Since you bought that damn boat so you could take your buddies fishing on it, I’m not going to sit at home either! My daughter and I are going to Turkey on our own, and you can live with your friends and that boat from now on!”
Lena said it to her husband the moment she walked into the apartment. She tossed her handbag onto the coffee table, along with a thin folder bearing a travel agency logo—bright, glossy ticket inserts peeking out from inside. Maksim, sitting on the couch, slowly turned his head. He stared at her for a few seconds, trying to catch a hint of a joke or sarcasm in her voice, but found nothing—only an even, almost metallic firmness. Her face was unreadable, like someone who had made a final, irreversible decision.
“You’re kidding?” His voice sounded uncertain, almost lost. “What Turkey? We didn’t plan that.”
Lena shrugged and, without giving him another look, went into the child’s room. A minute later she returned with a large, half-empty suitcase and opened it right in the middle of the living room on the carpet. She dropped to her knees and began methodically, one by one, packing their six-year-old daughter’s little dresses and T-shirts, pulling them from the dresser. Every movement was precise and calm, as if she’d been doing this all week—not as if she had just come home.
“You didn’t plan to consult me when you blew almost four hundred thousand on a booze-up in the reeds, either. I just followed your example. I solved the problem on my own.”
Maksim got up from the couch. His expression shifted from surprise to confusion, and then to indignation. He stepped closer, looking from his wife bent over the clothes to the growing heap of children’s things forming neat stacks in the suitcase.
“Wait—are you serious right now? You just went and bought tickets? With what money, Lena? Do you even understand that that boat was an investment? And your Turkey is just money thrown away!”
She neatly folded a pair of her daughter’s sandals and slid them into the side pocket of the suitcase. Only then did she look up at him. Her gaze was completely calm, which frightened Maksim far more than if she’d been yelling or hysterical.
“An investment? You call it an investment—buying a rubber tub with a motor so you and Vitya can pound vodka far away from civilization? Great investment, Maksim. Very forward-thinking. Especially when the child didn’t have a single day at the sea all summer because her dad was saving up for his ‘dream.’”
He ignored her venomous jab, latching onto the main thing—money. It was the only category he could think in right now.
“But that was our money! We were saving it! You had no right to just go and—”
“And you did?” Lena cut him off without raising her voice. Her tone was steady, like a surgeon stating a fact. “You came home yesterday, glowing with happiness, and announced that the dream of your life had come true. You bought the boat. You didn’t ask if I agreed. You didn’t wonder whether we had other plans for almost four hundred thousand. You just presented me with a done deal. So now I’m doing the same. I’m presenting you with a done deal. Tomorrow at seven in the morning, we have a flight. You don’t have to see us off.”
“Our last money? Are you serious?” Maksim exploded. His confusion instantly turned to rage. He stepped forward, looming over her, his voice breaking into a shout. “That was our last money, Lena! The last! We have nothing left! You’re irresponsible! How could you?!”
Lena stopped. She was holding a neatly folded stack of her daughter’s summer shorts. Slowly she set them into the suitcase, smoothed them out, and then just as slowly stood up. She stepped right in front of him, forcing him to meet her eyes. Her gaze was icy, stripped of emotion, and it made Maksim uneasy. He expected tears, screaming—anything, except this cold, piercing emptiness.
“No, Maksim. The only irresponsible one here is you,” she said quietly, but each word struck harder than any shout. “I invested my money in my child’s health and rest—who spent the entire summer breathing dust in this city while you told her fairy tales about the sea that would be ‘someday later.’ And you invested your money in a hangover. In future drinking sessions with your buddies, who have obviously been more important to you for a long time.”
He recoiled as if hit. The accusation was so precise and humiliating that he couldn’t find an answer right away. He tried to defend himself, to drag the argument into a different lane.
“These aren’t just drinking sessions! It’s relaxation! I work, Lena—I bust my ass like a slave so you don’t need anything! Don’t I deserve an outlet? A place where I can just unwind, be a man, and not only ‘dad’ and ‘husband’?”
Lena gave a bitter little smirk, the corners of her mouth twitching into a barely visible grimace.
“An outlet? Was that your outlet when Anya had her kindergarten graduation and you were ‘helping Vitya move’? Or when I asked you to go to my parents’ on the weekend and help my dad at the dacha, and you disappeared for the whole day because Seryoga’s car ‘broke down on the highway’? You’ve got three ‘outlets’ a week, Maksim. And this boat is just the cherry on top. The culmination of your selfishness. You bought yourself freedom from us. Well then—use it.”
Every word she said lanced an old sore. He’d already forgotten that graduation, that car. To him those were small, insignificant episodes, justified by male friendship and helping each other out. To her, they formed one big, ugly picture of his indifference.
“You twist everything!” he snapped again, feeling the ground slipping under his feet. “Friends are sacred! You just don’t understand that! You want me sitting at your skirt twenty-four seven!”
“I want my child to have a father—not a holiday guest who sometimes sleeps at home. I want a husband for whom family isn’t a burden you run away from by going fishing. But apparently that’s too much to want. So I don’t want anything from you anymore. At all. When we get back, I hope you won’t be here. Because I don’t want to live with someone for whom fishing matters more than his family.”
After that, she dropped back onto her knees and calmly went on packing, as if they’d been discussing the weather and not handing down a sentence on their marriage. For her, the conversation was already over.
“When you get back, I won’t be here?” Maksim let out a jittery laugh, but it came out dry and nasty, like metal scraping glass. “And did you think about what you’ll live on? How you’ll support the child? Or you think your salary will cover all your whims? I’ve been the one carrying this house on my back the whole time—everything for you!”
