Lidia stood by the kitchen window, watching the last rays of the October sun paint the maple leaves in golden hues. At that moment, she felt like those leaves — beautiful to look at, but ready to break free from the branch at the slightest gust of wind.
Her phone vibrated in her pocket. A message from Igor: “Mom and Dad will come by seven today. Prepare something.”
Lidia reread the message several times, each time feeling that familiar sense of helplessness grow inside her. Again. The same thing. No questions, no discussions — just a fact to accept and carry out.
She glanced at the clock. Half past five. An hour and a half to clean, cook, and get herself ready. After an eight-hour workday at the office, where she headed the marketing department and earned twenty thousand more than her husband.
Her fingers dialed the familiar number by themselves.
“Igor, we agreed you’d warn me in advance.”
“What’s the big deal?” her husband’s voice sounded irritated. “They’re my parents, not strangers. Besides, you’re home in the evenings anyway.”
That phrase hit the mark exactly. “You’re home.” As if she had no choice, as if she were a prisoner in her own apartment.
“I’m home because there are things to do at home,” Lidia said, trying to hold the tremor out of her voice. “Laundry, cleaning, cooking. You don’t help with any of it.”
“I earn the money,” Igor snapped. “My job is to provide for the family.”
Lidia closed her eyes. The same old song. He still thought his salary was the family’s main income, even though she had surpassed him financially several years ago.
“Igor, I can’t today. I have a meeting with my classmates.”
Silence hung in the air. Then an explosion:
“What meeting?! You’re embarrassing me! What am I supposed to say to my parents? That my wife has important things to do? On a Friday evening? It’s your female duty to host guests!”
“And who decides what my duties are?” Lidia’s voice became quieter but steel entered her tone. “I work just as hard as you, I earn more than you, I run the household. And you expect me to snap my fingers and instantly turn into a gracious hostess?”
“What are you even talking about?” Igor clearly didn’t expect this turn. “We’re a family, we should—”
“We should respect each other,” Lidia cut him off. “And you don’t respect me. You know what? Let whoever invited your guests serve them today. That means you.”
She hung up and put the phone in her bag.
Something sharp and frightening beat in her chest — either relief or terror at her own boldness. The last time she had acted like this was back in her student years, when she left a boring philosophy lecture.
The meeting with her classmates had indeed been planned — but for the next week. Lidia had moved it up to today with one call. Katya and Marina agreed without questions — they were married women too and understood without explanations.
Her phone buzzed in her bag. Igor was calling. She hesitated but answered.
“Where are you? The guests are already at the table!” Lidia said nothing and hung up.
At the café, sitting by the window under warm lamp light and the sound of rain against the glass, Lidia felt like herself for the first time in a long time. Not Igor’s wife, not the daughter-in-law to her mother-in-law, not a housekeeper — just Lidia.
“You’re glowing,” Katya said, sipping her latte. “What happened?”
“For the first time in three years of marriage, I told my husband and his parents to go to hell,” Lidia said and laughed. “Sounds terrible, right?”
“Sounds awesome!” Marina replied seriously. “Lidia, I’ve wanted to tell you for a long time… you’ve changed. You used to be so… alive. And now it’s like you’re always apologizing just for existing.”
Those words echoed painfully somewhere near her solar plexus. Lidia had never thought about how she appeared to others, but Marina was right. When was the last time she had truly laughed? When did she last buy something just because she wanted it? When had she expressed her opinion without fear of someone’s displeasure?
The phone was silent. Lidia checked it several times, expecting angry messages from her husband, but the screen remained dark. That was more unsettling than yelling.
She returned home around eleven. In the hallway stood the familiar boots of her mother-in-law; the air smelled of someone else’s perfume and cold food.
Voices came from the living room. Lidia stopped by the door, gathering courage.
“Where have you been? Do you know what time it is?” Igor shouted as he saw her. His face was red with anger and possibly wine.
“I was where I said I was,” Lidia replied calmly, taking off her shoes.
“What a disgrace!” her mother-in-law Tamara Mikhailovna snapped. Sushi and pizza boxes sat on the table before her. “The lady of the house is wandering around God knows where, and the guests are eating store-bought food!”
“Mom, don’t,” Igor tried weakly to object, but his father-in-law jumped into the attack:
“What kind of wife is this? Can’t fulfill the simplest duties! The house is a mess, the fridge is empty…”
“The fridge is full,” Lidia said quietly. “And the house is clean. And I work harder than all of you combined.”
