Don’t tell me your mommy wants some delicacies again!” I didn’t even turn toward Egor, continuing to furiously wash the dishes after lunch.
He was silent. That silence was enough.
“Seriously? The gourmet store again? For Spanish jamón?” The sponge slipped from my hands and slapped into the sink. “You know what, dear husband? Let her go herself. As far as I know, she still has legs.”
“Lena, Mom isn’t feeling well…”
“Oh, of course!” I spun around so sharply that drops of water flew from my hands onto the tile. “So unwell that yesterday I saw her dancing to some TV show in the living room! She thought I was at work, but I had come back for my forgotten phone.”
Egor’s face fell.
“You… saw that?”
“I did. She was even hopping on one leg, can you imagine? A bad leg, you said? Rheumatism? Arthritis? Should we add bone cancer to the list too?”
Three months earlier, Lidia Borisovna had shown up at our place with two suitcases and the announcement that she had rented out her apartment in the Moscow suburbs and would be living with us. “Not for long,” she had promised then. Not for long had turned into an eternity measured in dirty plates, criticism, and constant requests to buy something, bring something, cook something.
“Lena, she really can’t go to the shops,” Egor tried to take my hand, but I pulled it away. “The doctor said…”
“What doctor? The one she supposedly visited on Wednesday? I called that clinic. No Lidia Borisovna was seen there on Wednesday.”
Silence. Long, awkward, disgusting silence—the kind that tells you your husband knew. Or at least suspected. But he kept quiet because that was easier.
“You… checked?” Egor’s voice grew quieter.
“What else was I supposed to do? Watch myself being used? Yesterday she wrote me a three-page shopping list! Three pages! Do you know what was on it? Quail eggs, goat cheese from a farm shop on the other side of the city, some chia seeds…”
“Mom is taking care of her health.”
“Oh, really?!” I grabbed that very list from the table, wrinkled and covered in tiny handwriting. “And croissants from that French bakery near Taganskaya metro station! That’s an hour and a half one way! Carrying everything myself! And do you know how much money she gave me for it?”
Egor looked away.
“Three thousand,” I continued for him. “Three thousand for groceries that cost at least eight. So I’m supposed to pay the rest from my own salary. Which, by the way, I earn by working ten hours a day.”
“I’ll pay you back…”
“It’s not about the money!” My patience was cracking at the seams. “Do you understand? It’s not about money. It’s about the audacity! She sits here like a queen on a throne, and I’m supposed to serve her whims?”
I paced around the kitchen, trying to calm down. Outside, it was getting dark—the January evening was falling quickly. The streetlights had already come on, and in their glow rare snowflakes circled through the air. But I wasn’t looking at them. All I saw was my reflection in the dark window: tired, exhausted, with dark circles under my eyes.
“You know what’s funniest?” I turned back to Egor. “Last night I woke up to drink some water. I go into the kitchen, and there’s your mommy. At three in the morning. Making herself an omelet. In a frying pan. At the stove. All by herself!”
“Maybe she…”
“Be quiet. Just be quiet. When I walked in, she got so scared she almost dropped the pan. She started mumbling something about insomnia, about suddenly having just a little strength… And I simply poured myself some water and left. I decided I’d talk to you in the morning. So here I am, talking.”
Egor sat down on a chair and ran a hand over his face. He looked lost, and some part of me wanted to feel sorry for him. But most of me was boiling with rage.
“What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to open your eyes! Your mother is manipulating us. She’s healthy. She just decided it’s convenient to live at our expense and boss me around.”
“She’s my mother…”
“And this is my apartment!” I snapped. “Or have you forgotten that we pay the mortgage equally? That I put in the money from selling my grandmother’s apartment?”
His face darkened.
“Lena, I haven’t forgotten. But what are you suggesting? Throw her out onto the street?”
“I’m suggesting we stop lying! To her, to ourselves, and to me. She can rent a place. She has a decent pension, you said so yourself. Plus the money from the apartment she rented out. Where does that money go, by the way?”
“She’s saving it…”
“For what?! Her funeral? Judging by yesterday’s dancing, she’ll live another forty years!”
At that moment, footsteps sounded in the hallway. We both fell silent. Lidia Borisovna walked past the kitchen without looking in and disappeared into her room—my former office, where I used to work in the evenings.
“She heard,” Egor whispered.
“Good. Let her know I’m onto her games.”
“Lena…”
“That’s it, Egor. Tomorrow she can go grocery shopping herself. Or you can. But I’m not going to be a workhorse anymore.”
