You have to bail her out, Vera. She’s not a stranger to you!”
Igor threw a bank statement onto the kitchen table. The crumpled sheet slid across the damp oilcloth and stopped against the ceramic salt shaker. Without saying a word, I turned off the stove. The rumble of the old extractor fan instantly died away.
I wiped my wet hands and picked up the paper. At the very bottom of the page, a number was printed in bold: eight hundred and forty-three thousand rubles. That amount was almost one and a half times my annual salary at the metalworks factory.
“Where did numbers like this come from, Igor?”
My voice sounded muffled, as if it were coming from the next room. My husband nervously rubbed the bridge of his nose. He deliberately kept looking away toward the window.
“Lika made a mistake. She’s still young. It happens. The girl wanted to live beautifully, took out one online loan, then another to cover the first one. The interest piled up like crazy.”
He looked at me with his usual expectation. With the same expression he wore when he asked me to find clean shirts or cook a more elaborate dinner. As if solving this problem automatically fell under my duties as a wife.
“And what are you suggesting I do?”
I carefully smoothed the crumpled corner of the statement.
“You have five hundred thousand saved for renovations and for Pashka’s tutors before his exams.”
Igor lowered his voice into an insinuating, almost affectionate half-whisper.
“You’ll withdraw it tomorrow morning. I’ll borrow the rest from the guys at the garage cooperative. We’re family, Vera. We simply have to help each other in trouble.”
Suddenly there seemed to be too little air in the kitchen. For fourteen years, I had raised his daughter from his first marriage. I ironed her school blouses, sat through her colds at night, and listened to endless reproaches from my mother-in-law on weekends. And now I was supposed to give away my own son’s last savings for someone else’s whims.
“I’ll think about it.”
I turned toward the metal sink and turned on the icy water.
The Paper Trail
That evening, Igor went to the garage for a homeowners’ meeting. Lika, as usual, locked herself in her room. I took out that same bank statement.
I smoothed the thick paper on the table under the bright light of the kitchen sconce. My habit of checking every number made me read not the final total, but the tiny lines of daily expenses.
My husband had been trying to convince me that the girl had simply made a mistake out of inexperience. But the neat columns of numbers said something entirely different.
A beauty salon on Krasnoarmeysky Avenue cost fifteen thousand. Japanese food delivery to the house cost 3,200 rubles. A purchase at an elite shoe store drained twenty-eight thousand. A restaurant in the very center of the city left a bill for eight and a half thousand.
This was not a single unfortunate mistake. This was the lifestyle of a nineteen-year-old girl who had never worked a single day anywhere.
She was enrolled in college in the paid design department. My husband paid for that prestigious education out of our family budget.
I turned over the page of the bank statement. My eyes caught on a strange recurring transfer. Every month on the fifth, four thousand rubles left the account and went to the details of some individual entrepreneur.
I took out my phone and typed it into the search bar. The screen gave a clear answer. It was payment for a premium fitness club membership. Lika had never once mentioned workouts in front of me.
I quietly went out into the hallway. My stepdaughter’s new leather jacket was hanging on a hook. A heavy, sweet perfume sharply rose from the collar. The edge of a pink receipt stuck out of the side pocket. I pulled out the glossy slip of paper.
A receipt from a trendy coffee shop, printed exactly at noon. Two almond milk cappuccinos and signature croissants for nine hundred rubles.
The girl whose debts supposedly threatened to leave her without a roof over her head was calmly drinking expensive coffee in the city center.
The small details finally came together into a complete picture.
Old Sneakers
I slowly walked to my younger son’s room. From under the tightly closed door came the distinct sharp chemical smell of shoe glue. I silently pushed the wooden door open.
Pashka was sitting at his desk, hunched low under the light of the desk lamp. In his hands, he was tightly holding his old right sneaker. An open metal tube of glue lay on the table.
“Pash, what are you doing there?”
I stopped right on the threshold. My son startled with his whole body and hurriedly tried to hide the shoe under the desktop.
“Nothing special, Mom.”
He lowered his eyes and began nervously wiping his dirty fingers on his sweatpants.
“The sole came loose a little at the bend. I’ll glue it now, press it down with heavy books overnight, and it’ll be fine. I’ll get through this winter without any problem.”
The sole had not simply come loose. It had fallen off exactly halfway, exposing the worn gray insole. Pashka had been wearing those cheap sneakers for the third year in a row. But he stubbornly kept silent. He always kept silent and never asked us for anything extra. Because he knew perfectly well about the endless holes in our budget because of his older sister.
First, we paid for tutors for her admission. Then we transferred money for paid college. Then we bought a new laptop for her studies, which mysteriously broke exactly one month later.
“Why didn’t you tell me right away that they had finally torn?”
I came closer and took the heavy shoe, thickly smeared with yellow glue, from him.
“Mom, I heard Dad shouting in the kitchen yesterday because of money.”
He looked at me with his light eyes, far too grown-up for a fourteen-year-old.
