“ Tanya, can you believe our luck? Absolute jackpot—I’m still stunned. Vika called me half an hour ago, screaming into the phone like she’d been hit by a train. At first I thought something awful happened, I couldn’t even understand her. But then she told me what it was—and wow!”
Sergey stormed into the kitchen without even taking off his street shoes, even though he usually changed into slippers first thing. His face was shiny with excitement, his eyes blazing with that peculiar fire people get when they feel like they’re deciding other people’s lives. He tossed his keys onto the table—right on top of the petunia seed packets Tanya had laid out so neatly—and stood there, hands planted on his hips like a man who’d just won a battle.
Tanya slowly looked up from her shopping list for the summer season at the dacha. She had been enjoying the quiet of a Friday evening, planning what soil she still needed to buy for her hydrangeas. Her husband’s loud entrance—dirty shoes and an even dirtier sense of entitlement—shattered that fragile calm like a stone thrown into still water.
“What happened?” she asked evenly, carefully sliding the keys off a packet decorated with a pale pink flower. “Did Vika win the lottery?”
“Pretty much! Actually—better!” Sergey grabbed an apple and took a loud bite, juice spraying. “She and Pasha scored a last-minute Europe deal. Someone backed out at the last second—visas, hotels, flights, everything included—and it’s like a seventy percent discount. Italy, France, Spain. A dream come true! They’ve barely traveled anywhere—just Turkey a hundred times. And now they’ve got this chance. They fly out in a week.”
Tanya nodded, doing her best to look politely interested, though nothing inside her stirred. Vika, Sergey’s younger sister, and her husband Pasha were loud, chaotic people who always seemed to be tumbling into some new mess.
“Good for them. Let them go, get a change of scene,” Tanya said, dropping her gaze back to the list. “But what does that have to do with us? And why are you in boots in the kitchen?”
Sergey waved off the shoe comment like it was a mosquito. He pulled out a chair, turned it around, and straddled it, leaning over the table with the air of a conspirator.
“And that’s where it gets interesting. The problem was the kids. Where do you put triplets? Pasha’s mother is going into the hospital for tests—planned, but unavoidable. And my mom, you know how her blood pressure is, she’s at Auntie’s dacha, she can’t be jumping around with three boys. Vika started crying, saying she’d have to cancel, the tickets would be wasted. So I told her: ‘Vika, stop panicking. Your brother will handle it.’”
A cold, heavy knot formed in Tanya’s stomach. She knew that look on her husband’s face. The same one he’d worn when he took out a car loan without consulting her. The same one when he invited his friends to stay overnight and “forgot” to tell her. The face of a man performing a grand gesture—at someone else’s expense.
“And how exactly did your brother ‘handle it’?” Tanya’s voice dropped. Steel crept into it. Sergey, high on his own triumph, didn’t even notice.
“How? Easy!” He grinned, radiating absolute confidence in his brilliance. “Our dacha is just sitting empty—fresh air, nature. You start your vacation on Monday. So I told her: bring the whole herd to us! You’ll be there anyway, digging in your garden beds, bored out of your mind. This way the kids have space, and Vika and Pasha can actually relax—like a second honeymoon.”
Sergey slapped the table triumphantly, making the seed packets jump.
“I told them to drop the boys off Sunday evening. You’ll have time to stock up on groceries and get the rooms ready. We’ve got two empty bedrooms upstairs—you’ll spread them out. They’re not picky. They just need outdoors and to be fed on time.”
Tanya stared at him without blinking. The words landed in her head like bricks, clumsy and unmortared. Triplets. Three five-year-old boys who, the last time they visited—at Sergey’s birthday—had turned the apartment upside down in two hours. They’d broken the chandelier with a ball and scribbled on the wallpaper with a marker they’d “accidentally found.” Three untamable batteries of energy even Vika struggled to control. And Sergey had just signed Tanya up to supervise them around the clock.
“Wait,” Tanya set her pen down. “Are you saying you invited three kids to live at my dacha? For my entire vacation?”
“Well, not the whole thing,” Sergey grimaced like she’d said something ridiculous. “Just two months. They’ll be back mid-August. You’ll be there anyway! What’s the difference—drinking tea alone or keeping an eye on your nephews? You’re a woman—you’ve got instincts and all that. And they’re family. Not strangers.”
