Natalya stood by the window of her office on the twenty-third floor, looking down at the city spread out below like a chessboard. From up here, everything seemed small and controllable. Cars crawled along the avenues like toy models, people were tiny dots, and problems… problems stayed somewhere far beneath her.
But not today.
Today, her problem had come up in the elevator and was now sitting in the reception area, waiting for the secretary to show them in.
“Ms. Natalya Sergeyevna, your parents are here,” Alina’s voice was polite, though touched with faint surprise. In three years on the job, she had never seen anyone’s family show up at the office.
“I know. Give me five minutes.”
Natalya turned toward her desk and automatically straightened the folders, though they were already aligned with perfect precision. Deep breath in. Slow breath out. She’d learned to control her emotions back in childhood, the moment she understood that tears and resentment changed nothing—only made you weaker.
Parents. Funny how that word still caused a sharp little sting somewhere beneath her ribs, like a splinter she could never quite pull out. She’d stopped being angry with them a long time ago. She understood they had tried to do what they thought was best. Still, some things refused to fade.
Her troubles had begun even before she was born.
Her mother told that story rarely—usually after two glasses of wine at a family celebration, when her tongue loosened and her self-control slipped.
“Your father and I weren’t planning to get married,” she would say, staring off somewhere to the side. “We were just dating. I was studying at the institute—I wanted to become a literature teacher. He worked at the factory and planned to apply to school too. Then we found out I was pregnant. Your grandmother said it would be a disgrace if we didn’t sign the papers. So we had a registry-office wedding: maybe twenty guests, cake, champagne. I can’t say we were happy then.”
Natalya remembered the apartment where she’d spent her childhood. A worn-out Khrushchyovka on the edge of town—two rooms, low ceilings, and the constant feeling of being crowded in. Her father worked two jobs; her mother tutored and cleaned. Money still wasn’t enough. Natalya remembered their nighttime whispers in the kitchen, how her mother sometimes cried, how her father slammed the door in irritation.
“Because of you, I never finished university,” her mother said once when Natalya was about nine. She didn’t say it with anger—more like announcing the weather. “I had to quit in my third year. We didn’t have the money.”
Back then, Natalya didn’t understand why those words burned so badly. But she remembered them. And years later she finally realized the truth: she had been the unplanned child who had flipped her parents’ lives upside down. They didn’t love each other, but they married the moment they learned a baby was coming. Both of them ended up working instead of getting the education they wanted.
It was hard.
But with time, things settled. Her father got promoted, her mother found steady work at the plant. They traded their old place for a three-bedroom in a more decent neighborhood. Natalya was eleven then. And that was when Alice appeared.
The second daughter was expected. Planned. Prepared for. They bought toys, set up the nursery, chose a name. When Alice was born, her parents seemed to forget every hardship that had come before. Natalya remembered how her father spent hours pushing the stroller through the park, how her mother sang lullabies, bending over the crib. They looked at Alice with an adoration they had never once shown their older daughter.
“Let her have it better than we did,” her father said. “Let her study, become someone. We’ll do everything we can.”
And they did. They enrolled Alice in music school, English lessons, dance classes. They bought her pretty clothes, toys, books. And Natalya heard something else:
“You’re older—you understand. We can’t afford the same for both.”
Natalya did understand. And she stayed quiet. She learned to be invisible, not to ask for anything. After school she cooked dinner, washed the floors, watched Alice while their parents worked. By fourteen, she was practically running the household on her own.
“Help your sister with homework. Make something to eat. Go to the store.”
That was the sum total of the attention she got.
Alice, meanwhile, was spoiled. She got new dresses while Natalya wore the old ones. Alice was allowed to stay out late while Natalya had to be home by eight. Alice grew up in love and care like a flower in a greenhouse.
And inside the older girl, from early childhood, lived a fury at an unfair world. At first it was childish hurt—why couldn’t she, when her sister could? Why did her parents smile at Alice, but look at her with tired, demanding eyes? Then the hurt hardened into a quiet, icy rage. And that rage became the force that pushed her forward.
“I’ll prove it to you,” Natalya thought, hunched over textbooks after midnight while her parents read fairy tales to Alice in the next room. “I’ll prove it to all of you.”
She studied flawlessly—not because she loved school, but because it was her way out. A gold medal at graduation, a state-funded place at university, a diploma with honors. She earned it all herself—without help, without support. Her parents came to her university graduation and told acquaintances proudly, “That’s our eldest—look how accomplished she is.” Natalya smiled tightly and thought, Where were you when I was scared, when I stayed awake all night before exams, when I needed one kind word?
