Alice pressed her forehead to the cool glass of the hospital room window, feeling under her fingers the steady, lulling breath of her newborn son, nestled against her chest. Her third son. Outside, under the streetlights, thick March snow swirled as if in slow motion—just as blind and hopeless as it had been six years ago, when she, eighteen and frozen with fear, first held in her arms the bundle that was her own fate and thought that life was over, bricked up within four walls of despair.
But then Dmitry had appeared. He emerged from a blinding blizzard like a guardian angel without wings—wearing a worn jacket and a shy smile. He offered his hand when the whole world, including her closest kin, had ostentatiously turned away and slammed the door.
And now… Now his phone had been dead, silent for three days. That silence was louder than any scream; it rang in her ears, throbbed in her temples, chilled her blood.
Alice didn’t know that today, in a few hours, he would say those very words—the words that would cut through the past like a scalpel and split her life into two foreign continents: “before” and “after.” She didn’t know that all these years she had been only a pale, voiceless shadow in someone else’s dazzlingly bright romance, an extra in a play where no one even asked whether she wanted to play the part.
But something dark and ancient, dozing at the bottom of her soul, was already whispering as it slipped past her fatigue and hope: “You’ve always known it. Always.”
Six years earlier. The chill of despair.
“Alice, do you even understand what you’ve done?” Her mother’s voice trembled, and her gaze was sharp and alien, as if she were looking at a disagreeable stranger, not her daughter. “Some frivolous good-for-nothing, a flibbertigibbet—and here’s the ‘result’! And what’s going to become of you now?”
“Mom, I didn’t plan it… I truly believed we were serious, that we’d be together…” Alice clasped her hands, feeling her nails bite into her skin. She was twenty-two, had just received her diploma; in her bag lay a résumé she’d sent to promising companies, and in her head—plans for an independent, bright life. And now a child was growing and stirring inside her. A child by Artyom, a former classmate who, upon learning she was pregnant, had wrinkled his nose in distaste and said, “Well, Alya, you’re a big girl—you can handle it yourself. I still have a career to build, some wild oats to sow—you understand, right?”
“I understand,” she had answered then, swallowing tears. She understood she had become a burden to him, an annoying hindrance, a “youthful mistake.”
“Didn’t plan it!” Her father struck the table with his fist so hard a crystal vase rattled. “We don’t intend to take responsibility for your mistakes! Raising a child by some swindler? Never!”
Friends… Friends scattered like cockroaches when the light comes on. “It’s your own fault—you should’ve used your head, not your feelings.” “I don’t want to get involved in your problems; I have enough of my own.” “You need to sort this out yourself.” The phrases merged into a single deafening chorus of condemnation.
Alice was left in a complete, crushing silence of loneliness. Completely alone in the whole wide world.
And then, like a stray note in the soundless symphony of her despair, Dmitry appeared.
They studied in the same year, but their paths rarely crossed. He was an orphan—a quiet, withdrawn guy whose presence usually dissolved in the brighter, louder student crowd. He worked as a programmer, lived austerely in a world of zeros and ones, and seemed content with it.
“Alice, hi,” he blocked her way at the university exit, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot. “I heard… that you might be going through a rough patch.”
She froze, feeling a blush of shame spread across her cheeks. So the rumors had reached him too. Her disgrace had become public property.
“Listen, if you need any help… I can…” Dmitry ran a nervous hand over his close-cropped hair. “I mean, not all men are like that… I can be there. If you’ll let me.”
Alice stared at him, eyes wide. She hadn’t expected this and hardly knew him. Her heart, locked in the ice of recent betrayals, didn’t respond. She kept silent, only nodded, and walked past, leaving him standing in the wet snow.
A fragile refuge.
Alice lived in a small “rented” apartment that actually belonged to her aunt; she only paid the utilities, and her parents sometimes slipped her money for groceries. She had moved there back in her first year to be closer to the institute, and after graduation had simply stayed.
A week after that strange meeting, Dmitry turned up again. A knock at the door—and there he was, with two bags of groceries, a shy but stubborn resolve in his eyes. He began coming every day. He brought food, fruit, vitamins. He helped assemble the crib—tightened screws, hung shelves—quiet and focused. He went with her to ultrasounds, and she saw the spellbound way he watched the screen where a tiny, unborn life pulsed.
“Why are you doing all this?” she blurted out one late evening as they tried together to decipher the sterilizer instructions. “Why are you spending your time on me?”
