“…The potatoes turned out especially good today. Just like when I was a kid,” Stas said, spearing a golden-brown slice with his fork and popping it into his mouth with obvious pleasure, eyes closing in satisfaction. “And these cutlets of yours… pure magic.”
Lena smiled—not the tired, automatic smile people wear after a workday, but a genuinely warm one. She loved evenings like this: just the two of them in their small but cozy kitchen. Outside the window the deep blue November dusk was thickening, but in here a soft light glowed, the air smelled of fried chicken and dill, and for a moment it felt as if all their problems had stayed somewhere far away, outside the borders of their little world.
“I tried,” she said, carefully cutting off a piece of cutlet. Fragrant juices ran onto her plate. “You know, today I counted it again. And checked apartment prices. If we save a bit more, by summer we’ll probably be able to start looking at options.”
She meant the money her grandmother had left her. It wasn’t just numbers in a bank account. It was her grandmother’s last hello from childhood, the last tangible proof of her love. Whenever Lena thought about that money, she didn’t see digits—she saw wrinkled, warm hands baking the best pies in the world, and mischievous eyes looking at her from a faded photo on the dresser. She and Stas had decided right away: this was their shared ticket into a new life. A roomy two-bedroom apartment, with space for a nursery and a corner of their own.
“Yeah, that would be amazing,” Stas nodded, chewing thoughtfully. He set his fork down and looked at Lena. “It’s like she knew… your grandma. She wanted you to have something of your own. Something reliable. So you’d feel more secure.”
Lena looked at him with gratitude. He understood. He felt it the same way she did. That mattered. More than anything.
Stas was quiet for a moment longer, staring into his plate. Then he suddenly lifted his eyes—there was a new, busy little spark in them.
“By the way, speaking of good things. It’s Irka’s birthday soon. Thirty—big milestone. And I keep thinking what to get her…”
Irka—his younger sister—was a delicate topic. A carefree dragonfly flitting through life, changing jobs and boyfriends, always complaining about having no money and how cruel the world was. Lena felt neutral about her, like she did about unavoidable weather.
“Get her a spa certificate,” Lena suggested, her thoughts already drifting back to apartment plans. “She likes that stuff.”
Stas waved it off as if she’d suggested a bunch of balloons.
“A spa certificate… that’s small. This needs to be a gift that’s, like… wow. Something she’ll remember. Something that actually changes her life for the better. She’s always rattling around on those minibuses, spending her last money on taxis.”
He leaned across the table, his face taking on that conspiratorial, thrilled expression kids get when they’ve invented a brilliant prank. His voice dropped to a confidential whisper.
“Len, listen. What if…” He paused dramatically. “What if we buy her a car with your money? Huh? Can you imagine? Not a new one—just something simple, used. So she can drive. Picture her face! She’ll lose her mind from happiness. That’s a gift!”
Lena’s fork froze halfway to her mouth. The warmth from the food that had just been spreading through her body evaporated instantly, replaced by a cold knot in her stomach. She stared at his beaming, utterly sincere face and couldn’t make sense of it. Was this a stupid, inappropriate joke? A test? Or had he really just said that?
Slowly she lowered the fork onto the plate. The clink of metal against ceramic rang out deafeningly in the sudden silence.
“Are you out of your mind?” she asked. Her voice was even, almost calm—but steel already rang beneath it.
Stas didn’t even understand what had happened. His smile slipped, replaced by genuine confusion.
“What’s the big deal? The money’s there. It would help Irka so much. We’re family—we should help each other. What, are you being stingy or something?”
“Stingy?”
That simple word hit Lena harder than a slap. It was so absurd, so monstrously wrong in this situation that for a moment she couldn’t breathe. He sat there across from her with the same baffled expression, waiting. He truly didn’t understand. Didn’t understand that with one sentence he’d trampled the memory of her grandmother, their shared plans, her trust—all at once. He had reduced everything sacred to her to a cheap question of greed.
Lena slowly straightened in her chair. The kitchen table that a minute ago had been the center of their tiny universe now felt like a barricade splitting them into two hostile camps. The smell of dinner suddenly turned cloying and nauseating.
“What does your sister have to do with the money my grandmother left me? Who is she to me? Why on earth would I buy her a car with it, Stas?”
She said his name the way you say it when you’re seeing someone for the first time and trying to memorize it. Not a questioning “Stas?” but a final “Stas.” Like a period at the end of a sentence. At the end of their former life.