“Lika has some serious problems again. She needs the money more right now. I really can wear these sneakers a little longer.”
I swallowed the lump rising in my throat. My own son was secretly gluing his shoes so he would not burden the family with extra expenses. And in the next room sat a girl ordering delicacies on credit. I placed the ruined sneaker back on the table.
“Get ready right now.”
I said it very quietly.
“Where are we going this late?”
Pashka blinked in surprise.
“To the shopping center on the avenue. For new warm sneakers. And we’ll look at a new jacket too.”
I turned around and decisively walked out into the corridor. From behind my stepdaughter’s closed door came bright, carefree laughter. She was talking animatedly with someone on her phone. I opened the door slightly without even thinking of knocking.
Lika was sprawled on her made bed in silk pajamas. Empty plastic food containers were piled on the bedside table. She was rhythmically running a glass nail file over her long nails, freshly coated with burgundy polish. In our city, a manicure like that cost no less than three thousand.
“Yes, babe, tomorrow we’ll go to the new club.”
With a practiced gesture, she pressed the phone between her ear and shoulder.
“Dad promised to throw some money onto my card tonight. He’ll milk his old hen for her stash, and then we’ll party.”
I silently closed the door. Old hen. That was who I had been in this house for all those long fourteen years. A convenient, reliable step they had both gotten used to walking on without even taking off their shoes.
The Plastic Folder
In the morning, Igor hurried off to work. I called my boss and took one unpaid day off. Lika was sleeping soundly after her nightly phone chats. I sat down at the kitchen table, opened the old laptop, and typed in the college address.
The school had its own dormitory for students. I found the direct phone number of the dormitory supervisor. The long beeps went on for a while. A woman with a low, hoarse voice answered. I politely introduced myself as the stepmother of student Ivanova. I asked about available places for someone who urgently needed housing.
“There are places in the third women’s block.”
The supervisor coughed dryly into the phone.
“Three thousand two hundred rubles a month for a bed. Payment strictly in advance for the entire semester. Bring the student ID and passport.”
I wrote down the exact address. I dressed very quickly, threw on my autumn coat, and went outside. The cold November wind immediately slipped under my collar. I got into an overcrowded minibus and headed toward Kosaya Gora.
The student dormitory turned out to be an old red-brick building with badly peeling paint on the wooden window frames. Inside, there was a thick smell of boiled cabbage from the cafeteria and damp boards. The supervisor turned out to be a stout elderly woman in a thick gray cardigan. She looked at me carefully over horn-rimmed glasses.
“Ivanova Lidia Igorevna?”
She spent a long time leafing through a thick ledger.
“But she has local registration. Why would she need a dormitory in the middle of the school year?”
“Complicated family circumstances. It’s time for the girl to learn independence.”
I took out the cash I had withdrawn in advance. Exactly nineteen thousand two hundred rubles for six months of housing. The very bills I had taken from my own untouchable personal reserve.
The supervisor slowly counted the money. She wrote out a pink official receipt. She filled out the housing order with a blue stamp. Then she placed all the documents into a thin plastic folder.
“Room three hundred twelve, on the third floor.”
She passed the folder to me through the narrow glass window.
“The roommates are quiet girls. They’re studying to become pastry chefs. Let her come with her personal belongings before evening. Clean bedding is issued strictly on Tuesdays.”
I left the gloomy building. Inside me spread a surprising lightness I had almost forgotten. I had dropped a heavy stone I had voluntarily carried on myself for many years.
Suitcases at the Door
I returned to my warm apartment closer to lunchtime. The hallway was quiet. I went straight into the living room, pulled two large travel suitcases down from the upper storage cabinets, and loudly rolled them into my stepdaughter’s cluttered room. I threw open the doors of her huge wardrobe.
Packing took me exactly one hour. Silk blouses flew onto the light laminate floor, many of them still with store tags attached. Designer jeans, short shiny dresses, cashmere sweaters. I carefully placed the shoes at the very bottom and tightly packed soft clothes on top.
The expensive cosmetics that took up half the dressing table, I swept without regret into a separate thick bag. As I zipped the bags shut, I watched the room gradually lose the look of a glamorous shop window.
Lika appeared in the doorway only when I was packing her winter boots. She had just come from the bathroom. She was wearing a fluffy house robe, and a towel was wrapped around her head like a turban. She froze in place, her mouth open in amazement.
“What are you doing here?”
She shrieked loudly, staring at the empty wardrobe shelves.
“I’m packing your things.”
I tied the knot on the bag with the shoes.
“You’re moving today.”
“Where exactly am I moving? Are you insane? This is my home!”
She sharply stepped forward and tried to snatch the bag from my hands by force. I calmly stopped her with an icy look.
“Your home is wherever you pay for it yourself. I pay here. My apartment, my utility bills, my food in this refrigerator.”
With effort, I fastened the tight latch on the second suitcase. Lika recoiled as if she had been slapped.
