— Yes, Mom, don’t worry… I’ll take care of it right after the wedding… I’ll say it’s for the mortgage, or think up something else… Yeah, we’ll put it in your name, that’ll be safer; she won’t be a stranger anymore.
Yana froze in the entryway, barely managing to pull the front door shut behind her. The key turned in the lock almost soundlessly—she’d mastered that over the past months so as not to wake Maksim if she came home late. Today, on the contrary, she’d left work three hours early. In her hands was a box with his favorite medovik honey cake from an expensive patisserie. A surprise. She wanted, for no reason at all, to throw a little celebration in the middle of an ordinary day for herself and her fiancé. There was just over a month left until the wedding.
Maksim’s voice drifted from the bedroom. It was calm, everyday, even a bit lazy, the voice of someone discussing potatoes at the market. But the words were different. They were sharp and cold, like shards of glass. They pierced the warm, peony-scented air and froze it.
Moving slowly so as not to make a sound, Yana set the cake box on the hall table. The flowers her coworkers had given her to congratulate her on the upcoming wedding slipped from her weakening fingers and fell to the floor, but she didn’t even notice. The cold wasn’t a metaphor. It started somewhere in her solar plexus and spread through her veins in icy needles, reaching the tips of her fingers. She understood what they were talking about. Her apartment. Her only one, a gift from her parents for her thirtieth birthday. Her walls, her fortress.
“…That’ll be safer…”
“…She won’t be a stranger anymore…”
The last phrase sounded like a sentence. Not a stranger. So it’s okay to clean her out. Turn out her pockets, because now it’s “family.” She stood without moving, listening to the short pauses in his speech when he was hearing his mother’s reply. She could almost physically feel the presence of that woman, Svetlana Igorevna, on the other end of the line—her approving cooing, her practical, businesslike advice. The woman who, in a month, was supposed to call her daughter.
“All right, Mom, talk later. Kisses.”
Footsteps. He was coming from the bedroom. Yana didn’t hide or pretend she’d just walked in. She simply stood and waited. Straight as a string, in the center of her entryway.
Maksim came into the hall, stretching, a satisfied smile on his face. Seeing her, he froze. The smile slid off as if wiped away with a dirty rag. He went pale so fast the freckles on his nose looked like dark patches of mold. His gaze darted to the cake on the table, to the flowers on the floor, then back to her face. He understood everything.
“Yana? Have you… have you been here long?”
His voice was hoarse. The voice of a thief caught at the scene of the crime.
“Long enough to understand everything,” her own voice sounded even and unfamiliar, as if someone else were speaking. “ ‘Safer,’ is it? To wrest the apartment and put it in Mommy’s name?”
He jerked as if struck and took a step toward her, hands extended in a pleading gesture.
“Yan, you’ve got it all wrong, it’s—”
“How about you get the hell out, my dear, if all you need from me is the apartment and a residence registration? Or did you think that once I found out, everything would go on like before?”
She didn’t raise her voice. There was no need. Each word fell into the space between them like a heavy stone. She walked around him, went to the front door, and flung it wide open, letting in the indifferent light of the stairwell lamp.
“You have five minutes to pack your things and disappear from MY apartment. And do hurry. The surprise didn’t work out. For you or for me.”
“This is some mistake, you couldn’t have heard that!” Maksim tried to grab her hand, but Yana snatched it away as if he were a leper. His face, pale a second ago, flushed with an unhealthy, blotchy redness.
“Mistake? So it wasn’t you who just told your mommy you’d think up a way to make me sign the apartment over to her? Maybe I’m having auditory hallucinations?” She folded her arms across her chest. Her stance was the embodiment of impenetrability. She didn’t shout, didn’t fuss. She simply stood there like a rock, against which his pitiful, panicked waves of lies were breaking.
“It was just… just talk! We were only discussing… financial security! For our future family!”
“Ours?” Yana allowed herself a crooked, vicious smile. “Seems you’re confused. The security in question was your family’s—yours and your mother’s—at the expense of my apartment. Smart. Practical. It’s a pity the executor fell short. And turned out too chatty. By the way, your five minutes are already running.”
He looked at her, and fear flickered in his eyes. Not the fear of losing her, but the fear of losing an asset. Of losing a cozy setup, a settled life, and most of all, the grand prize in the form of square meters in the city center. He realized persuasion was useless. Her face was carved from stone. Then he did what he always did in a no-win situation. He snatched his phone off the table and, backing away, slipped into the bedroom, closing the door tightly behind him.
Yana didn’t follow. She stayed in the entryway, beside the open front door. She could hear his muffled, panicky whisper. He was complaining. Seeking support. Calling in reinforcements. She even knew who would come. Heavy artillery. The chief strategist of this failed operation.
