By evening, the kitchen was fragrant with porcini mushrooms and bay leaf. Anna set a bowl of soup in front of her husband and placed a slice of homemade bread beside it, fresh from the oven. The crust crackled softly; the crumb was light and airy, exactly the way he used to love it.
“Anya, did you forget the salt?” Dmitry grimaced after the first spoonful.
He tasted it again, shook his head with visible displeasure, and pushed the bowl away.
“It’s too thick. And there’s too much pepper.”
Anna stared at him, confused. There was a time when he had called this porcini soup “the best cure after a night shift.”
Without lifting his eyes, he added,
“You used to cook better. And honestly, you looked different too. Fresher, somehow.”
Anna slowly turned toward the sink and turned on the water. In the reflection of the dark window, she saw the droop of her tired shoulders. In that moment, it became painfully clear: this was not about the soup at all.
Anna had met Dmitry a little over ten years earlier. That day she had stopped by the clinic to see her mother, Maria Petrovna, who had spent more than thirty years working as a nurse in the treatment room.
“Mom, I brought you lunch,” Anna said, handing her a container of home-cooked food.
“Thank you. Annushka, come here,” her mother said, guiding her into the hallway where a young doctor in a white coat was standing. “This is Dmitry Orlov, our new intern. And this is my daughter.”
“Pleasure to meet you,” Dmitry said, extending his hand. “Maria Petrovna, you never told me you had such a beautiful daughter.”
Anna smiled shyly. She worked as a freelance designer, creating layouts for magazines and websites. Her life moved at a gentle pace: morning coffee, hours at her computer, evening walks.
A week later, Dmitry called her.
“Anna, this is Dmitry Orlov. Do you remember me? The exhausted intern. Your mother gave me your number. Would you like to grab a coffee after my shift?”
They met in a small café on Sadovaya Street. Dmitry talked about overnight duty, difficult surgeries, his first diagnoses made on his own. Anna listened with her chin resting on her hand.
“You know,” he said, “sometimes I forget to eat. I come home at three in the morning and the fridge is empty.”
“That’s terrible. Someone who saves lives shouldn’t be going hungry.”
The next day, she brought a container of borscht and some savory pastries to the doctors’ lounge.
That was how it began. Dmitry often stayed at work until late, and Anna started bringing him food: homemade soups, cabbage pies, potato croquettes, crepes filled with sweet farmer’s cheese.
“You’re not a woman, you’re a culinary fairy,” he laughed, finishing yet another portion. “If you keep feeding me like this, I’ll have to marry you.”
“Is that a threat or a promise?” Anna would tease, and they would both laugh.
Their wedding was modest, just parents and close friends. Afterward, they rented an apartment on Vasilyevsky Island. Anna turned it into a true little nest: linen curtains at the windows, an embroidered tablecloth on the table, fresh flowers in a vase. She woke before her husband every morning, brewed coffee in a cezve, fried eggs with tomatoes. In the evenings she baked bread, and the apartment filled with warm, comforting aromas. By the time Dmitry came home, a hot dinner was always waiting.
“Anyechka, you’re magic,” he would say, kissing the top of her head. “How do you manage to do it all?”
On Sundays they went to the market together. Dmitry chose the meat, examining each cut with great seriousness, while Anna picked out herbs and vegetables. The vendors already knew them by sight.
“So, young folks, today do you want young lamb or older beef?” Uncle Kolya the butcher would joke.
“We’ll take the tenderloin. Anya, will you make your signature stew?”
Their downstairs neighbor, Valentina Nikitichna, always said the same thing when she met Anna in the stairwell:
“Annushka, your home looks like a picture. And those smells! My late Semyon used to say, ‘You can tell whether a family is happy just by the smell coming from their apartment.’”
As time passed, Dmitry climbed higher and higher in his career. First he became head of a department, then deputy chief physician, and eight years later, the chief physician of the clinic. With every promotion, he seemed to grow more demanding.
That was when the first criticisms began.
