“Alexei, you saw the way she looked at me, didn’t you?” Vera sat on the edge of the sofa, carefully folding the freshly washed laundry. Her voice was low, barely above a whisper. “Your mother acts as if this is completely normal. Alina lounges there with one leg crossed over the other, ordering me around about which salad to chop, while Galina Petrovna is handing me a knife like I’m the hired help.”
“Ver, she’s pregnant,” Alexei muttered, barely glancing up from the stained-glass design he had been working on for the past week. He only gave a small shrug. “Mom’s just being caring. You know how long she’s waited for grandchildren from Igor. He’s her favorite, the baby of the family.”
“Pregnant?” Vera set down the pillowcase and looked at her husband’s back. There was a faint, bitter smile in her eyes. “I was pregnant too, Lesha. Remember? I was still finishing that city park project, the deadline was on fire, and your mother kept calling, demanding that I come wash her windows because she was ‘feeling dizzy.’ And I went. With a belly. And I washed them.”
“That was different,” he mumbled at last, turning to face her. “And you’re strong. Alina… well, she’s different. Fragile. A flower.”
“She’s a weed, not a flower,” Vera exhaled, trying to swallow her irritation and replace her anger with patience. “I don’t mind helping, Lesha. What I mind is being treated like second-rate servants, like Olya and I exist to do the work while Alina is some prize mare everyone feeds sugar to. Today Galina Petrovna announced that Olya and I should pitch in to buy Alina a stroller. That ‘mint’ one that costs as much as a car.”
“And what did you say?”
“I said I’d think about it.” Vera rose and walked to the window. The evening city murmured beyond the glass. More than anything, she wanted her husband to understand without her having to scream. “But I don’t want to think about it, Lesha. I want you, just once, to open your mouth and tell your mother that we have our own needs too. Seryozha is growing up. He needs tutors, activities. We can’t keep financing your brother’s wife’s whims just because Igor doesn’t know how to earn money and only knows how to act like some misunderstood genius.”
“I’ll talk to her,” Alexei nodded, though Vera could see how badly he wanted to stay out of it. “Mom’s difficult right now. Age, you know. I don’t want to upset her.”
“So upsetting me is fine?” Vera stepped right up to him and searched his eyes. Her hope for understanding was fading, but it had not quite died. “Lesha, this isn’t just hurt feelings. This is disrespect. Deep, constant disrespect toward our family. Toward Nikolai and Olya’s family too. To her, we’re resources. Igor and Alina are the goal.”
“You’re exaggerating,” he waved her off, picking up his pencil again. “Once she gives birth, everyone will calm down, and things will go back to normal.”
Vera said nothing. She knew nothing would fix itself unless someone forced it to. But for now, she chose to wait.
July was not merely hot; it was scorching. The sun melted the asphalt in the city, and the trip to the dacha seemed like salvation until their car rolled to a stop at the gate of Galina Petrovna’s property. The air there did not move. It hung heavy over the garden beds, thick with the smell of dill and sunbaked soil.
Vera got out of the car, adjusting her wide-brimmed hat. As a landscape designer, it physically pained her to look at her mother-in-law’s chaotic planting schemes, but she had long since given up trying to interfere. Nikolai’s car pulled in beside them. Olya, his wife, who worked restoring antique textiles, already looked exhausted before the “vacation” had even begun.
“Ready for another day of heroic labor?” Olya asked with a weary little smile as she pulled a bag of groceries out of the trunk.
“Always,” Vera muttered.
An idyllic little scene waited for them on the veranda, the kind that could have graced the cover of a glossy magazine. Reclining in a brand-new wicker chair—bought, incidentally, with money Galina Petrovna had borrowed from Nikolai and conveniently forgotten to repay—was Alina. Her rounded belly stretched the fabric of a light summer dress. Blue balloons with cheerful little messages floated around her. Beside her fussed Igor, adjusting the umbrella so not a single ray of sun would touch his wife’s pale skin.
“Oh, the girls are here!” Galina Petrovna fluttered out of the kitchen, clapping her hands. Her cheeks were flushed, and she wore an apron. “How wonderful! I’m drowning in work here. Alinochka needs fresh lemonade, someone has to crush ice, and meanwhile my cucumbers are getting overgrown!”
Vera and Olya exchanged a glance.
