Anna, what are you doing? We can’t just take someone else’s child!”
“Stepan, imagine if the same thing happened to ours—if he was found in an empty train car, starving and frozen to the bone?”
A cold October wind rustled the curtains in the windows of their village home. Anna Ivanovna stood before her husband, pressing a skinny five-year-old boy tightly to her, the boy clinging to her like a tiny bird in a storm. His dirty clothing exuded a smell of train tracks and desperation.
It all began three hours earlier, when she was returning from the city market. In the nearly empty commuter train car, she spotted him—huddled in a corner, his eyes filled with the kind of hopelessness one sees only in abandoned children or wounded animals. None of the passengers knew where he had come from. The conductor just shrugged: perhaps he got lost, or maybe…
“What’s your name, little one?” she had asked, crouching down next to him.
The boy was silent, but when she took an apple out of her bag and offered it to him, he grabbed it with both hands and bit into it as if he hadn’t eaten in days.
“Igor…” he whispered then, wiping his mouth.
Now they stood before Stepan Fedorovich, and Anna could feel the child trembling as he leaned against her shoulder. Her husband frowned; his broad shoulders were tense, as though he faced an important decision.
“Stepa, we’ve been waiting so many years…” she said quietly.
A week later, Igor was already helping Anna Ivanovna with the cooking. She set him on a tall stool by the table and tied an enormous apron around him, which hung from his skinny shoulders.
“That’s it, my dear, roll out the dough,” she instructed. “Slowly, carefully.”
The boy rolled the pin diligently, sticking his tongue out in concentration. There was a white smudge of flour on his cheek, and as Anna looked at him, she felt her heart fill with warmth.
“Will Uncle get mad?” he suddenly asked, pausing with the rolling pin raised.
“No, sweet boy. Papa’s strict, but fair. He wants you to grow up to be a real man.”
Stepan Fedorovich taught him in his own way. When the first snow fell, he called Igor outside to chop wood.
“Hold the axe firmly,” he instructed, standing behind the boy, “take a wide swing.”
Igor huffed and puffed but tried his best. The log was small—chosen specifically for practice—but the axe still felt too heavy.
“I can’t,” he sniffled after several attempts.
“Yes, you can,” Stepan answered firmly. “You’re a man. And men never give up.”
When the log finally split apart, Igor beamed with joy, and Stepan Fedorovich allowed himself a faint smile hidden beneath his mustache.
By the spring of 1984, all the paperwork was in order. The chairman of the village council, an old friend of the family, helped resolve the complicated situation. Maria Petrovna, the paramedic who had known Anna since she was a young girl, also stepped in—she compiled all the necessary documents.
“You are now officially Igor Stepanovich Voronov,” Anna announced ceremoniously to her son over a festive supper.
Igor gently touched the brand-new document and asked cautiously, “Can I call you Mom and Dad?”
Anna pressed her palm to her lips, trying to hold back tears. Stepan Fedorovich rose from the table, walked over to the window, and looked off into the distance for a long while before replying in a low voice, “Of course you can, son.”
Igor’s first day of school began with him gripping his mother’s hand tightly. Anna Ivanovna could feel his fingers trembling as they walked along the dusty village road to the school. The white shirt she had ironed the evening before was already getting rumpled from his nerves.
“Mom, what if I can’t handle it?” he whispered, eyeing the two-story school building, which seemed huge to him.
“You’ll handle it, my treasure. You’re your father’s son.”
That evening, Stepan Fedorovich carefully examined his son’s new notebook.
“So, math is going to be your main subject. You can’t get by without it. Tomorrow we’ll start with the multiplication table.”
By the end of first grade, Igor already knew the multiplication table by heart. Every morning, Stepan tested him, despite Igor’s fatigue and occasional tears. But when his son brought home his first certificate of praise, Stepan Fedorovich publicly placed a hand on his shoulder for the first time.
“Well done,” he said simply, but Igor beamed as though a sun had burst open above him.
In third grade, Igor got into his first fight. He came home with a split lip and a torn shirt. Anna fussed over him, pressing plantain leaves to his cuts, while Stepan silently waited for an explanation.
“They were bullying Pet’ka Solov’yov,” Igor mumbled, wincing from the pain. “Three against one. That’s not fair.”
Stepan snorted into his mustache. “You fought for what’s right? Well then… Tomorrow, I’ll teach you how to stand properly in a fight, so that no one can break your lip again.”
At thirteen, Igor began showing his own will. He contradicted his father more often, slammed doors, and spent hours down by the river.
“Why does he always boss me around?” he complained to his mother while working with her in the garden. “All I ever hear is ‘Do this, do that.’ I just can’t take it!”