I left the kitchen, went into the bedroom, and closed the door. I sat on the bed, holding my head in my hands. My heart was pounding somewhere in my throat, my hands trembling. Everything inside me churned—resentment, anger, despair. When we got married four years ago, I had fallen in love with Egor precisely because of his gentleness, his care. He had been attentive, tender. And now… now I didn’t recognize my husband. He had turned into a puppet in his mother’s hands.
A message from Sveta, my colleague, lit up my phone: “How are things? Want to talk?”
I typed back: “Not now. I’ll tell you later.”
The apartment was filled with tense silence. I could hear muffled voices from the living room—Egor was talking to his mother. I couldn’t make out the words, but the intonations said everything: he was making excuses, she was indignant.
Half an hour later, the bedroom door opened slightly.
“Lena,” Egor stood in the doorway, “we need to talk. Seriously.”
“Don’t tell me I’m supposed to apologize to your mother.”
“No. I want… I need to tell you something. Something I found out today.”
Something in his voice made me alert. He looked pale, almost ill.
“What happened?”
“Mom…” He hesitated. “She didn’t sell the apartment just like that. The money… it was needed for something else.”
“For what?”
Egor closed the door and came closer. He sat on the edge of the bed, looking into my eyes.
“For debts. She had debts. Serious ones.”
“What debts?” I exhaled slowly.
“Loans. Several of them. For large amounts.” Egor didn’t look me in the eye. “She took them out over the last three years. She said it was temporary, that she’d pay them back…”
“Wait. So all these months, while she’s been living here and pretending to be sick, she actually just has no money? None at all?”
“It’s worse. Debt collectors started calling. Her. Me. Today one of them came to my workplace.”
I jumped up from the bed.
“A debt collector came to your work? And you’re only telling me this now?!”
“I’m in shock myself!” He ran his hands through his hair. “Turns out Mom borrowed money at interest from some private lenders. Not from a bank. From people who don’t joke around.”
“What for? What did she spend that kind of money on?”
Egor fell silent. Too silent.
“Egor, answer me!”
“On Vlad.”
The name hung in the air. Vlad. Egor’s younger brother. The one I had seen exactly once at our wedding—an unshaven guy of about thirty who spent the whole evening on his phone and left without saying goodbye.
“What happened to Vlad?”
“He… got into trouble. Two years ago. Big debts. Mom decided to help, took out a loan. Then another one. Then borrowed from acquaintances. And Vlad disappeared. Changed his phone number, left no address.”
I sank back onto the bed, trying to digest the information.
“Wait, wait. Your mother got herself into debt for a son who then simply ran away? And now she lives with us, pretends to be helpless, just so she doesn’t have to spend money?”
“She didn’t want you to find out. She was afraid you’d throw her out.”
“So she decided to use me?! Make me carry bags, feed her, keep quiet about the money?! Brilliant!”
“Lena…”
“No!” I jumped up again. “You know what? Right now I couldn’t care less about her problems! She’s an adult, she made her choice. But what does that have to do with me? Why am I supposed to pay for her motherly love toward her parasite of a son?”
“She’s my mother!”
“This is my life!” I was almost shouting. “My apartment, my nerves, my time! I didn’t sign up for this!”
The bedroom door flew open. Lidia Borisovna stood in the doorway. Without the cane she usually leaned on. Straight, collected, with a cold gleam in her eyes.
“Well, Egor,” her voice was calm, almost indifferent, “did you tell your wife about our family matters?”
“Mom, don’t…”
“Shut up,” she snapped. “I’ll speak to this hysterical woman myself.”
“Excuse me, what?” I stepped forward.
“You heard me perfectly, dear,” Lidia Borisovna entered the room and closed the door behind her. “Let’s be honest. Yes, I live here at your expense. Yes, I have no money. Yes, I was pretending. But you know what? I don’t care about your opinion.”
Her arrogance threw me off for a second.
“You…”
“He is my son,” she continued. “I gave birth to him, raised him, educated him. And who are you? Some random girl who attached herself to him four years ago. You think you’re in charge here? Funny.”
“Mom, stop it!” Egor tried to get between us.
“Step aside, Egor,” I didn’t take my eyes off my mother-in-law. “Go on, Lidia Borisovna. Tell me something else interesting.”
She smirked.
“What’s there to tell? The facts speak for themselves. I have problems. Serious ones. And I came to my son for help. Is that a crime?”
“The crime is lying and manipulating people!”
“Oh, please! You know perfectly well how the world works. Everyone survives however they can. I chose my way.”
