“Do you even realize what you’re doing?” Gleb threw the grocery bag onto the sofa, and oranges rolled out of it, scattering across the carpet. “My mother called me, crying! She says you refused to give her money for a medical examination!”
Nadya stood in the middle of the living room with wet hands. She had just come out of the bathroom, where she had been soaking the children’s clothes. Drops of water ran down onto the parquet floor, forming a small puddle.
“I didn’t refuse,” she replied evenly. “I said we first need to sort out our debts.”
“What debts?” Gleb yanked off his jacket and threw it onto an armchair. “Have you completely lost your mind? You refused to give my mother money for treatment! You are obligated to support her, period!”
Nadya slowly wiped her hands on her jeans. Five years ago, she would already have been crying, making excuses, running to look for her wallet. Now she simply looked at him — at this man who had once read poetry to her on the roof of their dormitory, and was now shouting over money for his mother, who had flown to Turkey for a vacation just last month.
“Gleb, your mother receives a decent pension. Plus, she rents out an apartment in the city center. And we haven’t paid Maxim’s kindergarten fees for three months.”
“What does kindergarten have to do with this?” He stepped closer, and Nadya instinctively moved back. “My mother is sick! She needs medicine!”
“She needs a consultation with a private cardiologist for twenty thousand,” Nadya clarified. “Even though she is already being seen by a doctor for free at the public clinic.”
Gleb fell silent for a second, and in that silence Nadya heard laughter coming from the children’s room — Maxim was watching cartoons. An ordinary evening scene. Except their life had stopped being ordinary about six months ago, when Elena Fyodorovna — her mother-in-law — decided that her daughter-in-law was supposed to participate financially in her life. Actively participate.
“You know what?” Gleb took out his phone. “I’m going to call my mother right now and tell her you refuse to help. Let her know what kind of wife I have.”
He really dialed the number. Nadya watched as he pressed the phone to his ear, as his face took on the familiar expression of a caring son — eyebrows raised, a softness appearing at the corners of his lips.
“Mom? Yes, I’m home… No, she said there won’t be any money.”
Nadya turned around and went into the kitchen. Her hands were trembling — not from fear, but from anger. That same anger she had hidden somewhere deep inside for years, convincing herself that she had to endure, that family mattered more, that she had to be wiser.
In the kitchen, she turned on the kettle and sat down at the table. The numbers from her mobile banking app flashed before her eyes: her salary had arrived three days ago, but almost half of it was already gone. Debt for the apartment, internet bills, money for Gleb’s “urgent needs,” which he never explained. And now another twenty thousand for Elena Fyodorovna.
Her husband’s muffled voice came from the living room — he was clearly complaining. Nadya opened the notes app on her phone and scrolled through the list of expenses from the past three months. There, between the lines of numbers, hid the truth she had been afraid to admit: she wasn’t supporting a family. She was supporting two adults who had decided they were entitled to it.
The kettle clicked, but she didn’t make tea. Instead, she took her jacket from the hallway hanger.
“Where are you going?” Gleb appeared in the doorway, still holding the phone.
“Outside.”
“Maxim is home!”
“He’s home with you,” she pulled on her boots. “You’re his father. You’ll manage.”
“Nadya, what’s wrong with you? We haven’t finished talking!”
She turned around. She looked at him — at this person who, in five years of marriage, had not once asked how she was doing. Who called his mother three times a day but forgot to congratulate his wife on her birthday. Who believed Nadya’s main duty was to earn money and hand it over.
“The conversation is over,” she said, and walked out the door.
It was dark and windy outside. Nadya walked without paying attention to where she was going until she found herself at the metro station. She sat down on a bench near the entrance and took out her phone. There was a message from her sister Olga in the messenger app: “How are you? We haven’t written to each other in ages.”
Nadya looked at the screen and suddenly realized she hadn’t written to anyone in ages. All her connections had gradually been cut off: first the mutual friends from university disappeared, then the girlfriends she had canceled on again and again because of “family matters.” Only work, home, and endless demands remained.
“Bad,” she typed, then immediately erased it. Then she wrote again: “Can I come over? Right now.”
The reply came instantly: “Of course. You remember the address?”
Olga lived on the other side of the city, in a district Nadya hadn’t visited in three years. But right now, it felt right — to go far away, into another space where she didn’t have to justify herself or explain anything.
