“Valera, listen… don’t you feel even a little sorry to leave all this behind?” Antonina’s voice was soft, almost pleading, as her finger traced the intricate pattern on the new linen curtains she had designed herself for the veranda. “You put your soul into this place. Every screw, every outlet — it’s your work.”
“That’s exactly why, Tonya,” Valery replied without looking up from the electrical panel diagram he was sketching in his notebook, checking the final voltage readings. “Because I know the value of my own labor. I’m a design engineer. I’m used to documents and facts, not whims and tantrums. Your mother thinks I’m here to ‘grab’ her property — beautiful word, by the way. My nervous system is worth more to me than this house, even if it is perfect now.”
“But she’s… she’s just an old woman. She has fears,” Antonina said, stepping closer and placing her hand on his shoulder. There was hope in that gesture, an attempt to smooth over the sharp edges that had been sticking out of their lives for the last two years like rusty nails from an old fence. “Once she sees how we live here, she’ll calm down. I’ll talk to her again. Gently. Without accusations.”
“You spoke gently two years ago, when we were hauling mountains of garbage out of here,” Valery finally lifted his head. There was no anger in his gray eyes, only the exhaustion of a man tired of proving he wasn’t some sort of villain. “And then, when I paid for the new roof out of my bonus money, she said I was doing it so I could present the bill during a divorce. Tonya, I love you. But I’m not a masochist.”
“Let’s just try to stay for the summer. Only us,” Antonina begged. “You, me, and silence. Fresh air. You wanted to test the drainage system during the rainy season yourself. And if… if Mom even hints at coming, we’ll leave immediately.”
Valery looked at his wife. Antonina, a talented interior designer, could create comfort even inside a concrete box, and she had turned this summer house into something worthy of a magazine spread. He loved the way she looked at it — as if it were their shared child.
“All right,” he exhaled, closing the notebook. “Here’s the deal: if your mother shows up here, I’m gone. Immediately. No long packing, no farewell tea parties. I get in the car and leave. What you do after that is up to you.”
“Thank you!” She hugged him, pressing her cheek against his stubbly one. “You’re the best. She won’t come. She’s afraid of drafts and mosquitoes. Everything will be fine.”
The veranda smelled of warm wood and pine needles. It was that fragile kind of happiness they had built brick by brick.
The history of this house was like a neglected illness that had been treated for a long time, only for the patient to turn out ungrateful. Five years earlier, when Antonina’s father left the family, exhausted by his wife’s endless complaints, the summer house had been abandoned. Galina Petrovna, a loud woman who considered herself a “victim of circumstances,” never went to the property. She was too lazy. At most, once a season, she would bring her friends there, steam in the bathhouse, leave behind piles of dirty dishes and empty bottles, and drive away without even turning off the lights.
When Antonina married Valery, the question of the summer house came up by chance. The young couple wanted a corner of their own in nature. Valery, a thorough man used to precision in his work as a design engineer, suggested restoring the house. His mother-in-law only snorted back then.
“Do whatever you want. It’s rotting there anyway.”
But she flatly refused to transfer the property into anyone else’s name.
“Oh, sure! You’ll divorce him in a year, and he’ll snatch half my house. I know these slippery types!”
Valery said nothing at the time. He decided to prove through action that he cared not about the cadastral value of the land, but about his wife’s comfort.
Two years. Two long years, he poured every spare ruble into that place. He replaced the rotten lower logs of the frame, installed new wiring according to all safety standards, drilled a well, and put in a septic system. Antonina took care of the interior. She chose the colors, furniture, and textiles. From a gloomy crypt, the house turned into a bright, stylish cottage with a cozy fireplace.
At first, Galina Petrovna stayed quiet. But the moment the house began to shine, greed woke up in her, thickly mixed with suspicion. She started coming for “inspections.” She walked across the new laminate in dirty shoes, poked the walls with her finger, and spoke loudly enough for the neighbors to hear as she told her friends:
“Look at that, Lizka, how hard my son-in-law worked! Not for nothing, oh, not for nothing. He wormed his way in, invested money, and now he’ll try to get his claws into it. Cunning rat!”
