At a family lunch, Lida’s father-in-law announced what he had decided to do with the house. Everyone expected an argument. But Lida merely smiled and said nothing, because she knew something no one else at the table knew.
Her father-in-law rose from his chair while everyone was still eating. He lifted one hand, and the conversations died away.
Lida put down her fork. She knew Gennady Pavlovich was not the kind of man who stood up to make a toast. If he was on his feet, he had something else to say.
“All right, then,” he began, looking around the table where about twelve people were seated. “I built this house forty years ago. With my own hands. And I have decided who will inherit it.”
The silence became so complete that they could hear the fruit drink bubbling on the stove.
Beside Lida, Kostya tensed. She felt it when his foot moved under the table and brushed her ankle. He had not meant to touch her. His body had simply reacted before his mind had caught up.
Across from them sat Zoya, the eldest daughter-in-law. She stopped cutting her meat and froze with the knife in her hand. Her mouth opened slightly, but she made no sound.
“The house will go to Artyom,” Gennady Pavlovich said.
Then he sat down.
Artyom was the youngest son. He was twenty-four, unmarried, childless, renting a room in Tver and working occasional shifts at a warehouse. He sat at the far end of the table, poking at his beet salad with a fork, and seemed not to understand what had just happened.
Zoya put down her knife. Slowly and carefully, she placed it parallel to her plate.
“Wait, Dad,” said Valery, her husband and Gennady Pavlovich’s middle son. “We’ve been repairing the roof for fifteen years. We rebuilt the fence. We put up the bathhouse. And the house is going to Artyom?”
Gennady Pavlovich looked at him as though Valery had asked what two plus two was.
“I’ve said what I had to say.”
Lida looked down at her plate. Her cutlet was getting cold, and the gravy was beginning to congeal around the edges. She raised her eyes and met Zoya’s stare. Zoya was looking directly at her, apparently waiting for Lida to start protesting too.
Instead, Lida smiled.
Only slightly. Just with her lips.
Then she picked up her fork again.
After lunch, everyone drifted through the house the way people do after news like that: still under the same roof, but each person alone with their own thoughts.
Zoya washed the dishes with an expression that suggested the plates were personally responsible for everything. They clattered loudly against the sink. Valery stood smoking on the porch, even though he had quit three years earlier.
Kostya stood by the window in the upstairs bedroom. Lida entered and closed the door behind her.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” he asked without turning around.
“What was I supposed to say?”
“I don’t know. Zoya’s about to smash every plate in the house.”
“Let her smash them. They’re her plates.”
He turned toward her. His face looked lost, like that of a little boy who had been left without a present on New Year’s morning.
“Lida, it’s the house. Dad’s house. We come here every summer. The children grew up here.”
“The children spent their holidays here. That isn’t the same thing.”
Kostya rubbed the bridge of his nose. It was a habit that appeared only when he could not decide whether to be angry or agree with her.
“Artyom can’t even afford the repairs. He earns thirty thousand a month.”
“That’s Artyom’s problem.”
“It’s the house’s problem. The place will rot within five years.”
Lida sat down on the bed. The springs creaked. The same bed had creaked when she and Kostya first came there as newlyweds, when she had been embarrassed to move at night.
“Kostya, listen to me. Your father made a decision. He has the right to do that.”
“He has the right. But what about fairness?”
She did not answer. Fairness was one of those words that had made her palms itch for years.
The house stood at the edge of the village of Sosnovka, one hundred and seventy kilometres from Moscow. It was built of logs on a high foundation, with a veranda Gennady Pavlovich had added in 1992. The roof was covered with metal tiles—the same roof Valery had spent years repairing.
Lida remembered the house differently.
The first time she and Kostya came there, she had been twenty-three. It was November. Mud reached almost to their knees, and the wind blew through the cracks around the windows so strongly that the curtains moved.
