Gleb called that same evening. Nelly stared at the screen, where his name showed as “Gleb,” realizing she still hadn’t changed the contact note. For eight years, it had said “Glebushka,” but at some point, she’d deleted the affectionate diminutive. She couldn’t remember exactly when—probably when he first didn’t come home for the night and told her he’d slept in the car at the warehouse.
— Yes.
— Nell, hi. Listen, here’s the thing. I heard you went to see a lawyer.
— Who told you?
— Doesn’t matter. Why do you need a lawyer? We already agreed on everything.
— We didn’t agree on anything. You talked. I listened.
A pause. She could hear a television playing somewhere on his end, and a woman’s voice laughing loudly, sharply.
— You do realize that hiring a lawyer costs money, right? Money you don’t have?
— All questions go through my lawyer now, Gleb.
She was the one to hang up first. Her hands shook so badly afterward that she couldn’t get her key into the mailbox lock on the first try. She ended up not getting her mail at all. She went home and stood under the shower for a long time, until the water started to turn cold.
Three days later, a summons arrived. A statement of claim for divorce and division of property from the district court; the preliminary hearing scheduled in a month. Tamara Arkadyevna sent a short message: “Saw it. We’ll file a counterclaim. Don’t worry.”
Don’t worry. As if you could just switch that on and off like flipping a hallway light.
Her mother-in-law showed up unannounced on Wednesday. Zoya Pavlovna. Seventy-one years old, a retired math teacher who’d spent her entire career at one school on Kashirka. She’d worn the same wet-asphalt-colored coat for about twelve years now, always mending it herself when the lining tore. She came in, took off her boots, and placed them toe-first against the wall, just as she always did.
— Cabbage pie. For Dasha. For you too, if you want.
— Thank you, Zoya Pavlovna.
Her mother-in-law walked into the kitchen, sat on the stool by the window where she’d sat for the last twenty years, and looked at the cabinet door over the sink.
— Still hanging there.
— Still hanging.
— Gleb promised he’d fix it.
— Gleb promised a lot of things.
Zoya Pavlovna pressed her lips together. They were thin, almost colorless, with vertical wrinkles above the top lip that looked like a barcode. She stayed silent for a while, fidgeting with the button on her coat, which she hadn’t taken off.
— Don’t think I’m on his side, — she said finally. — I was never on anyone’s side. I’m a teacher. I’m for the correct answer.
— What’s the correct answer, Zoya Pavlovna?
— I don’t know yet. I haven’t solved the problem.
She stood up, went to the sink, and for some reason touched a white mug with a broken handle. She ran her finger along the chip. Then she picked up her bag and left, still wearing her coat. The pie remained on the table, wrapped in a waffle towel.
Dasha ate three slices, without reheating them.
“Grandma was acting kind of strange,” she said, her mouth full.
“How so?”
“In the hallway, she hugged me and told me, ‘The most important thing is, never sign anything before you read it.’ So I told her, ‘Grandma, I don’t sign anything, I’m fifteen.’ And she said, ‘I mean for the future.'”
Nelli stopped wiping the table. The cleaning cloth stayed there—wet and smelling of chlorine.
What did Zoya Pavlovna know? And why couldn’t she just say it outright?
Nelli ran into Ksenia at the mall two weeks later. She wasn’t looking for her. She’d just wandered into the kitchen furniture section on the third floor, like she had for the past six years: a little ritual, where she’d look, touch the cabinet facades, leaf through catalogs, and then leave. Every time she brought up the idea of a new kitchen, Gleb always replied the same way: “Nell, not now. We don’t have the money. Later.”
She instantly knew it was her. No photos, no hints needed. The girl was about twenty-nine, tall, with long, light hair tied in a ponytail high on her head, nails painted fuchsia—so bold, you could see them from across the display floor. She was standing by the sample with glossy white fronts, talking to a sales consultant.
“No, we want gold handles. Matte gold. And a marble-look countertop, like I said on the phone.”
“Of course. Installation was two Saturdays ago, right? Did everything fit?”
“It fit. But I want an island, too. My guy said it’s possible.”
