprised by that.
“Vera Pavlovna, wait. Am I understanding this correctly? You decided that Nastya’s children will spend the summer at our dacha?”
“Well yes,” Vera Pavlovna replied in the tone of someone who could not imagine what needed explaining.
“Did you discuss that with us?”
“I’m telling you now.”
“You already told the children.”
“They were so happy!” There was something self-satisfied and faintly triumphant in Vera Pavlovna’s voice. “If only you’d seen them. So excited. The dacha, nature, butterflies…”
Olya stood up from the table.
“No,” she said.
There was silence on the line.
“What do you mean, no?”
“I mean no. The children will not be spending the summer at the dacha.”
“Why not?” Vera Pavlovna asked, as if the question were absurd.
“Because I work there. Because I’m not a nanny. Because you made this decision without asking me and then presented it as a fact. I am not taking the children to the dacha.”
The pause grew longer.
“Olya,” Vera Pavlovna said, and her voice took on that special note, half wounded and half reproachful, the tone mastered by a certain kind of woman. “This is family. Your family. Do you understand that?”
“I do understand. The answer is still no.”
“But they’re children. They need fresh air, nature…”
“I hear you. No.”
“You can’t just refuse…”
“Yes, I can,” Olya said. “It’s my dacha.”
The words came out on their own, and once she said them, they rang true. Her aunt’s dacha. Her dacha. The place she had rescued, rebuilt, imagined into being again. Her place for work, for quiet, for herself.
The conversation ended badly. Vera Pavlovna raised her voice and said several things Olya did not enjoy hearing. Olya did not shout back. She spoke evenly, firmly, in short sentences. In the end she said goodbye and hung up.
Maxim was standing in the kitchen doorway.
“Maybe you could’ve been gentler,” he said.
“Maybe you could have said no right away,” she replied. “You could have said it the moment she started.”
Maxim stayed silent.
“Why didn’t you?”
“I didn’t have time…”
“You were nodding.”
He had no answer.
Olya looked at him. She had known him for years, knew that face well: intelligent, kind, and now helplessly uncertain. The face of a man who had spent his whole life standing between two fires and had learned never to step fully toward either one. Not because he was a coward. Because it was easier that way. If you never choose, then no one can blame you.
“Maxim,” she said. “We need to talk.”
They talked for a long time. Olya did not raise her voice. She never did; that was not her way. She spoke slowly, arranging her thoughts the way she arranged arguments in a text, one after another, tightly, with no gaps.
She said: this is what’s happening. Your mother keeps making decisions about our life, about our dacha, my time, my work, without asking me. She did it in the autumn when she said they would be dropping by often, without checking first. She’s doing it again now. And every time I say no, everyone acts shocked, as if I was supposed to say yes.
Maxim listened.
Olya continued: I understand that she is your mother. I understand that you love her. But you are not living with your mother. You are living with me. And I want an honest answer: who comes first for you?
He was silent for a long time.
“You do,” he said at last.
“I don’t just want to hear that,” Olya replied. “I want to see it in specific actions. Starting now.”
“What do you mean?”
“Call her. Today. Tell her the children are not coming to the dacha. Tell her that nobody comes to the dacha without my invitation, ever, under any circumstances. Say it clearly. Not gently, not vaguely. Clearly.”
Maxim stared at her.
“She’ll be upset.”
“Probably.”
“It’ll be an unpleasant conversation.”
“Yes.”
“Olya…”
“Maxim.” She said his name in a way that made him stop. “You just said I come first. Now prove it.”
He got up. Took the phone. Went out onto the terrace.
Olya stayed at the table. She looked through the window at the garden, at the swelling buds on the apple tree, at the pale April sky. She could hear Maxim speaking beyond the glass, first quietly, then a little louder, then calm again. She could not make out the words. She did not try.
The conversation lasted a long time, longer than she had expected. She thought: now he is explaining, trying to convince her, and his mother is arguing back, and he is explaining again. She did feel a little sorry for him. That was true. But not enough to regret asking what she had asked.
At last Maxim came back and sat across from her.
“I talked to her,” he said.
“And?”
“I told her. She… was upset. She said I’ve changed. That I used to be different.” He gave a crooked little smile. “She said you were turning me against her.”
“I knew she would say that.”
“I told her you had nothing to do with it. That it was my decision.” He paused. “I told her the dacha is yours, that you work there, that nobody can come without an invitation. That it isn’t up for discussion.”
Olya nodded.
“Thank you,” she said.
“She hung up on me.”
“She’ll call again. In a day or two, once she cools down a little.”
“Probably,” he agreed.
“And when she does, you’ll have to say the same thing again. Calmly. No scandal. But firmly.”
Maxim looked at her for a long time, with an expression she had rarely seen on his face. Something like relief he had not expected to feel.
“You know,” he said quietly, “I realized something today.”
“What?”
“I’ve spent my whole life trying to make sure everyone was happy. My mother happy, you happy, everyone happy. I thought that was the right thing.”
“It isn’t,” Olya said. “It’s convenient. For you. That way you never have to choose.”
“Yes,” he said. “Yes. That’s exactly it.”
Outside, evening was falling. April twilight comes quickly: a moment ago it is still light, and then suddenly the garden dissolves into blue shadow, everything grows quiet, and far away a bird cries out, one solitary note in the thickening air.
Olya thought that in a month she would be here. She would sit at her desk by the window in that white-walled office, with the garden outside and silence all around, and she would work exactly as she had imagined.
No other people’s children trampling through the garden beds. No unexpected visits. No voices in the next room when she needed stillness. Only her dacha, her work, her summer.
“Shall we go home?” Maxim asked.
“Yes,” Olya said. “Let’s go.”
She stood up, gathered the cups from the table, rinsed them in the sink. Then she stood by the window for another minute, for no particular reason. After that she turned off the light and stepped outside.
Olya walked around the house to make sure everything was locked and closed, then stopped by the apple tree. She touched the bark. The buds were alive, taut, ready.
Soon, she thought. Very soon.
They left after dark. The dacha remained behind them: dark, closed, patient. It knew how to wait. Olya knew that because she knew how to wait too.
Vera Pavlovna called again three days later. The conversation was difficult. She spoke about family, duty, how people simply do not behave this way. Maxim listened without interrupting, and then he repeated exactly what he had said the first time, evenly, without apology, without extra explanation. No. No one comes without an invitation. The decision is final.
She hung up on him again.
Then Nastya called, offended and a little bewildered, not used to having her plans collapse so completely. This time Olya answered herself.
“I understand that this is inconvenient,” she said. “But the dacha is my workplace. I can’t host the children for the whole summer. If you want to come for a weekend, message me in advance and we can talk about it.”
“Are you serious?” Nastya asked.
“I am,” Olya said.
“Well, fine then,” Nastya replied in the voice of someone who had not yet decided whether she was insulted or not.
Olya hung up and looked at the seedlings on the windowsill. The tomato plants were stretching toward the light, thin, stubborn, unstoppable.
Maxim came in carrying two mugs of tea.
“How are you?” he asked.
“Good,” Olya said. And for once, it was entirely true.
She took the mug in both hands, feeling its pleasant weight and warmth. Outside, a thin April rain was falling, quiet and purposeful. In a month she would be at the dacha. Sitting at her desk. Listening to the pines. Working in the silence.
Exactly as she wanted.
Exactly as it should be.