“Good afternoon, Galina Petrovna,” Vera said coolly. “Hi, Alina. How are you feeling?”
“Oh, awful,” Alina whined without even turning her head, scrolling through her phone feed. “It’s stuffy, there are flies everywhere… Igor, where’s the ice? Mom asked for it!”
Igor, a tall, slightly hunched man with a perpetually annoyed face, shot a look at the two sisters-in-law.
“What are you standing around for? Didn’t you hear Mom? The cucumbers are in the greenhouse. They need to be picked before the sun gets too high. Alina and I can’t do it. The doctor said she’s not allowed to bend, and my back’s been killing me since morning.”
Nikolai, Olya’s husband, usually the one who tried to smooth things over, frowned.
“Igor, your back hurts from lying on the couch. And your wife eats those cucumbers by the jar. The two of you could at least help your mother carry water.”
“Don’t tell me what to do!” Igor snapped. “My wife is carrying the heir! She needs peace! And you lot… you show up here to enjoy everything ready-made!”
Without a word, Vera went inside, changed into work clothes, and headed out to the garden. Olya followed.
An hour later, with sweat pouring into her eyes and her back feeling like a plank of wood, Vera straightened up and leaned on her hoe. Laughter drifted over from the gazebo. Galina Petrovna cooed over Alina, offering her a pillow, then cookies, then whatever else came to mind.
“When I was pregnant,” Olya said quietly, yanking an especially vicious weed out by the roots, “she made me pick currants. ‘Vitamins,’ she said. ‘It’s good for you to move around.’ I nearly gave birth under a bush. But here? Lemonade.”
“That’s because Igor is the baby of the family,” Vera said, driving the hoe into the soil. “Galina Petrovna always wanted a daughter. Now she plays dolls with Alina. And you and I? We’re just staff for the dollhouse.”
“Ver, I’m not going to last much longer,” Olya admitted. “I’ve got an urgent order waiting, an eighteenth-century tapestry, and here I am digging in the dirt so this princess can crunch cucumbers all winter.”
“We endure it, Olya. For our husbands,” Vera replied, though she knew her own patience felt like a dried branch now. One careless move, and it would snap.
By lunchtime, the heat had become unbearable. Galina Petrovna called everyone to the table. There was okroshka—chopped, of course, not by Alina—and a mountain of pastries.
“Alina, sweetheart, would you like some sour cream?” Galina Petrovna fussed over her as though she were hosting royalty.
“Ugh, no, it’s too fatty,” Alina grimaced. “Igor, I want peaches.”
“There are no peaches,” Igor said, thrown off. “We have strawberries. Olya picked them.”
“I don’t want strawberries. They might give me a rash. I want peaches!” Alina’s voice climbed into a shrill whine. “Mom, tell them!”
Galina Petrovna turned a stern look on Vera.
“Vera, you have the car. Drive to the village and buy the girl some peaches. The flat ones. Donut peaches. Those are the only ones she likes.”
Vera froze with her spoon in her hand. For a moment, the only sound in the room was the buzzing of a fly.
“Galina Petrovna,” Vera said slowly, “I just spent four hours breaking my back in the garden. I’m not going anywhere for peaches. Let Igor go. He has a car too.”
“Igor is tired!” the mother eagle sprang instantly to her younger son’s defense. “He washed the gazebo!” In reality, Igor had only dusted off the table. “How can you be so shameless, Vera? Refusing a pregnant woman? That’s a sin!”
“The real sin is sitting on your relatives’ necks and swinging your legs,” Olya said loudly and clearly.
Igor shot to his feet so fast he knocked his chair over.
“Hey, you! Shut your mouth!” he shouted. “You are supposed to help! This is family! And you’re acting like selfish rats! Mom does everything for you, and you—”
Alexei and Nikolai both stood up at the same time.
“Sit down, Igor,” Nikolai said heavily. “And lower your voice.”
“No, I won’t sit down!” Igor bellowed. “Mom, tell them! They’re making Alina cry!”
Alina did indeed let out a theatrical sob, pressing her perfectly manicured fingers to her eyes.
Galina Petrovna slammed her palm on the table.
“That’s enough! Vera, Olya, apologize to Alina this instant! You’re upsetting her! She’ll go into distress!”
Vera looked at her husband. Alexei shifted awkwardly, staring at the floor. Nikolai’s jaw was tight, but he said nothing. And in that moment Vera understood: no one was going to protect her. Only she could do that.
