“An inheritance?” Veronika repeated, holding the phone between her shoulder and ear because both hands were wrapped around a cup of tea that had already gone cold. “Are you sure you haven’t called the wrong person?”
The voice on the other end—dry, businesslike, with the slight breathlessness of an elderly man—patiently explained everything again: he was a notary, there was an inheritance case, Antonina Yefimovna had died a month earlier, and the apartment on Zarechnaya Street was to pass to Veronika, the only remaining relative on her father’s side.
Veronika slowly lowered the cup onto the table.
She had last seen Antonina Yefimovna about fifteen years ago. They had exchanged New Year’s cards until Veronika was around twenty, but over time the correspondence had faded away, as often happens with distant relatives.
And now this woman, someone Veronika had barely known, had left her a one-bedroom apartment on the other side of the city.
“Do I need to come in?” Veronika asked, still struggling to believe what she was hearing.
 
“The inheritance can be formally processed in six months,” the notary replied. “You’ll come in with the necessary documents then. For now, I simply wanted to inform you.”
After ending the call, Veronika remained motionless for several minutes, staring out of the kitchen window.
More precisely, someone else’s kitchen window.
She had not had a kitchen of her own for almost two years.
For the past two years, Veronika and her husband Nikolai had been living with his parents, Tamara Vladimirovna and Pyotr Alexeyevich, in their spacious three-room apartment.
Everything in that home followed long-established rules.
Dinner was served at exactly seven—not earlier, not later.
The television in the living room belonged to her father-in-law, and nobody changed the channel without asking him first.
Laundry was done according to a schedule. Tamara Vladimirovna had created it during the first month of the couple’s stay, politely but firmly explaining to her daughter-in-law that “this is how things are done in our family.”
Guests were not supposed to be invited without prior discussion either. Tamara Vladimirovna became offended if she learned afterward that strangers had visited the apartment.
Veronika adjusted as best she could.
She kept her belongings out of the hallway so they would not inconvenience anyone. On weekdays, she cooked food that Pyotr Alexeyevich liked—cutlets that were not too spicy, borscht without too much garlic.
She stayed silent when her mother-in-law criticized her at breakfast for “sleeping too late on weekends” or suggested that “a young wife could do more around the house.”
 
Veronika tolerated all of it because she believed it was temporary.
When Nikolai came home from work that evening, she could not contain herself. She told him the news the moment he walked through the door, while helping him take off his jacket.
“Kolya, you won’t believe this! Aunt Antonina left me an apartment!”
Nikolai froze with one hand still raised toward the coat rack.
“What Aunt Antonina?”
“She was a distant relative on Dad’s side. You never met her. It’s a one-bedroom apartment somewhere on Zarechnaya Street. I don’t even know the exact address yet. Everything will be finalized in six months.”
Nikolai slowly sat down on the bench in the hallway and began removing his shoes. Confusion crossed his face first, then a wide, almost boyish smile appeared.
“That’s… that’s amazing!” he exclaimed, jumping back to his feet and pulling his wife into a hug right there among the shoes and winter coats. “Vera, this is our way out! We can finally move!”
That night they could not fall asleep for a long time.
They whispered about the future so they would not wake his parents in the next room.
 
Veronika rested her head on Nikolai’s shoulder, and for the first time in two years she felt something close to genuine hope.
“Just imagine,” she whispered. “We’ll finally be able to live the way we want. No laundry schedules. No one deciding what time we’re supposed to eat dinner.”
“I completely agree,” Nikolai replied quietly, running his fingers through her hair. “I’m tired of it too. I want a home of our own. Our own space.”
For the first several days after the news, Veronika moved through life as though wrapped in a pleasant dream.
She browsed kitchen designs on her phone, imagined what color she would paint the bedroom walls, and mentally arranged furniture in rooms she had not even seen yet.
Six months later, after the inheritance had been officially processed and all the documents were completed, Veronika and Nikolai finally went to see the apartment.
The building on Zarechnaya Street was an old postwar brick block with high ceilings and a creaking staircase but no elevator.
The apartment itself was thirty-six square meters: one room, a tiny kitchen, old Soviet-era furniture, and wallpaper that looked as though it had been hung at least twenty years earlier.
 