On the metro, she sat by the window and stared at her reflection. A tired face, dull hair pulled into a ponytail. When had she become like this? When had she stopped recognizing herself?
Her phone kept exploding with calls from Gleb. Nadya rejected the third call in a row and wrote briefly: “Maxim is fine. I’ll come back later.”
“You’re sick!” came the reply. “You abandoned your child and ran away!”
She gave a bitter smile. Abandoned her child. With his father. For two hours. But in Gleb’s worldview, that was apparently a crime.
Olga met her at the door with a glass of wine and no questions. She simply hugged her and led her into the room, where a floor lamp was glowing and a blanket lay on the sofa.
“Tell me,” her sister said, sitting beside her with her legs tucked under herself.
And Nadya told her everything. About the money, about Elena Fyodorovna, about Gleb, who thought it was normal to demand instead of ask. About how tired she was of being both an ATM and a servant at the same time.
“Does he even know how much you earn?” Olga asked.
Nadya thought for a moment.
“Approximately.”
“Approximately,” her sister repeated. “And how much does he bring in?”
“Well… he’s between projects right now.”
“Between projects,” Olga took a sip of wine. “Nadya, he’s been ‘between projects’ for six months. I told you that back in September.”
Nadya said nothing. Because she knew Olga was right. Gleb really hadn’t worked properly for six months, blaming the crisis, the market downturn, the fact that it wasn’t the right moment. But apparently, it was only the wrong moment for work — not for demanding money from his wife.
“What should I do?” she asked quietly.
Olga looked at her for a long time.
“What do you think?”
And there, in her sister’s warm room, far from home and from Gleb, Nadya suddenly realized: she knew the answer. She had probably known it for a long time. She had simply been afraid to say it out loud.
Nadya returned home after midnight. Gleb was already asleep, sprawled across the entire bed. She went into the children’s room, adjusted Maxim’s blanket, and kissed the top of his head. The boy was sniffling — he had caught another cold, and she still couldn’t find time to take him to a proper ENT specialist instead of the district clinic.
In the morning, she woke up to a phone call. Elena Fyodorovna. Nadya looked at the screen and declined the call. A minute later, she called again.
“Yes,” Nadya said, putting the phone to her ear while still lying down.
“Nadenka, dear!” her mother-in-law’s voice sounded disgustingly cheerful. “I’ve decided… well, I’m selling the dacha!”
Nadya sat up in bed. Beside her, Gleb snored louder.
“Excuse me, what?”
“I’m selling the dacha,” Elena Fyodorovna repeated, and there was poorly hidden triumph in her tone. “I found buyers. Good people, ready to pay cash immediately. True, a little below market price, but I urgently need the money.”
Nadya rubbed her face with her hand. The dacha. That very dacha outside Moscow where they took Maxim every summer. Where Gleb had spent his childhood, where his father — long dead — had planted apple trees and built the bathhouse. The only place her husband remembered with warmth.
“Elena Fyodorovna, why so urgently? Maybe it’s worth waiting until spring? Prices will go up.”
“No, no, dear, I need it now,” her mother-in-law laughed. “I bought a travel package! A Mediterranean cruise! Three weeks! Can you imagine — Greece, Italy, Spain… I’ve always dreamed of it!”
Nadya was silent, processing what she had heard. So the twenty-thousand-ruble cardiologist consultation had been urgent, but somehow she had found money for a cruise that cost around three hundred thousand.
“You said you weren’t feeling well.”
“Oh, that was just nerves!” Elena Fyodorovna brushed it off. “Rest is exactly what I need. The doctor himself said a change of scenery works wonders. So I decided: enough denying myself things. At sixty-two, I’ve earned the right to live for myself!”
Nadya lowered the phone onto her lap. She wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. There it was, the truth: no medicine had been needed. Just another whim that her daughter-in-law was supposed to pay for.
“Who called?” Gleb turned over and opened one eye.
“Your mother. She’s selling the dacha.”
He jumped up as if scalded.
“What?!”
“She’s going on a Mediterranean cruise. For three hundred thousand.”
Gleb grabbed his phone and started dialing. Nadya got up and went to the kitchen. She started the coffee maker, took cereal out for Maxim — and listened as her husband’s shout came from the bedroom:
“Mom, what are you doing?! The dacha?! Dad’s dacha?!”