Not even twenty minutes had passed when the figure of Svetlana Igorevna appeared in the doorway. She didn’t ring. She walked in as if it were her own apartment and she’d only stepped out for a second. Tall, in an expensive cashmere coat, she exuded the scent of authority and costly perfume. Her gaze slid with disdainful perplexity over the peonies scattered on the floor, lingered on the cake box, and finally bored into Yana.
“What is going on here?” Her voice was low and metallic. She wasn’t addressing Yana but the space itself, as if Yana were a piece of furniture. Maksim slipped out of the bedroom at once and stationed himself behind her shoulder like a guilty puppy.
“I think your son has already explained everything,” Yana replied calmly, without moving. “He’s packing his things.”
“Packing his things?” The future mother-in-law’s eyebrows climbed in regal astonishment. “My girl, are you in your right mind? Throwing your fiancé out into the street a month before the wedding over some silly thing you misunderstood? We’d nearly accepted you into the family, and you—”
“ ‘Nearly’ is the key word,” Yana cut in. Her calm was her main weapon. “I understood everything correctly. Your plans to ‘strengthen financial security’ at the expense of my property were stated with absolute clarity. ‘We’ll put it in your name, that’ll be safer.’ Did I misunderstand that too?”
For a moment, Svetlana Igorevna was speechless. She hadn’t expected such a direct blow. She was used to people cringing, shuffling, making excuses before her.
“You eavesdropped on a private conversation!” she finally found her voice. “That’s low!”
“What’s low is drawing up plans behind the back of someone who trusts you to snatch her apartment. Overhearing it is a stroke of luck. It saves me a lot of time, money, and nerves. And now, if you don’t mind, I’d like you both to leave my apartment. Maksim, your five minutes have long expired. Looks like you’ll be going out empty-handed.”
She stepped aside, opening the door even wider and pointing to the exit. It was an ultimate, irrevocable gesture. But Svetlana Igorevna hadn’t rushed over here to surrender so easily. She took a step forward, her face twisted with a grimace of righteous anger.
“You little… We’ve invested so much in you! Spent so much time on you! You think we’ll let you destroy everything just like that?”
“Invested?” Yana cocked her head slightly, her gaze mocking, appraising. “That’s a very interesting claim. Let’s try to tally your investments. I’m actually curious.”
Svetlana Igorevna frowned. She hadn’t expected that. She’d counted on embarrassment, on attempts to justify herself, but certainly not on a cold accountant’s audit.
“Tally what? Are you mocking me? I taught you how to cook! I gave you advice on how to behave in respectable society!”
“Cook…” Yana repeated slowly, savoring the word. “That is, without doubt, a major contribution. We’ll put it down. Advice on how to behave in society… also valuable. Especially from someone who teaches her son to take his fiancée’s apartment by deceit. Very ‘respectable’ advice. What else was in your investment portfolio?”
“I… I helped you choose a laptop!” Maksim suddenly squeaked from behind his mother’s shoulder. “We spent the whole day going from store to store! I spent my time! I screwed that shelf into the bathroom! It would still be lying in the box!”
He blurted it out with desperate pride, as if that shelf were the cornerstone on which their would-be marriage rested. Yana looked at him the way you look at a ridiculous insect.
“A shelf. A laptop. A whole day. How adorable. I suggest we draw up a transfer-and-acceptance act right now. I’ll return your shelf—you can unscrew it and take it with you. And for the day you spent, I’m ready to pay. How much is a day of your time worth, Maksim? Go on, don’t be shy. Since we’re counting everything now.”
Svetlana Igorevna realized the attack had failed. Their “investments” looked pitiful and laughable. She shifted tactics, moving from accusations to blunt pressure. She took another step forward, almost shoving Yana deeper into the hallway. Her face turned hard, unpleasant.
“Enough clowning! You live within these walls alone. We wanted to create a family, to fill this home with life! There would have been children… Did you think about that? Maksim needs confidence in tomorrow; he needs to stand firmly on his feet to provide for a family! And I, as his mother, care about his well-being!”
“Care about his well-being at my expense,” Yana cut in, and for the first time ice edged her voice. “And since we’re talking about real debts and well-being, Svetlana Igorevna… Let’s talk real numbers. Not cooking and not shelves.”
She paused, sweeping them both with a heavy gaze. Maksim shrank instinctively. He understood where she was going. His face turned ashen again.
“What is she talking about?” asked Svetlana Igorevna warily, flicking her eyes from Yana to her son.
“Ask your successful son,” Yana went on, not taking her eyes off Maksim. “Ask where the three million rubles you gave him a year ago for a ‘promising cryptocurrency startup’ went. He reported to you that he invested them well and would soon return them with interest, didn’t he?”
Svetlana Igorevna went still. Her face lengthened.
“Yes. He invested… that’s… that’s a trade secret. Isn’t that what you told me, son?”