“Anna, the bread is underbaked in the middle,” he said one evening, breaking the crust apart.
“But you like a soft crumb…”
“I used to. Tastes change.”
Then it was the tea.
“It’s too strong. I asked you to make it weaker.”
“Dima, I brew it the same as always, three minutes…”
“Then you must be using too many leaves.”
At first Anna blamed it on his exhaustion. Being chief physician meant endless responsibility, constant stress, inspections. She tried harder: cooking more variety, buying new cookbooks, watching recipe shows.
That evening, Anna spent a long time choosing a dress. She settled on a dark burgundy one; Dmitry had once told her the color suited her. They were going to a colleague’s anniversary party.
Dmitry sat in an armchair fastening his watch. He glanced at her briefly, then returned to what he was doing.
“Well?” Anna asked, turning so the skirt swayed nicely.
“It’s fine,” he said with a shrug. “Though… you should really start exercising. Working from home isn’t doing you any favors. You’ve put on weight around the waist.”
The words hit harder than a slap. Anna looked at herself in the hallway mirror. Yes, she was no longer the slim girl he had met ten years ago. But was that really what mattered?
“I’m just being honest,” he added as he stood. “The chief physician’s wife should take care of herself. You’ve seen Irina, Petrova’s wife? She’s forty-five and looks thirty.”
The following Monday, Anna signed up for yoga at a fitness club near the house. She bought beautiful workout clothes, a mat, a water bottle. Lena, the young flexible instructor, demonstrated the poses while Anna repeated them carefully, feeling muscles stretch that had long forgotten such effort.
“Don’t overdo it at first,” Lena advised. “Your body needs time to adjust.”
A week later, Anna bought running shoes for morning jogs. Now she woke at six, quietly tied her laces in the hallway so as not to wake her husband, and slipped outside. At that hour the city felt different — quiet, sleepy, almost peaceful.
After her run, she bought coffee from Sergey, the drowsy vendor at the kiosk on the corner.
“Anna Sergeyevna, you’ve turned into an athlete!” he said in surprise. “Every morning like clockwork.”
“I’m trying, Sergey. Really trying.”
In the evenings, instead of her usual pies and casseroles, she made light salads, steamed fish, grilled vegetables. She stopped baking Dmitry’s favorite honey cake and napoleon.
“What’s for dinner?” Dmitry would ask when he got home.
“Quinoa salad and baked chicken breast.”
“This grass again,” he would mutter, though he ate it.
But he barely noticed the changes in her appearance. Or perhaps he simply did not want to.
Dmitry started coming home later and later. He used to make an effort to be back for dinner; now he often arrived close to midnight.
“Where were you?” Anna would ask as she reheated his meal.
“The meeting ran long.”
The next day:
“An unplanned inspection from the ministry.”
A week later:
“I was on call. One of the therapists got sick, so I had to cover.”
One day, while emptying the pockets of his jacket before putting it in the wash, Anna found a receipt from a restaurant called Venezia — the very place she had long dreamed of visiting. The date was yesterday. The time: 8:47 p.m. Two glasses of wine, two Caesar salads, a steak, and fish.
The night before, he had said he was stuck at a staff meeting.
Their tenth wedding anniversary was approaching. A round, important date. Anna started preparing for it well in advance, planning the evening two weeks ahead.
She bought a blue dress with a narrow belt, elegant and flattering to the figure she had slimmed down through exercise. She reserved a table at a riverside restaurant — the same one where they had celebrated their first anniversary.
“Dima, don’t forget, Friday is our special day,” she reminded him on Monday.
“Of course I remember.”
On the tenth of October, the day of their anniversary, she left work early. She had her hair done at the salon, got a manicure. At home she prepared light appetizers in case Dmitry wanted champagne before they went to the restaurant. She set the champagne on ice and lit candles.
Seven o’clock. Then eight.
She sat by the window in her new dress and watched the street outside. People hurried home; lights came on in the windows.
Nine. Ten. She called the restaurant and canceled the reservation.
“Did something happen?” the hostess asked kindly.
