“I didn’t choose you for passion. I needed a woman who would be normal. Home, order, children. No whims. You were a perfect fit—quiet, compliant. A nanny, free of charge and enthusiastic. And women for love—they’re different. They know how to live beautifully, don’t dump their problems on you, and look… well, definitely not like you.”
Irina fell in love with Vadim at first sight.
He was five years older, well-groomed, confident, and knew how to convince people. He owned a small business, drove a nice car, always looked impeccable, and had that rare talent of making a woman feel loved.
Flowers every week, constant calls, dinners at restaurants, compliments, gifts—all of it went straight to Irina’s head. She truly believed she had finally met an adult, reliable man who knew what he wanted. And that with him, life would be calm.
They registered their marriage six months later. Everything seemed so right, as if fate itself had brought them together. Right after the registry office they went to the seaside, and then came the day when Vadim solemnly said:
“It’s time for you to see my home. Our home.”
Irina smiled, imagining a spacious apartment where the two of them would build their little family together. But when the door opened and she stepped over the threshold, everything went completely off the script she’d written in her head.
In the hallway stood two pairs of children’s sneakers, and from one of the rooms came the sound of children’s laughter.
“Vadim,” she said, confused, “what… is this?”
He smiled as if nothing unusual was happening.
“Oh… that’s Katya and Sasha. My kids.”
Irina felt as if she’d lost her bearings in space.
“Your kids?” she repeated hoarsely, frowning. “You said you’d been married before, but I thought they lived with their mother.”
“No, they live with me,” he replied calmly. “It’s complicated with my ex. She was a completely useless woman, so I took them.”
At that moment, an eight-year-old girl with braids and a curious look ran into the hallway.
“Daddy’s home! And who is this?” she asked.
“This is Irina,” Vadim said, putting his arm around his daughter’s shoulders. “This is your new mom.”
Irina froze. She didn’t know what to say. They had never discussed any such “new status.”
When they were alone, Irina whispered:
“Vadim, why didn’t you think it necessary to tell me about this in advance?”
“I just didn’t want to scare you off,” he said calmly, pouring himself tea, as if they were talking not about two children, but about a puppy he’d decided to adopt without warning. “You’re a kind woman, I knew you’d accept them.”
“Accept them.” The word sounded as if she had no choice at all.
The first weeks Irina lived as if in a dream. Katya treated her warily, Sasha constantly asked when dad would come back, and it seemed as if Vadim had been swapped out. He became demanding, irritable; from her they now expected not admiration, but order, care, dinners and discipline.
Irina took the children to kindergarten and school and picked them up. Vadim fired the nanny as unnecessary, because Irina could do everything. After all, she wasn’t working anymore.
“You’re a married woman now,” he said. “You should know how to do everything around the house.”
“But I didn’t know I’d be a nanny,” Irina couldn’t hold back.
“A nanny?” he smirked. “No. They’re your kids too. So don’t you dare talk like that.”
She sat in the kitchen at night, staring out the window, where there had long been no one on the streets, only the streetlights shone back at her mute questions. Vadim no longer brought her flowers, and the compliments had been replaced by constant criticism. Irina felt their love dissolving, giving way to anxiety and exhaustion.
But one day after school, when Katya shyly brought her a drawing—with a woman with long hair and two small children by her side—Irina couldn’t hold back her tears.
“This is for you,” Katya said quietly. “At school they told us to draw our mom…”
In that moment, Irina realized that life had turned in a completely different direction than the one she had planned.
That was when Irina got herself a remote job. Vadim didn’t know anything about it: he came home late, when her workday was already over. It turned out that it wasn’t hard at all for a bookkeeper to find remote work.
Vadim spent less and less time with the family. Irina had the strong feeling that he had chosen her solely as a nanny for his children, not as a wife. Maybe that was why Vadim had been so insistent that they didn’t need a big, fancy wedding.
Irina spent a lot of time walking with the kids. After school she and Katya did homework in the children’s room at a big table piled with notebooks and pencils. Katya kept asking for help, and Irina patiently explained how to solve the tasks or nudged her toward the right answers. Then they would go to the kindergarten for Sasha, and as soon as he saw Irina, he would run to her and wrap her in a hug.