He said it lightly, carelessly, like he was asking her to water a neighbor’s plants twice a week. In his world, his wife’s vacation was empty time that needed to be “put to use.” And he, generous man that he was, had found her a job.
“Did you ask me?” Tanya stared at the bridge of his nose. “Did you call me and ask: ‘Tanya, are you okay with turning your vacation into a high-security kindergarten?’”
“Oh, here we go,” Sergey rolled his eyes and took another bite of apple. “Why ask about something obvious? You’re not some kind of monster—of course you’d help my sister. People get a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see Europe! And you’re going to strike a pose over nonsense? I already promised, Tanya. Vika’s paying for the tickets. You’re not going to embarrass me in front of the family, are you? I told her my wife is a golden woman—always rescues everyone.”
He got up, went to the refrigerator, and started poking through it, acting like the matter was closed. For him it was decided—simple, logical, convenient. Convenient for everyone except the person whose shoulders he’d dumped the burden onto.
Tanya exhaled slowly through her nose and looked at the window where dusk was thickening. She’d been dreaming about this summer since January. Waking up in the silence of the old wooden house. Coffee on the veranda. Books she hadn’t touched in months. Her garden. She wanted quiet—absolute, ringing, healing quiet. And instead her husband had handed her chaos, noise, and endless cooking for a pack of children, wrapped up as “family duty.”
“So you already promised,” she repeated, tasting the words. Bitter.
“Yes, I promised. And don’t pull that face like I’ve sent you to hard labor. Fresh air is good for kids. And it’ll be good for you to move around instead of sitting with a book. By the way, Vika asked if our internet is decent out there. The boys need cartoons before bed, otherwise they’ll demolish the house.”
Sergey took out a pot of soup without realizing that, right now, he was laying dynamite under the foundation of his marriage.
He spooned up borscht with appetite, not even noticing Tanya hadn’t touched her dinner. He ate quickly, efficiently, like a man fueling up before a long trip, and at the same time pulled out his phone to open his chat with his sister. Tanya watched him with a frightening, unnatural detachment—like someone watching a nature documentary where one insect tries to explain to another how to build an anthill, without any interest in what the second insect thinks.
“Listen, there are some diet details,” Sergey said, wiping his lips with a napkin. “I’ll forward you the list in a message, but I’ll say it out loud too so you remember. Tyoma is allergic to everything red, except apples. No strawberries for him—even if he begs. Sasha can’t handle lactose, so his porridge has to be on water or that… what’s it called… plant milk. You’ll get it at the village store, they sell it everywhere now. And Dima is just picky—he picks boiled onion out of everything, so you’d better blend the soup into puree, then he’ll eat it.”
Tanya blinked slowly. The “requirements” sounded less like a plea for help and more like instructions for hired staff at a five-star resort.
“You want me to cook three different menus?” she asked quietly. “At the dacha? Where we have a two-burner stove?”
“Why three?” Sergey looked genuinely puzzled by her “confusion.” “Just cook everyone the diet version. It’ll be good for you too—you always complain about your stomach. Light soups, steamed cutlets. Vika said they don’t eat store-bought processed stuff—they’re used to home cooking. You don’t have to make dumplings from scratch, sure, but you’ll grind fresh mince. The old Soviet meat grinder is still there, right? Perfect.”
He said it like cranking out a whole basin of meat on a rusty hand grinder was the ideal way to relax after a year of working as chief accountant. Tanya felt her fingers curl into fists under the table. Her nails dug into her palms—painful, but clarifying.
“And the groceries?” Her voice was dry as fallen leaves. “Is your sister leaving money to feed three growing boys? Or is that also included in the ‘all-inclusive’ package?”
Sergey frowned, setting down the spoon. He didn’t like the “mercenary” tone.
“Tanya, why are you being petty? They’re kids. How much can they eat? A bowl of soup and an apple. You’ve got a garden—carrots, zucchini, herbs. All your own, free. Vitamins! I’m not going to shake my own sister down for food money when they’ve already spent so much on the trip. Every euro matters—they need spending money. And you and I both work. We won’t go broke feeding the boys for a couple of months. Consider it our contribution to their happiness.”
“Our contribution,” Tanya repeated silently. So her garden—where she’d poured sweat every weekend, hauling buckets and weeding under scorching sun—was now public property. A free supermarket for Vika’s family.