“So that whole performance with your bad legs, the doctors…”
“A necessity,” Lidia Borisovna shrugged. “Would you have agreed to help a healthy woman? Hardly. This way, at least there was some sympathy.”
I stood there, unable to believe what I was hearing. In front of me was a completely different woman—not a pitiful helpless old lady, but a cold, calculating person openly admitting to deception.
“Mom, you don’t understand what you’re saying,” Egor was pale as chalk.
“I understand perfectly. And I’m tired of hiding it. Lena found out anyway, so why keep the comedy going?” She turned to me. “So here’s what I’ll tell you, dear. I have nowhere to go. The money is gone. The debts remain. The collectors don’t play around. And I’m staying here, whether you like it or not.”
“Are you out of your mind?”
“I am perfectly sane and of sound memory. You can make a scene, you can cry to your husband. But the fact remains: if you throw me out, I’ll go sleep under a bridge. And all your friends, relatives, and colleagues will find out what a heartless woman you are for putting your sick mother-in-law out on the street.”
“Sick?! You just admitted it yourself!”
“And who will tell them the truth?” Lidia Borisovna smiled coldly. “Do you think anyone will believe I’m healthy? I have medical certificates. Real ones. From real doctors. I had an examination a year ago—arthritis was confirmed.”
“But you were dancing!”
“My word against yours.”
I looked at this woman and understood: she had thought everything through. Every step. Every detail. She knew what she was doing when she arrived. She had been counting on this from the very beginning.
“Egor,” I turned to my husband, “do you hear what your mother is saying?”
He was silent. Standing there with his head lowered, silent.
And that was when I understood: he wouldn’t protect me. Not now. Maybe never.
“Fine,” I nodded, feeling a strange calm. “Then I’m leaving.”
“What?” Egor raised his head.
“I. Am. Leaving. Today.”
“Lena, don’t…” He stepped toward me, but I moved away.
“You know what’s the scariest part? Not that your mother turned out to be a manipulator. Not that she deceived us. It’s that you’re silent. Right now, while she openly says she’s going to parasitize us, you stand there and say nothing.”
“I don’t know what to do!”
“Exactly,” I opened the wardrobe and took out a bag. “You don’t know. And you don’t want to know. It’s easier for you if I just accept it, play by the rules, and shut up.”
“That’s unfair…”
“Unfair?” I threw random clothes into the bag. “You know what’s unfair? For three months I carried heavy bags, cooked, cleaned, endured criticism. And you knew. Maybe not everything, but you definitely knew something.”
Lidia Borisovna stood in the doorway with her arms crossed over her chest. A smug smile played on her face.
“Go on, leave,” she drawled. “It’ll be easier for everyone. Egor doesn’t need a wife who makes scandals.”
I stopped, looked at her, and laughed. For the first time that terrible evening, I laughed.
“You really think you’ve won?” I zipped up the bag. “You think I’ll leave now, and you’ll stay here with your precious son and live happily ever after?”
“Isn’t that so?” She raised an eyebrow.
“No. Because this apartment is registered in my name. Half mine, half Egor’s. And I will file for division of property. And I’ll call my lawyer—yes, I have a lawyer, a friend from university. I’ll find out how to evict someone from an apartment when they are not registered there and don’t pay for housing.”
The smile faded from Lidia Borisovna’s face.
“You wouldn’t dare…”
“I would. And you know what else? Tomorrow I’ll go to the bank and freeze the joint account I have with Egor. Let him pay the mortgage himself if his mother is more important than his wife.”
“Lena!” Egor grabbed my hand. “Wait! Let’s discuss this!”
“It’s too late to discuss,” I freed myself. “We should have discussed it three months ago. When your mother first arrived. But you chose to stay silent and hope I’d endure it.”
“I love you…”
“You love me?” I looked into his eyes. “Love isn’t words. It’s actions. It’s a choice. And you didn’t choose me.”
I walked past both of them toward the exit. In the hallway, I threw on my coat and put on my shoes. My hands were shaking—from anger, resentment, fear of the unknown. But I couldn’t stay. One more day in that apartment, and I would have broken completely.
“Lena, stop! Where will you go?”
“To Sveta’s. She offered to let me stay with her when she found out about your mother.”
“You… told her?”
“Of course I told her! I’m not a robot; I needed support!” I turned back at the threshold. “Unlike you, I have people who are on my side.”
I stepped out onto the landing. Cold air hit my face—the window on the stairwell was slightly open. I took out my phone and wrote to Sveta: “Can I come to you? Urgent.”
The answer came instantly: “Come. I’m waiting.”