Only then did it start to reach him—not that she was right, no, but that his brilliant plan had met resistance. His face began to redden.
“Lena, why are you starting this? We’re family. Irka is my sister, which means she’s your family too. What’s with that tone, like I’m taking the last thing from you? We’re trying to do something good for her!”
“‘We’?” Lena gave a bitter little laugh. “There is no ‘we.’ There’s your proposal, and for some reason you expected my automatic agreement. My family is my grandmother—the woman who worked herself to the bone at two jobs so I could have a start in life. She never even saw your Irka once. These are her money, do you understand? Hers. Not yours—and not ‘ours’ to waste on gifts!”
On his plate the cutlet cooled, a pale film of congealed fat forming on top. Dinner was ruined beyond repair.
“So that’s how it is…” he drawled, and accusation crept into his voice. “So when it’s about paying off a mortgage and looking for a bigger apartment, the money is ‘ours.’ But when it’s about helping my own sister, suddenly it’s ‘yours’ and ‘your grandma’s’? I didn’t expect such pettiness from you. Such greed.”
The word hung in the air again. Greed. This time it wasn’t a question—it was a verdict. And that verdict snapped the last thread of Lena’s self-control.
“Greed?” she laughed—sharp, barking. “That’s what you call it? I call it trying to latch onto someone else’s money! You’re acting like a freeloader, Stas. You want to solve your sister’s problems at my expense and look like some generous benefactor. Easy to be kind with someone else’s money, isn’t it? Maybe we should renovate your parents’ house too? Why not—money exists!”
He shot up from his chair, knocking over a glass of compote. The dark, sticky liquid spread across the white tablecloth, soaking in as an ugly brown stain.
“Have you lost it? Leave my parents out of this! I just wanted to do a good thing! And you turned it all into money and insults!”
“But it is money!” she shouted, standing too. “It’s not just paper! It’s years of my grandmother’s life! It’s our future home! And you’re trying to throw it away on your infantile sister’s whim!”
They stood facing each other across the table where their last peaceful dinner was cooling. The cozy kitchen had turned into a boxing ring. And both of them understood the bell had rung—and the fight was only beginning.
The shouting hung in the air and slowly settled, like dust after an explosion. Stas breathed heavily, chest rising and falling. He still stood with his knuckles pressed to the table, staring at the dark compote stain as if it proved she was wrong. He waited for her to keep yelling, arguing, explaining. But Lena was silent.
Slowly—almost with detached grace—she sat back down. The movement was smooth and precise, as if she hadn’t taken part in the ugly scene at all, as if she were watching it from the outside. She looked at Stas, and there was no anger left in her eyes, no hurt. There was something worse: cold, analyzing curiosity—like an entomologist studying an insect pinned to velvet. She examined his flushed, twisted face, his clenched fists, the posture of a cornered animal—and she saw not her husband, but a stranger she found unpleasant.
“So what now? We’re just going to sit in silence?” he finally squeezed out. The quiet pressed on him; it was louder than any shouting.
Lena tilted her head slightly.
“And what is there to talk about? You said everything. I heard you.”
That drove him even madder. Her calm was insulting. He wanted a fight—emotion, a debate he could win by crushing her with stubbornness or authority. And she had simply removed him from the conversation, delivered her verdict, and closed the case. He felt the ground sliding out from under him. He was losing. And then he did what people do when their own arguments are gone—he called for backup.
“Fine,” he hissed, yanking his phone from his jeans pocket. “Talking to you is pointless. There are people who’ll understand me.”
His fingers jabbed nervously at the screen. Lena watched with the same icy calm. She already knew who he was calling. His last, dirtiest trick—the “heavy artillery.” His mother.
“Mom, hi. No, I’m not asleep…” He moved toward the window, instinctively turning his back to Lena, forming an alliance against her. “Me and Lena… we’re talking. Yeah. I’m calling because… remember I told you about Irka’s birthday? I had an idea…”
Lena didn’t listen to the words. She’d heard them before in other, smaller fights. The wounded-boy tone. The thin manipulation, where facts get twisted and someone else’s words are served up in the ugliest, most convenient version. She watched his back, his tense shoulders, how he gestured with his free hand while complaining about his own wife.
“…No, can you imagine? She thinks Irka doesn’t deserve it! Says it’s only her money! Called me a freeloader! Yeah, straight up… says I’m reaching for someone else’s…”
In that moment everything snapped into place for Lena. This wasn’t just her husband’s dumb impulse. It was his whole family’s position. They were one tight organism—and she was a foreign element. An attachment with a useful resource: inheritance. And now their clan, in the form of her husband and mother-in-law, was deciding how to make best use of that resource. The man she’d married, trusted, planned a future with, had turned—right in front of her—into his mother’s son, whining about a disobedient wife.