She got a good job at a large company. Worked twelve-hour days, took extra projects, never refused business trips. She climbed upward steadily, stubbornly. At twenty-eight, she became a department head. At thirty-two, a branch director. At thirty-five, she was leading the entire regional office.
And Alice… Alice grew up beautiful, pampered, and completely unprepared for real life. She enrolled in college, then dropped out after a year. Worked at a trendy shop, then at a beauty salon, then nowhere at all. She changed boyfriends like gloves, spent money on clothes and entertainment, and constantly showed up at her parents with a new request.
“Mom, I need money for makeup courses—it’s only forty thousand.”
“Dad, I want to go to Turkey—my friends are all going.”
“I need a new coat. The old one is out of style.”
And their parents paid. They denied themselves everything, but gave her what she wanted. Because Alice was their hope, their darling, their little princess who—somehow—refused to grow up.
Natalya watched it all from a distance. She’d moved out long ago, bought her own apartment, built her career. She saw her parents at family celebrations, brought expensive gifts, but kept herself apart—not cold, not warm either. Polite. Formal.
She had forgiven them. But closeness had never existed between them.
Their parents continued indulging their younger daughter. And Alice grew demanding, capricious, selfish. She needed more and more; she got older, but she kept expecting her parents to provide. Only now the demands were more expensive.
When Alice turned twenty-eight, she announced she wanted her own apartment.
“I can’t live with you forever,” she said over a family dinner. “I need my own space. My own home.”
Natalya didn’t say anything, but she thought, At twenty-eight she expects our parents to buy her an apartment? Seriously?
But their parents treated it as perfectly normal.
“Of course, sweetheart,” her mother said. “We’ll figure something out.”
And they did. They split their three-bedroom into two smaller places. The smaller, worse one went to them—a one-bedroom on the outskirts in an old building where the elevator barely worked and the windows looked out onto an industrial zone. The bigger, nicer one went to the favorite child. Alice received a renovated one-bedroom downtown, with new furniture.
When Natalya found out, she simply shook her head.
“You’re serious?” she asked her mother on the phone.
“What else could we do?” her mother defended herself. “She asked. She needed an apartment.”
“And you? What do you need?”
“We’ll manage. We don’t have that much time left anyway.”
Natalya ended the call and never brought it up again. What was the point? They had made their choice—like always.
Two years passed. Through mutual acquaintances, Natalya heard that Alice was doing fine—posting photos from cafés and beauty salons. Whether she worked, no one really knew. Their parents saw her rarely; it was inconvenient to cross the entire city.
Then her father got sick.
At first it was weakness, then shortness of breath, then pain. Doctors took a long time to pin down a diagnosis. When they finally did, it turned out he needed surgery—complex, expensive. And it had to be paid for, because waiting for a state quota would take six months, and there wasn’t that kind of time.
Her parents scraped together money however they could. They sold the dacha they’d once saved for ten years to buy. They took out loans. They borrowed from friends. Still, it wasn’t enough.
The surgery happened. Her father survived—but the recovery was long. Rehab, medicine, procedures. They sank into debt. Their pensions were small. Half went to medication, a third to loan payments.
Natalya learned all this by accident—from her mother’s neighbor.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked when she came to see them.
They sat on an old sofa in their cramped little apartment. Her father looked gaunt, ten years older. Her mother looked worn down to the bone.
“We didn’t want to bother you,” her mother said quietly. “You work so much already.”
“And Alice?”
Her mother looked away.
“Alice… she has troubles now too.”
Natalya gave a short, humorless laugh.
“What troubles? She lives downtown—in the apartment you gave her.”
“She has expenses,” her mother insisted. “Utilities, food. She can’t.”
Natalya said nothing. She wanted to scream, wanted to ask, And what about me? Was I supposed to be the one? But she stayed silent. Instead, she opened her banking app.
“How much do you need?”
“Natalya, don’t… we can’t…”
“How much?”
She paid off their debts. All of them. Left enough money for three months of medication. Set up grocery delivery once a week. Hired a caregiver to come help her father.
“Thank you, sweetheart,” her mother sobbed, hugging her. “Thank you…”
Natalya stood with a stone face. She wasn’t helping out of love. Not even out of duty, really. She helped because she could. And because, no matter what, they were her parents.
But it didn’t bring peace.
Six months passed. Her father improved, started walking little by little. Natalya called occasionally, asked how things were, sent money. But there was no closeness—only obligation.
And today, they had come to her office.
Natalya straightened her posture, smoothed her skirt, and nodded toward the door.
“Show them in.”
