The first call came at seven on Saturday morning.
“Alyosha, my boy! We’ve already left. We’ll be there in three hours. Fix something for us to eat, will you?”
I opened my eyes and stared at the ceiling. Andrey mumbled sleepily into the phone, set it back on the nightstand, and pulled the blanket over his head.
“Who’s coming?” I asked, even though I already knew.
“Mom and Lena. And the kids are with her. They’re coming to stay.”
“For how long?”
“Two days, I guess.”
I sat up. Outside the window, October rain drizzled in a dull gray curtain. The weekend was clearly going to be just as gray.
“Andrey, we had plans. We were going to that exhibition—you bought tickets.”
“They’re traveling all this way. We’ll go another day.”
He was asleep again. Or pretending.
I got up and went to the kitchen to make coffee. Two days. Fine. I could survive two days.
By ten o’clock I’d baked apple charlotte, fried cutlets—my mother-in-law liked a heavy breakfast, that was her little quirk—and laid out cold cuts, cheese, and fruit. Andrey finally woke up, showered, and sat down with coffee, scrolling on his phone.
“Will you help me set the table?” I suggested.
“Mhm,” he nodded, eyes still glued to the screen.
So I did it myself.
They burst into the apartment like a tornado. My mother-in-law, Galina Mikhailovna, wore an expensive sheepskin coat and carried three bags. Lena—Andrey’s sister—came with her husband Oleg and two children: Misha, eight, and Dasha, five.
“Alyoshenka!” Galina Mikhailovna kissed her son all over his face, nudging me toward the fridge. “How I’ve missed you! Lena, look how skinny he’s gotten—he needs feeding properly.”
“He hasn’t gotten skinny,” I said.
“Masha, hi,” Lena pecked my cheek. “Oleg, take your shoes off right away—don’t track dirt. Kids, jackets on the hook!”
The kids didn’t take their jackets off at all. They raced through the apartment shrieking, and Misha had already found the TV remote and blasted some cartoon at full volume.
“Maybe a little quieter?” I tried.
“Oh, let them have fun!” Galina Mikhailovna was already inspecting the table. “Mashenka, why are the cutlets cold? I like them hot. And the kids need pancakes—do you have jam?”
Without a word, I went to reheat the cutlets and pull out flour for pancakes.
By the evening of the first day I already felt like a waitress stuck serving the pickiest customers in the world. Galina Mikhailovna asked for tea—not black, green—and not just green, but jasmine. I ran to the store. Then she remembered some special cookies she’d eaten on her last visit—so I ran to the store again.
Lena settled on the couch with her phone while the kids demolished the living room. They built a barricade out of chairs and armchairs and shrieked as they chased each other around it.
“Lena, maybe calm them down?” I finally snapped.
“Oh, come on, let them play. They’re energetic.”
“They broke the table lamp.”
“It’s not a big deal. Don’t worry.”
I looked at Andrey. He was in the kitchen with Lena’s husband, happily talking football. Their mother sat beside them, gossiping about neighbors.
“Andrey, can you help me?” I called from the hallway as I picked up the lamp shards.
“Yes, sure—right now,” he answered.
He never came.
I cleaned it up myself, then cooked dinner—“something light,” Galina Mikhailovna requested, but “still filling,” Lena clarified. I made baked chicken with vegetables, a salad, and put out wine.
At dinner Galina Mikhailovna said, “You know, Alyosha, it would be nice to go to that restaurant tomorrow—the one we went to last time. Those steaks!”
“Mom, it’s expensive,” Andrey began.
“Oh, don’t be silly. We see each other so rarely. Besides, I’ll pay—don’t worry.”
She didn’t pay. Andrey did, and I watched him go subtly pale when the check arrived.
On the third day, while I was washing the second load of dishes that morning—Galina Mikhailovna had decided she wanted fritters—there was a “family meeting” in the living room.
“We’ve been thinking,” Lena began, “and we decided we should stay longer. Oleg got approved to work remotely for a week, and the kids’ school break is starting anyway. We’ll stay another week, okay?”
I froze with the sponge in my hand.
A week. Another week.
“Great!” Andrey lit up. “Right, Mash?”
I turned around. Everyone looked at me expectantly—with a faint air of condescension, as if the hostess’s opinion was just a formality.
