“No, Alla Borisovna, that’s not going to happen. Neither Zoya nor her kids are going to the dacha.”
Olga stood with her hip leaned against the kitchen cabinet, methodically drying an absolutely clean cup with a dish towel. A Saturday morning that had promised a lazy breakfast with Dima and maybe a trip to the garden center had turned into yet another circus.
Her mother-in-law, Alla Borisovna, sitting at Olga’s table in Olga’s own kitchen, theatrically pursed her lips. She was wearing her “dress” house robe—plush, the color of overripe plum, embroidered with gold thread. She always put it on when she came “to visit” her son, as if the robe granted her special authority.
“So what do you mean, ‘they’re not going’?” she sang, stretching out her vowels. “Olechka, did you not understand? I’m not asking. I’m telling you: Zoya is packing. Her girls are allergic to city dust. They need fresh air!”
Olga sighed, putting the cup on the shelf. There she was—classic Alla Borisovna: domineering, stingy with genuine feelings, but generous with manipulation. A top-tier actress.
“Fresh air is wonderful. Only the dacha is mine. And I wasn’t planning to let tenants in there this summer. Not even free ones.”
“Tenants?” Her mother-in-law practically sprang up; red blotches spread across her face. “You’re calling Dima’s own sister—your nieces—tenants? Olya, have you got any conscience? They’re family! Blood!”
At that moment Dima came out of the bathroom. Tall and well-built in a simple gray T-shirt, he still smelled of shower gel. He was a department head at a logistics firm, and that constant competitiveness lived in him: who lives better, who’s more successful—who gets to be “the boss.” But he loved Olga—solidly, for real. And that love was the only thing stopping Olga from simply throwing her mother-in-law out.
“Mom, what’s with you first thing in the morning?” Dima poured himself some water, glancing at his wife’s tense back.
“What’s with me?” Alla Borisovna instantly changed tactics. Her voice trembled; a fake tear glinted in her eyes. “I’m looking out for the family! Zoya’s children are wasting away in the city. And you—meaning Olya,” she venomously stressed the last word, “have a dacha that’s just sitting there! Is it really so hard to share with family? Olechka doesn’t even live there—she only goes on weekends!”
Dima frowned. He hated it when his mother put on a “performance.”
“Mom, first: Olya inherited that dacha from her aunt. It’s hers personally. Second: we’re building there. What Zoya with the kids? On a construction site?”
“Oh, they’re ‘building’!” his mother snorted. “That shed of yours will stay a shed! And Zoyka—she’s not picky. She’d live in a shed if it meant the kids were okay.”
Olga barely held back a smirk. She worked as a sales clerk at a big garden center, and if anyone knew the difference between a “shed” and a “house,” it was her. Her aunt had left her a sturdy log cottage in an old summer settlement. Not a palace, sure, but not the ruin her mother-in-law was trying to paint. And most important—there was land. Her land.
“Alla Borisovna, we’ve already had this conversation,” Olya said firmly. “You wanted us to sell my ‘pre-marriage’ one-bedroom—the one we’re sitting in right now, by the way…”
“Because it’s not right for a son to live in his wife’s apartment! A man should—”
“…sell the dacha,” Olya cut her off, “pool all the money, take out a mortgage, and buy a huge house outside Moscow. So that you, Zoya with her brood, and Aunt Vera from Ryazan could all move in.”
“And what’s wrong with that?” her mother-in-law protested sincerely. “A big, happy family! All together!”
“Only for some reason it’s supposed to be Dima and me paying for that ‘happy family.’ More precisely—me. With my inheritance. No, Alla Borisovna. It’s not happening.”
Dima set down his glass.
“Mom, Olya’s right. Case closed. We’ll decide for ourselves how we live. Want some tea?”
Alla Borisovna realized the head-on attack had failed. Her only Dima was once again taking the side of “that seed peddler.” She jumped up sharply; the plush robe fell open, revealing a faded nightgown.
“Ungrateful!” she spat. “I want what’s best for you idiots—so everything’s decent and proper! And you,” she jabbed a finger at Olya, “you’ll regret turning your back on the family! You’re not Dima’s equal—he’s a boss and you’re… just a counter!”