Antonina was ashamed. Valery endured it. For a while.
And then that day came. The beginning of another summer season.
Antonina’s phone, lying on the elegant handmade table, began to vibrate. The screen lit up: “Mommy.”
Antonina answered, smiling at her husband, who was fiddling with the router settings.
“Hello, hi, Mom.”
“Hi, sweetheart!” her mother’s voice rang out, cheerful — too cheerful. “Listen, the girls and I talked it over. The weather is practically begging for a getaway! So, we’re heading to your place. Expect us by evening!”
Antonina’s smile faded. She caught Valery’s eyes. He froze.
“Mom, wait,” Antonina’s voice trembled, though she tried to make it firm again. “Valera and I are living here. We planned to spend the summer alone. There isn’t much space for guests.”
“What do you mean, alone?” Galina Petrovna’s tone changed instantly, becoming shrill and demanding. “Are you saying you won’t let your own mother through the door? The house is mine, the documents are in my name, or have you forgotten? Don’t get too bold! We’ve already packed our bags. Aunt Lyusya and Aunt Ira are coming with me. Can you imagine, Ira dumped her brat on her husband — we’re going to have fun! So hurry up and set the table. And move that leather sofa from the living room down to the first floor. Lyusya can’t be bothered to climb stairs.”
“Mom, WAIT!” Antonina tried to interrupt the stream of words. “Valera asked… Valera doesn’t want—”
“I couldn’t care less what your Valera wants!” the receiver screamed so loudly that even from the corner of the room it was audible. “If he doesn’t like it, he can get lost! Look at him, acting like a lord! In my house, he’s going to set rules for me? Anyway, we’ll be there in three hours. The bus is leaving soon. Meet us, and make sure the barbecue is ready!”
The call ended.
Silence settled over the room. Thick, sticky, unpleasant silence.
Antonina slowly lowered the phone. She felt the softness and hope inside her turning into something cold, heavy, and bitter.
“She’s coming,” Antonina whispered. “With her friends. She ordered us to move the sofa.”
Valery didn’t say a word. He simply stood up, neatly wound the cable, placed his tools in the case, and snapped the locks shut.
“I warned you,” he said evenly, without emotion. “I did not sign up to be a porter for her drunken friends. And I will not tolerate insults in my own home… in the house I turned into a home.”
He went to the closet and began packing his things.
Antonina looked at his straight back, and anger began to boil inside her. Not at him. At the woman who believed that giving birth to a daughter meant receiving two grown adults as slaves.
“Valera,” she said quietly. “I can’t go with you right now.”
He turned around, raising his eyebrows in surprise.
“You want to stay and serve them? After what she said?”
“No. But I have an idea. You go. Truly. You don’t need to see this.”
“Tonya, don’t be foolish. Let’s go back to the city.”
“Valera, trust me. I’ll give her the keys. Let her use her summer house. Her own summer house.”
At that moment, Valery’s phone rang. It was his mother, Elena Sergeyevna.
“Son, hello!” Her warm voice was the complete opposite of what they had heard minutes before. “You haven’t worked yourselves to death out there, have you? I baked apple charlotte and heated the bathhouse. The cherry trees are blooming here, it’s unbelievably beautiful. Maybe you and Tonechka could come? I haven’t seen you in ages. Your father is waiting too — he wants to show you his new machine.”
Valery put her on speaker. Antonina heard everything.
“Hi, Mom,” Valera said, looking at his wife. “We’ve actually just… become free.”
“Oh, wonderful! Come over! Tonechka, can you hear me? I prepared those strawberry seedlings for you — the ones you wanted.”
Antonina nodded, swallowing the lump in her throat. This was family. A place where people waited for you with pie, not orders to drag furniture around.
“Elena Sergeyevna, thank you,” she said loudly. “We’ll come soon. Valera will arrive first, and I… I’ll come a little later by train. I just need to do something here.”