The three of them walked home through a small park where Sasha went down the slide and Katya collected leaves for her school herbarium. Sometimes they stopped by a nearby bakery where the staff already knew them.
“As usual?” the saleswoman would ask with a smile. “Two cinnamon buns and raspberry tea?”
Irina nodded. The children would sit at a small table by the window, eating their buns and chattering nonstop, while Irina watched them and felt how slowly but firmly she was becoming part of their lives.
The children loved being with her. Other than Irina, no one really took a genuine interest in them: not the many nannies who had changed at least five times in the last six months, not their father, who was always “at work,” and not their own mother, who in all that time hadn’t called even once. Not even for their birthdays.
Irina became an island of warmth for Katya and Sasha—the one person who listened, cared, and asked how their day had gone. Sometimes, when Sasha fell asleep holding her hand, Irina would sit quietly next to him, look at his peaceful face and whisper:
“Well, who’s going to protect you if not me?”
But the more attached she became to the children, the more distant Vadim grew. He stopped spending nights at home, explaining it with meetings, business trips, and negotiations. Sometimes he disappeared for two or three days at a time. When Irina tried to ask where he’d been, he got sharply annoyed:
“Here we go again with this interrogation? On what grounds? I’m working, in case you haven’t noticed, so we can have everything we need.”
One evening, when he came home close to dawn, Irina caught a faint scent of women’s perfume on his shirt.
“Vadim,” she said quietly, “are you cheating on me?”
He froze for a second, then gave a cold smirk:
“Have you lost your mind? Maybe you just made that up so you wouldn’t feel so pathetic?”
After that conversation he didn’t speak to her for a week, and then, as if nothing had happened, he started behaving evenly—calmly, without reproaches, but without affection either. That affected Irina worse than any fight.
She knew Vadim was lying. She understood perfectly well that these “business meetings” had long since turned into nights with someone else. But she had no proof. All she had were guesses, scents, the silence of his phone, and his indifference.
And then there were the children, who saw her as someone more… perhaps even a mother. And for their sake, Irina held on. She got up earlier than anyone, made breakfast, got Sasha ready for kindergarten, Katya for school, and then sat down at her laptop and worked, as if that was the only thing that gave her life meaning.
Work became her salvation, a chance to feel like a real person, not just some convenient woman. Vadim had no idea that Irina had taken a remote job. And how could he have known, when he was hardly ever home?
And then one day Irina was standing at the window when she heard a familiar car pull into the yard. She looked down automatically—the gray SUV Vadim drove turned toward their building.
What she saw next made her heart clench.
From the passenger seat stepped out a tall brunette—slender, in an expensive coat, with long hair and a dazzling smile. She looked like she’d just come off the page of a glossy magazine. She smiled at Vadim and reached for his hand, but he suddenly turned sharply, said something quickly, and almost rudely made her sit back in the car.
Vadim glanced around nervously, slammed the door, and walked toward the entrance with a bag in his hands. Irina stood motionless. Everything suddenly fell into place. The business trips. The long evenings. The “work.”
A few minutes later the key turned in the lock—Vadim walked into the apartment. Not a muscle on his face twitched.
“I’ll be quick,” he tossed over his shoulder. “I just need to pack. Emergency business trip.”
He opened the wardrobe and started hurriedly throwing out shirts, shorts, and sunglasses.
“Isn’t that a bit light for November?” Irina asked calmly, almost indifferently.
Vadim froze. Then slowly raised his eyes and sneered.
“Yeah… business trip to Sochi. It’s much warmer there.”
“Strange. You always went on business trips to Siberia before, and now suddenly Sochi…”
“Listen, Ira. Let’s skip the drama. You want the truth? Fine. You’re too naïve if you thought I’d change my priorities for someone like you.”
She didn’t understand right away what he’d said. Only when Vadim went on did the words sink in and cut into her.