“I’m calling Dad right now!”
She shot out into the corridor. I could clearly hear her sobbing into the phone, complaining to her father about her stepmother. I rolled both heavy suitcases into the hallway. Beside them, I placed the bags with cosmetics and shoes. All that was left was to wait for my husband.
The Confrontation
Igor rushed home twenty minutes later. He practically flew into the apartment, forgetting to take off his dirty outdoor boots. Clumps of wet November mud fell from the soles onto the clean linoleum. Lika instantly threw herself around his neck.
“Daddy, she threw out my things! She’s kicking me out into the cold!”
Igor roughly pushed his daughter aside and took a threatening step toward me. He was breathing heavily, his nostrils flaring.
“Have you completely lost your mind, Vera?”
He clenched his fingers.
“You’re throwing my own child out of the house? I’ll divorce you tomorrow!”
I stood straight, leaning slightly back against the wallpaper. In my hands, I held that same folder tightly.
“Then divorce me.”
I said the word absolutely calmly. My voice did not tremble once.
“But first, look at this carefully.”
I placed the plastic folder on the small cabinet under the mirror. Igor opened the transparent cover suspiciously. His gaze ran across the lines of the pink receipt.
“What are these papers?”
He frowned in confusion.
“This is an officially paid place in the student dormitory at her college, six months in advance.”
I folded my arms firmly across my chest.
“Room number three hundred twelve. Her roommates are studying to be pastry chefs. I am not throwing her into the street. I am providing her with a roof over her head.”
“A dorm?”
Lika peered out with disgust from behind her father’s broad back.
“I will never live in that dump! There’s one shower for the whole floor!”
“But there you’ll get free experience in adult independent life.”
I looked straight at her.
“At the same time, you’ll learn the value of the money you spend on coffee shops.”
In a rage, Igor threw the folder onto the floor.
“You have no right! This is cruel! She is my biological daughter!”
“And whose son is Pashka?”
I raised my voice for the first time in that endless day.
“Pashka, who is gluing torn sneakers for the third winter in a row because we’re financially dragging your princess along? He asks me not to buy him anything new so Daddy won’t get angry about expenses?”
Igor blinked in confusion. His confidence cracked.
“What does Pashka have to do with this? We agreed on everything yesterday. Just give me your savings now, and I’ll pay you back later.”
“I don’t have any savings anymore.”
I looked at my empty hands.
“I bought my son winter clothes. I paid for his tutors six months in advance. And I transferred everything left to my sister’s account. Part of the cash went to this dormitory. There is no more money, Igor.”
Igor’s stunned gaze shifted from me to the packed suitcases, then to his frightened daughter. He was too used to convenient Vera. The Vera who always found a compromise and silently took out her wallet for the sake of some mythical family peace.
“Lika is not leaving this apartment. We are staying here.”
He forced the words out stubbornly, but no longer with the same certainty.
“I inherited this apartment from my grandmother before our marriage.”
I reminded him of the fact he preferred not to talk about.
“If Lika doesn’t leave right now for the room that has been paid for, tomorrow morning I will file a lawsuit for forced eviction. And a statement too.”
Lika instantly understood that the usual game was over. She grabbed her phone in its glittering case and began frantically tapping the screen.
“I’m calling a taxi to the dorm.”
She sniffled loudly.
“Dad, give me money for the taxi.”
Igor silently took out his leather wallet. He pulled out a red banknote and shoved it into her hand. Lika hurriedly threw on her jacket and grabbed one heavy suitcase. Igor obediently picked up the second one. They went out into the cold stairwell.
Silence
The apartment became unusually empty. The loud music from the speakers disappeared. The laughter on the phone went silent. The sickly sweet smell of perfume vanished from the corridor.
Pashka quietly came out into the hallway. He came right up to me and hugged me tightly. The top of his fair-haired head already reached my chin. He had grown so quickly, and because of someone else’s endless loans, I had almost missed that important moment. The two of us went to the kitchen and drank tea.
The heavy front door slammed loudly. Igor had returned.
He walked into the kitchen and slowly lowered himself onto a stool. His shoulders hung helplessly, his gaze fixed on the tabletop. Mechanically, he reached toward the windowsill, where that same terrible bank statement with the enormous debt was still lying.
Without saying a word, I pushed a clean mug of fresh tea toward him. He froze. Then he slowly moved his hand away from the paper and wrapped both palms around the hot ceramic mug. No objections followed. He knew perfectly well he was not going anywhere. And he would have to learn to live by my rules.
Sometimes you simply need to pack someone else’s suitcases so it becomes easy to breathe in your own home again.
And what would you do with someone else’s debts under your roof? Would you be able to send an adult stepdaughter out the door with suitcases, or would you keep enduring it for the sake of fragile peace in the family?
Vera was still gentle with her by paying nineteen thousand for that dormitory. I would have simply put those suitcases out on the landing without any receipts and let her father find housing himself.