I went downstairs and out into the street. The city greeted me with a frosty January evening. The lights of the streetlamps blurred through the tears I no longer held back. But they weren’t tears of weakness. They were relief.
I walked down the street with my bag in my hand and felt free. For the first time in three months—free. Yes, ahead lay divorce, division of property, paperwork. But it would be my fight. My choice.
My phone vibrated. A message from Egor: “Forgive me. I’ll fix everything.”
I didn’t answer. I stopped a taxi, gave Sveta’s address, got into the back seat, and closed my eyes.
“Rough day?” the driver asked.
“Rough three months,” I smiled through my tears. “But they’re over.”
The car started moving. I looked out the window at the houses, shops, and people passing by. Somewhere there, in one of the apartments, Lidia Borisovna was explaining to her son that I was bluffing. That I’d be back in a couple of days. That women always come back.
But she was wrong. I wouldn’t come back. Not to a husband who couldn’t make a choice. Not to an apartment where I wasn’t respected. Not to a life where I was nothing more than free domestic help.
There was a lot of uncertainty ahead. Conversations with a lawyer, searching for new housing, explanations to my parents. But it was my life. And I had finally taken it into my own hands.
My phone vibrated again. This time it was a call. Egor. I declined it and blocked his number.
“We’re here,” the driver announced.
I paid and got out of the car. Sveta was standing in front of the entrance—apparently, she had been watching from the window. She hugged me silently, tightly.
“Tell me everything,” she said. “And know this: I have a couch, excellent tea, and full readiness to help you kick that fox’s ass.”
I laughed. Truly laughed. And we went upstairs to a warm apartment where I was expected, where I was welcome.
Sveta made tea, and we sat in the kitchen. I began telling her everything, from the very beginning. About Lidia Borisovna’s dancing, the nighttime omelet, the open confrontation.
“This is like some kind of movie,” Sveta shook her head. “Such nerve!”
“You know what’s strangest? I’m almost not angry anymore. I’m tired of being angry. I just want to start over.”
The phone was silent. Egor didn’t call again.
We talked until midnight. Sveta told me about a lawyer she knew who specialized in divorces. I listened, nodded, made notes on my phone. The plan became clear: tomorrow, the lawyer; the day after tomorrow, the bank; after that, we’d see how things went.
“Let’s sleep,” Sveta yawned. “You’ll need strength tomorrow.”
I settled on the couch and covered myself with a blanket. I closed my eyes and almost immediately fell asleep.
The doorbell woke me. Sharp, insistent. I opened my eyes—it was still dark outside. My phone showed 6:47 a.m.
“Who is it?” Sveta’s sleepy voice came from the room.
I got up, went to the door, and looked through the peephole. I froze.
Egor stood on the landing. With two bags. Disheveled, without a hat, his coat unbuttoned.
I opened the door.
“What are you doing here?”
“Can I come in?” He was trembling. From cold or nerves, I couldn’t tell.
I silently stepped aside. He came in and put down the bags.
“I kicked my mother out,” he said quietly.
“What?”
“After you left, I sat in the kitchen for an hour. Thinking. And then I realized: she destroyed our family. Deliberately. She manipulated me, used you. And I let her.”
Sveta peeked out of the room in her robe, assessed the situation with one glance, and silently disappeared back inside.
“I told her she was leaving. Today. I gave her money for a rental for one month. I told her that after that, she would solve her problems herself. Vlad was her choice. The debts are her responsibility. And I choose you.”
His voice trembled. I stood with my back against the wall and didn’t know what to feel.
“Lena, forgive me. I was a coward. I was afraid to hurt my mother, afraid of conflict. But I lost the most important thing—you. And I don’t want to live without you.”
“And your mother?”
“She went to her sister in Tver. She got on a bus an hour ago. She didn’t want to, she made a scene, but I insisted.”
I looked at him. At this tired, tormented man who had finally made a choice.
“You really did that?”
“I did. And if you don’t come back, I’ll understand. I deserve it. But I’m going to fight. For us. For our marriage. Because you are my family. Not my mother. You.”
I took a step toward him. Then another. And hugged him. Tightly, desperately.
“Never do that again,” I whispered into his shoulder. “Never choose someone else instead of me again.”
“I promise,” he held me close. “I promise.”
We stood like that, hugging in someone else’s hallway early in the morning. And for the first time in a long while, I felt that everything would be all right. Not immediately, not quickly. But it would be.
Ahead of us were conversations, rebuilding trust, and new rules for our life. But the main thing was—we were together. And this time Egor proved that I was not just his wife.