Her mother-in-law, Tamara Ilyinichna, was still alive then. She was a small, thin woman whose hands always smelled of dill and laundry soap. She had placed a bowl of cabbage soup in front of Lida and said:
“Eat. You’re far too skinny.”
Lida had eaten.
The soup was too salty, but she finished every drop. Tamara Ilyinichna had nodded, as though Lida had passed some sort of test.
Thirteen years had passed since then.
Tamara Ilyinichna had been gone for five years by the time of this family lunch. Sometimes Lida wondered whether the whole situation with the house would have unfolded differently if she had still been there.
Then again, perhaps it would not have.
That evening, Zoya came into their room.
She did not knock. No one knocked in that house.
“May I come in?” she asked, though she was already standing inside.
Lida was sitting on the bed, scrolling through her phone. Kostya had gone to help his father with the generator, or at least that was what he had said.
“Come in.”
Zoya sat on the chair beside the window. She was a large, broad-shouldered woman with heavy hands that she always placed on her knees when she was nervous.
Her hands were on her knees now.
“What do you think about all this?” she asked.
“About the house?”
“The house. Artyom. Everything.”
Lida put down her phone.
“I think Gennady Pavlovich knows what he’s doing.”
“He knows what he’s doing? He’s giving the house to a boy who was last here two years ago. For half a day. He came, ate some borscht and left.”
Zoya spoke evenly, but her fingers were gripping her knees so tightly that they had turned white.
“And what about us? We come every summer. Valery rebuilt the fence. I look after the vegetable garden. Those tomatoes are mine. The strawberries are mine. I pruned the apple trees. Thirteen years, Lida.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you silent? You and Kostya aren’t strangers here either. If we all speak to Dad together…”
“What would we say?”
“That it isn’t fair.”
That word again.
Lida gently bit her lower lip.
“Zoya, tell me honestly. Do you want the house?”
Zoya blinked. It was clearly not the question she had expected.
“We want justice.”
“That isn’t an answer. Do you want this house? Do you want to live here, heat it, repair it and pay the taxes?”
Zoya fell silent.
Something rustled outside the window. Perhaps a cat had run across the shed roof.
“We have an apartment in Odintsovo. We only come here in summer…”
“Exactly. In summer. For two months.”
Zoya straightened in her chair.
“Artyom doesn’t even come for the summer. What difference does it make?”
“It makes a great deal of difference. But it isn’t my business. And, Zoya, it isn’t yours either. It’s Gennady Pavlovich’s business.”
Zoya stood up. The chair scraped backwards and bumped against the windowsill.
“You’re strange, Lida. You always have been.”
She left.
She did not slam the door. She merely pulled it shut in a way that made it perfectly clear the conversation was over.
Lida lay awake in the darkness and listened to the house breathing.
Old houses breathed, especially at night. The logs cracked softly, the floorboards groaned, and the wind moaned through the chimney, even though the old stove had long since been replaced by a boiler.
Kostya returned late. When he lay down beside her, he smelled of tobacco and something sour—perhaps apples from the garden, perhaps alcohol.
“Are you awake?” he whispered.
“Yes.”
“I spoke to Dad.”
“And?”
“He said Artyom is alone. He said Valery and I have somewhere to go, but Artyom doesn’t.”
Lida rolled onto her back. The ceiling in that room was low enough to touch if someone stood on tiptoe.
“What else did he say?”
“That Mother would have wanted the same thing.”
Silence.
Far away, somewhere beyond the forest, a dog barked. The sound was deeper than that of the village dogs.
“Lida.”
“What?”
“Are you really not upset?”
She thought about it.
Not about the house, but about the day twelve years earlier when their eldest son, Misha, had been christened there. Tamara Ilyinichna had baked pies. Gennady Pavlovich had built a swing in the yard.
It was made of birchwood. It was still standing, although the ropes had been replaced.
Misha had first sat on it when he was eighteen months old. He had shrieked so loudly with delight that the neighbours’ cat had fled across three gardens.
“No,” Lida said. “I’m not upset.”