“And one more thing,” Sergey said, scrolling through a long message on his phone. “Vika’s worried they’ll forget letters over the summer. They go into prep class in the fall. You’re educated, you’re грамотная—so you’ll do an hour a day with them, okay? Reading, handwriting. They’ll bring books. They need routine and discipline. They’re spoiled at Vika’s, but you’re strict—they won’t mess around with you.”
He looked up, expecting praise for his thoughtfulness. His gaze held an impenetrable certainty that he was right. Sergey truly believed he’d arranged everything perfectly: helped his sister, found his wife an “activity,” saved everyone money—and stayed the hero, a good brother and a caring husband.
“So,” Tanya stood at last, and for once she didn’t start clearing the dishes the way she always did. “You promised Vika not only housing and supervision, but also a chef, a dietitian, an entertainer, and a tutor. All on my dacha, on my dime, on my vacation time.”
“Oh, don’t exaggerate,” Sergey winced as if she’d given him a toothache. “‘Services,’ ‘dime’… We’re family. Family helps family. When you needed to take your mom to the hospital, didn’t I drive?”
“You drove once, Sergey. Once in three years. And then you complained for a week about the gas money and missing football,” Tanya replied coldly.
“Don’t start,” he waved her off, getting up and heading to the living room where the TV was on. “I already decided. Vika will bring them Sunday at lunch. Be ready. And yes—give them the big room, the one facing the garden. Better air. Move your stuff into the small room by the storage nook. You only need it to sleep anyway.”
He passed by her without noticing how dangerously her pupils narrowed. He took her silence for agreement, for obedience—something he’d grown used to over ten years of marriage. To him, Tanya was a convenient function: a fail-safe mechanism you could switch from “wife” to “nanny” with a press of a button.
Tanya remained in the kitchen. The hum of the refrigerator suddenly sounded deafening. Somewhere deep in her, near her solar plexus, a cold, poisonous rage began to boil. She stared at the empty chair where her husband had just been sitting and understood: this wasn’t really about the triplets. Or Vika. It was about the fact that Tanya, as a person, no longer existed in this house. There was only service staff—who had just been handed a technical assignment for the summer.
Tanya walked into the living room and stood directly in front of the TV, blocking the view of the football match. Sergey, sprawled on the couch with the remote in one hand and his phone in the other, clicked his tongue in annoyance. He tried to peer around her hip to see the score, but she didn’t move an inch. She looked like she’d been poured from concrete.
“Tanya, move, will you? Big moment,” he drawled without even looking at her face. “Why are you standing there like a statue? Go get ready. I sent you the list. And Vika asked if we have old blankets at the dacha so the kids can sit on the grass.”
“Look at me,” Tanya said. Her voice was quiet, flat, stripped of emotion. Not the familiar grumbling Sergey usually ignored. The voice of someone who had just made a final decision.
Sergey finally tore his eyes from the screen and looked at her. There were no tears, no pleading, no hurt. Only a cold, analytical curiosity—like she was examining mold under a microscope.
“I’m looking. What do you want?” He hit pause, making it clear he was doing her a huge favor.
“Tell me, Sergey,” she asked slowly, “since when did you become the owner of a place you have nothing to do with? You assign rooms, tell me where I’ll sleep—in a closet or a bedroom. You invite people to live there. You promise my labor. So let me remind you of one tiny detail: whose last name is on the ownership certificate for that house?”
Sergey snorted, rolling his eyes. He’d heard this argument before and always dismissed it as female nitpicking.
“Oh, not this song about ‘Grandma’s inheritance.’ We’ve been married ten years, Tanya. Everything is shared. Your dacha is our dacha. My salary is our budget. Are we a family or LLC ‘Horns and Hooves’? What’s with dividing square meters? It’s low, dear. Especially when it’s about helping children.”
He tried to twist it so she’d feel like a stingy villain. But today the trick didn’t work.
“Your salary goes to your car loans and your gadgets,” Tanya cut in, and the fact landed like a slab of concrete. “And I pay the land tax, roof repairs, rewiring, and seeds out of my bonus. But it’s not even about money. It’s about you deciding my time is your resource. You sold my vacation to your sister so you could look like a good brother.”