Anna wiped the sweat from her brow, leaving a smudge of dirt on her skin. “Son, everyone has their own way of seeing things. Your father’s been through a lot. He was orphaned as a child and had to make his own way in life. That’s why he wants you to be strong in spirit.”
“And you? You’re so kind, yet you live with him.”
Anna smiled. “I notice what others miss. When you had pneumonia last year, he spent three nights by your bed. You don’t remember—you were feverish.”
Igor’s idea to go to a technical college and study engineering came suddenly. He saw a photo of a new machine in the district newspaper and lit up—there it was, his calling!
“You want to go to the city?” Stepan scratched his head thoughtfully. “Well, it’s a good plan. But remember—you’ll be living in a dorm, and we won’t have extra money.”
“I’ll work in the summer!” Igor burst out. “Uncle Vitya said he’d take me on at the sawmill.”
All July he labored there, coming home covered in sawdust and with aching muscles. Stepan watched him surreptitiously, smiling in satisfaction beneath his mustache more and more often.
By the end of summer, Igor had earned enough to pay for his first semester and buy a new suit. He also came away with calluses he secretly took pride in—and the realization that perhaps his father wasn’t so wrong about work and character.
When it was time for him to leave, Anna cried as she packed his things. She put in a jar of raspberry jam, wool socks, and a whole stack of pies. Stepan silently observed, then disappeared into the yard and returned with a small bundle.
“Here,” he said, handing his son an old watch. “They belonged to your grandfather, then to me. Now they’re yours.”
Igor froze, looking at the worn leather strap. He knew this family relic—his father wore it only on special occasions.
“Thank you, Dad,” he said, his voice trembling. “I… I won’t let you down.”
“I know,” Stepan replied simply. “You’re my son.”
The spring of 2000 came early and loud. Beyond the edge of the village, machinery worked day and night—construction had begun on a new machine-building plant. Every evening, Igor came to watch the construction, just as he once ran to the river as a boy. His mechanical-engineering diploma felt alive in his hands.
“They’re going to take me on, Mom!” he burst into the house one day, waving papers in the air. “The shop manager said they need skilled specialists!”
Anna Ivanovna just shook her head—her son looked like a little boy again, his eyes shining as they had in childhood. Stepan Fedorovich merely grunted, “Well, we’ll see what you can do.”
His first year at the plant flew by. Igor started as a simple machine operator, but he was soon noticed—he could fix things others wrote off, find solutions where others gave up.
“Voronov!” the shop manager called out one day. “Come see me.”
The office smelled of coffee and metal. The manager leafed through some papers for a while.
“There’s talk of making you a shift foreman. Think you can handle it?”
Igor automatically touched the watch on his wrist. “I can handle it, Nikolai Petrovich. But there’s one condition—I’ll need some good guys on the team. And the equipment needs updating.”
“Bold,” the manager smirked. “You take after your father, don’t you?”
“My father,” Igor nodded, remembering how Stepan taught him to keep his word.
He came home less often now—work took up all his time. But each trip was like a little holiday. Anna Ivanovna baked his favorite apple pies, and though Stepan Fedorovich had aged, he still grilled Igor about the plant.
One evening, his father called him out to the yard. The summer twilight painted the sky in lilac hues; lights from the factory flickered in the distance.
“Listen, son,” Stepan said, more gently than usual. “I’ve been thinking… Maybe I was too strict with you?”
Igor froze with a lit match in his hand. “Dad, why would you say that?”
“Well, the years go by. Sometimes I wonder if I raised you right. Maybe I should have been gentler, like your mother.”
“I’m grateful to you,” Igor said softly. “Grateful for everything. For your strictness and for your lessons. If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be who I am now.”
They fell silent, gazing at the darkening sky. Then Stepan slowly put his hand on his son’s shoulder. “I’m proud of you, Igor. I always have been, just never knew how to say it.”
A month later, his father passed away. He simply didn’t wake up one morning—his heart gave out. The whole village gathered for the funeral. Igor stood, clutching his mother’s hand, remembering their last conversation.
That evening, he sat on the porch of his parents’ home, watching the neighbor’s kids play near the gate. The youngest fell and started crying, and the older boy immediately ran over.
“Don’t cry! You’re a man!”
Igor smiled through his tears. How much that sounded like his father… He took out the watch from his pocket—the hands still ticking steadily, just as they had when his grandfather wore it, then his father, and now him.
In the house, dishes clinked—his mother was preparing dinner. It smelled of pies, just as it had in his childhood. Igor ran a hand over the rough wood of the porch and thought: maybe it was time for him to raise someone, too. To pass on everything he had been taught—to be strong yet fair, firm yet kind. To become a father not by blood, but by spirit.
He stood up and went into the house to help his mother with the pies—just like in the old days, like always. Ahead of him lay an entire life to continue his parents’ legacy. Not by right of birth, but by right of love.