“What a smell,” Nikolai said, wrinkling his nose as he entered.
“Nobody has lived here for a long time,” Veronika replied, opening the window. “We’ll air it out and it’ll be fine. Look at these ceilings—they’re so high! And here…”
She walked over to the wall between the kitchen and living room.
“We could make a breakfast bar if we widened the opening a little.”
“That could be expensive,” Nikolai said, not irritably, but thoughtfully.
“We wouldn’t remove the whole wall. Just enlarge the opening. I already asked a friend whose husband works with a renovation crew. She said something like that would cost around fifteen thousand.”
They spent nearly two hours walking through the apartment, discussing everything: furniture, bathroom tiles, whether the windows needed immediate replacement or could wait another year.
 
Nikolai agreed with nearly all her ideas. He nodded, suggested alternatives, and even joked about grilling meat on the tiny balcony on weekends.
When they returned to his parents’ home, Veronika created a folder on her phone called “Our Apartment.”
She filled it with pictures of affordable kitchen cabinets, wallpaper ideas, bathroom tiles, and appliances.
She also began calculating their budget.
If she saved fifteen thousand rubles a month from her fifty-eight-thousand-ruble accountant’s salary, and Nikolai contributed from his seventy-five-thousand-ruble manager’s salary, they could finish the essential renovations and buy furniture within six months to a year.
At first, Tamara Vladimirovna made no comments about their plans.
Then one evening, while Veronika was showing Nikolai pictures of bathroom faucets during dinner, her mother-in-law suddenly asked, without looking at anyone in particular:
“Why are you in such a hurry?”
Veronika looked up from her phone.
“We’re not rushing. We just want everything finished before autumn.”
“Hmm,” Tamara Vladimirovna murmured before returning to her food.
About a month passed.
 
Veronika had already saved nearly seventy thousand rubles for household appliances and was looking at discounted washing machines and refrigerators.
One evening, she came home from work earlier than usual and found Nikolai and Tamara Vladimirovna sitting together in the kitchen with cups of tea.
They were speaking quietly, almost in whispers.
“…and if you rent it out, you could easily get at least twenty-eight thousand a month,” her mother-in-law was saying, stirring her tea. “It’s a decent neighborhood.”
The moment she noticed Veronika standing in the doorway, Tamara Vladimirovna fell silent.
Then she smiled with exaggerated cheerfulness.
“Veronika, would you like some tea?”
“No, thank you,” Veronika replied shortly before going to change.
But an unpleasant feeling remained inside her.
A splinter she chose not to examine too closely.
 
Over the next few weeks, similar conversations happened more and more often.
Whenever Veronika left the room, Nikolai and his mother’s voices would suddenly become quiet in the kitchen.
One evening, Veronika deliberately stopped in the hallway beside a half-open door and listened.
“Kolya, think about it,” Tamara Vladimirovna was insisting. “You and Veronika are perfectly comfortable here. Why spend money on renovations and furniture when you can rent the apartment out and have a stable monthly income?”
“Your mother is right,” Pyotr Alexeyevich added, apparently looking up from his newspaper. “Renting property is profitable these days. Twenty-five to thirty thousand a month, and you don’t need to waste money on renovations.”
Veronika quickly returned to the bedroom.
Her heart was pounding so loudly that she was almost afraid they might hear it.
She still did not fully understand what was happening, but something inside her already knew this would not end peacefully.
Nikolai began changing gradually.
The differences were almost invisible from the outside, but Veronika noticed every shift in his mood.
“Listen,” he said one evening as they were getting ready for bed, “maybe we should postpone the renovation. There’s no rush.”
“What do you mean, no rush?” Veronika pushed herself up on one elbow. “We agreed we’d finish everything before autumn.”
“Well, it’s just…”
 
Nikolai looked away and stared at the ceiling.
“This isn’t the best time. They cut bonuses at work. Maybe we should save more first.”
Veronika said nothing that night, deciding it was not worth arguing before bed.
But two weeks later, the subject came up again, only this time Nikolai sounded sharper.
“Vera, what’s the point of rushing to move out?” he asked one morning over breakfast, stirring sugar into his coffee without looking at her. “We don’t pay for anything here. No rent, barely any utilities, even groceries are shared. If we move, all those expenses will fall on us.”
“Kolya, it’s my apartment,” Veronika said quietly, setting down her cup. “We dreamed about having our own home.”
“We did,” Nikolai replied. “But we have to be realistic.”
 