“My guy.” She wore a vanilla fragrance with a hint of something bitter underneath. Nelli stood three meters away, behind a shelf of tile samples, counting the little squares on the nearest display. Twelve across. Eight down. Ninety-six. Just like the pages in a notebook.
Ksenia walked away, her ponytail swinging. The sales consultant—a young guy named Artyom—turned to Nelli.
“Can I help you with something?”
“No—well, actually, yes. This kitchen, the white one with the gold handles. How much does it cost?”
“With appliances and installation?” Artyom smiled his polished consultant smile. “Starts at 1.8 million. The girl spent almost two—she chose premium fittings. Want me to calculate your price?”
“No, thank you.”
She rode down on the escalator, walked out to the parking lot, and sat in her old car—the one Gleb bought her a decade ago “so you can take Dashka to swim practice.” She didn’t turn the engine on. She just sat, staring at the windshield wiper shivering in the wind.
Two million. A kitchen with gold handles. And an island—just because “my guy said it’s possible.”
Back home, she opened her notebook to a blank page and wrote: “K’s kitchen ~2 million. Mall, 3rd floor, Artyom.” She thought for a moment, then underlined it twice. After that, she snapped a photo of the page and sent it to Tamara Arkadyevna.
The reply came five minutes later: “Good. That could come in handy. But for now, it’s just words—we need paperwork.”
The preliminary hearing was in a small room on the fourth floor. The walls were painted beige, there was a rubber plant with dusty leaves by the window, and the radiator underneath droned like someone was operating a drill inside. The judge, a woman around forty-five with slicked-back hair and rimless glasses, spoke rapidly, dropping the ends of her words.
Gleb showed up with his lawyer, a young guy in a slim suit who kept adjusting his cuffs the entire time. Gleb sat on the other side and didn’t look at Nelly once. His gaze was fixed on the ficus plant. The comma-shaped scar on his chin looked redder than usual. He’d shaved that morning and cut himself.
Gleb’s lawyer stood up and began to speak in an even tone—about as lively as reading out a washing machine manual.
“The plaintiff states that the funds totaling five million eight hundred thousand rubles were spent by him, prior to the end of the marital relationship, to pay off the limited liability company’s debt to third parties under loan agreements. Copies of the contracts and IOUs are attached. Therefore, these funds were used in the interest of the family, as the company is the family’s financial source, and are not subject to division.”
Nelly glanced over at Tamara Arkadyevna. She was chewing on licorice, slowly and contentedly, the way people chew gum at a bus stop when the bus just won’t come.
“Any objections?” the judge asked.
Tamara Arkadyevna stood up and put on her glasses.
“We object, Your Honor. The defendant files a motion to obtain a bank statement for the card account ending in 4417, to which the disputed funds were transferred. We also request statements for the plaintiff’s personal accounts for the last six months. We believe the funds were not used to pay debts, but were withdrawn to hide them from property division.”
Gleb’s lawyer adjusted his cuff again.
“We object. That’s interference in commercial confidentiality.”
“These are your client’s personal accounts, not commercial secrets,” Tamara Arkadyevna said calmly, her glasses slipping down to her chest.
The judge jotted something down and looked up.
“Motion granted. Submit a request to the bank. The next hearing will be in six weeks. In the meantime, would the parties like to try coming to an agreement? The court is open to a settlement.”
For the first time, Gleb turned to Nelly. He looked straight at her, unblinking. Nelly noticed the vein on his temple throbbing under his combed hair.
He caught up to her in the hallway by the elevator. Tamara Arkadyevna stayed behind, talking with the court secretary about something.
“Nel. Wait.”
She stopped.
“Let’s not drag this out. I’m offering a fair deal. The apartment is all yours—my share too. I’ll sign. And I’ll pay Dasha child support, thirty thousand a month—more than what the law requires. But you drop any claims on the business and the account. We sign a settlement at the notary, and that’s it. No statements, no courts. You don’t need this stress.”
“You said there was no money.”
“There isn’t. That’s why I’m offering the apartment. That’s all there is. Think about it. For Dasha’s sake.”
He walked away quickly, not waiting for the elevator. He took the stairs. Nelly listened as his footsteps echoed down, uneven and heavy, like he was skipping steps.
Dasha listened silently. She sat on the windowsill in her room, legs tucked under herself, twirling a hair tie in her fingers.
