“From now on, pay for your own wants!” Irina told her mother-in-law
Olga Petrovna abruptly pulled the lid off the box, and the room seemed to grow quieter—everyone froze, waiting for a miracle. But no miracle came. Inside there was no glitter of gold, no rustle of wrapping paper—only emptiness, mercilessly emphasizing the absurdity of the moment. Her mother-in-law tilted the box as though hoping the piece of jewelry had simply rolled into a corner, then shook it. Nothing.
“This is my gift,” Irina said calmly, without looking away. Her voice was steady, without the slightest strain, as though she had rehearsed the line long ago. “From this day forward, this is exactly how much you’ll be getting from me—not a ruble more.”
Olga Petrovna slowly placed the box on the table. At first, all the color drained from her face, then crimson blotches spread across it as though from a sudden burn. She jumped to her feet, her chest rising and falling as she tried to summon the words for a devastating retort, but at that moment familiar footsteps sounded in the hallway—her son was coming home.
Irina did not flinch. She was ready to face both his stare and the storm of accusations.
The story had been going on for years, and its roots stretched far beyond that particular evening.
Irina worked as the chief accountant at a reputable construction company—a position she had earned entirely on her own, without connections or shortcuts. Seven years of demanding work had taught her to keep hundreds of figures in her head, reconcile complicated reports, and spot a catch in every line of a contract. Yet when it came to family matters, that cool precision somehow fell apart, giving way to her desire to feel needed and accepted.
From the very first days of her marriage to Artyom, Irina sincerely tried to become part of his family.
By then, Olga Petrovna had already retired and lived alone in a spacious but run-down three-room apartment. Whenever they met, she subtly hinted at the hardships of loneliness and her lack of money, disguising her complaints behind a weary smile.
“All alone, completely alone,” she would sigh, resting her cheek on her hand. “The apartment is big, but my pension is small. There’s a draft coming through the windows, and the refrigerator is about to give up.”
Irina listened—and acted.
At first, helping seemed natural, almost insignificant. She paid to have the windows replaced before the cold weather arrived, then bought a new refrigerator, and later brought expensive blood-pressure medication several times.
Artyom thanked his wife quietly but sincerely, and that gave her the strength to continue.
As time went on, the requests became larger and the expenses more substantial.
Irina covered the cost of a complete bathroom renovation. The three of them—Irina, Artyom, and Olga Petrovna—spent several hours wandering through the aisles of a large home-improvement store choosing tiles. Her mother-in-law hesitated for a long time, putting down one sample and then another, as though every decision were painfully difficult.
“I suppose this light-colored one might work,” she said uncertainly, barely touching the edge of the tile.
“Choose whichever one you like,” Irina replied, trying to put warmth into her words.
Next came a new sofa, a modern kitchen set, and a trip to a health resort in the Caucasian Mineral Waters region.
Irina patiently sat in queues at government service centers, arranging documents for the apartment remodeling. She helped move furniture and bought groceries for her mother-in-law’s anniversary celebration.
For every holiday, she gave Olga Petrovna a substantial amount of cash in an elegant box with a greeting card, as though trying to package all her willingness to be a good daughter-in-law into that gesture.
But she never received even a simple “thank you” in return.
Whenever they gathered around the table, Olga Petrovna invariably returned to the same subject.
“Money is all well and good, of course. But a real wife should put her family ahead of her career. She should be thinking about children first and foremost.”
And almost every time she added, supposedly by accident but with deliberate casualness:
“Now Lena… she was completely different. She dreamed of having a family, never argued, did everything from the heart. Such a quiet, homey girl.”
Lena was Artyom’s ex-girlfriend.
Irina had heard the name so many times that she had learned to let it go in one ear and out the other.
Almost.
Autumn had only just begun when Lena, Artyom’s former girlfriend, returned to the city.
Olga Petrovna mentioned it as if in passing while they were having tea, adding a note of sympathy to her voice. Apparently, life had treated the girl unfairly—a divorce, a rented apartment, loneliness.
Irina merely nodded and thought nothing of it.
But about a month later, disturbing cracks began appearing in the familiar picture of her life.
Artyom increasingly found reasons to visit his mother in the evenings—sometimes to help her with something, sometimes just to “drop in for five minutes.”
Olga Petrovna kept calling her son and insistently inviting him to dinner.
“I baked a pie. Come over. I miss you.”
Irina did not go with him. After an exhausting day at work, she barely had enough energy to make it home.
Artyom assured her that it was temporary and that his mother was simply lonely.
One day, Irina decided to visit her mother-in-law herself and bring the groceries she had asked for.
She filled several heavy bags at the supermarket, drove to the familiar courtyard, went upstairs, and rang the doorbell.
No one answered.
She went downstairs again, walked to the edge of the landing, and stopped at a spot where she could see into the kitchen through a small window.
The lights were on inside.
Muffled laughter drifted through the room.
Irina froze beside the window.
Three people were sitting at the table.
Olga Petrovna was pouring tea, wearing the kind of broad smile Irina had seen on her face so rarely.
Artyom sat beside her.
And opposite him sat a young woman with dark hair.
She was laughing, covering her mouth with one hand.
It was Lena.
For several seconds, Irina stood perfectly still, as though the world around her had slowed down.
Then she went downstairs, silently left the grocery bags by the door, and drove away.
No phone call.
No message.
Nothing.
She simply left.
From that evening onward, small details began fitting together into a frighteningly clear picture.
Several times Artyom contradicted himself while explaining his late meetings at work.
Once Olga Petrovna arranged a “family evening” without warning anyone in advance—and Lena was there.
Then Irina’s friend Katya sent her a photograph with the caption:
“Isn’t that Artyom in the bookstore?”
In the picture, he was standing beside a bookshelf next to a dark-haired woman.