“You decided everything yourself,” he said, picking up his bag. “I didn’t choose you for passion. I needed a woman who would be normal. Home, order, kids. No whims. You were a perfect fit—quiet, compliant. A nanny, free of charge and enthusiastic. And women for love—they’re different. They know how to live beautifully, don’t dump problems on you, and look… well, definitely not like you.”
Irina felt something inside her crack when Vadim gave her a condescending look.
“I’m not a babysitter for your kids,” she exhaled, stepping toward him.
He smirked, opened his mouth, but she didn’t let him speak.
“I’m their mother, Vadim. A real one. The only person who actually thinks about them and takes care of them. And you are just someone who happened to be nearby.”
He snorted.
“Big words. Just don’t forget I’m the owner of this house.”
“I don’t care. We’re getting a divorce.”
A cold, almost contemptuous smirk appeared on Vadim’s face.
“You think I’ll be upset?”
“No,” Irina replied calmly. “I think you’ll just have to actually put in some effort for your kids. If you’re really as smart as you think you are at work.”
He gave her a short look, shrugged, and left without saying goodbye. A minute later the front door slammed, and silence filled the apartment. Irina walked to the window. It was already getting dark outside.
Vadim’s car was still in front of the building, and that same gorgeous woman got out of it again. This time he didn’t bother hiding—he just hugged her, got in beside her, and they drove off. Irina watched the red glow of the taillights and felt… nothing.
…nothing. No pain, no anger, no pity. She understood that it was all over.
That same evening Irina filed for divorce.
The process was quick and almost painless. Vadim didn’t even try to keep her—on the contrary, he signed the papers with relief. Irina left taking only her own things. She could hardly bear leaving the children—Katya and Sasha—but she could no longer live next to a man capable of such meanness.
On the night before she left, when Vadim was “on a business trip,” Irina quietly entered the children’s room. Katya was still awake.
“Are you going to leave us?” the girl asked, looking at her with huge eyes that were far too grown-up for her age.
Irina nodded.
“But I’ll always be nearby. Here,” she handed her a slip of paper with an address. “Remember it, okay? If you ever want to—come. I’ll always be happy to see you.”
Katya hugged her as tightly as only children can hug those they truly love.
“I’ll come,” she whispered. “I promise.”
A few days later Vadim brought in a new nanny. Young, smiling, with bright lipstick and the smell of cheap perfume—she gladly took on the job. Vadim left again—now without hiding that he spent weekends sometimes in Turkey, sometimes in Greece, sometimes “in negotiations” in Italy.
The children saw their father less and less. But Katya, as she’d promised, came to visit Irina after school. They had lunch together, drank tea, and did homework.
The years went by. Irina devoted herself fully to her work, and later met a man who, for the first time in her life, saw her not as a convenient woman, but as an equal. They got married, and they had a son.
Katya did not disappear from her life. Even when she grew up, went to university, and moved into her own apartment away from her father, she still made a point of dropping by Irina’s place—just to sit, talk about her life, or ask for advice.
Sometimes, when people called her “Aunt Irina,” Katya would correct them:
“No. This is my mom. Not by blood, maybe, but the real one.”
As for Vadim… he kept flying abroad with different women, changing them like gloves. He didn’t wrong his children materially: gifts, gadgets, money—they had everything. Except warmth. To the seaside he never once took them. You can’t buy love, not even with the most expensive things.
Katya grew up, matured, and one day invited Irina to her wedding. When Irina walked into the hall, Vadim was standing by the entrance, greeting the guests. He glanced at her… and didn’t recognize her.
Reserved, confident, beautiful—she seemed like a different woman. But Irina didn’t want him to recognize her. She had nothing to prove—to him, to herself, or to anyone else.
After the wedding, when the newlyweds had left, her little son asked:
“Mom, who was that pretty girl who hugged you and cried?”
Irina smiled, pulled the boy close, and answered:
“That’s my foster daughter.”
He looked up at her in surprise.
“You have another daughter?”
“Yes,” Irina said softly. “Only now she has her own family.”
And in that moment she suddenly realized that everything that had once seemed like the end was just the beginning of a real, honest, happy life.