“Yes… unexpected circumstances.”
At three in the morning, a message arrived: Work overload. Don’t wait up.
She ended up falling asleep on the couch in her dress.
The next morning, Anna went out for her run earlier than usual. The park was crisp and cool, smelling of wet leaves. At the turn of the path, she ran into Elena Pavlovna Sinitsyna, the wife of one of the cardiologists from Dmitry’s clinic.
“Anyechka! What a surprise! How are you feeling? We were all so worried!”
“I’m sorry… I don’t understand.”
“Oh, come on. Andrey said Dima took two weeks off. He told everyone you were seriously ill and needed special care. He’s so devoted to you! Not every husband would take leave for his wife.”
Anna stopped walking. A dull roar filled her ears.
“When… when did he take leave?”
“Why, starting Monday. Andrey was surprised — it’s inspection season, after all. But Dmitry said family came first.”
The ground seemed to slip beneath her feet. Dmitry had left the house every morning as usual. He had come back late each night. Where had he been all that time?
The front door clicked softly. Dmitry hung his coat in its usual place and walked into the kitchen. The unfamiliar silence cut at him — no clatter of dishes, no smell of dinner. The table was bare, the stove cold.
“How are you feeling?” he asked, peering into the living room.
Anna sat in an armchair, her hands folded in her lap. Her gaze was calm, almost detached.
“Thank you for your concern. It was especially touching to hear how worried you were about my ‘poor health.’”
Silence dropped between them like a heavy curtain. Dmitry slowly lowered himself onto the sofa across from her.
“Oksana Lebedeva,” Anna said quietly. “The nurse from your hospital.”
He nodded without raising his eyes.
“It’s been six months…” His voice trembled.
“Why?” A single question, instead of a thousand accusations.
Dmitry looked up, and in his eyes something like relief flickered.
“You’re a flawless homemaker, Anya. Perfect. But when was the last time you cared about my work? My thoughts? You live inside these walls, these dishes, these recipes… where am I in that life?”
The suitcase lay open on the bed. Dmitry folded shirts into it with mechanical precision while Anna stood in the doorway watching. No tears, no reproaches — only the soft rustle of fabric and the tapping of raindrops against the glass.
“Your ties are in the top drawer,” she said automatically.
“Thanks.”
He passed by her on his way to the dresser. Their shoulders nearly brushed — the first closeness they had felt in weeks, and yet between them there was only an endless distance.
At the kitchen table, Anna instinctively straightened the napkins, aligned the salt and pepper shakers. Her hands kept moving through familiar motions while her thoughts drifted somewhere far away.
The click of the suitcase latches brought her back. Dmitry stood in the hallway, holding the suitcase in one hand and a ring of keys in the other.
“I’ll leave the keys on the stand,” he said. “The car papers are in the desk drawer. If you need anything…”
“I’ll manage.”
He nodded, then suddenly stepped closer.
“I’m sorry, Anya. For everything.”
The door closed softly, almost soundlessly. Anna remained standing in the middle of the hallway, staring at the keys on the table. The apartment felt enormous and hollow, like a museum after closing time.
Morning sunlight striped the kitchen in bands of gold. Anna sat by the window with a cup of coffee and her tablet. On the screen was an interior sketch for a new client. Beside her lay a notebook full of notes, colored pencils scattered across the table.
The old china set had long since been sent to her mother’s dacha. In its place were simple white cups and bright ceramic pieces from a flea market. Her own watercolors now hung on the wall instead of bland, impersonal prints.
Her phone chimed with a notification: Your lemon pie recipe has reached 500 likes!
She smiled. The cooking blog had started as a way to fill her evenings, but it had unexpectedly become a source of joy. Now she cooked not for approval, but for the pleasure of sharing.
Outside, spring was beginning to bloom. Anna took a sip of coffee and returned to her sketch. For the first time in many years, her day was not beginning with thoughts of someone else’s needs. Her heart beat steadily and quietly, like the heart of someone who had finally found the way back home — to herself.