Valery ended the call and looked at his wife carefully.
“Tonya, what are you planning?”
“Nothing criminal,” she said, her lips pressing into a thin line. “I’m simply returning everything to its original condition. Go.”
He hesitated for a minute, then nodded. He knew his wife. If the designer in her had awakened and saw a picture hanging crookedly, she would not rest until she straightened it. Or ripped it off the wall entirely.
“Be careful. I’ll wait for you at Mom’s.”
When Valery’s car disappeared around the bend, Antonina closed the gate. Her face changed. The softness vanished. The uncertainty disappeared. All that remained was the cold calculation of a professional who saw that a project had failed and needed liquidation.
It was the middle of the day. The sky began to darken, gathering heavy gray clouds, which felt very symbolic.
Antonina had about two hours before the bus arrived. Not much time, but motivation is a powerful force.
She took out her phone and opened the summer village chat.
The first message went to Uncle Misha, a neighbor who lived two plots away.
“Uncle Misha, you asked about the birch firewood Valera prepared for the fireplace. And the wood for the bathhouse too. Take it all. Pickup now. Five thousand for everything.”
The price was ridiculous. There was enough dry, chopped firewood for two full truckloads.
Ten minutes later, a motorized cart with a trailer rattled up to the gate. Uncle Misha, a stocky little man in a faded cap, could hardly believe his luck.
“Tonya, are you serious? Valerka broke his back chopping all this…”
“Take it, Uncle Misha. Urgent move. No time to explain.”
Next she wrote to Larisa, a neighbor and mother of many children who had long dreamed of a large refrigerator and washing machine but never had enough money.
“Lara, two-chamber fridge, washing machine, microwave. And the sofa from the first floor. Take them for a symbolic price. Right now.”
Larisa came running with her husband and two older sons.
Antonina acted like a machine. She felt no pity for the things. Those things had been bought with Valery’s money. The furniture had been chosen by her. Her father had once brought old Soviet junk here long ago, but they had thrown it out in the first year.
“What happened?” Larisa’s husband puffed as he and his sons carried out the heavy leather sofa — the very sofa Aunt Lyusya had planned to sprawl on.
“The concept has changed,” Antonina replied shortly, unscrewing the expensive Italian faucets. She replaced them with old rusty taps that had been lying in the shed. Valery had never gotten around to throwing them away because of his habit of thinking, “It might come in handy someday.” Today, it did.
Curtains. Textiles. Dishes. All of it moved into neighbors’ trunks or Larisa’s bags.
Antonina walked through the house. It was emptying before her eyes.
She unscrewed every light bulb. Expensive energy-saving ones. She left only empty sockets.
Then she went down to the basement. The water purification system, the pump station — all of it had been installed by Valery in such a way that it could be removed in half an hour, if one knew what to twist. Antonina knew. She had often helped her husband.
Of course, she didn’t sell the station — it was too valuable. She simply shut off the main water valve somewhere deep inside, using a key only they had, and removed the automatic control unit. Without it, the pump was just a piece of metal. There would be no water in the house.
Electricity. She flipped the switch on the pole, to which she had access, and hung her own lock on the panel. The key flew into a patch of nettles. Only the old wiring remained in the house, cut off from power.
In two hours, the house had transformed.
It was no longer a cozy cottage. It was an empty shell.
In the living room, only an old wobbly table remained — the kind that remembered her father’s drinking sessions with his friends — along with two stools. In the corner, an ancient sagging sofa-bed huddled miserably. The neighbors wouldn’t even take it for free because it smelled of dampness and mice. It had been standing in the garage. Antonina dragged it into the house with difficulty. Let it stay. Her mother asked for a sofa? Here it was, signed and delivered.
The final touch of the “redesign” was gathering all the food. No tea. No sugar. No salt. Not a single match. Even the toilet paper was gone from the bathroom, where instead of the porcelain toilet there was now a gaping hole — she had taken the portable toilet away and given it to the guard at the entrance.