“The apartment will be all ours?”
“Yes.”
“And he’ll stop calling?”
“Probably.”
“Mom, say yes.”
Nellie lifted her head. Dasha was gazing out the window at the playground, where a little boy, around six years old, was trying to climb onto the slide—not using the ladder, but scrambling up the slide itself. He would slip down, then try again, and again.
“I don’t want this to last a year,” Dasha said. “Liza from the other class went through that. Two years. Her dad dragged her mom to court, her mom dragged her dad. Liza was seeing the psychologist in ninth grade. I don’t want that. He can keep his money and choke on it. We’ll have enough.”
“Dasha.”
“What do you mean, ‘Dasha’? You said yourself that we have enough, back when I wanted a new phone. We always have enough.”
She jumped down from the windowsill and went to the bathroom. She turned on the faucet. Nellie stood for a moment outside the closed door, listening to the water running, but didn’t knock.
Why not agree? The whole apartment—that’s not so little. Tamara Arkadyevna said the records might not be enough. That Gleb could have withdrawn the money in cash, that loan agreements can look convincing, that courts can go either way. That it could take a year. Or two, like Liza’s mom.
That evening, Nellie called the lawyer.
“He’s offering the whole apartment.”
“The apartment is worth about fourteen million. Legally, half is yours anyway. He’s offering you seven million in exchange for your share of the company and half of the hidden money. The company, by my estimate, is worth at least twenty. You know how much money is involved. Do the math yourself, you’re an accountant.”
“My daughter just wants this to be over.”
A pause. The sound of licorice being chewed.
“It’s your decision, Nellie Sergeevna. I’ve given you my opinion. If you sign at the notary, there’s no going back.”
Nellie did the math. The numbers made little sense, but they added up to one thing: silence. To Dasha no longer locking herself in the bathroom. To never needing to sit again in a waiting room with a dusty ficus.
She wrote to Gleb: “Alright. Let’s meet at the notary.”
He replied within a minute: “Good girl. Thursday, 11:00, notary on Profsoyuznaya, I’ll send you the address.”
“Good girl.” Like talking to a dog that brought you your slippers.
On Wednesday, the day before Thursday, Nellie couldn’t sleep. The alarm clock on her nightstand read 2:14 when she got up, put on her robe, and went to the kitchen. She only turned on the dim, yellow stove light, then pulled all four notebooks from the drawer. She didn’t know why. She just needed to do something with her hands.
She opened the second one, the oldest of those left. 2020, 2021. She flipped through, not reading, just recognizing her handwriting the way you recognize your own face in old photos. The writing was neater. The numbers, tidier.
On one page, from March 2021, there was a note in pencil in the margin: “G. said: kitchen later, no money now. We’ll wait until fall.”
And below, in a softer, almost erased pencil: “Until spring.”
And further down: “Later.”
Nellie sat over that page for a long time. The stove light buzzed overhead. The fridge hummed its new high-pitched note. The cupboard door above the sink was hanging by a single hinge.
She remembered back in 2021, sitting in this same kitchen, when Gleb was scrolling through something on his phone and said, “Nel, what kitchen? I’ve got two trucks just sitting there—no spare parts. Be patient.” And so she waited. Then she waited again. Eventually, she stopped asking and just started wandering up to the third floor of the shopping mall to touch the kitchen displays.
Meanwhile, Ksenia has a kitchen with gold handles. And it was installed the Saturday before last.
Nelli closed her notebook and checked the time. 3:40. She still hadn’t slept. She sat there until the sky outside faded from gray to blue, then to the typical dirty-white of March.
At half past eight, Tamara Arkadyevna called.
“You still haven’t signed?”
“At eleven.”
“Don’t sign at eleven. Come to my place. The bank replied. Faster than I expected. The court secretary gave me a copy this morning.”
Her voice sounded odd. No trace of licorice sweetness. Almost as if she was standing and couldn’t sit down.
On the lawyer’s desk were twenty-three pages, stapled in the corner. A bank statement, dry and factual, with columns of numbers in tiny print.
