The doors of the suburban PAZ bus slammed shut right in Oksana’s face. She even managed to slap her hand on the dirty glass, but the driver turned the wheel without a glance in the mirror. The bus covered her legs with diesel fumes and rolled heavily towards the railway crossing.
Oksana was left standing on the cracked asphalt. The time was twenty-two fifteen. The next bus wouldn’t come until morning.
She rubbed her freezing cheeks hard. The shift at the bakery had been rough today: the dough mixer broke, so she had to knead half the batch by hand. Her back was aching, and now she’d missed her bus, too. Home was five kilometers away, through an industrial area and a residential district. She couldn’t bring herself to spend money on a taxi, especially right before the weekend.
She pulled her jacket tighter and had just stepped off the curb when a dry crackle of tearing plastic sounded behind her.
Oksana turned around. Under the dim shelter of the bus stop, large potatoes rolled straight into a puddle. Next to them stood a short, thin woman in a bulky gray puffer jacket and a dark headscarf. She looked helplessly at the torn handles of her checkered duffel bag.
“What am I supposed to do now…” the woman muttered. Her voice was unexpectedly firm, with no hint of the usual elderly tremble.
Oksana closed her eyes. At home, Denis was waiting—he hated it when she was late. There was an unwashed uniform and an unpacked bag for tomorrow’s trip. But she couldn’t just turn around and disappear into the darkness.
“Let me help you,” Oksana said, kneeling to gather the muddy potatoes into the surviving end of the bag. “How did you even lift this? It’s got to weigh at least twenty kilos.”
“Your own load doesn’t weigh you down, dear,” the woman gripped the bag by its bottom. “But the trouble is, they make these materials so cheap now. Couldn’t take it.”
“Do you have far to go?”
“Past the railway tracks, to Stroiteley Street.”
Oksana quietly lifted the bag from below. Her fingers immediately cramped from the weight. They walked alongside the factory’s concrete fence. The streetlights weren’t working, and watery mud squished under their feet. They walked in silence, only the companion’s heavy breathing could be heard.
“My name is Antonina,” the woman suddenly said, as they turned into a narrow alley between fences. “And why have you been sighing the whole way? Coming from work?”
“From work.”
“And your husband’s going to be upset because you’re late, isn’t he?”
Oksana smiled:
“He will. We’re headed to his mother’s tomorrow for a family visit. I haven’t packed yet, let alone bought gifts. Margarita Vasilievna can’t stand chaos; everything has to be according to schedule with her. And now I’ve messed it up again.”
“So you’re going to your mother-in-law’s,” Antonina stopped by old gates made from blackened metal sheeting. “Well, this is my yard. Just set it down here on the ground. I can manage the rest from here.”
Oksana lowered the load with relief. Her shoulders were burning.
“Thank you. Not many people are willing to help strangers these days,” Antonina said, looking at her. In the darkness, it was hard to see her face—only her eyes glinted.
“Don’t mention it,” Oksana said, flexing her stiff hands and turning away.
“Oksana.”
She froze. A cold pang went through her stomach. She hadn’t told the woman her name.
The woman stood at the gate, making no move to take the bag.
“Don’t go to your mother-in-law’s village tomorrow,” she said in an even voice—no hint of emotion, not a note higher or lower. “No matter what your husband says, no matter how much he yells. Stay home.”
“How did you…” Oksana started, but Antonina had already slammed the bolt and disappeared into the yard, dragging her bag behind her.
Oksana made it back to her five-story building, not even sure how. That strange, absurd phrase kept echoing in her mind. When she finally turned her key in the lock, the scent of food drifted from the kitchen.
Denis was sitting at the table in a stretched-out T-shirt, scrolling through his phone.
“It’s almost eleven,” he said, eyes glued to the screen. “I called you three times.”
“My phone died in the cold. I missed the bus and had to walk from the plant.”
“Great. So where are the bags?”
Oksana pulled off her damp boots and leaned against the doorframe.
“What bags?”
Denis finally put his phone down.
“We’re going to Mom’s tomorrow for the whole weekend. You promised to buy good cheese at the market, meat for roasting, and a cake. I was in the garage all morning checking the car—I asked you to stop by after your shift.”
“Denis, the dough mixer broke. I had to knead forty kilos of dough by hand. What market? I can barely feel my legs. We’ll get everything tomorrow on the way at the supermarket.”
“Mom hates store-bought pastries!” he snapped, shoving his mug aside in annoyance. “We haven’t seen her in over a month. She’s been getting ready, waiting. And here you go again, leaving everything to the last minute. Work is always more important for you.”
Oksana looked at her husband. His dissatisfied face, the crumbs on the table from the bread he hadn’t even brushed away. Suddenly, the old woman’s words came back to her as clearly as if she were standing behind her.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Oksana said quietly.
