Olga Left Her Husband and Mother-in-Law — and Kept the Apartment. They Were Left With the Debts! So Much for “Family.”
“Olga Sergeyevna, the report is signed. Can I send it?” Larisa cautiously peeked into the office, holding a stack of papers with both hands.
Olga looked away from the screen and rubbed her temple. Her left eye had been twitching since morning. If she could afford to throw a tantrum, she would have done it properly—with flash drives flying, doors slamming, and furious shouting.
But she was the chief accountant, a grown woman with a mortgage, an unemployed husband, and a mother-in-law living off her.
What worried her wasn’t the urge to scream. It was the number in the report: five hundred thousand rubles had disappeared on unexpected expenses during the quarter. Of that amount, she had transferred one hundred and twenty thousand to Valentina Sergeyevna’s card.
For “blood pressure medication” and “injections for her back.”
“Send it, Larisa,” Olga nodded wearily. “And if anyone asks, tell them I went out for lunch and never came back.”
“Don’t feel like going home again?” Larisa asked sympathetically. “I saw your Alexei near the Krasnoye & Beloye liquor store yesterday. Is he still trying to ‘find himself’?”
“He already found himself,” Olga replied bitterly. “In the beer section.”
She left the office at seven in the evening. She felt gray and exhausted, as though she were ninety instead of fifty-three.
Outside, February slush covered everything. Her car was practically knee-deep in mud, and her soul felt just as filthy—drowning in misery.
Silence greeted her at home.
But not the cozy kind. It was tense silence, like the air before a thunderstorm.
The smell of fried onions drifted from the kitchen.
So Valentina Sergeyevna had once again decided to “treat” everyone to dinner. Pasta fried into dust and cutlets as tough as shoe soles.
“Where have you been wandering around?!” A figure in a plaid robe stormed out of the kitchen. “I’ve been waiting for an hour! My blood pressure is one-sixty! I’m out of pills!”
“Right,” Olga said, silently taking off her coat and brushing away the dirt. “And once again, you’re the only person who can save humanity if I transfer two thousand rubles?”
“Two thousand?! Everything at the pharmacy has gone up! Here’s the receipt!” Valentina Sergeyevna theatrically waved a scrap of paper. “And I need diuretics and ointment for my knee too!”
“Mom,” Alexei’s voice came from the other room. “Don’t yell. My head hurts. Ol, did you at least buy some beer?”
There it was.
Their cozy little family nest.
She worked herself to exhaustion, and when she came home, she was greeted by one person’s blood pressure and one chronically unemployed loafer.
Alexei was stretched out on the sofa wearing a stained undershirt and boxer shorts covered in teddy bears. A mug stood near his feet and the remote lay beside him.
His wife had just come home from work.
So what?
His head hurt, apparently.
“And you?” Olga tilted her head and looked at her husband. “What did you do today?”
“I… well, I called the employment center! They don’t have anything for delivery drivers right now. They said maybe something will come up in March.”
“March is a month away. What are we supposed to eat until then?”
“Mom cooks!” Alexei replied with genuine surprise. “Or are you unhappy about that too?”
Olga clenched her teeth.
Her heartbeat pounded in her ears like a hammer.
She walked over to the cabinet and pulled out a pharmacy bag.
Inside were…
Candy.
Nail polish.
And a tube of cream called “Woman’s Whim.”
All of it had been bought by Valentina Sergeyevna under the pretense of “treating her hypertension.”
“What is this?” Olga approached her mother-in-law, holding the bag at arm’s length. “Are these some new medications, Valentina Sergeyevna? Blood pressure cream?”
“You have no right to go through my bags!” she shrieked, jumping back. “Those are my personal belongings!”
“Bought with my money?” Olga was nearly shouting now. “Every month you beg me for money for ‘medicine,’ and then you paint your nails and stuff yourself with chocolate?!”
“You ungrateful bitch!” her mother-in-law wailed, clutching her chest. “I gave birth to your husband, I never got any grandchildren, and now I have to put up with your poison in my own home!”