From that day onward, any mention of renovation or moving seemed to irritate him instantly.
If Veronika tried to discuss wallpaper or bathroom tiles, Nikolai frowned, answered curtly, or simply left the room under some excuse.
Meanwhile, his parents’ kitchen conversations became increasingly specific.
One day, Veronika accidentally overheard her father-in-law calculating figures aloud while tracing numbers on a sheet of paper.
“If we rent it for thirty thousand, that’s three hundred and sixty thousand a year. Add Kolya’s bonuses, and by next summer we could probably buy a new car.”
Veronika froze in the doorway.
Pyotr Alexeyevich noticed her, gave her a quick glance, folded the paper, and slipped it into the pocket of his robe.
Now everything was clear.
Her husband’s family had already made plans for property that did not belong to them.
A few days later, during another family dinner, Veronika finally decided to confront the issue directly.
“Kolya,” she began, carefully putting down her fork, “we need to decide when we’re moving. At least approximately.”
Silence fell around the table.
Tamara Vladimirovna slowly put down her spoon, dabbed her lips with a napkin, and spoke in a cold voice.
 
“Veronika, do you ever think about this family? We fed you and Nikolai for two years, gave you a place to live, and now you want to take everything and simply abandon us?”
“Tamara Vladimirovna, nobody is abandoning anyone,” Veronika replied, feeling heat rise in her face. “We simply want to live separately, like any normal married couple.”
“A normal family takes care of its parents!” Pyotr Alexeyevich interrupted sharply, striking his spoon against the table. “You have a responsibility to use what you have to help the family.”
“That property was left specifically to me,” Veronika answered firmly. “Aunt Antonina left the apartment to me, not to the entire family.”
Nikolai remained silent.
He stared at his plate, pushing cold food around with his fork.
Then, without looking up, he finally spoke.
“The rent money from the apartment will go to my parents,” he said. “I’ve already promised them.”
 
The kitchen became so quiet that Veronika could hear water dripping from the poorly closed faucet.
“What did you just say?” she asked.
A wave of cold seemed to move through her entire body.
“I already promised Mom and Dad that we’d rent out the apartment and give them the money,” Nikolai repeated, this time louder as he finally looked at his wife. “It’s only fair.”
“Who gave you the right to make decisions about my inheritance?”
Veronika slowly rose from the table, placing both palms against the tabletop.
“Who gave you permission to promise someone else’s apartment to your parents, Nikolai?”
Her husband shrugged and looked toward the window.
“I already gave them my word,” he said heavily. “I’m not going back on it. It would be embarrassing in front of my parents.”
“Embarrassing in front of your parents?”
Veronika’s voice trembled with anger.
“And you’re not embarrassed in front of me? This is my apartment!”
“Stop making a scene,” Tamara Vladimirovna cut in, rising and placing her hands on her hips. “I fed you for two years, washed your clothes, tolerated your moods. I have every right to expect some gratitude.”
“Gratitude in the form of rental income?” Veronika asked, hardly believing what she was hearing.
 
“What’s wrong with that?” Pyotr Alexeyevich said. “You’ve become greedy, Veronika. Some distant relative leaves you property, and suddenly you’re clinging to it as though you earned every brick yourself.”
“Nikolai and I have both been working all these years!” Veronika almost shouted as anger surged through her. “We regularly paid for groceries, contributed to utilities, and helped around the house. Neither of us was living here for free!”
“You barely paid anything,” Tamara Vladimirovna scoffed, folding her arms.
“Enough!” Veronika snapped. “Enough that we don’t owe you our future!”
The argument quickly exploded into a full-scale fight.
Everyone spoke over everyone else.
Pyotr Alexeyevich shouted about ungrateful young people.
Tamara Vladimirovna listed every supposed sacrifice she had made during the past two years.
And instead of supporting his wife, Nikolai suddenly lost his temper too.
 
“Stop acting as though that apartment belongs only to you!” he shouted, slamming his palm onto the table hard enough to make the plates rattle. “We’re married! Everything is shared!”
“Then your salary is shared too,” Veronika fired back. “And decisions should be shared. You don’t get to make promises behind my back and expect me to obey them afterward.”
She took a breath and continued more quietly.
“I am not giving your parents income from property that belongs to me. And I will not allow anyone to control my inheritance without my permission.”
Nikolai went pale.
His jaw tightened.
Then he said the words that made something inside Veronika collapse completely.
“If that’s your attitude,” he said through clenched teeth, “then you have no place in our family.”
Tamara Vladimirovna immediately stepped between her son and daughter-in-law, almost like a human barrier.
“Veronika,” she said in a cold voice that allowed no argument, “either you accept the family’s decision or you can pack your things right now.”
Veronika slowly looked around the kitchen.
Her husband’s frozen expression.
 