“Because you don’t deserve to be alone,” he answered simply and sincerely, like a blow straight to the heart. “No one does.”
When Lev was born, Dmitry was in the waiting room. He was the first—before the nurses—to hold the baby, and he looked at him with such trembling, unearthly tenderness that something in Alice quivered and tightened with an unfamiliar hope. Her parents, who had come to see their grandchild, softened visibly at the sight—an exhausted daughter and a joyful young man with a newborn in his arms.
“Let’s get married,” he said a month later, as they sat in the kitchen drinking tea and Lev slept sweetly in his cradle.
“What?” Alice choked, not believing her ears.
“I’m absolutely serious. Little Lev needs a father. And I…” He faltered, staring past her at the wall. “I need a family. The one I never had. I… I love you, Alya.”
She didn’t love him. Not the way she had loved Artyom—with that insane, all-consuming, blind passion that burns you to ash. But Dmitry was her rock, her harbor in a terrible storm. Wasn’t that reliability, that loyalty, enough for happiness? Wasn’t duty more important than feeling?
They registered their marriage quietly, in a half-empty registry office, with no guests, no rings, no lavish celebration. Her parents found out after the fact and seemed only glad that their daughter was “settled,” and to such a seemingly dependable man at that.
A year later Alice gave birth to Sonya. This time, to Dmitry’s child. “Now we’re truly a family,” she thought as she watched her beaming husband rock a tiny princess in a pink swaddle.
But somewhere deep down, in the most secret corner of her soul, a cold, inexplicable feeling stirred. She still hadn’t fallen in love with him; she felt neither electricity nor passion. She had simply grown used to him, the way one grows used to the ticking of a clock—he became the background, an integral but not the most desired part of her existence.
Cracks in the foundation.
Years passed. Dmitry’s career skyrocketed—he rose from a regular programmer to department head. But with the promotion came endless late nights. He came home after dark, tired, pale, distant.
“Crunch time. New project. Deadlines are on fire,” he waved off her questions, avoiding her eyes; his gaze slid over the walls, the children, her—never lingering.
Alice tried her very best. By society’s standards, she became the ideal wife: she cooked well, kept immaculate order, devoted all her time to the children. She built a beautiful cardboard fortress of a home, and inside it was empty and cold.
There was no happiness. There was routine, habit, an illusion.
He left the first time when Sonya turned three.
“I need… time. Just to be alone. To think,” Dmitry’s voice was flat as he packed his things into a duffel bag. “I’m lost. In everything.”
“What did I do wrong?” Alice’s voice betrayed her. “Tell me and I’ll fix it!”
“It’s not you, Alya. You’re perfect. The perfect wife, the perfect mother.”
“Then what is it?!” she almost shouted, grabbing his sleeve.
“I don’t know!” he burst out for the first time, jerking his arm away. “I just can’t breathe this air anymore! I can’t!”
He disappeared for two weeks. Didn’t pick up, didn’t answer messages. Alice wandered their emptied apartment in despair, sure it was over, that her house of cards had collapsed.
Then he came back. With a huge bouquet of white roses, expensive gifts for the children, and a contrite look.
“Forgive me. I… I was blind and foolish. You are my everything. The only family I have. I can’t live without you.”
Alice forgave him. Because in her world, stripped of supports, he remained the only rock. Because she feared being alone again with two children. Because she’d been taught that for the sake of the children, you can sacrifice everything—even the ghost of your own happiness.
A year and a half later she became pregnant for the third time. Dmitry heard the news in silence, eyes fixed on his laptop screen.
“Are you happy?” Alice asked, trying to catch his gaze.
“Of course,” he nodded mechanically, still staring at the monitor. “Of course I’m happy.”
Sentence at the maternity ward window.
Alice lay in the maternity ward with newborn Tikhon. The phone was a dead weight in her hand.
“Probably a work emergency, a sudden call, server issues,” she tried to reassure herself, but inside, an icy wave was growing, stiffening every muscle.
On the third day he finally appeared in the doorway, and from the first glance Alice understood—the verdict had been passed. His face was ashen; his eyes were sunken and inflamed, as if he hadn’t slept, waging grueling inner battles.
“Dmitry, what happened?” Her own voice sounded hoarse and strange.
He sank heavily onto the edge of the bed, staring at the hospital linoleum pattern.
“Alya… I have to tell you something terrible.”