“Our home,” Olga hissed through clenched teeth. “The one we bought with a mortgage. Paid from MY salary. The salary you devour with your ‘knee ointments’!”
Alexei got up unsteadily and walked toward them, breathing heavily.
“Why are you yelling at my mother?! She’s an old woman!”
“She’s a blackmailer with a pedicure!” Olga snapped. “And you’re no better, Lyoshenka! Twenty years together, and during all that time you’ve never held a job for more than a month! Who pays for the internet? Who buys your shoes? Who paid for our vacations? Me! And the two of you keep eating away at me like mice chewing through cheese in a pantry!”
“Well then go stay with your girlfriends if you’re so great!” Alexei shouted, turning red. “Rent yourself an apartment and live alone! It’s about time!”
“Thanks for your permission!” Olga threw the bag onto the floor, turned around, and headed toward the bedroom. “Just leave my slippers behind. I bought those for you too, by the way.”
She slammed the bedroom door and leaned against it.
Everything inside her was boiling like a kettle on the stove.
She wanted to cry, but no tears came.
There was only rage and bitterness.
How many years had she carried those two parasites on her back?
And for what?
Valentina Sergeyevna’s voice came through the wall:
“Better to be born rich than beautiful… She has money, so she thinks everyone owes her something!”
Olga looked at the suitcase standing in the corner.
She had bought it for a vacation in Sochi.
They never went. Alexei had supposedly “broken his leg” on the stairs right before the trip.
Since then, the suitcase had remained in the corner, reminding her of everything she had wanted but never gotten.
She opened it.
Slowly.
Without rushing.
She began putting things inside: jeans, a couple of blouses, her passport.
Then she thought for a moment and added a pair of high heels that had been gathering dust ever since she had stopped going “out.”
Ten minutes later, she walked into the hallway carrying the suitcase.
Her mother-in-law sat in the kitchen, grimly chewing on a pickle.
Alexei was in exactly the same position on the sofa, except now he had a bottle in his hand.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“To get some air,” Olga replied. “I’m tired of suffocating.”
“And don’t even think about coming back!” Valentina Sergeyevna shouted. “We’ll survive perfectly well without you!”
“Oh, I’m sure you will,” Olga snorted. “Except I blocked my card. We’ll see how well you manage without me… and without my money.”
The door slammed shut.
The stairwell was damp and smelled of cats.
But for the first time in many years, Olga felt that she could breathe more easily.
The next morning began with a cup of tea at the train station and the question of where a fifty-three-year-old woman was supposed to go when home offered her nothing except demands, leeches, and imaginary high blood pressure.
The tea was weak and the plastic cup burned her fingers, but at least no one was screaming from the kitchen:
“Where are my pills?”
And no one was whining from the sofa:
“Are you at least going to buy me socks?”
“How about you finally start living like a human being, Olya?” she muttered to herself, staring through the cloudy window of the station café.
She rented a studio apartment.
Yes, it was tiny, with a view of a blank wall and the lingering smell of previous tenants.
But it was hers.
No noisy Valentina Sergeyevna.
No Alexei spread across the sofa like butter melting on hot bread.
At lunchtime, Olga went to the bank.
She opened a separate account.
Not a joint one.
Not a family account.
Her own.
“Would you like to have your salary transferred automatically?” asked the young bank employee with bright pink nails.
“Yes,” Olga replied confidently. “Only to that account. Only for me.”
Her phone wouldn’t stop ringing.
First, Alexei called.
“Ol, did you seriously leave?! I thought you just went for a walk…”
“I am walking. Without you.”
“Come back. Mom was worried. So was I. You’re not really going to abandon us, are you?”
“I already did. You can go worry in the kitchen. I think there are still some pickles left.”
Closer to evening, text messages from Valentina Sergeyevna began arriving:
“I’m sick. The ambulance said I need rest and medication.”
“You’ll rot in hell if you leave your husband’s mother without a penny!”
“I curse you. My blood pressure is 180!”
“And mine is already 200,” Olga muttered, silencing her phone.
On the third day of her new life, she woke up to silence for the first time in years.
Not to clattering pots.
Not to shouting.