She thundered down the hallway and slammed the door hard enough to make the dishes clink in the cabinet.
Olga closed her eyes. The stubborn pragmatist in her said, You did everything right. But the woman in her soul ached with unfairness. She went to the window. It was early May; lilacs were exploding in the courtyard, throwing out purple and white clusters. The scent pushed through even the closed vent.
“Dim, I can’t do this anymore,” she said quietly. “She’ll eat us alive. She thinks my apartment is ours. My dacha is hers.”
Dima came up behind her, wrapped his arms around her shoulders, and buried his nose in her hair, which smelled of chamomile shampoo.
“Olya, you know my mother. She’s a grumbler. She’ll grumble and stop. I’m with you. I’ll always be on your side, you hear me?”
He kissed her temple. Olga felt lighter. Dima was her fortress. His competitive nature had an upside: he didn’t let anyone offend what he considered “his.” And Olya was “his” woman.
“Okay,” she smiled. “Let’s go buy seedlings before the season’s gone. I still want to look at trailing petunias—I want to hang planters at the dacha.”
“Only coffee first,” Dima rubbed his hands. “And your signature omelet.”
The tension eased. It felt like the storm had passed. But Olga, a pragmatist to the bone, could feel it: this had only been a probing attack.
Her intuition didn’t fail her. The real storm broke a week later.
They came back from the dacha late Sunday evening—tired but happy. Olya had finally planted tomato seedlings in the greenhouse. She knew a little secret: for tomatoes to take root better, you toss a handful of onion skins and a pinch of ash into the hole. It helps against blight and adds potassium.
Dima had mowed the grass, and they’d brought back a whole bundle of fresh hay for their daughter’s guinea pig (their daughter was staying with Olga’s mom). The apartment greeted them with silence and a dusty smell.
While Dima was in the shower, his phone, lying on the little table in the hallway, vibrated. Once, then again. Olya automatically picked it up to bring it to him—and the screen lit up. A message in the “Family” group chat. From Alla Borisovna.
Olya never read other people’s messages. But here… the chat title and the first lines flashed on the locked screen; she didn’t even have to open it.
Alla Borisovna: “Zoya, Vera, don’t get worked up. I’ll talk to Dima. He’s soft—I’ll press him. The main thing is Olya.”
Olga’s heart dropped into her heels. Her fingers unlocked the phone on their own (she knew the passcode—their cat’s birthday).
The “Family” chat was crammed with messages from the last week. She read, and the cozy May evening in her apartment turned icy.
Aunt Vera (from Ryazan): “Alla, what kind of daughter-in-law is that of yours! A loudmouth! Inheritance fell into her lap and now she thinks she’s a queen! Dima’s a boss, and who is she? A shopgirl!”
Zoya (Dima’s sister): “Mom, she told me ‘no’ to my face! To my kids! I don’t know how Dima puts up with her. Stubborn as a donkey.”
Alla Borisovna: “Girls, quieter. I found everything out. That dacha is nothing. The main thing is her one-bedroom. Good neighborhood. If we sell it—and that lousy dacha too—and Dima’s share in the parents’ apartment (I’ll sign mine over to him, for the plan!), then we’ll have enough for that house in Komarovo we looked at. Remember, with the big plot?”
Zoya: “Wow! Mom—will Olya agree?”
Alla Borisovna: “Where would she go? I’ll tell Dima she hates all of you—his family. That she embarrasses him with her job. He’s a proud man, he won’t like it. He’ll start pressuring her. And she… she’ll cry and agree. They’ll do great in the attic. And we’ll take the first and second floors. Vera, you’ll get the room with the bay window like you wanted.”
Olga read on as the color slowly drained from her face. They didn’t just want the dacha. They wanted everything. They wanted to strip her of the apartment she’d bought with the money her grandmother had left her. They wanted to take her aunt’s inheritance. And they wrapped it all in the sauce of “a big, happy family.”
But the worst part wasn’t even that. The worst part was the contempt in their words: “peddler,” “loudmouth,” “donkey,” “she’ll cry and agree.”
Dima came out of the shower, drying his hair with a towel.
“Olya, why are you so pale? Something happen?”
Olga silently held out the phone.