“Are you ill?” Her heart dropped to her heels, encased in ice. “Has something happened to you?”
“No. I’m fine.” He inhaled sharply, wheezing. “I… God, this is so hard… I can’t go on living this lie. Torturing you. Torturing myself.” He lifted his eyes, and in them sloshed such bottomless pain that Alice shuddered. “I’ve always loved someone else.”
Silence. Absolute, deafening. Only the rising roar in her ears and the frantic beat of her own heart, counting down the last seconds of her old life.
“What?”
“I fell in love with her back in our first year. She studied in a parallel program; we hardly crossed paths, but I… I was crazy about her. Every day. She was like the sun—bright, smart, unattainable. I was afraid even to approach her, to speak. Then school ended, and I thought it was time to grow up, forget it, build a normal life.” The words poured out in a rush, as if he feared being interrupted. “When I met you in that situation… I saw a chance. To save you, give you and your child a name, make a family—the one I dreamed of—and finally tear her from my heart. I really tried to love you, Alya. I swear. I tried so hard.”
“Dmitry…”
“Six months ago they hired her at our company,” he went on, not listening, entranced by his confession. “I saw her by the coffee machine in the corridor and… everything collapsed. All these years turned to dust. Nothing had gone away. No-thing. We started talking, working on the same project… She’s not married. She’s free. And I… God, I realized this was my second, maybe last chance. A chance to be truly happy.”
“You… cheated on me?” Her voice was quiet and strangely calm, as if it didn’t belong to her.
“No!” He jerked his head up; a fire flared in his eyes. “No, I couldn’t. I didn’t want to betray you, to lie, to live a double life. That’s why I came here. That’s why I’m telling you everything now.”
“Now?” Alice instinctively drew Tikhon closer, seeking protection in his warmth. “When I’ve just given you a son?!”
“I know I’m acting like the lowest scoundrel,” his voice dropped to a whisper. “I know it with every cell of me. But it will only get worse. I’ll start lying, wriggling, and you’ll feel the falseness, suffer, go mad… I don’t want to turn our life into utter hell! You’re a wonderful person, Alya. You deserve someone who will love you for real, with all his heart, not as an afterthought!”
“And the children?” Hot, salty tears finally spilled down her cheeks, leaving burning tracks. “Three children, Dmitry! Three!”
“I won’t abandon them! Never!” He seized her cold hand; his palm was damp and hot. “I’ll provide, help, visit, be involved. Lev is like my own, even if we’re not bound by blood. I love them all. But I can’t keep pretending I love you as a wife. That’s a lie—to you, to me, and… to Olga.”
This man—her support for six years, the one who held her hand through the darkest times, who called her his family… He had carried another woman’s image in his heart all these years?
“What’s her name?” Alice whispered, staring out the window where the snow kept falling, indifferent as ever.
“Olga. Olga Zakharova. You were in different programs; you probably don’t—”
“I remember,” Alice cut him off, and a picture surfaced in her mind: a tall, slender blonde with long hair and an infectious laugh. The one every guy on the course watched. “Very beautiful.”
Dmitry nodded silently, lowering his head.
“You want to leave? Right now?”
“I…” He faltered. “I’ll pick you up from the hospital, help you settle in at home, make sure you have money. I won’t leave you in trouble, Alya, I—”
“No,” her voice rang out like steel—surprising even herself. “Leave now. We’ll manage on our own.”
“Alice…”
“Go!”
He rose slowly, stood for a few seconds as if waiting for something—for a miracle, a word that would change everything. But she said nothing, still staring out the window. Then he turned and left the room, closing the door softly behind him.
Alice watched the snow, the cars darting below, the gray sky—and understood that her life had split into “before” and “after” once again. But this time the “after” was absolutely black, bottomless, frightening.
The bitter medicine of truth.
Divorce. Three children spaced in age, sleepless nights, the endless crying of a newborn, a worn-out Sonya’s tantrums, the silent reproach in Lev’s eyes, already older. Alice felt she was going mad, that she would soon fall apart under the weight of responsibility and unprocessed pain.
Dmitry came every weekend, taking Lev and Sonya. He brought diapers, formula, left envelopes of money. But every time Alice opened the door for him, she saw on his face such torment, such genuine suffering that her fists clenched and she wanted to shout, “You decided all this! Don’t play the martyr!”
“How are you?” he asked timidly.
“Just wonderful,” she replied, her smile sharp as a razor. “Blooming and fragrant.”