All the money she had made — not much, since she had sold everything for almost nothing, but the principle mattered more — she transferred to her husband’s card with the note: “Compensation for moral damage.”
Antonina stood in the middle of the empty living room. The walls, once decorated with paintings and shelves, now stared back at her with bare patches of unpainted wallpaper where furniture had hung, or simply with emptiness. Echo moved through the house.
It was getting cold. Outside, the wind picked up, and the first drops of rain began tapping against the metal roof. The very roof Valera had installed.
“Well then,” Antonina said into the emptiness. “Welcome home, Mom.”
She stepped onto the porch, locked the door with a key — she hadn’t changed the old lock; a new one had simply been installed above it, but she locked the new one and took the key, leaving only the old latch functional — and went to the gate.
Her friend Oksana, who had spent the whole summer sitting in a stuffy apartment and complaining of boredom, was already waiting in her car at the entrance to the village.
“Tonya, why are you so pale?” Oksana asked when Antonina got into the car.
“I’m fine. Drive me to the station. I’m going to my mother-in-law’s.”
“And your mom?”
“My mom is about to arrive. To have fun.”
The bus arrived on schedule. A noisy landing party spilled out of it.
Galina Petrovna, a woman in a bright pink windbreaker, commanded the parade.
“Lyuska, don’t fall behind! Irka, carry the bag with the wine carefully — the Isabella is in there! Oh, girls, we’re going to have a proper time now! My son-in-law has probably already fired up the grill and heated the bathhouse. Everything there is top class, I told you!”
Her friends followed behind her: Lyudmila, a skinny woman with a mean face, divorced three times and hating the entire male sex, and Irina, a plump, breathless lady whose only dream was to escape her overcrowded apartment for a while.
“Galya, will your son-in-law make a fuss?” Irina asked, stepping over a puddle.
“Who? Valerka?” Galina Petrovna burst into loud laughter. “Where is he going to go? I’ve got him right here!” She squeezed her plump fist. “He’s afraid to peep. He knows whose house it is. He’s nobody. A kept man. Let him work while I’m in a good mood.”
The rain grew heavier. The sky turned leaden. The wind bent the trees.
They reached the gate. Strangely, it was not locked. And there were no lights on the property, though evening was approaching and in weather like that the outdoor lamps were usually on.
“Hey! Anyone alive in there?” Galina Petrovna shouted, pushing open the gate. “Come greet your guests! Where’s the music?”
Silence. Only the noise of rain and the creak of old hinges.
They walked along the path. The flower beds were beautiful — the only thing Antonina could not, and would not, destroy. But without lighting, even they looked gloomy.
Galina Petrovna climbed onto the porch. The door was not locked.
“Tonka! Valera! Are you deaf in there?” she shouted, kicking the door open, clearly intending to make a dramatic entrance.
The effect exceeded every expectation.
She stepped inside and froze.
The house was dark. It smelled of dampness and old dust.
“No lights, or what?” she muttered and flicked the switch.
Nothing happened.
“Galya, where did you bring us?” Lyudmila’s irritated voice came from behind her. “You promised renovation, comfort…”
Galina Petrovna pulled out her phone and switched on the flashlight. The beam of light cut through the darkness and revealed a completely empty room. Bare walls. An old peeling table. Two stools. And that foul-smelling sofa in the corner.
Instead of a plasma TV, a single nail stuck out of the wall.
Instead of a soft seating area, there was emptiness.
Instead of a fireplace stacked with firewood, there was a clean, empty hearth. No wood anywhere.
“What the…” Galina Petrovna rushed to the kitchen.
Empty. No refrigerator, no microwave. Only a sink with a rusty faucet. She turned the tap. The pipes gave a deep, hollow groan and fell silent. There was no water.
“Is this some kind of joke?” Irina hissed, already soaked and desperate for warmth. “Where is the sofa? Where is the food? Where is your famous son-in-law slave?”