“Work is work, but family is family!” Tamara Mikhailovna cut in. “Good thing you don’t have children yet. Who knows how you’d raise them. Most likely, you wouldn’t raise them at all — you’d abandon them like a cuckoo.”
The last words hit like a slap. Children. A sore topic they and Igor carefully avoided for two years. Tests were normal, doctors shrugged, but at home hung a heavy silence of unfulfilled hopes.
Lidia felt something inside finally break. Not bend under the weight, but break with a crack, making space for something new.
“You know what?” she said, her voice surprisingly even. “You’re right. I failed at being a wife. I don’t know how to be convenient, submissive, and grateful for being tolerated.”
Igor opened his mouth, but she didn’t let him speak:
“That’s why I’m filing for divorce. Tomorrow I’ll submit the papers.”
Deafening silence followed. Tamara Mikhailovna sat with her mouth open, her father-in-law froze with a piece of pizza in his hand, and Igor just stared at his wife like a ghost.
“Lida, what are you saying?” he finally blurted out. “Divorce? We’ll sort everything out…”
“No,” Lidia said. “We won’t. Because I don’t want to fix things anymore. I’m tired of being blamed for everything. Tired of apologizing for having my own life, job, and interests. Tired of hearing how bad a wife I am.”
She turned and walked to the bedroom to pack her things. Voices of outrage sounded behind her, but she no longer listened.
Several months of quarrels, lawyers, and division of property flew by like a haze. Lidia rented a small apartment near work, decorated it to her taste — light furniture, lots of plants, books on the shelves.
The first months of solitude were hard. Not because she missed Igor — rather because she was unaccustomed to the silence, to the ability to do what she wanted when she wanted. To the freedom that scared her with its scale.
But gradually life began to improve. Work progressed, new projects, new acquaintances appeared. Lidia joined a gym and got a dog — a small beagle named Charlie.
And she met Denis.
He was a psychologist, worked with couples, and that didn’t scare him — on the contrary, it intrigued him: a woman who decided to divorce not because of cheating or abuse, but simply because she didn’t want to be unhappy anymore.
“It takes great courage,” he said once over dinner. “Most people choose familiar unhappiness over unknown happiness.”
With Denis, everything was different. He didn’t try to change her, didn’t demand she fit some standard. He accepted her as she was — with her job, ambitions, and occasional need for solitude.
When after a year they realized they wanted a child, everything happened surprisingly easily. As if her body was just waiting for the right time and the right person.
The pregnancy went smoothly. Denis was attentive and caring, but not intrusive. He read books about child development, went with her to prenatal classes, set up the nursery.
Maxim was born on a spring morning when apple trees bloomed outside. Small, wrinkled, with a surprisingly serious expression. Lidia looked at him and understood she had never been so happy in her life.
—
The two-year-old sat in his stroller, waving a rattle and babbling in his own language only he understood. Lidia pushed the stroller along the park path, enjoying the warm May day.
“Lida?”
She turned toward the familiar voice. Igor stood a few meters away, clearly hesitant to come closer. He had aged; gray hairs appeared at his temples, wrinkles around his eyes.
“Hi,” she said calmly.
“Is this… your son?” Igor looked at Maxim with a kind of painful expression.
“Yes. Maxim.”
“Beautiful,” Igor paused, then added, “I got married. To Olya, you remember, she worked in accounting.”
“Congratulations,” Lidia said sincerely. “I hope you’re happy.”
“We… we’re trying to have children, but it’s not working yet,” Igor looked away. “Doctors say everything is fine, but…”
Lidia looked at her ex-husband and suddenly felt something like pity for him. He looked lost, unsure of himself.
“Apparently, it wasn’t me,” she said softly.
Igor looked up at her, and in his eyes, she saw understanding. Not just about children. About everything. That she was right to leave him. That he lost not only a wife.
“Lida, I…” he began.
“It’s okay,” she interrupted. “Everything is as it should be.”
Maxim reached his hands toward his mother, and Lidia lifted him from the stroller. The boy pressed close to her, and she felt his warm breath on her cheek.
“I have to go,” she told Igor. “Take care of yourself.”
Pushing the stroller further down the alley, she thought about how strangely life is arranged. Sometimes you have to destroy one world to build another — the right one.
Maxim fell asleep in the stroller, and Lidia stopped on a bench by the pond. Ducks floated on the water, leaving spreading circles behind. Somewhere in the distance, children played, their laughter heard.
She took out her phone and wrote to Denis: “Heading home. I miss you.”
The reply came instantly: “We miss you too. Dinner’s almost ready.”
Lidia smiled and got up from the bench. Home was waiting. A real home where she was loved just as she was.