“Oh, stop with ‘sold’ and ‘resource’!” Sergey’s irritation flared. He sat up, tossing the remote onto a cushion. Red blotches spread across his face. “I organized your leisure! You’ll be howling from boredom in a week! What’s a woman supposed to do out there alone—smell flowers? This way there’s fun, laughter, life! I’m taking care of you, idiot, so you don’t go feral in the wilderness!”
“I dreamed of going feral,” Tanya took a step toward him, and Sergey instinctively pressed into the couch. “I worked myself into the ground all year. No sick days. Quarterly reports. Inspections. I waited for these two months just to watch sunsets and not speak to anyone. And you decided my rest was nonsense. That if I’m not serving someone, I’m useless. To you I’m a convenient function. A voice-activated multicooker.”
“You’re selfish, Tanya!” Sergey spat, switching to attack. “Cold, childless selfish woman! That’s why we don’t have our own kids—because you only care about your comfort! God sees it, that’s why you’re not given any! And now you’re being handed a chance to clean your karma with your nephews, and you’re turning your nose up!”
Those words were meant to crush her. Before, they might have. But now they only confirmed what she’d understood half an hour earlier in the kitchen: this man didn’t love her—he despised her.
Tanya gave a bitter, almost amused smile.
“So I’m selfish. Fine. But you know what’s great about selfish people, Sergey? They do what they want—not what others want.”
She slipped her hand into the pocket of her home pants and closed her fingers around the cold metal of a keyring. The one that held keys to the city apartment, the car—and most importantly, the heavy padlock key to the dacha gate.
“I’m not going there with your nephews,” she said clearly. “And they’re not going there either.”
“You won’t dare,” Sergey jumped up, face twisting with rage. “I already promised! Vika’s already packing! You want to disgrace me in front of everyone? You have any idea what scandal this will be? Mom will eat me alive!”
“That’s your problem, Sergey. Only yours. You promised—you deliver. Want to be a great brother? Go ahead.”
“You’re out of your mind!” he shrieked. “The dacha is shared! I have the same right to be there! I’ll call Vika right now and tell them to come. And you’ll have to open the gate and smile, because you’re my wife!”
“Not anymore,” Tanya replied calmly.
She walked to the entryway table where Sergey’s little leather bag sat and dumped its contents onto the floor. Among the receipts and coins, his spare dacha keys clinked—the duplicate she’d made two years ago so he could go fishing. Tanya bent down, picked them up, and slid them into her pocket.
Sergey stared, mouth open. A mutiny that had gone too far.
“What are you doing? Give them back!” he lunged—but stopped short when he met her eyes. There was such icy contempt in them that his anger drained instantly.
“So you promised your sister I’d babysit her triplets for free all summer at our dacha while she and her husband travel Europe,” Tanya said, every word sharp. “Did you ask me if I want to work as a kindergarten teacher during my legal vacation? You decided to manage my time and my home without me? No. Hand over the dacha keys and go babysit your own nephews. And don’t come back to me.”
“You’re crazy…” Sergey whispered, finally grasping the size of the disaster. “You realize I’ll never forgive you for this?”
“I really hope you don’t,” Tanya nodded. “Because there’s nothing to forgive. I’m just taking back what’s mine. And you can keep your ‘shared.’”
She turned and walked toward the bedroom—not to cry into a pillow, but to pack. Only her things. Only what she needed for a quiet, solitary, happy summer.
The sound of the zipper on her sports bag cracked through the bedroom silence like a starting pistol. Tanya moved fast and efficiently: two pairs of jeans, warm sweaters, a waterproof jacket, a first-aid kit, and a stack of books that had been gathering dust since winter. Nothing extra. No “shared” belongings, no attempts to divide property. Just what would keep her independent.
Sergey stood in the doorway, leaning a shoulder against the frame. His posture was meant to look dominant and threatening, but the trembling fingers worrying the hem of his T-shirt betrayed panic. He watched his comfortable little world crumble and scrambled for a lever to stop it.
“You’re bluffing,” he finally forced out, his voice cracking. “You’ll get to the car, sit there five minutes, cry, and come back. Because you’ve got nowhere to go, Tanya. We’re family. You can’t just drop this on me.”
Tanya hoisted the bag onto her shoulder and didn’t even look at him. Now that she’d chosen, Sergey was no longer someone close. He was an obstacle—like a squeaky door or a puddle you simply step around.