She rose slowly. Calmly removed the kitchen apron from her waist. Folded it neatly and placed it on the edge of the table.
“I am not apologizing,” Vera said. Her voice was solid as stone. “I’m not going for peaches. And I’m not preserving cucumbers either.”
“What do you think you’re doing?” Galina Petrovna stared at her in disbelief. “Where are you going? The cucumbers will spoil!”
“Then let them spoil. Or let Alina preserve them. It might do her good to develop some motor skills.”
“Me?!” Alina shrieked. “I’m pregnant!”
“Pregnancy is not a disability, and it is not a free pass to behave like a spoiled brat,” Vera shot back. “I’m leaving. For good. My foot will not cross this threshold again until you apologize to me for all of this.”
“Me too,” Olya said, getting to her feet. “Kolya, stay if you want. I’m taking the train home. My tapestry matters more to me than all these petty whims.”
“Then get out!” Igor roared. “We’ll manage just fine without you! Fancy princesses! Mom will do it all herself!”
“I will!” Galina Petrovna threw her head back proudly, though a flash of fear flickered in her eyes. “I will do it! We don’t need helpers like you! God will judge you!”
Vera walked out of the house without looking back. The sun still blazed overhead, but suddenly she felt astonishingly light, as if a rotting sack of potatoes had slid off her shoulders.
Alexei caught up with her by the car.
“Ver, why did you have to go so far? Mom’s probably already reaching for her blood pressure monitor…”
“Let her,” Vera said, unlocking the car door. “Are you getting in, or are you staying to hunt for peaches?”
Alexei stood there for a second, looked back at the house—where his mother’s wailing and Alina’s shrill voice still carried through the yard—and then silently got into the passenger seat.
Autumn came with rain and cold wind, washing away the dust of summer and the last of Vera’s illusions. The calls from her mother-in-law stopped. Or rather, Galina Petrovna still called her sons and complained about her health, but she no longer asked for Vera or Olya. Pride would not allow it.
News reached them in fragments. A boy was born. They named him Anton. On Alina’s social media there were perfect pictures from the hospital discharge: giant bouquets, balloons, the glowing grandmother. But outside the frame of those beautiful photographs, reality looked very different.
It turned out the so-called fertility goddess Alina was utterly unfit for motherhood. The baby screamed through the nights. Alina had no milk, did not want to get up, and demanded a nanny. But her “genius artist” husband had no money for a nanny. Galina Petrovna’s savings had all gone on that stroller and the “mint” crib.
Galina Petrovna moved in with her younger son to help out. That was when hell began.
The phone rang late one November night. It was Nikolai.
“Ver… Mom’s in the hospital. Hypertensive crisis. The doctors say she was on the verge of a stroke. They barely stabilized her.”
Vera froze, a book still in her hands. Her anger had long since cooled.
“Who’s with her?”
“No one. The ambulance took her from Igor’s place. Alina threw a fit, saying who was going to rock the baby now if the old woman left. Igor stayed home to calm his wife down.”
Vera closed her eyes. The scene rose in her mind with brutal clarity: an elderly woman clutching at her chest, while her young daughter-in-law screamed that her evening had been ruined.
“Olya and I are coming,” Vera said shortly.
The hospital room smelled of medicine. Galina Petrovna lay on the tall bed, small and gray, nothing like the powerful woman who used to order her daughters-in-law around the garden. When she saw Vera and Olya, she tried to sit up, but she had no strength.
“Did Igor… come?” she whispered. Her lips trembled.
Vera stepped closer, straightened the blanket, and poured water into a glass.
“No, Galina Petrovna. Igor is at home. With his family.”
A single tear slid down the older woman’s cheek. Bitter, solitary. In that moment she understood everything. She understood that she had raised a taker. She understood that the woman for whom she had humiliated her elder daughters-in-law had not even bothered to call and ask whether she was alive.
“Forgive me, girls,” she whispered, turning her face to the wall. “I’ve been a foolish old woman.”
Vera did not say, “It’s all right,” or “We’re family.” Those words would have been a lie. She simply sat down beside the bed.
“Go to sleep, Galina Petrovna. Olya and I brought broth and clean clothes. Tomorrow the doctor will come, and we’ll talk about your treatment.”