“The card ending in 4417 belongs to Zoya Pavlovna,” Tamara Arkadyevna said. “Your mother-in-law. The account was opened three days before the transfer. The money’s still there. Almost all of it. He didn’t pay off any company debts. I’ll check the loan agreements he gave you, but to be honest, they’re fake. Good fakes, with stamps. But fake.”
Nelli stared at the numbers. Five million eight hundred—credited. Five million eight hundred—just sitting there. Not a single transaction.
Zoya Pavlovna. Coat the color of wet asphalt. “Just make sure you don’t sign anything until you’ve read it.”
“That’s not all,” Tamara Arkadyevna continued. “Take a look here. Page eleven. This is his personal card.”
She handed over the page and pointed at a line with the tip of her nail. Nelli put on her reading glasses—the ones she carried in her bag but felt embarrassed to use.
Transfer. Recipient: Kseniya Andreevna L. Amount: one million nine hundred forty thousand rubles. Date: two weeks before Gleb made coffee and said he was leaving.
Purpose of payment: “For our kitchen. Just like you wanted. Love you.”
Below that, another one. Three hundred thousand. “For your patience, kitten.”
And another. One hundred fifty thousand. “For a fur coat, just not a red one.”
Nelli took off her glasses and placed them on the table, lenses facing up. She gazed out the window, where a crow sat on a poplar branch pecking at something with its beak, rhythmically, as if it were counting.
“He always signed the transfers,” she said. “Always. For twenty years.”
“I see.”
“‘For Dashka’s braces—don’t waste it.’ ‘For your boots, just not red ones.’ He wrote to her the same way. Even used the same words.”
“Nelli Sergeyevna, do you understand what this means?”
“I do.”
“This is proof that he spent marital funds on another woman without your consent. Not for the family. The court will take this into account. These two-plus million will be counted as part of his share—as if he already received them. And the 5.8 million with your mother-in-law will be divided. And half the business too. He wrote it himself. In his own hand. He couldn’t even be bothered to leave the description field blank.”
Nelli laughed. It was quiet and short, surprising even to herself—a dry laugh, almost like a cough. She covered her mouth with her hand.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. I’ve been in this business for twenty-eight years. I laughed too.” Tamara Arkadyevna finally popped a licorice twist into her mouth. “You’re not going to the notary. Write to him that you’ve changed your mind. Keep it short. No explanations.”
Nelli pulled out her phone. She typed: “I won’t be coming.” She hesitated. Deleted it. Then wrote again: “All questions through my lawyer.” Sent.
The reply arrived while she was putting on her coat. It was a long message, with three exclamation points and the words “you’ll regret it.” Nelli read the first line, then put her phone back in her pocket, not bothering to read the rest.
Zoya Pavlovna didn’t open the door right away. Nelli rang the bell of her fifth-floor Khrushchyovka, no elevator, and listened to the shuffling of slippers, the creaking parquet by the door, the click of one lock, then another.
“You’ve come,” her mother-in-law said. She wasn’t surprised.
“I’ve come.”
In Zoya Pavlovna’s kitchen, it smelled of Corvalol and baked apples. On the table, covered with a blue checkered oilcloth, lay an old Soviet-style savings book, and next to it a new bank card in a white envelope. Untouched, as far as Nelli could tell.
“He brought me a passport to sign,” Zoya Pavlovna said, not looking at Nelli but at the envelope. “He said, Mom, open an account, I need to put some money away for a while, there’s a tax audit at the company and otherwise they’ll take it. So I opened one. I’m his mother, after all. Then he called and said: Mom, if anyone asks, it’s your money, you’ve been saving it. And that’s when I understood everything. I’ve been solving problems for children for forty years. I can see when an answer doesn’t add up.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Her mother-in-law looked up. Eyes light, faded, with rims of red around the eyelids.
“Because he’s my son. And you’re not my daughter. I didn’t know what the right thing was. I thought he’d come to his senses. Give it back. I called him three times. I said: Gleb, this isn’t right. He said: Mom, stay out of it.”
“And now?”
Zoya Pavlovna was silent for a long time. She picked up the envelope with the card, turned it over in her hands, then put it back down.
“I got a summons. Yesterday. To court, as a witness. Your lawyer called me.”
“I didn’t know.”