“I’m not dropping anything on you, Sergey. I’m leaving you alone with what you created,” she said calmly, heading for the door.
He didn’t move aside—he blocked her path. Red blotches flared across his face again, his eyes filling with cornered-animal anger.
“Stop!” he barked, trying to put on his “man voice.” “Do you have any idea what you’re doing? Vika called a minute ago! They’re already in a taxi, on the way to the airport! The kids will be brought here tomorrow morning! Where am I supposed to put them—in this two-room apartment? Do you even understand what will happen in here with three boys?”
“That’s a fantastic question,” Tanya said, stopping so close that Sergey instinctively leaned back from the coldness radiating off her. “But why are you asking me? You’re the architect of this plan. You’re the good brother. So perform your miracles of hospitality. Sleep on the couch. Feed them dumplings. Entertain them with cartoons. You said it was easy—‘a bowl of soup and an apple,’ remember?”
At that moment Sergey’s phone rang in his pocket. The ringtone was a cheerful pop song—one he’d set for his sister. In the current situation it sounded like a funeral march. Sergey jolted as if shocked by electricity, yanked out the phone, saw “Vikusya” on the screen, and turned pale.
He shoved the phone toward Tanya, practically jabbing it at her face.
“Here! Tell her!” he squealed. “Tell her yourself you’re a monster! That you’re throwing your own nephews out on the street! Go on—explain why their vacation is ruined! I can’t do it—do it! You’re the principled one!”
Tanya pushed his hand away with disgust.
“No, dear. I promised nothing. I wasn’t part of your little conspiracy. This is your phone, your sister, and your lie. You deal with it.”
She stepped around him the way you step around a lamp post and went into the entryway. Sergey froze for a second, stunned that she wouldn’t become his lightning rod, then rushed after her, still gripping the vibrating phone.
“You’re not leaving!” he screamed as Tanya started putting on her shoes. “I’m not giving you the car! It’s shared—we bought it while married!”
Tanya straightened, already in her sneakers, and pulled the SUV keys from her pocket.
“The car is registered to me, Sergey. And I paid the loan while you were ‘finding yourself’ for two years. So legally, practically, and morally—the steering wheel is mine. I left you a metro pass. It’s on the table next to your conscience, if you can find it there.”
“If you walk out that door…” he panted, digging for the cruelest words he could. “If you leave, I’ll file for divorce! You hear me? I’ll abandon you! Who will want you—an old maid with garden beds? I’ll find a normal woman who values family!”
Tanya opened the front door. Cool air and freedom drifted in from the stairwell. She turned back one last time. In front of her stood the man she’d shared a bed and a table with for years—and now he looked sweaty, pathetic, and utterly foreign. The phone had stopped ringing for a second, then immediately started vibrating again. Vika was persistent.
“Sergey,” Tanya said, and for the first time a hint of a smile—tired and sad—touched her voice. “You’ve got it backward. You’re not leaving me. I’m firing you. For failing to meet the requirements of the position of husband.”
“What?” he blinked dumbly.
“You wanted to be good to everyone at my expense. Didn’t work. Now you stay here, alone with your promise. And please don’t come to the dacha. The gate will be locked. I’ll ask the neighbors’ dog to ‘keep an eye on the perimeter.’ If I see you near the fence, I’ll let her out with no warning.”
“Tanya!” he howled, taking a step toward her, but the door slammed in his face with a heavy, final thud.
The lock clicked. Once. Twice.
Sergey remained standing in the dark entryway. In the sudden quiet, his phone burst into its bright, chirpy trill again. On the screen: his sister’s photo and the name “Vikusya.” He stared at it like a bomb technician who’d cut the wrong wire.
From behind the door came the sound of retreating footsteps, then the intercom beep, then the roar of an engine starting. Tanya was driving toward her summer. And the summer Sergey had so generously planned—at her expense—had just turned into his own private hell.
Now he had to pick up the phone and explain to his sister why the “free help” had been canceled, and why three children would be arriving tomorrow morning not at a dacha with a yard and strawberries, but at their uncle’s cramped apartment—an uncle with no food, no patience, and no wife.
Sergey slid down the wall onto the floor, clutching the phone that kept ringing, demanding payment for the promises he’d thrown into the wind…