Not to the smell of burnt onions.
She simply woke up.
By herself.
That evening she went to the store and bought herself a piece of red fish.
A small piece that seemed to cost half a salary.
But for the first time in ten years, she bought it for herself.
Not “for Mom’s sandwiches.”
Not “for Lyoshka’s hangover.”
For herself.
To go with a glass of wine.
She sat on the sofa, drinking wine, watching a TV series, and smiling.
And then—
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Someone started hammering on the door.
It sounded like an action movie.
Olga nearly choked.
“Ol, open up! It’s me!” Alexei shouted. “I want to talk!”
She opened the door slightly, leaving the security chain in place.
“What do you want?”
“I understand everything now, Ol. Really. We went too far. You were right. But you can’t just cut everything off like this. We’re family.”
“What family, Lyosha? You’re my extra child, not my husband. How many years have you been living off me?”
“I’ll find a job!” He threw up his hands. “I swear! I’ll work as a loader if I have to. Just come back. Or at least give Mom her card back. Her blood pressure…”
“Your mother doesn’t have high blood pressure. She has greed.”
He fell silent.
He stood there shifting from one foot to the other like a schoolboy outside the principal’s office.
“I can’t manage without you, Ol…”
“You couldn’t manage even with me. What’s going to change?”
He said nothing.
Then suddenly he snapped.
“Screw you! You think you’re worth something? Who needs you with your nerves, your wrinkles, and that constantly controlling stare?”
“Better controlling than being a useless rag lying on the sofa.”
“We were together for twenty years!” he shouted. “We had a life! Habits! A shared life!”
“Yes. The habit of me carrying everything while you spent the money. The habit of disrespect. The habit of wiping your feet on me. You know what, Lyosha? I’ve found a new habit—living peacefully.”
She slammed the door.
And suddenly she started sobbing.
She didn’t even realize when it began.
The tears weren’t from pity.
They came from exhaustion.
From relief.
A few days later, the neighbor from the apartment next door at her old place called her.
“Ol, what did you do over there? There was so much screaming today, it sounded like someone was torturing your mother-in-law!”
“What happened?”
“She was screaming at Alexei that he let his wife get away, that now she was going to end up homeless because ‘that bitch blocked everything,’ and that her ‘joints wouldn’t survive this kind of stress.’ Then she kicked him out! Can you imagine? Threw him into the stairwell with a bag of his things!”
Olga smiled.
Did it hurt?
A little.
Did she feel sorry for him?
No.
Too late.
At work, Larisa approached her.
“Listen, I’ve been looking at you… You’ve blossomed, honestly. You used to walk around like a zombie, and now you’re practically glowing. New romance?”
“A new me,” Olga replied.
That evening, another phone call came.
This time from a lawyer.
“Olga Sergeyevna? Your husband wants to file for divorce. And he has requested a division of marital property.”
“Right. Let him try. I’ll collect twenty years’ worth of receipts for him. I paid for the apartment. I bought the furniture. The loans are in my name. Let him try.”
She hung up and laughed for the first time in a very long time.
Loudly.
Genuinely.
Still tired, but relieved.
Everything seemed to calm down.
As though someone had switched off the sound in this family soap opera.
The silence was loud, thick, almost unnatural.
Olga got up one morning, brewed coffee, put on a fresh blouse, and touched up her lipstick.
The mirror reflected a woman she hadn’t seen in years: straight-backed, clear-eyed and…
smiling.
A small smile.
But her own.
She no longer checked her phone every five minutes to see who needed something, who was demanding something, or who was unhappy.
She no longer trembled when she saw an incoming call from “Valentina S.”
No meant no.
Olga had learned to say that word like armor.
Directly.
Clearly.
Without trembling.
But the illusion of peace cracked two weeks later.
Two people stood outside the door of her new apartment.
One was Alexei—rumpled, angry, with yellowish circles under his eyes.
The other was a local police officer.
“Good evening, citizen…” the uniformed man began.
“Woman,” Olga interrupted. “Woman. Good evening.”
“We received a complaint from citizen Alexei Sidorov… um… your spouse, stating that you are preventing him from accessing jointly acquired property.”