One day he didn’t come alone. He brought her.
Alice saw Olga in the doorway, and everything inside her knotted into a tight, painful lump. She was even lovelier than in memory. Well-groomed, stylish coat, perfect blowout, light, unobtrusive makeup. She smiled a soft, apologetic smile, as if unaware of the monstrous awkwardness of this visit.
“Hi, Alice,” her voice was quiet and melodious. “I thought… it would be right for us to meet. Since we’re going to… intersect, one way or another. Because of the children.”
“Right…” Alice echoed, her fingers going numb.
“Alya, let’s not,” Dmitry cut in, nervously jingling his car keys. “We just came for the kids. We’re going to the water park. Do you want to come with us?”
“With you?” Alice burst out laughing—a laugh that sounded hysterical and sinister. “No, thanks. I’d rather sit here. With my newborn son.”
They left, leading her children by the hand. Alice closed the door, leaned against it, and didn’t know where to put the wild, all-crushing wave of rage surging up her throat.
A wound that slowly heals.
Six months later Dmitry and Olga married. Alice learned about it from Lev, who returned from Sunday outings in rapture:
“Mom, Dad and Aunt Olya are husband and wife now! They had a beautiful ceremony! And Aunt Olya is nice—she bought me a new construction set!”
Alice smiled at her son, went to the bathroom, turned on the water, and sobbed out loud so no one would hear.
But time, like it or not, heals. Even the deepest wounds eventually scar over. The pain turned from sharp, cutting, into dull and aching—and then faded into a subdued background. Alice went back to work when Tikhon turned one. A remote manager’s position, a modest salary—but it was her money, her tiny, personal support.
“Daughter, drop that cubbyhole of yours and move in with us,” her mother called once, with genuine concern in her voice. “We’ll help, we’ll watch the kids, we’ll cook. No need for you to waste away alone within four walls.”
Alice moved in with her parents. It was cramped and noisy, but unbearably easier. Her mother took over the children while she worked; her father drove the older ones to preschool and clubs.
Dmitry kept visiting. Now the three of them—he, Olga, and the kids—went to zoos, circuses, amusement parks. Lev and Sonya got used to “Aunt Olya,” even warmed to her. And little Tikhon, to Alice’s surprise, would go to her without fear.
Alice watched from the sidelines and felt not anger but a strange, bitter relief. Her children were happy. They hadn’t lost their father; they had gained one more loving adult. Wasn’t that what mattered?
“Thank you,” Dmitry said once when he brought the children home. “Thank you for not keeping me from seeing them. For not turning them against me.”
“Why would I?” Alice shrugged, watching Tikhon try to catch a pigeon in the yard. “You’re a wonderful father. And you were… honest with me. At the very last moment. You didn’t deceive me for years, didn’t humiliate me with secret affairs. You just found your happiness. Absurd, cruel—but you found it.”
“And you’ll find yours,” he said with unfeigned certainty. “You will, for sure. You deserve it more than anyone in the world.”
Alice still couldn’t call herself fully healed, but the poison of resentment and anger no longer tainted her soul. More and more often she analyzed her feelings and came to a paradoxical conclusion: she missed not Dmitry but the safety, stability, and care he embodied. She loved him as a friend, a protector—but never as a man, passionately and recklessly.
A new melody of fate.
Two years after the divorce, Gleb appeared in her life like a flash of light in a gray sky.
An ordinary evening, a big supermarket. Alice with Tikhon in the cart; Lev and Sonya, excited, playing tag between shelves of pasta. She tried to calm them, misjudged a turn, and bumped the corner of her cart into a man studying the coffee aisle.
“I’m sorry—it’s my fault, I wasn’t watching where I was going!” she babbled, flushing.
“No harm done,” he turned—and such a warm, radiant smile lit his face that Alice’s breath caught for a moment.
Tall, athletic, with lively, kind brown eyes where sparks danced.
“Three?” He nodded approvingly at her differently aged crew. “Respect. A proper little unit.”
“Yeah,” Alice sighed, catching an escaping Sonya. “Sometimes I feel like I’m not raising them—like they’re stress-testing me.”
He laughed—rich and infectious. They went their separate ways, and for a second Alice regretted it.
Exactly a week later, fate surprised her. Same store, same evening.
“Looks like our grocery schedules match,” he smiled again, and this time Alice smiled back.
“Looks like it.”