“Of course,” I forced out. “Wonderful.”
That night I couldn’t sleep. I lay there counting: seven more days of cooking, cleaning, store runs. Seven more days of children screaming and my mother-in-law’s comments—“Mashenka, maybe next time you’ll chop the vegetables smaller?” “Mashenka, do you always make coffee this strong?”
“Andrey,” I whispered.
He snored.
“Andrey!” louder.
“Mmm?”
“This is hard for me. I need your help.”
“Yeah, sure. Tomorrow I’ll help. Sleep.”
And he fell asleep instantly.
I lay in the dark and suddenly understood with perfect clarity: if I stayed, I’d lose my mind. Or I’d say something unforgivable and start a family war. Or I’d simply crack—like that lamp.
So I made a decision.
At five in the morning I got up without a sound. I pulled a gym bag from the closet and packed warm clothes, books, my laptop. I wrote a note—short, with no explanation: Gone to the dacha. I left it on the kitchen table.
I grabbed my car keys and walked out.
The drive to the dacha took more than two hours. I turned on the radio and cracked the window to let in cold autumn air. With every kilometer, my chest felt lighter.
The dacha met me with silence. An old wooden house Andrey and I had bought three years earlier and never properly fixed up. In summer it was lovely—we’d come for weekends, grill, read on the veranda. But now, late October, it looked abandoned.
I unlocked the door. It was cold inside, smelling of damp and old wood. I didn’t care. It was a space with no demands, no requests, no comments, no screaming children.
I got to work. I lit the stove—fussed with the logs for a long time, but the fire finally caught and the room warmed up. I carried water from the well—the bucket was heavy and my hands went numb, but it was honest, meaningful work, unlike endless dishwashing for people who never even said thank you.
I brewed tea in an old porcelain teapot, wrapped myself in a blanket, and sat by the stove.
God, it was good.
So quiet.
So calm.
I spent the first day in blissful idleness. I read a book I’d been trying to finish for half a year. I walked through the empty garden. In the attic I found boxes of old things—my grandmother’s scarves, yellowed photos, someone’s letters. I sat sorting through them, reading the faded lines.
I turned my phone off immediately. I knew I wouldn’t last otherwise—I’d keep checking whether Andrey was calling, getting angry if he wasn’t, or getting angry if he was.
On the second day I found an old axe in the shed and chopped wood. Physical work soothed me. Later I cooked myself the simplest fried eggs on a tiny gas burner, and they tasted better than any restaurant meal.
That evening I turned my phone back on. Thirty-two missed calls. Twenty-seven from Andrey. Dozens of messages.
Masha, where are you?
Masha, why did you leave?
Mom is asking what happened.
Masha, this isn’t right—you should’ve warned us.
Please call back.
I’m worried.
Lena is offended.
Mom says you acted selfishly.
I read everything, turned the phone off again, and went to sleep.
On the fourth day, as I sat on the veranda wrapped in two blankets and finishing my second cup of coffee, I heard the gate open.
Andrey.
He walked in looking exhausted and hollowed out. He climbed onto the veranda and stopped, staring at me.
“Mash…”
“Hi.”
“I ran away so I wouldn’t have to wait on your relatives,” I said calmly. “Figured you could handle them just fine on your own.”
He dropped onto the bench beside me.
“It’s a nightmare,” he breathed. “A complete nightmare.”
“Tell me.”
He dragged a hand over his face.
“The first day after you left, I woke up to Mom demanding breakfast. I made an omelet. She said the omelet was ‘wrong’ and asked for syrniki. I don’t know how to make syrniki.”
“Really?” I said, surprised.
“Then Lena sent me to the store for groceries. I bought the wrong stuff. Had to go again. Then Misha spilled juice on the couch, and Mom told me to clean it. I scrubbed for an hour and the stain’s still there.”
I sipped my coffee and listened.
“After that they wanted to go to the mall. They walked through every single store while I waited for three hours. Oleg asked me for money for some game for the kids—five thousand. Every evening Mom demanded dinner at nine and insisted it be something special. I ordered delivery, but she didn’t like any of it.”
“Go on,” I encouraged.