Galina Petrovna grabbed her phone and called her daughter.
“The subscriber is temporarily unavailable.”
She called her son-in-law.
The ringing went on for a long time. Then he answered.
“Hello! Valera! What do you think you’re doing?! Where are you?! What happened to the house?!”
“Galina Petrovna?” Valery’s voice was calm as a snake lying in the sun. “I’m at my home. At my parents’ house.”
“What do you mean?! What about us?! We arrived, and it’s empty here! Where is the furniture? Where is the electricity? Where, for God’s sake, is the firewood?!”
“I don’t know,” Valery replied. “When I left, I took my own things. Antonina must have taken the things she bought. You said the summer house was yours. Are the walls still there? Is the roof still there? Well then, enjoy your property. Nobody took anything that belonged to someone else.”
“You… you bastard! I’ll sue you! You’ll return everything!”
“Try,” Valery said with a faint laugh. “I have every receipt for construction materials and work. If you start dividing things, I’ll submit a claim for inseparable improvements. The amount is so impressive that you’ll have to sell your apartment. So I suggest you simply enjoy your vacation. Have a good evening. And yes, after rain, mosquitoes come out. Enjoy. BYE.”
He hung up.
Galina Petrovna stood in the middle of the dark, cold house, clutching her phone.
Outside the window, the rain had turned into a real storm. The roof hummed. The house grew colder by the minute.
“Well, Galya, you’re quite the liar,” Lyudmila snapped. “‘Cottage,’ ‘all inclusive,’ ‘son-in-law at your beck and call.’ You dragged us into this shed! I’m soaked! Does the toilet at least work?”
Lyudmila opened the bathroom door, shone her phone inside, and screamed. There was no toilet. Only a hole in the pipe.
“That’s it! I’m done!” she shouted. “I’m leaving!”
“Lyusya, where will you go?! It’s night, it’s pouring!” Galina Petrovna tried to stop her.
“I’d rather stand under the shelter at the bus stop than sit in this dump! I have a taxi app. I’ll call a car to the city. Come on, Ira!”
“Honestly, Galya, this is embarrassing,” Irina agreed, glancing around with disgust. “You said we’d be like queens, and this is… Ugh. There isn’t even anywhere to sit except that flea nest.” She nodded toward the old sofa.
“Girls, don’t leave me!” For the first time, real fear slipped into Galina Petrovna’s voice. Alone in an empty house, without electricity, without water, outside the city…
“You brought this on yourself. You pushed your daughter too far. You pushed your son-in-law too far. Greed ruins people,” Lyudmila threw over her shoulder, picking up her bag. “Goodbye, friend.”
The two figures disappeared into the rainy darkness. A couple of minutes later, the headlights of a taxi appeared in the distance — expensive, but comfort was worth more.
Galina Petrovna was left alone.
She sat down on the creaking stool. The only source of light, her phone screen, showed 15% battery. She hadn’t brought a power bank. She had assumed there would be plenty of outlets.
Fear crept in. The darkness pressed against her ears. The cold reached her bones. She wanted to make tea, but there was no kettle, no water, no stove.
She wanted to wrap herself in a blanket, but there were no blankets.
She was hungry, but no one had set the table, and she had brought no food of her own, counting on a free feast.
She sat inside her property. Inside those very walls she had guarded so fiercely. She had received exactly what she wanted — the summer house entirely at her disposal. No one claimed it. No one divided it.
But a summer house without love and care turned out to be nothing more than a cold crypt.
Tears of anger and self-pity ran down her plump cheeks. She tried calling her daughter again, but a mechanical voice replied:
“The device of the subscriber is switched off.”
At that same moment, Antonina was sitting in her mother-in-law’s bright, warm kitchen, drinking tea with apple charlotte and laughing at her father-in-law’s joke. For the first time in a long while, she felt truly at home.
And Galina Petrovna pulled her wet windbreaker tighter around herself and curled up on the old sofa, flinching at every branch that struck the window.
The night promised to be very long.
And very cold.