Denis frowned, clearly stunned by her reaction.
“What do you mean? Are you doing this just to spite me now?”
“No. I’m just dead tired. If I go to Margarita Vasilievna’s tomorrow and have to wait on her all day while she sighs about what a useless wife I am, I’ll snap. Go by yourself. Tell her I’m sick.”
Denis stood up from the table, red blotches flaring on his face.
“Perfect. Just perfect. So I’m going alone. And don’t expect me to cover for you with her later.”
He stormed off to the bedroom, slamming the door behind him. Only the fridge kept humming steadily in the corner.
The next morning, they barely spoke. Denis made a show of packing his gym bag loudly, rattling his keys. He drank his coffee standing up, didn’t even offer her any.
“I’ll be back Sunday night,” he said, putting on his jacket. “Don’t get too bored while I’m gone.”
The door slammed shut. Oksana walked to the window, hugging herself. Denis’s old Toyota pulled out of the yard and disappeared around the corner.
The drive to the village took just about an hour. He was supposed to arrive by ten in the morning. By eleven, Oksana couldn’t take it anymore and dialed his number. “The subscriber is temporarily unavailable.” At noon—still the same.
She started cleaning the apartment just to keep her hands busy. She scrubbed the stove, sorted through the closet. Oddly enough, her mother-in-law hadn’t called either. If Denis had arrived alone, Margarita Vasilievna would already have her phone ringing nonstop with lectures about wifely duty.
At three in the afternoon, an unknown number flashed on her mobile screen.
“Hello, I’m listening.”
“Is this Oksana Vladimirovna?” The voice was dry with a metallic tone. “This is Inspector Makarov from the road service. Your husband was involved in an accident on the thirty-second kilometer of the highway.”
Oksana’s sponge slipped from her hand and fell into the soapy water.
“What happened to him?”
“He’s alive. Took a serious blow to the chest, and there’s a suspected severe shoulder injury. There’s no signal from the cell tower in that stretch, so while the paperwork was being done and the tow truck called… An ambulance has already taken him to the district hospital. Please bring his documents and come.”
Oksana couldn’t remember ordering a taxi or how she traveled along the grey, slushy highway. The driver listened to some monotonous radio the entire ride, while she just watched the wipers sweeping muddy water off the windshield.
In the emergency room, the air smelled of bleach and old linoleum. The nurse on duty, not looking up from her monitor, nodded towards the corridor:
“Sokolov? Second exam room. Waiting for the doctor.”
Oksana pushed open the flimsy white door.
Denis was sitting on the examination couch. His right arm was tightly strapped to his body with an elastic bandage. There was a scrape on his cheekbone and his t-shirt was torn at the chest. He looked gaunt and lost.
When he saw his wife, he didn’t look away. He simply sighed, and his shoulders slumped.
“So, I’ve arrived, haven’t I.”
Oksana came closer and gently touched his uninjured shoulder.
“How did this happen?”
“The tires,” Denis said, rubbing his forehead with his good hand. “It started snowing and raining, the asphalt was as slippery as soap. The car just skidded at the turn by the sawmill. The brakes failed. We hit a concrete post at the old bus stop.”
He fell silent. Then he looked up at her.
“Oksan… the main impact was exactly on the right side. Where the passenger seat is.”
She stopped breathing.
“The investigator said,” Denis’s voice became very quiet, “he said if someone had been sitting there… it’s scary to imagine how it would have ended. The door was crushed almost all the way to the gearshift. I’m so glad you didn’t come with me.”
Oksana’s knees gave way and she sank onto the hard chair beside the couch. Her nose started to sting. ‘That’s not your road tomorrow.’ The old woman’s words echoed in her mind so clearly it felt like Antonina was standing right in this medicine-scented room.
Two weeks later, when Denis was finishing his recovery at home, Oksana set out deliberately for that very bus stop in the industrial district.
She walked to Stroiteley Street, turned into a familiar alley and stopped. The profiled metal gates she remembered were gone. Instead, there was a crooked wooden fence overgrown with dry burdock. Behind it stood a half-rotted log house with windows boarded up in a cross. The gate was tied shut with thick rusty wire.
Across the street, an elderly man in a quilted jacket was shoveling snow out of his yard.
“Excuse me!” Oksana called out to him. “Do you know what happened to the woman who lived here, Antonina? Short, older lady. Did she move away?”
The man leaned on his shovel and pushed his cap back.
“Aunt Tonya? Oh, my dear, what are you saying. No one moved anywhere. She passed away about eight years ago. The house has stood empty ever since, no heirs ever turned up.”
Oksana slowly nodded. The snow crunched beneath her feet. She turned around and walked back towards the bus stop. The wind tugged at her hair, but she didn’t feel cold at all. She just walked, realizing that sometimes you need to trust someone else’s voice to hold on to what matters most.