“Why?”
She turned toward him.
“Because it isn’t our house, Kostya. It never was.”
The morning smelled of pancakes and scandal.
Zoya and Valery sat at the table opposite Gennady Pavlovich. Artyom was smoking on the porch. Through the window, Lida could see his hand trembling slightly as he held the cigarette.
“Dad, we want to discuss this properly,” Valery began.
Gennady Pavlovich was spreading butter over a pancake. His knife moved evenly from one edge to the other.
“Speak.”
“Zoya and I think the house should be divided. Or at least discussed.”
“There is nothing to discuss.”
“Dad.”
“I can hear you. There is nothing to discuss.”
Zoya leaned forward.
“Gennady Pavlovich, we have been investing in this place for fifteen years. Money, time, labour. Do you remember the roof? Valery spent two summers fixing it. We built the bathhouse. I planted the garden…”
“The garden is yours,” her father-in-law said calmly. “Take it with you. Your seedlings, your shovel, everything growing in the beds. All yours.”
Zoya pressed her lips together.
Lida saw a thin vein pulsing in her neck.
“This isn’t serious.”
“It is very serious, Zoya. The house is mine. I built it. I decide.”
Valery placed one hand on the table. His knuckles were white.
“We’ll speak to a lawyer.”
“Go ahead.”
Two words.
Gennady Pavlovich took a bite of pancake and chewed while looking out of the window.
In the yard, Artyom put out his cigarette and stood with his hands in his pockets.
Lida drank her tea. It had been brewed with herbs. Tamara Ilyinichna had once dried so much mint and thyme that there still seemed to be an endless supply of it. Every summer, Lida discovered another newspaper-wrapped bundle tied with string at the back of a cupboard.
The woman had been gone for five years, but her herbs remained.
Lida took a sip and caught Artyom’s gaze through the glass.
He was watching her, and she saw something in his eyes she had never noticed before.
Confusion.
Guilt.
Or perhaps both.
After breakfast, Lida went outside.
It was September, but the sun was still warm. The apple trees were heavy with fruit, their branches bending almost to the ground. Zoya was right about one thing: she and Valery had taken care of the orchard. Every spring, they came to whitewash the trunks, cut away the dead branches and spray the trees against aphids.
Lida walked to the swing.
The same birchwood swing.
The ropes were new, but the crossbeam was unchanged, darkened with age and split down the middle.
Artyom approached from behind. She heard him walking softly, as though he was afraid to disturb her.
“Lida.”
“Yes?”
“Did you know? That he was going to decide this?”
“No.”
“But you weren’t surprised.”
“No.”
He leaned one shoulder against the swing post.
“I don’t want this house.”
Lida looked at him.
Artyom was thin and sharp-cheeked, with his father’s eyebrows and his mother’s chin. His lips were narrow, his hands slender. He was twenty-four, but sometimes he looked twenty and sometimes forty.
It was difficult to tell.
“Then why are you silent? Tell him.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because he’ll be hurt. He’s giving me something. Not an apartment. Not money. The house. His entire life.”
Lida reached out and touched the rope of the swing. It was rough and new and smelled of hemp.
“Artyom, what do you want?”
He remained silent for a long time.
A crow called somewhere in the distance, and the sound carried across the whole village toward the forest.
“I want Dad to live longer. And I want him to stop thinking I’ll disappear without him.”
“Will you?”
“No. I work. I rent a room. I’m fine.”
“Then tell him that.”
“You don’t understand. This is how he shows love. Through things. Through the house. Mother was the same. She showed love through pies and preserves. She labelled a jar for each of us with a marker on the lid.”
Lida released the rope.
Names written with a marker on the lid.
She remembered.
“For Kostya.”
“For Valery.”
“For little Tyoma.”
The handwriting had been round and childlike.
“I remember,” she said quietly.
“You see? How can I tell him, ‘Dad, I don’t want it’? It would be like smashing one of Mother’s jars on the floor.”
