“Recognize me?” — the voice on the line was nauseatingly familiar. Soft, insinuating — the very one that once promised forever.
I stayed silent, staring at the frost patterns on the windowpane. A call from my ex-husband, Dmitry, after two years of almost complete oblivion — that’s never a good sign. It’s always the prelude to some request.
“Anya, don’t be quiet. I’ve got something to ask.”
“I’m listening,” I said; my voice sounded dry, like the crack of a broken branch.
He hesitated, picking his words. That habit of his — to probe the ground before striking.
“I know it probably sounds crazy… Basically, things are really tight for Lena and me right now. We moved out of our apartment and can’t find a new one.”
I went on listening, letting him talk himself out. Each of his words was a pebble thrown into the stagnant water of my calm.
“Could you let us stay at the dacha? Just for a couple of months, until everything settles down. We’ll be quiet — you won’t even notice us.”
“‘My new wife and I have nowhere to live, let us use the dacha.’” The request sounded so casual, as if he were asking someone to pass the salt at dinner.
As if there had been no betrayal, no lies, as if he hadn’t left me to gather myself up from shards.
A picture flared in my mind. Twenty years ago, we were building that very dacha. Dima — young, tanned, a hammer in his hand — laughing.
“This is our fortress, Anka!” he shouted to me then. “Whatever happens, we’ll always have this place. Our fallback.”
How poisonous those words sounded now. Our fallback. He had brought another woman into that “fallback.” And now he wanted to bring her again — as the lady of the house.
“Dima, are you out of your mind?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady.
“Anya, please. We’ve got nowhere else to go. You know Lena, she’s… expecting. We can’t sleep on the street.”
He struck at the sorest spot. Children. The thing we never had. And for them — why, everything came easy and quick.
I closed my eyes. Two beasts were fighting inside me. One wanted to scream everything I thought of him into the receiver, slam it down, and forget that number forever.
But the second… the second was craftier. It whispered that this was a chance. Not to forgive. No. To set things right.
“You promised each other to help, no matter what,” his voice turned almost pleading. He pressed on my sense of duty, on the “good girl” I had been for him for so many years.
A memory. Our wedding. We’re standing there, so young, and he, looking into my eyes, says, “I swear I will never betray you.”
Then, fifteen years later, while packing his things: “Sorry, it just happened. The feelings are gone.”
He betrayed. Gone. And now he was asking for help.
Cold, ringing clarity filled my head. The plan was born instantly. Cruel. Perfect.
“Fine,” I said evenly, surprised to hear how calm I sounded. “You can stay.”
On the other end — a sigh of relief. He started thanking me in a rush, saying he knew I wouldn’t abandon him in trouble. I’d stopped listening.
“The keys are where they’ve always been. Under the stone by the porch.”
“Thanks, Anya! Thank you! You’ve saved me!”
I hung up. The trap snapped shut. All that remained was to wait until the beast finally lost all caution.
Two days went by. Two days I lived on needles, jumping at every phone notification.
I knew he would call. He had to make sure he still kept me on a short leash.
The call came Saturday morning.
“Hi! We’re here, everything’s great,” Dima reported cheerfully. The tone was no longer pleading — it was proprietorial.
“There’s a ton of work here, of course. Cobwebs in the corners, the garden’s overgrown. But it’s fine, Lena and I will put everything in order.”
I clenched the edge of the kitchen counter. “We’ll put everything in order.” In my house.
“I didn’t ask you to put anything in order,” I said crisply. “I allowed you to live there.”
“Anya, don’t start. We’re only trying to make it better. Lena says the air here is great — it’s good for the baby. She’s already picked a spot for a flowerbed. Right under the bedroom window.”
Bedroom. Our bedroom. Where there’s still a faint scratch on the wallpaper from our cat’s claws — the cat who died a year before the divorce.
“Don’t touch my roses,” was all I could manage.
“Who needs your prickly things,” he snorted. “Lena wants peonies. Listen, one more thing. The attic is full of your junk. Some boxes, old dresses. We’ve got nowhere to put our stuff. Can I move it all to the shed?”
A flash from the past. Our first apartment. Dima decided to “improve” the bathroom and, without asking, knocked off the tiles my mother and I had spent weeks choosing.
“They’re outdated, Anya; I’ll make it modern,” he said then. “Modern” ended up as cheap, crooked plastic and a hole in the budget I patched for six months. His initiatives always cost me too much.
“Don’t touch my things, Dima.”
“Why are you so attached to them? It’s junk!” He was losing patience; irritation crept into his voice. “We need living space! Can’t you be understanding? Lena’s upset, she shouldn’t be!”
I heard a whisper, and then the thin, syrupy voice of his new darling:
“Dimochka, don’t argue with her. Ask nicely. Anechka, we don’t mean any harm. We just need a place for the baby’s things. A crib, a stroller…”
They were staging a performance. Bad cop and good cop. He pressed; she smoothed. And I was supposed to melt at the mention of a crib and hand over everything — including the remnants of my dignity.
“I said, don’t touch my things. And don’t you dare plant anything in my garden. Live in the house and be grateful for that.”