He read for a long time. His face, relaxed at first, shifted to surprise, then to a deep frown, and finally to stone-cold fury. His competitive spirit had been hit to the core. This wasn’t just a household squabble. It was a plot. A plot against his family—against his wife.
“Mother…” he growled. “Oh, mother…”
“Dim,” Olya spoke softly, but steel rang in her voice. She was no longer an offended victim. She was a pragmatist watching someone try to steal her property. “They think I’m an idiot. ‘She’ll cry and agree.’”
Dima looked up at her. Anger burned in his eyes.
“I’m calling her right now! I’ll—”
“No.” Olya took his hand. Her palm was cold. “Don’t call.”
“How ‘don’t call’? Olya, they… they’re dragging you through the mud! They want to rob us!”
“I know. And if you call now, they’ll turn you into the enemy. Alla Borisovna will instantly clutch her heart. Say you misunderstood, that it was all ‘women’s talk,’ and that you, her son, betrayed your mother over a ‘skirt.’ They’ll lie low. And then they’ll hit from another angle.”
Dima stared at his wife, amazed. She was right. His mother was a master of those games.
“So what do you suggest?” he asked.
Olga sat down on the hallway bench. In her mind—trained to think in clear sales and supply algorithms—a plan was already forming. A cold, stubborn, pragmatic plan.
“They think I’m a stupid ‘seed peddler’? They want a ‘big house’? They want ‘profit’?” She smirked. “Fine. They’ll get it. You like pranks, Dim?”
Dima blinked.
“Olya… what prank?”
“The best one. They want to play ‘family ties’? We’ll play. Only by my rules.” She looked at him. “Are you on my side? All the way?”
Dima saw not a confused wife, but a general before a battle. And he liked it. His wife wasn’t collapsing. She was preparing a counterattack.
“All the way, Olya. What do we do?”
“To start,” Olya picked up her own phone, “I’ll call Alla Borisovna. And apologize.”
“What?!”
“I’ll say I was wrong. That I thought it through. That family is what matters most.” She smiled an icy smile. “I’ll say I’m ready to consider her proposal. About the house.”
Dima stared at her.
“You… you’re serious?”
“Completely.” Olya hit the call button. “Let them gather a ‘family council.’ Zoya, Vera—everyone who wants ‘profit.’ Tomorrow. I’ll show them such a ‘gold mine’… they’ll remember it for a long time.”
She lifted the phone to her ear; her face instantly became guilty and flustered.
“Hello, Alla Borisovna? Hi, Mommy… Forgive me, I’m a little jerk… You were right, I understood everything…”
“Dimочка, drive more carefully!” Aunt Vera shrieked from the back seat. “We’re getting shaken like potatoes in a sack! Alla, tell him! We’re going to our house—our family nest, you could say—and he’s flying over these potholes!”
Olga, sitting beside Dima, smirked almost imperceptibly. His old Renault really was bouncing on the broken dirt road that had started about ten kilometers back.
“Ah, Vera, we’ll get there,” Alla Borisovna waved lazily. She was in her element now: the victor, the matriarch, leading the clan to prosperity. “Olechka said the place is ‘special.’ Places like that don’t have smooth roads. Right, Olya?”
Olya nodded obediently, staring through the windshield.
“Right, Alla Borisovna. Unique. And most importantly—promising.”
In the back sat all three “conspirators”: the mother-in-law, her sister Vera from Ryazan who’d rushed in the moment she smelled profit, and Zoya, Dima’s sister.
After Olya’s call the night before, there had been celebration in their camp. The “seed peddler” had cracked! The “donkey” had backed down! Dima must have “pressed” her, just as Alla Borisovna planned. They’d spent the whole evening calling each other, already dividing up rooms in the “house in Komarovo.”
But Olya had disappointed them.
“No, Mom,” she’d told her mother-in-law on the phone in the same repentant tone, “Komarovo is banal. And expensive. I work in retail—I hear things… I found a place where the land will soon be worth gold. But you have to invest right now. You could develop such a… such a business there!”
Greed, dozing inside Alla Borisovna, drowned out her suspicion. “Business”! “Gold”!
And now they were jolting farther and farther from civilization.
“Olya, what is it even?” Zoya asked impatiently. “What kind of house? How many floors? Is there a pool?”
