Kira froze in front of the Italian shoe display when, out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of a familiar figure in the boutique across the corridor.
Alevtina Sergeyevna, her mother-in-law, was trying on a coat the color of wet asphalt, with leather inserts — the kind of coat that cost as much as three monthly salaries.
A sales assistant hovered nearby, praising the cut and the quality of the wool.
“It suits you so beautifully! And do you remember that wine-colored dress you bought in September? It was absolutely stunning.”
“How could I forget?” her mother-in-law narrowed her eyes at her reflection. “At Neva Fashion Week, everyone noticed me. They said I looked younger than fifty.”
Kira pressed herself against the wall of the shopping mall.
A wine-colored dress for one hundred and eighty thousand. Another two hundred thousand for the coat.
And just three weeks earlier, Alevtina Sergeyevna had called her in tears, complaining about expensive heart medication and begging to borrow thirty thousand until her pension came in.
“That will be three hundred and two thousand in total, including your previous purchases,” the sales assistant announced as she rang up the bill.
Without the slightest trace of embarrassment, her mother-in-law took out her card.
Kira turned around and walked out onto Obukhovskoy Oborony Avenue, just as a new electric bus on route 128 passed by — silent, eco-friendly, and somehow mockingly appropriate for what she had just discovered.
Her hands were shaking as she pulled out her phone. In her notes, she had a list. Dates, amounts, excuses.
August 2023 — fifty thousand for Boris’s surgery.
November 2023 — twenty thousand for urgent repairs.
January 2024 — forty-five thousand for medicine.
May 2024 — thirty-five thousand for a sanatorium trip because “the blood pressure has been unbearable.”
Altogether, the amount had already gone well past four hundred thousand rubles.
At home, the air smelled of coffee and fresh buns. Igor was sitting in the kitchen with his laptop, absorbed in another logistics plan.
The gray at his temples made his face look sterner than it had when he was younger, but his eyes were still gentle.
“How did your meeting with the client at Lineyny Park go?”
“Fine,” Kira said, slipping off her trench coat and hanging it over the back of a chair. “They want Scandinavian minimalism. Three rooms.”
“That’s great!” Her husband looked up. “By the way, Mom called. About my birthday. She says we should celebrate properly. Forty-five is a big date, after all.”
Kira poured herself some coffee. The cup burned her fingers.
“And what did she suggest?”
“A restaurant on Nevsky. She says she’s already picked out a table. Veronika will come with the kids, Dad too. A family celebration, basically.”
“I see.”
“What’s wrong with you?” Igor narrowed his eyes. “Usually just hearing about Mom’s ideas gives you a migraine.”
Kira took a sip of coffee. The bitterness spread across her tongue. She didn’t touch the buns. Her appetite had disappeared the moment she saw her mother-in-law in that boutique.
The next day, Kira met Svetlana at a new café on Vasilievsky Island, not far from the third section of Lineyny Park.
Her friend worked as an administrator at that restaurant and knew every detail of the business.
“Can you imagine?” Kira stirred her cappuccino. “For years, I thought I was helping. I saved money, denied myself things, put something aside from every project. And she was spending it all on clothes and showing up at fashion shows.”
“Are you sure it was that money?”
“Completely. Boris earns one hundred and forty thousand at the factory. Alevtina gets a pension of sixty thousand. Their rented apartment costs forty-five thousand a month. Where would they get three hundred thousand for designer clothes?”
Svetlana nodded thoughtfully.
“Listen,” she said. “What if I help you? I have an idea for that banquet.”
“What kind of idea?”
“I’ll tell you later. But I promise, they’ll remember it for a long time.”
The week before Igor’s birthday turned into an endless chain of phone calls.
Alevtina Sergeyevna called every evening to discuss the menu, the seating plan, and the program.
“Maybe Veronika’s boys could recite some poems? It was so sweet last time.”
“Last time they knocked over a jug of fruit punch onto the tablecloth,” Kira said, looking out at the rainy Petersburg evening. The October drizzle turned the city into a watercolor painting. “But of course, let them recite something.”
“Why are you suddenly so agreeable?” her mother-in-law asked suspiciously. “Normally, you argue with everything I say. Always dissatisfied.”
“I just realized that family is more important.”
“That’s right! Finally, you understand.”
After the call, Kira phoned Svetlana.
“Is everything ready?”
“Everything. Come at seven. It’s going to be interesting.”
Igor was buttoning his shirt and glancing at his wife.
She was wearing a cream-colored dress — one of the season’s fashionable shades — and low-heeled shoes.
“You look beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
“No, seriously, what happened? You haven’t argued with my mother once in two weeks.”
“Igor, just trust me. Tonight is going to be special.”
The restaurant was dimly lit.
Alevtina Sergeyevna was already seated at the head of the table in that very coat the color of wet asphalt, wearing it open so everyone could see the expensive blouse underneath.
Boris Mikhailovich was enthusiastically telling a waiter something about prices.
Veronika was trying to make her sons — eleven-year-old Artyom and nine-year-old Makar — sit down, but they were running between the tables.
“Well, finally!” her mother-in-law exclaimed, throwing up her hands. “We’ve been waiting for half an hour. We thought you were stuck somewhere again.”
“Sorry,” Kira said, sitting down beside Igor. “Traffic on Nevsky.”
“What traffic on a Saturday evening?” Veronika snorted. “You should have left earlier.”
