Ekaterina stepped out of the shower and wrapped her hair in a towel. The apartment was quiet—Maxim was probably at the computer in the other room. She walked into the kitchen, poured herself some water, and only then noticed that the bag on the chair was slightly open.
Strange. She was sure she had zipped up all the pockets before getting in the shower.
Ekaterina looked inside. Her wallet was in place, the documents too. She ran her hand through the compartments—makeup bag, keys, phone. Everything was there. Feeling calmer, she set the bag aside and went to get dressed.
Maxim was in the bedroom, staring at his laptop screen. When she walked in, he flinched and quickly switched tabs.
“Why are you so jumpy?” Ekaterina frowned.
“Me? No, everything’s fine. Just finishing up some work.”
She shrugged and walked over to the wardrobe. Lately Maxim had been acting strangely. Sometimes he would go out into the hallway in the middle of the night to make calls, or jump at every incoming message. Ekaterina chalked it up to work stress.
The next day, Saturday, Maxim’s phone was blowing up with calls. Ekaterina saw the name “Mom” pop up on the screen about five times in a row, but her husband declined the call every time.
“Maybe you should answer?” She nodded toward the phone.
“I’ll call her back later.”
“Maxim, what’s going on?”
“Nothing special,” he turned toward the window.
In the evening, while Ekaterina was making dinner, her husband’s phone rang again. This time he snatched it up and rushed out into the stairwell. Through the wall she could hear him anxiously explaining something.
“Mom, I didn’t know! You didn’t tell me how much you were going to spend! I thought there was more…”
Silence.
“What do you mean, eighty-five thousand?! Are you out of your mind?”
Another pause.
“I don’t have another card! I don’t even know if Katya has any other accounts!”
Ekaterina froze with the ladle in her hand. A card? What card?
She rushed to her bag and dumped everything out on the table. Wallet, documents, makeup bag… a little zip pocket. Empty.
Her salary card was gone.
Ekaterina flung the door open and stepped out into the stairwell. Maxim was standing on the landing, phone pressed to his ear.
“Mom, wait…”
“Give me the phone,” Ekaterina held out her hand.
Maxim turned pale.
“Katya, now’s not—”
“Give. Me. The phone.”
Reluctantly, he handed it over.
“Lyudmila Stepanovna? This is Ekaterina.”
“Oh, so you finally showed up!” her mother-in-law’s voice was shaking with indignation. “Do you realize your husband gave me a card that has no money on it at all?!”
Ekaterina leaned against the wall.
“Maxim gave you my card?”
“Yes! I invited my friends to a restaurant, was going to treat them properly. And in the end the card was declined! Eighty-five thousand the bill came to! I had to humiliate myself and ask them to chip in! Can you imagine how embarrassed I was?!”
“Lyudmila Stepanovna,” Ekaterina spoke slowly, as if explaining something to a child. “Maxim took my card without permission. That’s called theft.”
“What theft?! He’s my son! And you’re his wife! You’re supposed to help me!”
“I don’t owe anything to anyone. Especially not to someone who takes what doesn’t belong to them.”
“How dare you—”
“If this happens again, I’ll file a report with the police. On both of you.”
Her mother-in-law spluttered with outrage, but Ekaterina had already ended the call.
Maxim stood there, shoulders hunched.
“Katya, I was just trying to do something nice…”
“You took my card without asking and gave it to your mother?”
“She asked! She said it was just for a little while, just to go to a restaurant…”
“And you thought that was normal? To rummage through my bag, pull out my card and hand it to someone else?”
“She’s not ‘someone else’! She’s my mother!”
Ekaterina laughed. Short, without any joy.
“Maxim, there were fifteen thousand on that card. Until my next paycheck. Your mother planned to spend eighty-five. Do you even understand what could have happened?”
“I thought there was more…”
“You thought? Or you didn’t think at all?”
She turned around and went back into the apartment. Maxim trailed after her.
“Katya, I’m sorry, okay? I really didn’t want any trouble. Mom said she’d just sit with her friends, I figured, ten thousand tops…”
Ekaterina sat down on the couch and looked at her husband.
“You know what’s the worst part? Not that you took the card. It’s that you didn’t even try to ask for permission.”
“I knew you’d say no.”
“Exactly. You knew. And you still did it.”
Maxim sank down beside her.
“Mom is always complaining that her friends judge her. They say her son is doing well and has forgotten his mother. She wanted to prove that’s not true.”
“At my expense.”
“Well… yeah.”
Ekaterina got up and went into the kitchen. The soup on the stove had long gone cold. She turned off the burner and leaned on the counter.
Maxim appeared in the doorway.
“So what happens now?”
“I don’t know,” Ekaterina answered honestly. “I need to think.”
“You’re not going to divorce me over this, are you?”
She turned to him.