“No pool,” Olya replied calmly. “But the water… the water is endless.”
“Oh! A river?” Vera perked up. “That’s good! Fishing!”
“Almost,” Olya smiled mysteriously. “Dim, I think we’re here. Stop by that birch tree.”
The car came to a halt. As far as the eye could see stretched a field overgrown with waist-high weeds. The early June day was hot; the air smelled thickly of sweet clover and wormwood. Somewhere in the distance were the remains of either a farm or a warehouse—half-collapsed brick walls with no roof.
“So where is it?” Alla Borisovna broke the silence first.
“Right here,” Olya hopped out easily. She wore comfortable jeans and work boots. The “family,” dressed for “house viewing,” wore light trousers and delicate little shoes.
“What do you mean ‘right here’?” Vera peered out cautiously. “Olya, where did you bring us? Into a field?”
“Not just a field, Aunt Vera. Into our future,” Olya gestured toward the ruins. “Here! This used to be a pig complex. Bankrupt. Selling for peanuts!”
The three women froze by the car.
“What?” Zoya asked, thinking she’d misheard.
“A pig complex,” Olya repeated enthusiastically. “Just imagine the prospects! Alla Borisovna, you’re an agrarian at heart! Zoya, what space for the kids! And the land!”
Olya walked to the nearest ditch, scooped up a lump of soil, and rubbed it between her fingers.
“Heavy loam,” she announced authoritatively. “Acidity’s probably high—the horsetail is going wild. But! If we bring in twenty truckloads of peat, the same of sand, and most importantly—manure… oh, we’ll need a lot of manure. But in five years this will be black soil!”
“You… you…” Alla Borisovna lost the power of speech.
“And the buildings!” Olya pointed at the ruins. “Yes, there’s no roof. But the walls are brick! Strong! We’ll… we’ll set up a mushroom farm here! Oyster mushrooms! Button mushrooms! They love dampness and half-dark.”
“Mushrooms?” Vera squeaked, her face stretching longer and longer. “What mushrooms, Olya? We… we came to look at a house…”
“But this is the house!” Olya laughed. “Total area—two thousand square meters. Just like you wanted! You said: ‘a big, happy family.’ Here,” she pointed at the biggest half-ruined hangar, “will be the shared living room. True, first we’ll need to clean out… well… traces of the previous occupants. And pour concrete floors.”
Zoya backed toward the car.
“Mom… she… she’s making fun of us?”
Alla Borisovna finally found her voice. Her face went from red to purple.
“You! You filthy—seed peddler!” she screamed, slipping into a shriek. “What are you doing? You decided to laugh at us?!”
Olya’s face turned serious in an instant. All her meekness vanished. She stood with her hands on her hips—stubborn, angry, pragmatic.
“Laugh at you? Alla Borisovna, who started this game? Who was dividing up my apartment behind my back? Who decided I’d live in the attic of a house bought with my money? Who called me a ‘donkey’ and a ‘loudmouth’?”
All that time Dima had stood silently, leaning against the hood. Now he stepped forward.
“Mom. Vera. Zoya,” his voice was quiet, but heavy. “I read your chat. All of it. From start to finish.”
A ringing silence fell. You could hear only a bumblebee buzzing.
Alla Borisovna’s face broke into ugly white patches. Vera’s mouth fell open and stayed there. Zoya turned crimson.
“You… you read it?” Vera whispered. “Dimочка… son… this… this is all Olya! She—”
“It was Olya who stopped me,” Dima cut her off. “Stopped me from showing up at your place that same night and telling you everything. From kicking you out, Zoya, of the apartment I once helped you buy. From sending you money anymore, Aunt Vera, for your ‘medicine’ that you spend on clothes.”
He looked at his mother.
“And you, Mom… I believed you. I thought you grumbled but loved. But you’re a thief. You wanted to rob my wife. Which means—you wanted to rob me.”
“Dimочка, my son, how could you!” Alla Borisovna wailed, clutching at her heart. “I… I was just—”
“Don’t start, Mom,” Olya stopped her coldly. “We’ve seen this show already. You wanted profit? You wanted ‘family ties’? Here they are!” She swept her arm over the field. “Dig. Hill. Work. You think I—the ‘seed peddler’—don’t understand life, and you—the ‘family’—know everything. So prove it.”