That afternoon, Rita arrived.
She was Gennady Pavlovich’s sister, seventy-one years old, small and dressed in a knitted cardigan the colour of dusty roses. She carried a walking stick, though she seemed to use it more for authority than support.
“Well,” she said from the doorway, looking everyone over as though she had come to conduct an inspection. “Who’s dying?”
“No one,” Gennady Pavlovich replied.
“You wouldn’t know it from the faces in here.”
Rita sat at the table, removed her cardigan and hung it over the back of the chair.
Underneath, she was wearing another cardigan.
Lida poured her some tea.
“Thank you, dear. At least one normal person in the house.”
Zoya snorted from beside the stove but said nothing.
“Gena,” Rita said, looking at her brother. “Valery called me. He said you’re signing the house over to Tyoma.”
“I’m not leaving it to him in a will. I’ll transfer it to him as a gift.”
“It’s the same thing.”
“No. A gift deed can’t be cancelled.”
Valery, who was leaning against the doorframe, visibly flinched.
Lida saw him open his mouth and then close it again. Zoya stood beside him with her arms folded.
“Gena,” Rita said, taking a sip of tea and grimacing, either because it was hot or bitter. “Do you remember how our father divided his property?”
“I remember.”
“He decided everything himself too. You got the house. I got a one-room apartment in Kalinin. And I was angry with you for thirty years.”
“You’re still angry.”
“No. I’m seventy-one now. I have high blood pressure and a cat. I don’t have time to be angry.”
Gennady Pavlovich smiled.
It was the first time in two days that Lida had seen anything resembling warmth on his face.
“Rita, I didn’t ask for advice.”
“I’m not giving advice. I’m telling you what happened. Father thought you needed the house more. You had a family, children and a job at the state farm. I was alone, so he thought one room would be enough for me. He never asked whether it actually was.”
Silence.
The old wall clock ticked loudly. It had a cuckoo that had not cuckooed for years.
“Your wife Toma said something to me afterwards,” Rita continued. “She said, ‘Gena knows Father was wrong, but he’ll never admit it because the decision benefited him.’”
Gennady Pavlovich put down his mug.
Not sharply, but firmly.
The mug was thick ceramic with a painted rooster on it, and it made a dull sound against the table.
“Toma said many things.”
“Toma was an intelligent woman. Smarter than either of us.”
Lida went outside into the garden.
She needed air, not because the house was stuffy, but because those walls remembered too much, and sometimes the weight of it became unbearable.
She walked as far as the fence, the same fence Valery had rebuilt. The wooden slats stood straight, painted green. The paint had begun to peel near the bottom where the snow gathered during winter.
Beyond the fence stretched a field and then the forest.
The September sky was high and pale. The air smelled of fallen leaves and faintly of smoke. Someone two properties away was burning dead plants.
Lida stood there thinking about what she had known for months but had told no one.
Six months earlier, in March, Gennady Pavlovich had called her.
Not Kostya.
Not Valery.
Her.
He had phoned during her lunch break while she sat in her car outside work eating a cheese sandwich.
“Lida, I need your advice.”
“I’m listening, Gennady Pavlovich.”
“I want to transfer the house while I’m still alive. So they don’t tear each other apart afterwards.”
“Who do you want to give it to?”
“Tyoma.”
She had stopped chewing.
The cheese was hard, and the mouthful seemed to stick in her throat.
“Why Artyom?”
“Because he’ll lose himself, Lida. Valery is strong. Kostya has you. He has someone to support him. But Tyoma is alone. Completely alone. Just like Rita used to be.”
“You heard what Rita said about your father.”
“I did. But Father’s mistake wasn’t giving the house to me. His mistake was not explaining to Rita why.”
Lida had remained silent.
A light rain was falling outside the car, and the windscreen wipers were still damp from the morning.
“Lida, I’m asking you for one thing. When I announce it, don’t join the fight. Kostya listens to you. No one can control Valery, so let him rage if he wants.”