“What property, exactly?”
Alexei immediately jumped in.
“The apartment! I live there! I’m registered there! She kicked me out! Blocked everything, moved the accounts into her name, and won’t give Mom the card!”
“So you’re registered in the apartment?” the officer asked calmly.
“No. The apartment is registered in her name. I… well… lived there.”
“So legally, you are not an owner?”
“That’s not the point! She abandoned me! This is emotional damage!”
Olga barely managed not to laugh.
“Damage is when someone loses something. And you, Lyosha, only lost your free ride.”
The police officer looked at them with the expression of a man who was paid far too little to deal with things like this.
“As I understand it, this is a family dispute. Mr. Sidorov, if you have any property claims, you should go to court. As far as I can see, no one is forcing you to remain in this stairwell.”
Alexei froze.
He puffed himself up.
And suddenly blurted out:
“She nearly gave Mom a heart attack! Her blood pressure was almost two hundred! And you, Olga—you were living off me all these years!”
“I was?”
“You! You were always controlling everything, hiding money, living in that accounting office of yours like some bitter old hag!”
“Lyosha, do you really want to calculate who gave what to whom over the past twenty years?”
“I… I put up with you! Your constant accusations, your schedules, your ‘we need to save money’!”
Olga took a step forward.
She spoke calmly, but her voice was so cold that even the police officer took a small step back.
“Lyosha, you didn’t put up with me. You used me. You used the fact that I worked while you ‘searched for yourself’ on the sofa. I paid for your mother, your cigarettes, your internet, your ‘trips with friends.’ You are not a husband. You are a tenant who has the nerve to insult the landlady.”
“Screw you!” Alexei shouted and spat on the floor. “You’ll die alone, you old snake!”
“Better alone than surrounded by parasites,” she replied quietly.
The officer shrugged and led Alexei away.
From the stairwell, Olga could hear him muttering:
“She’ll regret this…”
That evening, she received a call from the accounting office.
“Olga Sergeyevna, a letter arrived for you. It’s a court summons. Apparently your husband has filed for division of property. We’ll email it to you.”
“Excellent,” she replied, pouring herself a glass of wine.
The court hearing took place a month later.
Alexei arrived with his mother.
Valentina Sergeyevna looked as though she were mourning the money rather than the marriage.
She wore a black jacket and the expression of a martyr.
“Your Honor,” she began before the judge could even speak, “I gave them everything I had! Even my pension! I practically invested in that apartment emotionally! And now they’re throwing me out!”
The judge, a tired-looking woman in her sixties, raised an eyebrow.
“Are you the defendant?”
“No. I’m the mother-in-law. This directly concerns me!”
The judge sighed.
“The only things that directly concern you are your pension and your medication. If you have no documents proving financial contributions, then you are here merely as an accompanying person.”
Olga stood slightly and handed over a thick stack of documents.
“Your Honor, here are all the payments for the apartment, bank statements, loans, and receipts. Everything is in my name. Alexei does not appear anywhere. Not a single kopeck came from him. Moreover, we had a prenuptial agreement. A copy is attached.”
The judge frowned.
“When was the prenuptial agreement signed?”
“Three years ago. Before the apartment was purchased.”
“Alexei, were you aware of this agreement?”
“Well… she signed something. She said it was ‘just a formality’…”
“So you signed it?”
“I… well, yes.”
“Then I have no choice but to dismiss the claim. The property belongs exclusively to Olga Sergeyevna. The hearing is concluded.”
Alexei jumped to his feet.
“What? That’s it?! But how am I supposed to live? I’m left with nothing!”
The judge looked up from the documents.
“Get a job, Alexei. It helps. Tried and tested.”
Olga walked out of the courtroom feeling as though she had finally removed a twenty-year sack of stones from her shoulders.
A taxi was waiting outside.
The driver was a woman in her forties with short hair.
“Where are we going?”
“You know what,” Olga said with a smile, “let’s go to the park first. I’d like to take a walk. And after that—to my new life.”
The driver nodded.
And stepped on the gas.