“You… you’re going to leave us here?” Zoya realized in horror.
Olya shrugged.
“Why would we? We’re leaving. And you… do what you want. The place is, as I said, promising.” She gave her sweetest customer-service smile. “By the way—small helpful tip from a saleswoman. See that blue flower? Chicory. If you dig up the root, dry it, and roast it—you’ll have a great coffee substitute. Might come in handy.”
She turned to her husband.
“Dim, let’s go. My petunia seedlings aren’t watered.”
Dima opened the door for her.
“You… you’ll regret this!” Vera shouted after them. “We’ll tell everyone what you’re like!”
“You will,” Dima nodded, climbing behind the wheel. “You’ll tell them how three grown women tried to take my wife’s apartment and inheritance. Good luck.”
The car turned on the grass, kicking up a little cloud of dust, and crawled back down the rutted road.
In the rearview mirror Olya saw three stunned figures in the middle of the weedy field.
“Olya,” Dima couldn’t help it—he burst out laughing. “A pig complex! Mushrooms! Olya, you’re a genius!”
Olya didn’t laugh. She watched the road.
“It’s not genius, Dim. It’s pruning.”
“What?”
“Sanitary pruning. In gardening, if a branch is sick, or growing the wrong way, or just choking the tree… you cut it off. Ruthlessly. To save the rest of the tree.” She turned to him. “You’re my tree. And they’re diseased branches.”
Dima stopped laughing. He took her hand and squeezed it hard. His competitive spirit was triumphant. They’d won. His family—him and Olya—had won.
Three months passed. It was late August; the air smelled of apples and early autumn.
Olya and Dima sat on the veranda of their dacha—the same one from her aunt. The house turned out to be surprisingly solid. Dima covered it with siding and put in new windows. Olya built a stunning flower garden. Her trailing petunias—yes, the ones she still bought that day—spilled from hanging planters like lilac and pink waterfalls.
They drank thyme tea and watched the sun go down.
“You know,” Olya said, “I called Alla Borisovna today.”
Dima lifted his eyebrows.
After that “excursion,” the relatives had gone quiet. Olya didn’t know how they got back to the city, but they apparently did. For the first week Dima’s phone had been exploding with curses and demands for “compensation for moral damages.” Dima silently blocked both his sister and his aunt. With his mother it was harder. He simply didn’t answer.
“Why?” he asked.
“Her birthday is soon. I asked what she wanted as a gift.”
“And what did she say?”
“She said, ‘I don’t need anything from you, you demon.’ Then she went quiet and added, ‘Unless… maybe some of those “Cylinder” beet seeds. You had good ones last year…’”
Dima smirked.
“So the ice is breaking?”
“I don’t think so,” Olya shook her head. “It’s not repentance. It’s pragmatism. Just like mine. She realized she can’t take anything from us by force. Now she’ll take by cunning. Small favors. Seeds.”
“And you’ll give her the seeds?”
“I will,” Olya said simply. “I’ll make her a whole box. ‘Cylinder,’ and ‘Nantes’ carrots too. I don’t mind.”
“So you forgive her?”
Olya looked at her garden—at the sturdy tomato bushes heavy with fruit, at the dahlias that had only just opened their heavy heads.
“I don’t forgive her, Dim. I keep my distance. I know who she is. But she’s your mother. And she’s not dangerous anymore. We showed her the boundaries.” She smiled. “Now she knows this plot is mine. And no one steps onto it without permission. No one.”
Dima hugged her. He knew his wife was the strongest woman in the world—not because she screamed or made scenes, but because she could stand her ground. Firmly, stubbornly, pragmatically. Like a tree rooted deep in its own land.
Zoya and Vera, true to their word, tried to “tell everyone.” But their story about how “that Olya” drove them into a field to show them some ruins sounded so wild and ridiculous that nobody believed them. On the contrary, people decided Zoya and Vera had “lost it” from envy. After waiting a bit, Dima did call his sister and told her that if she didn’t stop smearing his wife, he’d raise the question of the apartment she lived in. The gossip ended immediately.
Alla Borisovna got her seeds. And she even said “thank you.”
It was a small victory—but a victory all the same.