Nadya smirked. Now he cared. Now that it concerned property dear to his heart.
Gleb burst into the kitchen five minutes later — red-faced, disheveled, wearing only his underwear.
“She’s lost her mind! Completely lost it! She wants to sell the dacha to some random people! Says they need it urgently and will pay right away!”
“I heard,” Nadya took milk from the refrigerator.
“And you’re reacting so calmly?” he stared at her. “That’s our dacha!”
“It’s your mother’s dacha,” Nadya corrected him. “It’s registered in her name.”
“But Dad built it! I grew up there!”
“Exactly why you should have thought earlier,” Nadya poured herself coffee. “Maybe instead of demanding money from me for imaginary medicine, you should have wondered where your mother was spending it.”
Gleb opened his mouth, closed it. Then opened it again.
“You… are you serious? You’re blaming me now?”
“I’m stating facts,” Nadya took a sip of coffee. “Yesterday you shouted that I was obligated to give twenty thousand for an examination. Today it turns out your mother is buying a cruise for three hundred thousand. Any questions?”
He was silent. Nadya could see something clicking in his head, see him trying to find a counterargument and failing.
“We have to stop her,” Gleb finally forced out. “I’ll go to her. I’ll talk to her.”
He went to get dressed. Nadya woke Maxim, fed him, and got him ready for kindergarten. The boy chatted about how Dad had let him watch cartoons until ten last night and how they had eaten pizza. Nadya nodded as she zipped up his jacket and thought: there it was, Gleb’s version of parenting — no rules, only indulgences. Convenient, when you weren’t the one who had to deal with the consequences afterward.
Gleb came back three hours later, gloomy as a storm cloud.
“Well?” Nadya asked without looking away from her laptop. She was working from home, answering emails.
“That’s it. It’s decided,” he dropped onto the sofa. “She’s already made arrangements with a real estate agent. Says the deal is in a week.”
“And what did you tell her?”
“I told her everything!” Gleb ran a hand over his face. “That it’s Dad’s memory, that Maxim goes there, that she has no right… Do you know what she said?”
Nadya remained silent.
“That she spent her whole life living for the family and now wants to live for herself,” Gleb spoke quietly, almost in a whisper. “That we are ungrateful. That I married a greedy woman who refuses to help his own mother. And that if she had money, she wouldn’t be selling the dacha.”
Nadya closed the laptop.
“So it’s my fault?”
“That’s what she thinks,” Gleb wouldn’t look at her.
“And you?”
He raised his eyes. They showed confusion, anger, and something else — maybe shame. But he said nothing.
“I see,” Nadya stood up. “So I’m to blame. Me, the one who has been supporting this family for six months. Me, the one who gave your mother money every month for her ‘urgent needs.’ I’m to blame because she decided to blow her savings on entertainment instead of thinking about the future.”
“Nadya…”
“No,” she raised her hand. “Enough. I’m tired. I’m tired of being guilty for everything. Your mother wants to sell the dacha? Let her sell it. She wants to go on a cruise? Let her go. But she won’t get another kopeck from me.”
“You can’t just…”
“I can,” Nadya took her phone and bag. “And you know what else? I’m tired of being a servant and an ATM in this house. Tired of the fact that you haven’t worked for six months but still find time to judge me. Tired of your mother, who thinks the world owes her.”
“Where are you going?” Gleb jumped up.
“To work. There’s a rush there, you know. Someone has to earn money.”
She slammed the door and only in the elevator allowed herself to exhale. Her hands were shaking. Everything inside her was boiling — years of accumulated resentment, anger, exhaustion. But at the same time, she felt a strange relief. As if she had dropped a weight from her shoulders that she had been carrying for far too long.
Her phone vibrated. A message from Olga: “How are you? I’ve been thinking about our conversation. If anything happens, I know a lawyer. A good one. Just in case.”
Nadya looked at the screen. A lawyer. Just in case. She saved the message and walked out of the building. Ahead of her was a long day full of work and decisions. But for the first time in a long time, she felt that she could make those decisions herself.
That evening, when Nadya came home, the apartment greeted her with unusual silence. Maxim was asleep, and Gleb was sitting in the kitchen with a bottle of beer, staring at one point.