He talked for another couple of minutes, nodding at whatever came through the phone. Lena no longer looked at him. She looked at the cooling cutlet on her plate. The dinner she’d cooked with love now felt like a disgusting joke. She stood up silently, took her plate and Stas’s plate, and dumped everything into the trash. The sound of food hitting the bin made him turn around.
“…Yeah, Mom, I’ll talk to her again. Okay, bye,” he threw into the phone and hung up.
He turned to her. His face held a blend of righteous anger and confidence. He’d gotten support, his position had been approved. Now he was ready to continue the battle with fresh strength.
“Mom is shocked by you,” Stas began, and his voice carried steel tempered by maternal approval. He stepped forward, trying to reclaim control. “She said you just don’t understand what real family is. That you need to be—”
He didn’t finish. Without a word, Lena turned and walked out of the kitchen. Her movements were so calm and purposeful that Stas froze for a second. He expected tears, screams, begging—anything but this quiet, demonstrative exit. He stood alone in the kitchen with an unfinished sentence on his lips, feeling stupid. What was this supposed to mean? She went to the bedroom to dramatically go to sleep? Decided to ignore him? He smirked. Childish.
From the hallway came a soft rustle. Then another. He frowned, listening. He couldn’t make out the sounds. No closet doors slamming, no drawers yanking open—just a quiet, methodical fussing. A minute later she returned.
In one hand she held his bulky autumn jacket; in the other, his worn boots. She walked to the table and carefully set the boots on the floor beside his chair. Then she draped the jacket over the back of it. After that she went back into the hallway, and a few seconds later came in again holding his car and apartment keys, and his thick leather wallet. She placed them on the table, right on top of the sticky compote stain. The keyring clinked softly.
Stas stared at the arrangement, his brain refusing to process it. It looked like some absurd performance art piece.
“What is this?” he asked, his voice confused. The confidence he’d gained from the call evaporated instantly.
Lena sat down across from him. She didn’t fold her arms defensively. She simply sat, relaxed and straight, and looked at him.
“These are your things,” she answered in a flat, colorless voice. “The ones you’ll need in the next ten minutes.”
It started to sink in—slowly, the way pain arrives after a hard blow.
“You… you’re kicking me out? Because of a car? Are you serious?”
Lena allowed herself a faint, almost invisible smirk.
“No, Stas. Not because of a car. The car is just litmus paper. You just called your mother to complain about me. You brought her into our family so she could help you decide what to do with my money. You showed me there is no ‘us’ for you. There’s you and your family—and I’m the outsider with a useful asset. You made your choice. I’m just drawing conclusions.”
He stared at her, mouth slightly open. He wanted to shout, to rage, to call her crazy—but the words stuck in his throat. Her calm paralyzed him. There was nothing left in her of the woman he’d lived with for five years. In front of him sat someone cold, unfamiliar, and absolutely decided.
“You wanted to give your sister a generous present,” she continued in the same even tone, like she was reading the terms of a contract. “I won’t stop you. More than that—I’ll help. You’re going to her now. I’m sure she can find you a couch. You can enjoy your noble gesture together.”
“You’ve lost your mind,” he whispered.
“On the contrary. I’ve never been more clear-headed,” she said, standing and taking his jacket from the chair back to hold it out to him. “If gifts for your sister matter that much to you, go to her and live there. And find yourself a wife with an inheritance you can spend. Mine, unfortunately, isn’t for that. You have five minutes to get dressed and walk out that door.”
She didn’t push him. Didn’t shout. She simply stood there with the jacket extended, her gaze harder than stone. In that gaze Stas read his sentence. He understood it was over. Not another fight followed by reconciliation. This was a period. He slowly, as if in a dream, took the jacket. Took the keys and wallet from the table. Put on his boots in silence. All his righteous indignation, all his confidence crumbled to dust. He was crushed by her icy composure.
When he opened the front door, he turned back in one last weak hope. But she was already walking back into the kitchen, not even giving him a farewell look. The door clicked shut behind him.
Lena was alone in the apartment, filled with the smell of cold dinner. She pulled the tablecloth with the ugly brown stain off the table, crumpled it up, and threw it into the trash.
In the silence that followed there was no pain, no regret.
Only cleanliness.
And emptiness…