Irina assembled all the pieces.
The mosaic was complete.
She confronted Artyom that evening.
Irina did not shout or demand excuses. She simply asked him to explain everything.
He remained silent for a while, then began speaking without looking up.
It turned out that for months Olga Petrovna had been repeating the same idea: perhaps he should at least talk to Lena; perhaps they had been too quick to break up all those years ago.
Artyom said he had wanted neither a scandal nor hurt feelings—on either side.
“There was no affair,” he added quietly.
“I believe you,” Irina replied calmly. “But the meetings aren’t the worst part. What’s frightening is realizing that the person I’ve helped for so many years has spent all that time looking for a way to remove me from your family.”
Artyom said nothing.
There was nothing he could say.
The following morning, Olga Petrovna called.
Her voice sounded as plaintive as usual, as though nothing had happened.
“Irochka, could you help me out, please? Here’s the thing: I found this massage recliner chair. It’s absolutely essential for my back. My pension isn’t enough, as you understand. Add two hundred thousand for me, and somehow I’ll find the rest.”
Irina was silent for a second.
“Of course,” she answered evenly. “I’ll stop by this evening.”
Before visiting, she went into a jewelry store and chose an elegant box—dark blue velvet with gold embossing, the sort normally used for expensive jewelry.
Inside, she placed nothing but a sheet of white paper, neatly folded into quarters.
She closed the lid.
The clasp clicked shut.
When Irina arrived, tea had already been laid out on the table.
Olga Petrovna kept glancing at the box sitting near the edge.
Their conversation dragged on about nothing in particular—the weather, the neighbors, health.
Finally, her mother-in-law could no longer contain herself and reached for the gift.
She opened the box and stared inside for a long time, as though hoping she might somehow see something else there.
Then she looked up.
“Where’s the money?”
“Everything you deserve is in there,” Irina said calmly.
Olga Petrovna opened her mouth to say something, but her daughter-in-law did not give her the chance.
“I paid for the renovation of your apartment. I bought your furniture, your refrigerator, and your kitchen cabinets. I brought you medicine, paid for your health-resort trip, and contributed money toward your car. Every holiday, I gave you money in beautiful boxes. I spent hours sitting in queues arranging your paperwork. And all that time, you accepted my help while simultaneously looking for a woman you wanted to replace me with. From now on, buy everything yourself. And don’t ask me for money again.”
The lock clicked in the hallway.
Artyom walked into the kitchen.
He stopped in the doorway and looked from one woman to the other.
Irina did not even turn around.
“You destroyed the trust yourself,” he told his mother quietly but firmly. “You did.”
A week later, they suddenly packed up and left for Karelia.
They simply got into the car and drove north, as though trying to leave all the accumulated noise behind.
Irina watched the pine trees and gray boulders flash past the window and caught herself thinking about how long it had been since the two of them had gone anywhere alone.
Even the drive itself felt almost forgotten, yet painfully familiar.
In the evenings, they sat beside the water, listened to the wind whispering, and talked.
Slowly.
Without emotional outbursts.
As though they were learning how to hear one another again.
One evening, Artyom stared at the dark surface of the lake and quietly said:
“I knew Mom was going too far. But every time, I thought that if I just stayed quiet, somehow the whole thing would resolve itself.”
“Silence is also a choice,” Irina replied calmly. “And it means something too.”
Artyom merely nodded.
He did not argue.
There was nothing to argue about.
One evening, he wrote his mother a long, carefully worded message.
It was clear and unemotional: his meetings with Lena were over, the subject was closed, and any further attempts to interfere in their marriage would no longer be interpreted as concern.
He loved his mother, but he would not allow her to use that love as leverage.
Olga Petrovna called Irina three more times.
The first time, she complained about a leaking faucet, as though that alone should be enough reason for Irina to come to the rescue.
The second time, she casually remarked that a good winter coat was very expensive these days.
The third time, she asked directly: she needed money for a new vacuum cleaner.
Each time, Irina gave exactly the same answer—calmly, without irritation, and briefly.
“No, Olga Petrovna. That isn’t part of my plans.”
Her mother-in-law would fall silent for a moment, as though unable to believe what she had heard.
Then she would call Artyom instead.
But she received the same firm, calm refusal from him.
Gradually, the lists of things she needed appeared less and less often in their conversations.
Her wish list did not exactly disappear.
It simply dissolved like morning mist, because there was no longer anyone willing to pay for it.
At the end of February, Olga Petrovna came to visit them herself.
She called in advance, without hints or requests, and simply asked whether she could stop by.
No lists.
No carefully prepared stories about her difficulties.
She sat in the kitchen, gripping her cup tightly with both hands, and remained silent for a long time, as though every word had to be lived through inside her before she could let it out.
Finally, she began to speak quietly and with difficulty.
“For so many years, I clung to the idea of Lena. I thought she would have been calmer, easier… as though she belonged to some different, more proper world. I invented something that never existed and destroyed what actually did. Forgive me, Ira. If you can.”
Irina remained silent for a moment, weighing not so much her resentment as her exhaustion from the entire story.
“I accept your apology,” she finally said. “But everything else will remain as it is.”
Olga Petrovna nodded.
There was no hope in her eyes that the old arrangement would immediately return.
It seemed she had not expected anything different.
From then on, the couple visited Olga Petrovna on holidays, bringing a cake, flowers, and a basket of fruit.
But there were no envelopes.
And no hints of the old spending habits.
Irina put the dark-blue velvet box away in a drawer of her desk.
Sometimes, when opening the drawer for something else, she caught sight of it out of the corner of her eye.
Something inside her would tighten quietly—but no longer from pain.
It was the feeling of her own resolve.
A small object had become a silent reminder that she had finally stopped trying to buy someone else’s approval and learned to stand up for herself.