“There’s no secret,” Yana’s voice was as merciless as a surgeon’s scalpel. “He blew it all in two weeks on a scam exchange. Every last kopeck. And then he crawled to me, sobbing that you’d kill him. And you know what, Svetlana Igorevna? I covered his debt. With my own money. I gave him three million so he could go on lying to you about his ‘successful investments.’ Just to keep the peace. So you wouldn’t worry.”
The apartment fell utterly silent. You could hear only the hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen. Slowly, Svetlana Igorevna turned her head to her son. In her look was something worse than anger—icy, all-consuming contempt. All her arrogance, all her imperiousness collapsed in an instant, leaving only a humiliated, deceived woman.
“Maksim?.. Is that true?”
“Mom, she’s lying… she…” he babbled, but his darting eyes gave him away completely.
“So let’s not talk about investments,” Yana finished, her voice sounding like a hammer blow. “Especially when the two of you are up to your ears in mine. And now—out. Both of you. Immediately.”
“Mom, she’s lying… she…” Maksim started again, but his voice drowned in the icy emptiness that filled the entryway.
She didn’t deign him a glance. She looked at Yana, and there was no authority or anger left in her eyes. There was something much worse: a cold, appraising disdain, like for a street vendor who’d slipped her a fake. She was humiliated. Not by the fact that her son was a failure and a liar. By the fact that this girl, this simpleton she’d planned to shower with favors, had turned out to be a witness to their family disgrace. More than that—its sponsor.
“So you knew,” said Svetlana Igorevna quietly, each word like the lash of a whip. “You knew everything and kept silent. Played your part. Let me hold forth about borscht and advice, knowing that both my son and I were in your pocket. You enjoyed it, didn’t you?”
“Enjoyed it?” Yana allowed herself a bitter smile. “I was trying to save what, as it turned out, never existed. Your reputation. His manly dignity. My own peace of mind. But as you can see, the investment turned out just as much a failure as Maksim’s. And yes, he now owes me, not you—you got my money back from him, and he wrote me a promissory note. And how fortunate that I had the sense then to have it notarized.”
She pointed at the door again.
“And now, leave.”
But Svetlana Igorevna didn’t move. Her face turned to stone. She had lost the battle for the apartment, lost the battle for her son’s reputation. But she could not leave without taking at least something. She needed to strike a blow in return, even a symbolic one.
“Before we go, you’ll return what’s mine.”
“Yours?” Yana glanced around the entryway. “There’s nothing of yours here.”
“The pearls,” Svetlana said crisply. “The necklace. The one I gave you for the engagement. It’s a family heirloom. It’s not for the likes of you. Give it back.”
Maksim flinched, realizing his mother had crossed the last line, but kept silent. He was only a spectator in this ring where he’d been knocked out in the very first round.
Yana stared at Svetlana Igorevna for a long time without blinking. Then she slowly nodded.
“Is that so? Well then… One moment.”
She turned and, unhurriedly, walked into the bedroom. Mother and son remained together in the entryway—strangers to each other, united only by their shared debacle. A minute later Yana returned. In one hand she held a velvet case. In the other—a pen and a sheet torn from a notepad. She didn’t open the case. She went to the chest of drawers, set the paper on it, and clicked the pen.
“So,” her voice was businesslike and utterly calm. “Let’s record this. Maksim’s debt to me amounts to three million rubles. You transfer to me, toward partial repayment of this debt, the family necklace. We need to assess its value. How much is it worth, Svetlana Igorevna? So I can deduct that amount from the total.”
Svetlana Igorevna choked. She stared at the pen in Yana’s hand, at the sheet of paper, at the closed box, and couldn’t utter a word. It was monstrous. Worse than any shout, any slap. Yana was taking their relic, the symbol of their line, their honor, and turning it into a line item in a promissory note. She wasn’t desecrating the pearls. She was desecrating their very essence, their family history, translating it into the language of money—the very language they themselves had imposed.
“I… it… it’s priceless,” she rasped.
“No,” Yana said firmly. “Nothing is priceless. Everything has its price. Your love for your son. His love for me. My apartment. Now your necklace. Since you can’t name a price, I’ll take it to an appraiser tomorrow. And I’ll deduct the fair market value from the debt. And for the remaining amount, Maksim, I’ll draw up a payment schedule. I’ll expect the first transfer by the end of next month.”
She raised her eyes. There was nothing in them but emptiness.
“And now—out.”
They left without a word. Without looking at Yana or at each other. Like two ghosts driven from a place where their reality had just been destroyed. Yana didn’t watch them go. She slowly closed the front door. The lock clicked with a dull finality.
She stood for a moment in the silence. Her gaze fell to the floor, to the trampled peonies that looked like clots of blood. Nearby lay the box with the honey cake she no longer wanted. She didn’t tidy anything up. She simply walked around this little still life of her unrealized life and went into the kitchen. The surprise was over. For everyone…