“I know you didn’t. You never would have yourself. You would have just endured it.” She suddenly reached out and took Nelli’s hand, her fingers dry and cold. “I won’t lie under oath, Nelli. Not because of you. Because I’m a teacher. I care about the right answer.”
She let go of Nelli’s hand and went to the stove to check on the apples. Nelli sat at the table with the blue oilcloth, watching her back. Her rain-colored coat hung by the door, its lining sewn with big stitches.
The second hearing was scheduled for the end of April. The radiator in the courtroom was silent now, the heating was off, and it was cool. Wind seeped through the crack in the old window frame, carrying the scent of wet pavement and lilacs—not blooming yet, but swelling in the courthouse yard.
Gleb arrived in a light blue shirt. The same one with the stiff collar. Kseniya waited for him on the bench in the hallway, in a pale coat, scrolling her phone without looking up. Nelli walked past and caught a hint of vanilla with an edge of bitterness. She gripped her purse handle so tight it hurt her fingers.
Gleb’s lawyer was adjusting his cuffs again. More often this time. In front of him was the same twenty-three-page statement, only this copy belonged to the court, stamped in blue.
“The respondent insists on taking into account the funds that the plaintiff spent on a third party,” Tamara Arkadyevna read, voice firm. No glasses—she knew the statement by heart. “According to the statement, the plaintiff transferred a total of 2,390,000 rubles to the account of citizen L. during the period when the marriage was still officially intact and family relations continued. The payment description points to a personal, not family-related, purpose. The respondent did not agree to these expenses. We ask the court to consider this amount when determining the plaintiff’s share.”
“These were gifts,” Gleb’s lawyer replied. “The plaintiff is entitled to use his own funds how he wishes.”
“His own?” Tamara Arkadyevna countered. “Funds acquired during the marriage can only be spent in the interest of the family. A kitchen for citizen L. is not part of the defendant’s family interests. By the way, the defendant’s own kitchen hasn’t been renovated since 2008. This is backed up by the family’s expense records, which the defendant has kept daily. These have been added to the case file.”
The judge picked up a notebook adorned with a kitten, put on rimless glasses, and flipped through the pages. Nelli noticed the judge pause at a particular page—the one marked “Later”—and saw the slightest twitch at the corner of her mouth.
“Witness Zoya Pavlovna, please come forward.”
The mother-in-law entered, still wearing her coat. She didn’t take it off, and stood behind the podium with her hands folded on her purse, as if she were about to teach a lesson at the blackboard.
“Witness, you are aware of the criminal liability for perjury. Whose money is in the account opened in your name?”
Zoya Pavlovna looked at her son. Gleb looked back at her. Nelli saw Gleb’s left hand clench on his knee, and the scar on his chin turn pale.
“Mom,” he mouthed silently.
“The money belongs to my son and his wife,” Zoya Pavlovna answered loudly and clearly for everyone in the room. “He asked me to open the account and said he’d put money there for a while. Then he told me to say it was my savings. My pension is only twenty-six thousand—I could never have saved that much in my life. That’s not true. And I do not lie. I worked forty years in a school.”
The room fell silent. The sound of a trolleybus passing outside and the click of its pole against the wires was clearly audible.
Gleb’s lawyer leaned over and quickly whispered something to him. Gleb didn’t listen. He kept his eyes on his mother. Then he stood up, even though nobody had called on him.
“Mom, do you understand what you’re doing?”
“Sit down, plaintiff,” the judge ordered.
“Do you understand she’ll take everything? Half of it! I worked for twenty years!”
“Plaintiff, sit down. Or I will have you removed from the courtroom.”
He sat down. No, he collapsed into the chair, which screeched across the floor. Zoya Pavlovna stood straight as a pointer behind the podium, and looked at her son. Her eyes showed neither tears nor anger. Only weariness—heavy and old as her coat.
“You wrote everything yourself, Glebushka,” she said softly. “On every transfer. I saw the bank statement. You’ve labeled everything since you were a child—your notebooks, pens, pencil case, so that nobody would take them. Now everyone’s read what you wrote.”
“No further questions for this witness. You may go.”
Zoya Pavlovna stepped down from the podium, walked past her son without stopping, and sat on a bench in the corner. Next to Nelli. Not too close—leaving one seat in between.