“I’m Gleb.”
“Alice.”
“Maybe we could grab coffee sometime?” he blurted, hope and resolve mingling in his eyes. “If your strike team grants you a short leave.”
Alice froze. She hadn’t been on a date in… what felt like forever. She’d forgotten what it was like when a man looked at her not as the mother of his children or a duty, but as a woman.
“I… I have three children,” she repeated like an incantation, as if that might scare him off.
“I’m aware,” Gleb nodded. “But is that a diagnosis? A life sentence?”
They started seeing each other. Short evening dates once the kids were asleep. Long walks in the park. Cups of cappuccino in cozy cafés. Conversations about everything under the sun. Gleb was single, had no children, worked as an architect, and was paying off a mortgage on his two-room apartment.
“Why you?” Alice asked once, looking at his strong hands cradling a cup. “Why decide to get involved with me? With me— a whole ‘wagon train,’ as you say, baggage from the past, problems…”
“I’m not getting involved with a ‘wagon train,’” he cut in, his gaze turning serious. “I’m building a relationship with you. With Alice. And yes, the kids, the past, the problems—they’re part of you. But do you know what amazes me about you? You’re a titan. You raised three on your own; you didn’t break, you didn’t grow bitter. You went through hell and stayed human. That is… incredibly sexy, to be honest.”
Alice laughed—and the laugh was light, freeing.
“Hey, did I say something wrong?” Gleb pretended to be offended.
“No. It was perfect. Exactly what I needed to hear.”
Six months later Gleb officially met her parents and children. Lev watched him with wary curiosity, Sonya hid behind Grandma’s skirt, and Tikhon simply kept building a block tower. Alice’s parents, chastened by bitter experience, greeted their daughter’s new choice coolly.
“They’re all the same,” her mother grumbled after Gleb left. “Careful, dear—don’t get burned again. The last one looked like a knight at first, too.”
But Gleb was patient as a rock. He came not as a guest but as part of the family. He played board games with the kids, fixed broken bikes, helped Alice’s father repair a faucet. He didn’t try to buy their love with gifts; he earned it with attention and time. And the children—sensitive little radars—thawed, bit by bit.
Healing.
Dmitry learned about Gleb from Lev. He arrived on Saturday to pick up the kids just as Gleb was teaching Sonya to ride a two-wheeler, running alongside and holding the seat.
“Meet Gleb,” Alice said, stepping onto the porch. “This is Gleb.”
The men shook hands—appraising looks, but no aggression.
“Alya, can I have a word?” Dmitry asked.
They stepped over to an old apple tree.
“I take it you’re… happy?” he asked quietly.
Alice looked at Gleb, who was laughing as he swung a squealing Sonya into his arms, and nodded.
“Yes. It seems that way.”
“I’m glad,” he said, sincerity ringing clean of former pain. “Truly, insanely glad for you. You deserve the brightest things.”
“And you do, too,” she answered—and realized it was true. “It’s good we stopped lying to each other and finally let ourselves be truly happy.”
Unexpectedly, Dmitry hugged her. Briefly, like a friend.
“We were both just looking for our own love,” he said. “And it seems we both found it.”
A new life.
A few months later Gleb proposed. She said “yes” without a shadow of doubt. The wedding was modest but incredibly heartfelt, with the children as the chief witnesses. Afterward Alice and the kids moved in with Gleb, and their big, noisy family filled his previously sterile apartment with laughter, love, and light.
And now, years later, Alice stood at her bedroom window, looking out at the snowy night courtyard. Gleb slept in their bed; the children—in their rooms. Outside, under the streetlights, the same snowflakes danced as on that long-ago day in the maternity ward.
She remembered that day, Dmitry’s words, the pain that had seemed universal and endless.
“I’ve always loved someone else.”
Those words had once shattered her old life—her crystal cage of illusions—into pieces. But they had also set her free. Free from pretending, from living in the shadow of someone else’s unrequited love, from a false calm beneath which a chasm of dissatisfaction boiled.
Dmitry found his Olga. She found her Gleb. And, paradoxical as it was, all of them were grateful to one another.
For a bitter but saving honesty. For the pain that tempered them and made them wiser. For that very second chance they finally dared to take.
Alice smiled at her reflection in the dark glass, catching the eyes of a happy, grown, strong woman. She stepped back from the window and went to the bedroom, to her sleeping husband. Life went on. And it wasn’t just beautiful.
It was real.