Her parents walked in hesitantly, as if afraid they might be thrown out. Her father leaned on a cane; her mother clutched a plastic bag in her hands. In this spacious office with glass walls and modern furniture, they looked small and lost.
“Sit,” Natalya pointed to the visitor chairs.
“Natalyusha, we know you’re busy,” her mother began, twisting the handle of her purse. “We won’t take long.”
“Talk.”
“Well… you see…” her mother hesitated. “We have problems again.”
Natalya clasped her hands on the desk and waited.
“Your father needs another operation. The doctors say without it… well, he needs it. It’s expensive. Very. We tried to find the money, but… the bank won’t give us another loan.”
“How much?”
“Almost five hundred thousand,” her mother’s voice trembled. “We understand it’s a lot. We’ll pay you back—somehow…”
“And Alice?”
Silence fell.
“Alice…” her mother glanced at her father. “We asked her too.”
“And?”
“She said she doesn’t have that kind of money. That things are hard for her. She just took out a loan for a car…”
“A car,” Natalya repeated slowly. “I see.”
She stood and walked to the window. The city below lived its indifferent life, unconcerned with other people’s drama. Five hundred thousand. For her, it was less than two months’ income. She could make the transfer and solve it with a single tap.
But something inside her tightened into a hard knot.
“Tell me honestly,” she turned back to them. “Why did you come to me?”
“Natalya, you… you’re so successful, you can…”
“Why did you come to me?” she repeated, louder. “You have a beloved daughter—you gave her an apartment! You spoiled her her whole life, adored her, sacrificed everything for her! Why didn’t you go to her?”
“Natalya, please…”
“No!” Years of restraint—quiet endurance, swallowed pain—finally burst out of her. “No, I want to hear it! Why did you come to me? You have a daughter you gifted an apartment to! You bought her everything she ever wanted! She’s living in your apartment while you squeeze into a one-bedroom on the outskirts! She has a new car she could sell!”
“Sweetheart, calm down…”
“I’m not your sweetheart!” Natalya’s voice rang with fury. “Alice is your sweetheart! I was the girl who cooked dinner and scrubbed floors! I was the one you remembered only when you needed help! Where were you when I had it hard? When I sat exams alone, looked for work alone, fought my way up alone?”
Her mother cried. Her father sat with his head lowered.
“We… we thought you were strong,” he said quietly. “That you’d manage on your own. And Alice… she’s so sensitive, so…”
“So spoiled? So selfish? So incapable of taking care of herself?”
“We wanted what was best,” her mother whispered. “We tried…”
“Tried?” Natalya laughed bitterly. “You tried to raise one daughter into a servant, and the other into an infantile princess. Congratulations—you succeeded. And now, when the princess refuses to help you, you came to the servant.”
“Natalya, we know we were wrong,” her father tried to stand, but didn’t have the strength. “We know. Forgive us. But I… I need that operation. Without it, I won’t live to see spring.”
A heavy, ringing silence hung in the air. Natalya stood there, feeling two forces battling inside her: the anger she’d carried for years—and something else. Not love. Not pity. Maybe just the realization that these two elderly, broken people were all the family she truly had. And after them, there would only be Alice—someone she had nothing in common with at all.
She went back to the desk, picked up her phone, entered the amount, and hit “Send.”
“This is for the operation and the treatment after. Don’t come here again.”
“Natalyusha…”
“I said—don’t come here again. I’m helping my father because I don’t want his death on my conscience. But I don’t want to see you. Not you, not Alice. I’m tired of being the backup plan. Tired of being the person you run to when you have nowhere else to go.”
“We’ll pay you back,” her father said, eyes downcast. “We will.”
“Don’t,” Natalya turned back to the window. “Alina will show you out.”
When the door closed behind them, Natalya sank into her chair. Her hands were shaking. Her chest felt empty and heavy at the same time.
She did the right thing, she told herself. She helped because she could. Because she had been strong enough to earn that money. Because she wasn’t like Alice—someone who only took and never gave.
So why did it hurt so much?
Her phone buzzed. A message from her mother: “Thank you, sweetheart. Forgive us. We love you.”
Natalya stared at the screen for a long time. Down below, the city kept moving. Cars crawled along the avenues; people hurried along on their own paths.
She had forgiven her parents—she’d forgiven them long ago. But some things couldn’t be forgotten. And some things couldn’t be repaired.
Natalya rubbed her face, straightened her shoulders, and opened her laptop. In an hour she had a meeting, and in the evening a presentation for a new project. Life went on. As always. She would manage.
She always had.
Alone.