“I’m tired, Mash. And I realized…” He hesitated, searching for words. “I realized you were doing all of this. Every day. And I didn’t see it.”
“You didn’t,” I agreed. “Because it was comfortable for you. You got ‘family time’ and I did the dirty work.”
“I thought you could manage. You always manage.”
“I’m not supposed to manage alone, Andrey. It’s your family—your mother, your sister. Why should I be serving them like a maid?”
“You shouldn’t,” he said quietly. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
We sat in silence. The stove crackled behind the door.
“I asked you for help,” I reminded him. “More than once.”
“I nodded and forgot. Because…” He swallowed. “Because I knew you’d do it anyway. That was rotten of me.”
“It was,” I confirmed.
“Will you come back?”
“Are they still there?”
He shook his head.
“They left yesterday. Offended—like, if we’re not happy to see them and the ‘hostess ran away,’ then they won’t trouble us with their presence ever again.”
I snorted.
“Seriously? So they’re offended?”
“Mom said you ruined the family visit. Lena said you were making a mountain out of a molehill. I tried explaining they crossed a line, but…” He shrugged. “Anyway, they left. Proud and offended.”
“And how do you feel?”
Andrey looked at me.
“Guilty. Worn out. And… angry, honestly. At them. At myself. I should’ve protected you, and instead I checked out.”
“Yes,” I said. “You should have.”
He reached for my hand, and after a pause, I let him take it.
“Let’s stay here a couple more days,” he said. “I need to breathe too.”
I studied him—his tired face, his apologetic eyes—and nodded.
“Okay. But you’re chopping the wood.”
He smiled—properly smiled for the first time in days.
“Deal.”
We stayed at the dacha three more days. Andrey actually chopped wood—awkwardly, with a lot of swearing, but earnestly. We cooked together: simple food with no fuss. We walked in the woods. We talked—long, honestly, sometimes painfully.
I told him how invisible I’d felt in my own home. How resentment grew hour by hour—at them for the disrespect, at him for being blind. How I was terrified that if I said everything I truly thought, I’d shatter the fragile “peace” he tried to keep with his family.
He admitted he’d always felt pressure: to be a good son, a good brother. That he’d learned to please his mother because she’d been strict when he was a child and her approval was hard to earn. That he didn’t know how to tell her “no,” and he’d shifted that burden onto me without even realizing he was doing it.
“I thought I was creating a warm atmosphere,” he confessed one evening. “But really, I was hiding.”
“From what?”
“From conflict. From having to choose between you. I figured if I stayed ‘nice’ to everyone, it would all sort itself out.”
“It doesn’t,” I said. “That’s not how it works.”
“I get it now.”
On the fourth day, when we were packing to leave, I stood on the steps and looked at the house—old, shabby, the veranda a little crooked. But it had given me what I needed: silence, space, a chance to stop and think.
“Thank you,” Andrey said, wrapping his arms around me from behind.
“For what?”
“For leaving. For not swallowing it. For forcing me to open my eyes.”
I turned and looked at him.
“This can’t happen again.”
“It won’t,” he promised. “Next time they want to visit, we’ll discuss it together. We’ll set rules. And I’ll actually be there—really there, not just physically in the apartment.”
“And if your mom gets offended?”
He shrugged.
“Let her. I’m an adult. I have my own family. And my priority is you.”
I kissed him. We loaded the car and drove home.
The apartment was clean—though not with my usual perfection. But Andrey had tried; you could see it. The dishes were washed, even if not brilliantly. The floors were swept. In the fridge were the remains of some cooking experiments and a note stuck to a magnet: Sorry about the mess. I really tried.
I smiled.
That evening, a new message came from Lena: “Andrey, Mom is very upset. Maybe Masha should apologize? We’re family.”
I asked Andrey, “What will you reply?”
He took the phone and typed: “Lena, Masha did nothing wrong. Next time we’ll discuss visits in advance. I hope you understand.”
He hit send.
And I believed him—because in his eyes I saw something I hadn’t seen before: resolve. He had finally woken up.
And I was no longer the invisible maid in my own home. And if I ever start feeling like one again… I have an old dacha, a stove, and silence waiting for me.
And I won’t be afraid to leave again.
Because sometimes, to save a family, you have to know how to run from it—just long enough to make everyone face the truth.