“Mom called,” he said without turning his head. “The buyers backed out. Turns out they wanted to buy the dacha for demolition. They only needed the land.”
Nadya hung up her jacket and walked into the kitchen.
“And now?”
“Now she’s panicking. She already paid for the cruise, non-refundable rate. And the dacha isn’t selling,” Gleb finally looked at his wife. “She asked to borrow one hundred thousand. Until spring.”
“And?”
“I said I couldn’t.”
Nadya sat down opposite him. For the first time in many years, Gleb looked… small. Lost. As if he had suddenly grown up and seen what he had refused to notice for years.
“She called me a traitor,” he continued quietly. “Said I was just like you. Cold-hearted and greedy. That she had given her whole life to me, and I…”
He fell silent. Nadya waited.
“And then I suddenly thought: what exactly did she give me?” Gleb raised his eyes. “Really. I grew up, graduated from university, got married. She receives a pension, rents out an apartment. She lives better than many people. What sacrifices are we talking about? Why does that mean we owe her for the rest of our lives?”
Nadya said nothing. She didn’t want to prompt him, didn’t want to crush him. He had to come to this himself.
“I haven’t worked for six months,” Gleb rubbed his face with his palms. “I’ve been sitting on your neck and still demanding money for my mother. I… God, I didn’t even know how much you pay for the apartment. How much goes to Maxim. I thought you just had money, and that was it.”
“Gleb…”
“No, let me finish,” he interrupted her. “Today I spent half the day sitting in the apartment where I grew up. Looking at my mother, who was crying because she couldn’t go on a cruise. And I realized: she will never change. Never. To her, we will always be debtors. And I… I don’t want to live like that.”
Nadya wrapped her hands around the mug of cold tea. She was waiting for a catch, another turn where he would blame her again.
“Tomorrow I’m going to a job interview,” Gleb said. “I found it through an acquaintance. The salary isn’t great, but it’s something. And I want… I want us to start over. Properly.”
“And your mother?”
“My mother is an adult,” Gleb sighed. “Let her deal with her own problems. I won’t demand money from you for her anymore. Not at all.”
Nadya looked at her husband and tried to understand whether she should believe him. Many words had been said over the years. Promises too. But something in his eyes was different. Exhaustion. Awareness.
“All right,” she finally said. “We’ll try.”
Two weeks passed.
Gleb really did start working — as a manager at a construction company. The salary was modest, but he came home and talked about projects, clients. As if he were learning how to be an adult all over again.
Elena Fyodorovna went on the cruise after all — she took out a loan. She called once a day, complaining about the heat, the prices, the fact that the cabin was small. Gleb listened, answered briefly, and hung up. He no longer asked Nadya to get involved.
One evening, after Maxim had fallen asleep, the two of them were sitting together in the kitchen. Gleb was doing some calculations in a notebook; Nadya was reading a book.
“You know,” he suddenly said, “I used to think being a man meant demanding and receiving. That if I was the head of the family, everyone had to adjust to me.”
Nadya put the book aside.
“And now?”
“Now I understand that it was just immaturity,” he gave a bitter smile. “Hidden behind loud words. My mother raised me that way: you’re a man, people owe you. And I got used to it.”
“What changed?”
“I saw you,” Gleb looked at his wife. “I saw how you carry all of this. Alone. And I felt ashamed.”
Nadya nodded. Shame was a good beginning. Not the end, not the solution to every problem. But a beginning.
There was still a lot of work ahead: on their relationship, on themselves, on rebuilding their family. Properly. Without manipulation and demands. Nadya didn’t know whether it would work. But for the first time in a long time, she had hope.
And Elena Fyodorovna returned from the cruise tanned and dissatisfied — as it turned out, the trip had not brought the happiness she had expected. She called her son and hinted at the debts from the loan. Gleb politely advised her to contact the bank about restructuring and hung up.
His mother-in-law no longer called with requests. Occasionally, she sent messages complaining about her health. But she did not ask for money. Apparently, she had realized that this source had dried up.
Nadya stood by the window, looking at the evening city. Streetlights glowed below, cars passed by, people walked — each with their own problems and hopes. She placed her hand on the glass and thought: it really was good that, at some point, she had dared to say “no.” Good that she had stopped being convenient.
The years of silence were behind her. Ahead lay uncertainty. But that uncertainty no longer frightened her.