“Maxim, in two years of marriage your mother hasn’t called me by my name even once. Just ‘the daughter-in-law’ or ‘Maxim’s wife.’ She comes over without warning, criticizes my cooking, how I run the house, even how I dress. And you stay silent.”
“She’s just like that. She has a difficult personality.”
“Everyone has a difficult personality. But not everyone thinks it’s okay to be rude. And certainly not everyone thinks it’s okay to dig around in someone else’s wallet.”
Maxim clenched his fists.
“She’s my mother. I can’t abandon her.”
“I’m not asking you to abandon her. I’m asking you to set boundaries. To explain that my bag is not a communal cash box for her entertainment.”
“I’ll talk to her.”
“How many times have you already promised to talk to her?” Ekaterina rubbed her forehead tiredly. “When she called me a barren hen? When she said I was a bad housekeeper? When she announced you could’ve found a better wife?”
Maxim was silent.
“Exactly,” Ekaterina walked past him into the bedroom.
She took a blanket and a pillow from the wardrobe and threw them onto the couch.
“You’re sleeping here tonight.”
“Katya…”
“I need to be alone. Please.”
She closed the bedroom door and sank down onto the bed. Her hands were shaking—not from anger, but from exhaustion. From the realization that this is how people live: one pretends not to notice the problem, the other silently endures until they snap.
The next morning, Ekaterina woke up early. Maxim was still asleep on the couch, sprawled uncomfortably. She walked past him without waking him and went out onto the balcony.
Her phone vibrated. A message from Lyudmila Stepanovna.
“Ekaterina, I wanted to apologize for yesterday. I got worked up. Let’s just forget about it and never bring it up again.”
Ekaterina snorted. Forget. Of course. As if nothing had happened.
She typed a reply:
“Lyudmila Stepanovna, let’s agree on this right away. My personal things are my property. If you need something, you ask me directly. Not through Maxim, not behind my back. And I decide whether to give it or not. This is the last warning.”
She hit send and blocked her mother-in-law. From now on, if she needed something, she could go through her son.
Maxim woke up half an hour later. He walked out onto the balcony, rubbing his neck.
“Didn’t sleep well?”
“The couch is hard.”
“It’s temporary,” Ekaterina said, not taking her eyes off the street.
“How long is ‘temporary’?”
“Until we decide how we’re going to live.”
Maxim leaned on the railing next to her.
“I talked to Mom. She promised she won’t ask for money anymore.”
“Maxim, this isn’t about the money. It’s about the fact that you don’t see boundaries. You think it’s normal for your mother to be rude to me. Normal that she tells her friends how much I make. Normal to go through my bag and take my card.”
“I won’t do it again.”
“How am I supposed to know that?” She turned to him. “You make promises, and then you just do whatever you want again.”
He opened his mouth to argue, but stopped himself.
“I really won’t do it again.”
“Fine. Then tell your mother she can only come over when she’s invited. Not just when she warns us, but when we actually invite her ourselves.”
“She’ll be offended.”
“So be it. This is my apartment, and I decide who comes in here.”
Maxim nodded, though doubt was clearly written in his eyes.
The next few days passed in tense silence. Maxim tried to act like nothing had changed, but Ekaterina could feel the wall growing between them.
She caught herself realizing that she no longer trusted her husband. Now she took her bag with her even into the bathroom. She put her cards in a safe and didn’t give Maxim the code.
And she started thinking about what came next. Can you build a family with someone who doesn’t know how to say “no” to his mother? Who is willing to sacrifice his wife’s trust for the sake of a momentary peace?
The answer came on its own. And she didn’t like it at all.
A week later, Lyudmila Stepanovna called Maxim and demanded he come over. Immediately. Something was wrong with the pipes.
Maxim rushed to get dressed.
“I have to go to Mom’s. She says she’s flooded the neighbors.”
Ekaterina nodded without looking up from her laptop.
“Okay.”
“You’re not coming?”
“No.”
“But she asked…”
“Maxim,” Ekaterina closed the laptop and looked at her husband. “Your mother, your problems. I’m not taking part in this circus anymore.”
He opened his mouth to say something, but thought better of it and left.
Ekaterina stayed alone. She sat down on the couch and hugged her knees.
She used to think love meant being ready to forgive everything. Now she understood: love is when you’re respected enough not to be put into situations where you have to forgive.
And Maxim had never learned to respect her. Not her, not her boundaries.
Her phone vibrated. A message from her father:
“Katya, how are you? Haven’t heard from you in a while.”
Ekaterina smiled faintly. Her parents always seemed to know when she was struggling.
She typed:
“Dad, can I come to your place this weekend? Alone. I need to talk.”
The reply came instantly:
“Of course, sunshine. We’re waiting.”
Ekaterina leaned back against the couch and exhaled. The decision had formed on its own.
Some marriages can be saved. But only if both people want to save them. And when one is pulling in one direction and the other in the opposite, the rope will snap sooner or later.
And it’s better to let go before it hurts beyond repair