“You’re asking me to keep quiet.”
“I’m asking you not to destroy what I’m trying to build.”
She had finished her sandwich and washed it down with bottled water.
“All right.”
“Thank you, daughter.”
He had never called her daughter before.
He never did again.
That was why she had smiled at the table.
Not because she did not care.
Not because she agreed with him.
She smiled because she had given him her word. Because an old man who had spent forty years building that house had asked her for one thing, and she had said yes.
Kostya did not know.
Zoya certainly did not know.
Artyom may have guessed that his father had spoken to someone, but he had never asked.
Lida stood beside the fence thinking about fairness.
Everyone spoke about fairness as though it meant the same thing to every person.
Valery had contributed his labour. Zoya had contributed her time. Kostya had contributed his presence. Artyom had contributed nothing, perhaps because no one had invited him to.
Or perhaps they had invited him, but not in the way he needed to be invited.
She remembered when Tamara Ilyinichna was in hospital five years earlier.
Artyom had come alone.
He had no car, so he travelled by suburban train and then by bus. Four hours each way. He brought oranges she could no longer eat and sat beside her all day.
Silently.
Valery and Zoya had visited too. They came by car, brought supplies and spoke with the doctors. Kostya called often and transferred money.
But Artyom sat.
He simply sat beside his mother, holding her hand without saying anything.
When Lida looked into the room, Tamara Ilyinichna was asleep, and Artyom was counting the ceiling tiles.
“Are you all right?” Lida had asked.
“Two hundred and eighteen,” he answered.
“What?”
“Tiles. There are two hundred and eighteen.”
That was when she understood he had been sitting there for a very long time.
By evening, emotions had begun to settle.
Valery was drinking tea with Rita and no longer mentioning lawyers.
Zoya sat on the veranda looking out at the garden she considered hers, and perhaps she was right in her own way.
Gennady Pavlovich had gone into his workshop.
Whenever things went wrong, he had a habit of planing wood. He made stools, cutting boards and spoons—useless objects the house already had too many of.
Lida found him there.
The workshop smelled of wood shavings and oil. A board lay on the workbench, barely begun, marked in pencil.
“Gennady Pavlovich.”
“Yes?”
“Rita was right.”
“About what?”
“You need to explain. Not the decision, but the reason behind it.”
He did not raise his head.
The plane moved smoothly across the wood with a soft whisper.
“I explained. Artyom has nowhere to go.”
“That isn’t enough. Valery feels his work has been dismissed. Zoya feels she has been thrown away. Kostya feels he is somewhere in the middle, but he doesn’t know where.”
Gennady Pavlovich stopped and put down the plane.
“And you? What do you feel?”
“I feel that you are right. But you are doing it harshly.”
“I’ve done everything harshly my whole life. Toma used to say I had a spirit level instead of a heart. Straight, accurate and cold.”
Lida smiled.
This time, genuinely.
“Tamara Ilyinichna loved you.”
“She did. And she was angry with me. One never prevented the other.”
He picked up the board, examined it and put it down again.
“Lida, I’ll tell you something Toma said before… before the hospital. She said, ‘Gena, don’t divide the house equally. Equal shares will only start a war. Give it to the one who needs it most, and accept everyone else’s anger yourself.’”
“And you decided Artyom needed it most.”
“I decided that without this house, Artyom would lose something inside himself. He needs something to hold on to. The other two already have that.”
“Kostya is hurt too.”
“Kostya has you. That will be enough for him.”
He said it simply.
Not as a compliment. Not warmly.
As a fact.
As though she were a wall strong enough to hold up a roof.
Lida left the workshop and paused outside the door.
A curl of wood shaving had stuck to the sole of her shoe. She bent down, removed it and turned it between her fingers.
It was thin, twisted into a spiral and smelled of pine.
Kostya could not sleep that night.
He tossed, sighed and got up twice for water.
“Kostya.”