He began pacing the room from one corner to another like a trapped animal. His anger, finding no outlet, shifted into a new tactic—a counterattack. He decided to remind her of her place, of his breadwinner role, which he believed he had performed flawlessly.
“Who bought you that fur coat last year? Me! Who gave you the newest phone model for your birthday? Me! Did you forget? Or does ‘thank you’ last exactly until the next paycheck? I worked so you could dress nicely and not think about money—and you… you just took and betrayed me!”
Without breaking her rhythm, Lena pulled a first-aid kit from the dresser and started sorting through medicines, setting aside bandages, fever reducer, and nasal drops. Her calmness only made him angrier.
“Let’s stick to facts, Maksim,” she said evenly, not looking at him. “Yes, you bought me the fur coat—to replace the one that was seven years old and had sleeves rubbed through to holes. Yes, you gave me the phone because my old one stopped holding a charge and shut off three times a day. That isn’t luxury—that’s necessity. You didn’t spoil me; you just did the basic duties of a husband and father. But when you bought yourself a new spinning rod for thirty thousand because the old one ‘wasn’t the same anymore,’ or when you and Vitya sat in a bar and blew ten thousand in one night celebrating some football team’s win—that was money spent for pleasure. Only the pleasure was always yours, for some reason.”
Her logic was flawless, and that made it even more poisonous. She wasn’t accusing him—she was filing their shared life into neat folders, and in that accounting Maksim looked like a pathetic selfish man. Realizing he’d lost the financial argument, he switched tracks.
“It’s not about the money!” he shouted. “It’s about attitude! You never appreciated what I do for you! You never supported my hobbies! To you fishing is just drinking in the reeds! Did you ever ask why it matters to me—what it means to me? No! You never cared! You only saw the money spent, not that I’m trying to distract myself from all this…” He waved vaguely around the apartment. “From this routine.”
That was when she finally stopped and looked at him. Something like pity flickered in her eyes, then vanished, replaced by cold fatigue.
“You want to know when I stopped appreciating it? I’ll tell you. I stopped appreciating your ‘heroics’ after you promised Anya you’d take her to the zoo on her birthday—and then ran off to Seryoga because he urgently needed ‘help picking rims for his car.’ I stopped appreciating you when on our wedding anniversary you came home at eleven at night because you and your friends ‘got carried away discussing important things.’ I stopped appreciating you when I realized any call from your buddy mattered more than any request from me. Your boat, Maksim, isn’t an outlet. It’s a monument to all your betrayals. And I don’t want to live next to that monument anymore.”
She zipped the pocket with the first-aid kit and decisively placed it in the suitcase. He stood in the middle of the room, crushed by her words. All his accusations shattered against the wall of her cold, undeniable facts. He had nothing left to throw at her.
Lena snapped the last lock on the child’s suitcase. The sound was dry and final, like a shot in a silent room. She stood up, swept her gaze over the living room as if checking she hadn’t forgotten anything, and her eyes landed on Maksim. He stood by the window, shoulder against the wall, watching her with helpless, simmering anger. Every argument exhausted, every accusation parried—he was empty. And in that emptiness, one last ugly desire formed: to hurt her, to leave a scar.
“Then get lost,” he hissed through his teeth, his voice low and hoarse. “Who needs you anyway? With a kid. You think some prince on a white horse is waiting for you there? You’ll be alone, you’ll choke on it, you’ll crawl back yourself. Only I won’t take you back. And at least I won’t be alone. I’ll have my boat! And friends—real friends—who don’t betray!”
He said it like a challenge, almost triumphantly, clinging to the thought like a drowning man to a straw. The boat and his friends—his unbreakable fortress, his male world she had never understood and was never allowed into.
Lena, already moving toward the hallway, stopped. Slowly she turned to him. There was no anger on her face, no hurt—only a strange, detached focus. She looked at him the way you look at a stranger who asked a stupid question.
“By the way—about the boat and your friends,” she said quietly, but her voice filled the whole room. “I was thinking that since you spent our shared money so easily on your dream, it would be fair if part of that dream went toward your daughter’s vacation. So today, while you were at work, I called your best friend. Vitya.”
Maksim froze. He stopped breathing. Something in her intonation—in that icy calm—made him feel animal fear.
“I offered him to buy that damn boat from you,” Lena continued, stamping out every word. “I said we urgently needed money. I didn’t get greedy. I offered it for half price. Two hundred thousand. Great deal, right? Your best friend—the one who, as you say, doesn’t betray—thought for about thirty seconds. Probably figured out where he could get the money fastest. And then he happily agreed. Said he’d never even dared to dream of a stroke of luck like that.”
She paused, letting it sink in. Maksim’s face slowly shifted—disbelief, shock, then horror flashed across it, twisting his features. He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out.
“He already transferred the money to my card,” Lena finished in the same flat, colorless voice. “So the tickets are, you could say, partially paid for by your dream. And your friendship. So you don’t have a boat anymore, Maksim. And as for your friends—I wouldn’t be so sure, if I were you.”
She turned and went into the child’s room. A second later she came out holding sleepy Anya by the hand. The girl rubbed her eyes and looked at her father without understanding. Lena, without looking at her husband, walked past him to the front door and rolled the suitcase along. Maksim stayed standing in the middle of the room, turned to stone, staring at a single point. He was looking at his wife, but it was as if he no longer saw her. In his head there was only one ringing thought: Vitya. Bought his boat. For half the price.
The lock clicked. Lena and Anya stepped out onto the stairwell. The door closed behind them—not slamming, just quietly settling back into place. Maksim was left alone in an apartment filled with silence. He stood there, staring at the place where his family had been a moment ago. But he didn’t see them. He saw his best friend lowering his boat into the water. His dream…