“Grateful?” he flared up. “I wasted fifteen years of my life on you! And you’re lecturing me over old dresses! You know what, I’m changing the lock on the shed — the key’s gone missing anyway. You can pick up your boxes later. When we move out.”
He hung up.
I looked out at the gray cityscape. He wasn’t just living in my house. He was steadily taking it over.
Remaking it for himself. Erasing me, my memories, my past. And changing the lock — that wasn’t just nerve. It was a declaration of war. Well, he’d get his war.
I waited a week. A week of forcing myself not to think about what they were doing there. I worked, met with friends, lived my usual life — but beneath all that tinsel a cold, calculated plan was ripening.
The next Saturday I went to the dacha. Without warning. I left the car around the bend and walked to the property on foot, like a thief.
The first thing I saw was my rosebushes torn out by the roots. The very ones I’d planted with my mother. They lay by the fence like corpses.
And in their place was freshly turned earth with some pale shoots sticking out of it. Peonies.
Something inside me snapped. This wasn’t just high-handedness. It was desecration.
I walked around the house. New wicker furniture stood on the veranda. Someone else’s curtains with a silly floral print hung in the window. They were settling in. They were putting down roots.
The shed door was ajar. The very shed where he’d changed the lock. Apparently it wasn’t needed at the moment. I looked inside.
And froze.
My boxes had been opened. My things were dumped on the dirty floor. Here were my mother’s letters, once tied with a ribbon — that ribbon now lay in a puddle from the leaky roof. Here were my school diaries with pages torn out.
And on top of the pile of this ransacked past lay my wedding dress. Once white; now stained brown with earth and, it seemed, engine oil. An empty beer bottle lay nearby.
They weren’t just clearing space. They were savoring the destruction of everything dear to me. They were trampling my life underfoot, laughing in my face.
Enough.
That “good girl Anya,” who feared conflict and tried to please everyone, died in that cold shed, staring at her trampled dress. In her place, something else was born.
Calm, icy, absolutely merciless.
I didn’t shout. I didn’t burst into the house. I quietly turned around, walked to the car, and left.
The hands gripping the steering wheel didn’t tremble. My head was completely empty — and clear.
First, I stopped at a hardware store. I bought the most reliable padlock I could find. And a new chain. Thick, welded.
At seven the next morning I was already at the gate.
I wrapped the chain around it myself and snapped the huge barn lock shut.
I sat in the car, parked so I could see the house, and waited.
The sun climbed higher. Around ten, Dima appeared on the porch. Stretching, he strolled lazily to the gate. He tugged once, then again. Stared, puzzled, at the welded links and the chain.
His relaxed posture turned tense in an instant. He began shaking the gate, harder with every yank.
Lena ran out of the house. Her shrill voice carried even through the closed windows of the car.
My phone rang.
“What the hell are you doing?!” Dima shouted without preamble. “You locked us in!”
“I’m simply ensuring the safety of my property,” I replied in an icy tone. “You yourself showed that locks are no obstacle for you when you broke into my shed.”
“What shed?! Are you out of your mind?! Lena’s pregnant, she’s not well! What if we need an ambulance?! Open up immediately!”
“An ambulance? Of course. I’m just about to call the police. I’ll file a report for unlawful entry, property damage, and taking matters into your own hands. I’m sure they’ll have the tools to open the gate.”
Stunned silence on the other end. Only Lena’s whimpering could be heard.
“What… what entry? You let us in yourself!”
“I let you stay. Temporarily. And you decided you’d become the owners. You ripped out my roses, turned the shed into a dump, defiled what doesn’t belong to you. You crossed a line, Dima.”
“Who needs your old junk!” he flared up again. “You’re ready to put people in jail over trash?!”
“It’s not trash. It’s my memory. Which you first betrayed, and then decided to trample.”
I hung up and dialed the police. Calmly and clearly — the way I’d dictated the address to the welder — I reported that there were strangers on my private property who had entered the house, ruined my belongings, and refused to leave.
The patrol car arrived surprisingly quickly. I went to meet them, holding all the documents for the house and land.
Two officers listened to me while Dima and Lena shouted something at them through the fence. I silently handed the officers my papers.
“They say you let them in yourself.”
“I allowed my ex-husband to stay temporarily — out of simple human kindness. He started behaving like an owner, breaking locks, destroying my things. I asked them to leave; they refused.
I got scared and locked the gate so they wouldn’t carry anything valuable off while I called the police. Take a look at what they did to the garden.”
One of the officers walked up to the fence. Dima was arguing heatedly, pointing to Lena, who was theatrically holding her belly.
“Pack your things and get out,” the senior lieutenant told Dima sternly. “You have half an hour.”
The humiliation on his face was the best reward. They left with their bags like beaten dogs.
Lena threw me looks filled with hatred, and Dima just stared at the ground. He didn’t say another word.
When they disappeared around the bend, I stepped onto my property. I examined the wounds my home had suffered: the roses torn out, the alien curtains, the trampled past in the shed.
There was no gloating. No heady sense of victory. Only a quiet, firm realization that the fortress had held.
It was battered, but it was mine again. And no one, ever again, will dare to dictate rules to me in my own world.