“What?”
“Stop.”
“I can’t.”
“You can.”
He sat up in bed.
In the darkness, she could see only his silhouette: broad shoulders and untidy hair.
“It hurts, Lida. I understand that he has the right. I understand the house is his and we are guests here. But it still hurts. It’s like when I was a child and they bought Tyoma a bicycle, then told me I didn’t need one because I was older.”
“How old were you?”
“Twelve.”
“And now you’re thirty-six.”
“So?”
“Nothing. Only that twelve and thirty-six are different stories.”
He lay down again.
After a moment, he spoke.
“You know something I don’t.”
“What makes you think that?”
“You’re too calm. That isn’t normal for you.”
Lida closed her eyes.
The low wooden ceiling seemed to press down on her. The smell of varnish had long since faded, but it remained in her memory.
“I’ve simply accepted it, Kostya. Accepting something doesn’t mean agreeing with it. It means no longer wasting your strength on something you cannot change.”
“That sounds very wise.”
“It isn’t wise. It’s honest.”
He turned toward her, and she felt his warm, quick breath against her cheek.
“Are we really never going to come here again?”
“We will. If Artyom invites us.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“Then we’ll buy our own country house. A small one. With a fence you’ll paint yourself.”
“I don’t know how to paint fences.”
“You’ll learn.”
He made a sound that was almost a laugh.
Something inside him shifted slightly. Lida felt it in the way his shoulders relaxed.
The following morning, Artyom packed his things and waited on the porch.
His rucksack was worn and had a patch bearing the name of some band Lida did not recognise.
“Are you leaving?” she asked, stepping outside with a mug in her hand.
“The bus is at eleven forty.”
“Do you want a lift to the station?”
“No. I’ll walk.”
He hesitated.
Then he took a folded sheet of paper from his pocket.
“What’s that?”
“I wrote to Dad. I told him I can’t accept the house.”
“Artyom.”
“I know what you’re going to say. But I can’t take it. It isn’t mine. I didn’t build it, repair it or live here. It’s his life, not mine.”
Lida placed her mug on the porch railing.
It was the same mug with the painted rooster.
“Did you give him the letter?”
“Not yet. I wanted to ask you first.”
“Me?”
“You’re the only person here who isn’t shouting, sulking or pretending everything is fine. That means you understand something.”
Lida took the letter and unfolded it.
His handwriting was uneven, the letters jumping like a child’s.
There were only three lines.
“Dad, thank you. But the house should belong to someone who loves it. I love you. But I don’t love the house. Forgive me.”
She folded the sheet again.
“Don’t give it to him.”
“Why not?”
“Because he isn’t giving you a house. He’s giving you a place. Somewhere you can return to.”
“I already have somewhere. My room in Tver.”
“A room isn’t a place. A place is somewhere people wait for you.”
Artyom took back the letter and pushed it into his pocket.
He looked at the house, the roof, the veranda and the apple trees.
“He isn’t going to live forever.”
“The house?”
“Dad.”
Lida did not answer.
She already knew.
The bus left at eleven forty.
Artyom went away without giving his father the letter.
Valery and Zoya left after lunch.
Zoya packed jars of preserves, cucumbers and tomatoes into the car without speaking. Valery shook his father’s hand briefly and stiffly before getting behind the wheel.
“Zoya,” Lida called as she was opening the passenger door.
Zoya turned.
Her face looked tired rather than angry.
“What?”
“The garden is yours. He said so himself. That means you’ll come back in spring.”
“I don’t need his garden…”
She did not finish the sentence.
She waved one hand dismissively and got into the car.
But Lida had seen it.
The corner of Zoya’s mouth had twitched.
She would come back.
Lida and Kostya were the last to leave.
Lida was packing their things when Gennady Pavlovich entered the room.
He did not knock.
Like Zoya.
No one knocked in that house.
“Lida.”
“Yes?”
“Thank you.”