Her mother-in-law’s triumphant face.
Her father-in-law’s stern glare.
Nobody was going to stand beside her.
Nobody was even trying.
“All right,” Veronika said quietly but firmly. “I understand.”
That same evening, she pulled a travel bag from the storage closet and began packing methodically.
Clothes.
Documents.
Her laptop.
Her favorite mug, a gift from her grandmother.
Nikolai stood in the bedroom doorway with his arms crossed, silently watching her.
“You’re seriously leaving?” he finally asked as Veronika zipped the bag shut.
“What else am I supposed to do, Kolya?” She looked at him, exhausted. “Stay somewhere I’m treated like a source of income instead of a person?”
Nikolai had no answer.
 
He simply stepped aside and allowed her to walk past him.
Zarechnaya Street greeted Veronika that night with silence and the smell of old furniture.
She switched on the light in the only room, placed her bag on the floor, and sat down on the sagging sofa that had belonged to Antonina Yefimovna.
For several minutes, she simply sat there, staring at the peeling paint on the ceiling.
And strangely enough, she felt calm.
Almost frighteningly calm.
For the first time in years, nobody was telling her when to go to sleep, how to behave, or what she was allowed to do.
The next day, Veronika posted an advertisement looking for someone who could handle a few basic repairs.
Nothing extravagant.
Just the essentials: fixing loose wallpaper, replacing the leaking kitchen faucet, and repainting the worn window frames.
Renting the apartment out to strangers was no longer even a consideration.
Not now.
 
Not ever.
Two days later, Nikolai called.
“Vera, maybe you could come back?” His voice sounded unusually hesitant. “Mom already regrets what she said. Really.”
“Did she apologize?” Veronika asked.
“Well… not exactly,” Nikolai admitted. “But we talked everything over with my parents, and we decided we could reconsider how much rent they receive. You wouldn’t have to give them all of it. Just part.”
Veronika closed her eyes.
Something inside her hardened completely.
Whatever hope she still had that he might finally understand had turned to stone.
“Kolya,” she said calmly, without anger, “this was never about the amount. It was about the fact that you believed you had the right to make decisions about my property without me. Then you expected me to accept promises you made behind my back.”
“I’m sorry. I got carried away,” Nikolai muttered. “Can’t we just forget everything and have you come home?”
“My home is here now,” Veronika replied quietly.
Then she ended the call before he could continue.
The next few weeks were filled with work on the apartment.
Veronika chose inexpensive but attractive bathroom tiles. She painted the window frames a soft white and arranged the limited furniture carefully so that every corner of the small apartment served a purpose.
An elderly neighbor named Galina Sergeyevna stopped by one afternoon to introduce herself.
When she heard Veronika’s story, she shook her head.
“You did the right thing by realizing it early, dear. A friend of mine put up with something like that for twenty years. It never got better.”
Nikolai called several more times over the following month.
Each time, he offered a different compromise.
First, he suggested giving his parents a smaller amount.
Then he said he was willing to forget the rental idea completely, as long as Veronika returned to his parents’ home.
But with every conversation, Veronika understood more clearly that the problem had stopped being about money a long time ago.
The real problem was that her husband had chosen his parents’ side without hesitation.
 
He had not even tried to defend her interests.
Two months later, Veronika filed for divorce.
As she gathered the final documents at the courthouse, she was surprised to discover that she did not feel grief.
Instead, she felt relief.
It was as though she had spent years carrying a heavy backpack without realizing how exhausting it had become, and someone had finally lifted it from her shoulders.
Nikolai remained with his parents, Tamara Vladimirovna and Pyotr Alexeyevich, who never received the rental income they had already mentally spent.
For a while, he continued trying to restore contact with his former wife.
He sent messages.
He called in the evenings.
But gradually, the calls became less frequent.
Then they stopped entirely.
Veronika continued living in her apartment on Zarechnaya Street—the same apartment her husband’s relatives had already divided in their imagination before she had even formally inherited it.
In the evenings, after returning from work, she brewed tea in the old mug with the chipped handle and sat by the window, watching the sunset slowly fade above the rooftops of neighboring buildings.
One day, while sorting through boxes of Antonina Yefimovna’s belongings, Veronika discovered an old black-and-white photograph.
A young woman she did not recognize was standing beside the very same window, laughing as she held a light curtain in one hand.
Veronika never discovered exactly who the woman was.
 
But there was something strangely familiar in her smile.
Almost as though a distant relative was reaching across the years to send her a quiet greeting.
Veronika placed the photograph carefully on the windowsill, where the morning sunlight was strongest.
And as she looked at it, she realized that for the first time in a very long time, she was building a life she had actually chosen for herself.
A life without someone else’s schedules.
Without someone else counting her money.
And without anyone making decisions behind her back.