The waiter brought the menu. Alevtina Sergeyevna immediately opened it and began pointing at different items.
“We’ll take this, this, and this one too. And two bottles of champagne right away. Kirочка, you don’t mind, do you? It’s my son’s birthday, after all.”
“Of course I don’t mind,” Kira said with a smile. “Order whatever you like.”
Boris Mikhailovich cleared his throat.
“And you’ll pay, won’t you, my dear?”
“Naturally, Boris Mikhailovich. We’re family, aren’t we?”
Her mother-in-law exchanged a glance with her husband and smiled with satisfaction.
The dinner dragged on painfully. Salads, main courses, desserts.
The children spilled a glass of juice, stained the tablecloth, and crawled under the table.
Boris Mikhailovich told tasteless jokes about mothers-in-law, while Alevtina Sergeyevna criticized the waiters, the dishes, and the music.
“Restaurants used to be completely different in our day,” she declared. “Now they just rip people off. Two hundred and nine rubles for a kilo of tomatoes in a salad! Robbery.”
“Mom, maybe let’s not talk about sad things?” Igor poured himself some wine. “Let’s have a toast instead.”
“Of course, of course!” his mother said, rising from her chair. “To my son! He is forty-five today! May he be healthy, happy, and never forget that family is the most important thing in life.”
Everyone clinked glasses. Kira took a small sip of wine and glanced at her watch. A quarter to eight.
“Alevtina Sergeyevna,” she said, standing up. “May I say a toast too?”
“Oh, go ahead, go ahead!” her mother-in-law said, sitting back down, pleased.
“I want to raise my glass to family. To the way we always support one another. For example, in August of 2023, when you asked for fifty thousand for Boris Mikhailovich’s surgery. Or in November, when you needed twenty thousand for urgent repairs. Or forty-five thousand in January. Or thirty-five thousand for a sanatorium in May.”
Her mother-in-law’s face began to change — from pink to crimson.
“What… what are you…”
“Over the past two years, the total came to four hundred and twelve thousand rubles,” Kira continued, taking out her phone. “Would you like me to show the transfers? I have all the dates and payment notes saved.”
“Kira, what does this have to do with anything?” Igor frowned. “Why bring this up now?”
“Because last week I saw Alevtina Sergeyevna at Galeria. She was buying a coat for two hundred thousand. The sales assistant praised her earlier purchases too — more than another three hundred thousand. And I thought, how interesting. Where does a pensioner get that kind of money?”
Dead silence fell over the table. Even Veronika’s children stopped moving.
“You…” her mother-in-law turned pale.
“I was just passing by. The most insulting part is that you thought I was stupid. You thought I would never find out? That I would keep handing over money forever?”
“Mom, is this true?” Igor’s voice trembled.
“Igor, darling, I can explain everything…”
“Please do,” Kira said, sitting down again. “I’m very interested to hear it.”
Alevtina Sergeyevna swallowed nervously and took a sip of water.
“Well… yes, I bought some clothes. But it was for the prestige of the family! So I would look respectable when visiting you. So you wouldn’t be ashamed of your mother-in-law.”
“For three hundred thousand in a boutique on Nevsky Prospect?”
“There… there were discounts…”
Boris Mikhailovich coughed.
“Listen, my dear, maybe there’s no need to make a scene? It’s a celebration.”
“You’re right. Let’s celebrate properly. Sveta!”
The restaurant administrator approached the table with a folder in her hands.
“The total bill for the evening is sixty-three thousand rubles. Which card should I use?”
Alevtina Sergeyevna’s face twisted.
“What do you mean, whose card? Kira said she would pay!”
“I changed my mind,” Kira said, standing up and picking up her handbag. “You know, Alevtina Sergeyevna, all these years you taught me that family comes first. That relatives should help one another. That people shouldn’t count money between family members. So now show us an example. Pay for the banquet. Like family.”
“Are you insane?! I don’t have that kind of money!”
“How strange. You had money for the coat. You had money for the dresses. But suddenly there’s no money for the restaurant bill you ordered yourself?”
Igor grabbed Kira’s hand.
“Wait. Let’s discuss this calmly at home…”
“I have put up with your mother for far too long. Enough.”
She headed for the exit. Behind her, the relatives’ voices rose in waves — outraged, frightened, pleading.
Alevtina Sergeyevna wailed something about ingratitude. Veronika shouted that this was a disgrace. Boris Mikhailovich demanded the manager.
Kira walked several blocks to Lineyny Park and sat down on a bench near the fountain.
Her phone was exploding with calls, but she switched it off.
Ahead, the lights of the Gulf of Finland shimmered. The swings creaked in the wind.
Somewhere near Krestovsky Island, the forts of Kronstadt were being restored — rebuilding what had once seemed lost.
Maybe she needed to restore something important too.
Her self-respect, for example.
Igor sent a long message. He apologized for his mother, begged her to come back, promised to talk to his parents. Kira read it and typed her reply.
“We need to live separately for a while. I’m sorry. But I can’t do this anymore.”
She sent the message and turned off her phone again.
The city was falling asleep beneath a drizzling rain.
Electric buses glided silently along the avenues. In a nearby café, Anna Asti’s “Po Baram” was playing.
Somewhere, people were celebrating birthdays, anniversaries, reunions.
And Kira simply sat on the bench, thinking about her life.