He stood in the doorway, large and heavy in the same checked shirt, now unbuttoned at the neck. His arms hung stiffly at his sides like a soldier’s.
“There’s nothing to thank me for, Gennady Pavlovich.”
“There is. You were the only one who didn’t go to war with me.”
“I gave you my word.”
“You wouldn’t have fought me even without that promise.”
She zipped the travel bag.
The zipper caught, and she had to pull it twice.
“Tyoma wrote a letter,” she said. “He wants to refuse the house.”
Gennady Pavlovich did not look surprised.
He merely nodded.
“I know. I know him.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Wait. Wait until he understands that a place becomes important not when you want it, but when you have nowhere else to go.”
Lida lifted the bag.
It felt heavy, and not because of the clothes.
“And if he never understands?”
“He will. He’s my son.”
Gennady Pavlovich moved away from the doorway to let her pass.
As she walked by, he placed one hand on her shoulder.
Only for a second.
His palm was heavy, rough and hot.
Kostya remained silent for the first twenty minutes of the drive.
Then he turned on the radio, switched it off and turned it on again.
“Lida.”
“Yes?”
“Did you speak to Dad?”
“When?”
“Not today. Before all this. Before lunch.”
She looked through the window.
Fields.
Forest.
The turn toward the motorway.
Sosnovka was already behind them, a small village with a church that had no dome and a water tower that had not worked since 1998.
“Yes.”
“So you knew what he was going to say.”
“Yes.”
Kostya tightened his grip on the steering wheel.
His knuckles whitened, just as Valery’s had at the table.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“He asked me not to.”
“He asked you. But I’m your husband.”
“That’s exactly why.”
Kostya slowed at an intersection.
They were stuck behind a lorry, and diesel fumes drifted through the half-open window.
“What does that mean?”
“It means you would have confronted him. You would have argued, tried to prove him wrong and taken offence, just like Valery. And he would have become even more stubborn. Instead, you had to live through it yourself. Two days later, you’re no longer angry.”
“I am angry.”
“No. You’re hurt. That’s different.”
He overtook the lorry on a straight section of road and said nothing for a while.
“Lida, I don’t like you deciding when I should know something and when I shouldn’t.”
“I didn’t decide for you. I respected your father’s request.”
“That’s the same thing.”
“No, Kostya. It isn’t the same at all.”
He glanced at her, taking his eyes off the road for only a second.
She saw that he was not angry.
He was trying to understand.
It was written on his face as clearly as the white lines on the road.
They reached home by evening.
The children were staying with Lida’s mother, so the apartment greeted them with silence. Not the living silence of the countryside, but the empty silence of the city.
Lida left the bag in the hall, removed her shoes and went into the kitchen.
A cup she had forgotten to wash before leaving was still on the table. A little coffee had dried inside it, leaving a pale ring around the edge.
She washed the cup and placed it in the cupboard.
Kostya entered the kitchen and leaned against the doorway.
“Will we really buy our own country house one day?” he asked.
“One day.”
“A small one?”
“A small one.”
“With a fence?”
“With a fence.”
He smiled for the first time in three days.
“I don’t know how to paint fences.”
“I’ll show you.”
He came closer, wrapped his arms around her from behind and rested his face against the top of her head.
Lida stood with her hands gripping the edge of the sink and looked out of the window.
Darkness was falling. Streetlights were coming on, and the city hummed with its steady, familiar sound.
Somewhere one hundred and seventy kilometres away, Gennady Pavlovich was probably planing another piece of wood.
Artyom was riding on a suburban train, crumpling the undelivered letter inside his pocket.
Zoya was placing jars on a shelf and counting how many garden beds she would plant in spring.
Valery was smoking, although he had quit.
And Lida stood in her own kitchen, in her own apartment, inside her own life, knowing one thing for certain.
A home was not walls or a piece of land.
A home was when someone embraced you from behind and breathed against your hair, and you did not want to be anywhere else.
The cup stood in the cupboard.
Clean.