Nine days later, the verdict was announced. Nelly sat on a bench in the hallway, the same spot where Ksenia had been last time, waiting for Tamara Arkadyevna to come out of the office with the paperwork. This time Ksenia wasn’t there. Neither was Gleb. Only his lawyer had shown up, signed the papers, and left without adjusting a single cuff.
“Well,” Tamara Arkadyevna said, sitting down next to Nelly with a heavy sigh. “The marriage is dissolved. The apartment is split in half. The money from the mother-in-law’s account will be divided equally. The two million three hundred and ninety that went to citizen L. is counted as his share. The business share has been valued; you’re entitled to compensation for half its worth. And after taking into account everything he spent on the kitchen with golden handles, he actually owes you extra. He wanted to keep everything except half the apartment. Now he gets exactly half. Half of what he used to think was his alone.”
“Will he appeal?”
“He will. His lawyer will file an appeal—that’s their bread and butter. But I’m more confident in this process than I usually am. No one can contest the transaction write-up. He wrote it himself: ‘For our kitchen. Just like you wanted. Kisses.’” Tamara Arkadyevna shook her head. “In all the cases I handle, men always hide money the same way: with mom, with a brother, on a mistress. But I’ve never seen anyone have the habit of labeling every last ruble. He should have been an accountant.”
“He used to laugh at me because of my notebook.”
“The notebook won the case, Nelly Sergeevna. The notebook and his own fingers.”
Tamara Arkadyevna handed Nelly a little packet of licorice.
“Take this. To remember today. I don’t usually give these out, but you earned it.”
Nelly took it. The little black spiral was bitter, salty, and left an odd, medicinal sweetness lingering in her mouth.
In June, Nelly finally called a repairman for the fridge. The repairman, an older man in a blue jumpsuit, spent half an hour tinkering with the back panel before announcing that the issue was in the fan. He replaced it, and the fridge stopped humming on that high note. Nelly didn’t notice at first. It was just that one evening, the kitchen seemed quietly different.
She also fixed the cabinet door above the sink herself. She watched a video, bought two hinges for a hundred and eighty rubles at the hardware store, and screwed them in using the drill Gleb had left behind in the closet. The door was perfectly aligned and clicked shut with a soft snap.
“Aren’t you going to buy a new kitchen?” Dasha asked, sitting on the windowsill with a bowl of cherries. Her braces sparkled when she smiled. “Now you actually have the money for it.”
“I will. Probably. Later.”
“Again with the ‘later’?”
Nelly laughed.
“No, not ‘again.’ This is a different ‘later.’ It means when I want to myself.”
“And you don’t want to right now?”
Nelly glanced at the old cabinet doors, the cinnamon stain on the countertop that still hadn’t come off, and the white mug with a broken handle sitting by the sink.
“Right now, I want coffee.”
Dasha spat a cherry pit into her palm and hopped down from the windowsill.
“I’ll make you some. Grandma taught me how, with the cezve. She’s coming over on Saturday, by the way. She said she’ll bring pie. And she said you invited her.”
“I did.”
“So you two made up?”
“We didn’t fight.”
“Right,” Dasha said, reaching into the cupboard for the cezve.
The phone beeped on the table. A bank notification. A transfer from Gleb, the usual monthly one, straight to Dasha’s account. Nelli opened it, even though she hadn’t bothered with these messages in ages.
In the payment description, there was just one word: “Child support.”
Nothing else. No comments like “don’t splurge,” or “love you,” or “just not the red ones.” He’d stopped adding notes. He’d learned.
Nelli stared at that word for a long while. Then she closed the app, pulled out the kitten notebook—the fifth one, still new, bought just last week—and opened it to the first page. She grabbed a pen.
She wrote: “Hinges for the cabinet door, 2 pcs, 180 rub.”
She paused. Then, in small letters along the margin, she added: “Kitchen. When I feel like it.”
The coffee on the stove started to foam up. Dasha snatched the cezve off just before it boiled over and poured the coffee into two mugs: one big one for herself, printed with some logistics expo she should have thrown out ages ago, and the white one with the broken handle for her mom.
Nelli wrapped her hand around the mug’s side, holding it just the way she always did. And for the first time in a long while, she realized that, really, it was comfortable holding it like that.