After she was discharged, Galina Petrovna returned to her own apartment. She never went back to Igor’s place, claiming the doctors had forbidden stress and overexertion. It was the first time in her life that she, the mother, had refused her favorite son.
Igor called, demanded things, tried to manipulate her through the grandson. “Mom, you have to! Alina can’t handle it! We gave you a grandson!” But Galina Petrovna, taught a harsh lesson by the hospital bed and by loneliness, answered curtly: “My blood pressure is bad. Hire help.”
Her relationship with Vera and Olya became steady. Not loving, but respectful.
There was one more episode.
In spite of everything, Vera bought her nephew a gift—a good winter snowsuit and a set of expensive educational rattles. She did not deliver it herself; she sent it by courier.
The next day Igor called her. His voice was drunk.
“You… are you mocking us? Tossing us charity? Alina looked at it and said the color was wrong! It doesn’t match her style! She threw everything in the trash!”
Vera only gave a dry little laugh.
“That’s her choice, Igor. I gave it to the child with a sincere heart. Your pride is your own problem.”
Later, through mutual acquaintances, she learned that Igor had slipped out that night after Alina fell asleep, gone to the dumpsters, retrieved the bag with the snowsuit—an expensive Finnish brand—and brought it back home. A week later he presented it as if it had been a gift from his mother. And Alina, smiling her fake smile, dressed her son in it for Instagram photos, captioning them: “Beloved mother-in-law spoils her grandson.”
Vera did not feel sorry for them. She felt disgusted.
A year flew by. Anton’s first birthday came and went, but Alina considered the real event to be her own birthday, which followed a week later. She planned a grand celebration. She rented a restaurant hall, hired a host, ordered a photo zone. Igor paid for it all with borrowed money—another microloan he was too ashamed to tell even his brother about.
Everyone was invited. Alina fully expected her relatives to crawl in bearing expensive gifts, because she was the mother of the heir, the center of the universe.
Vera and Alexei received their invitation in the form of an ornate card embossed in gold.
“We’re not going,” Vera said, tossing it onto the nightstand.
“Ver, it would look bad…” Alexei began.
“What’s awkward is sleeping on the ceiling, Lesha. Going to a person who wiped her feet on me and smiling at her isn’t awkward. It’s humiliating. I respect myself. And you too, by the way, even if you don’t always realize it.”
Nikolai and Olya also refused. Olya happened to have a major restoration order due, but even if she had been free, she would not have gone.
The big day arrived. The restaurant hall sparkled with lights. Alina, in a sequined dress, stood at the center of the room waiting for her triumph. The tables sagged under the weight of appetizers.
But the hall was empty.
Two of Alina’s friends came—girls just as shallow as she was, lovers of selfies. They ate, took photos, and ran off an hour later “because of other plans.” Igor came, gloomy and jittery, constantly checking his phone. Debt collectors had already begun calling.
And Galina Petrovna came.
She entered leaning on a cane. Older now, but still standing straight. In her hands she carried a modest bouquet and an envelope.
Alina rushed toward her.
“Where are they?! Where is Vera? Where is Olya? Where are your sons?! Who did I set all this up for?! Did you do this on purpose?! Is this some conspiracy?!”
Galina Petrovna slowly lowered herself into a chair. She looked around the empty hall, the untouched salads, the lonely balloons.
“No, Alina. It isn’t a conspiracy. It’s a consequence.”
“A consequence of what?! I’m the mother of your grandson! They are supposed to honor me! This is Vera, isn’t it? That bitch turned them against me! She’s always been jealous of me!”
“Vera has nothing to do with this,” her mother-in-law said quietly. “People are like mirrors, Alina. If you spit at them, don’t expect them to reflect a smile. You wanted to be a queen, with everyone serving you. Well, here you are. A queen in an empty palace.”
“Oh, to hell with all of you!” Alina grabbed the envelope from Galina Petrovna’s hands and tore it open. There was not much money inside—only as much as a pensioner could afford. “Pennies! You’re all cheap! I hate every one of you! Igor, say something to her!”
Igor stood in the corner and said nothing. He looked at his wife and, for the first time, he no longer saw a delicate flower. He saw a spiteful, greedy woman who had driven him into debt and destroyed his family ties.
“Mom… let’s go home,” he said hoarsely. “I’ll call you a taxi.”
“I’ll get there myself, son,” Galina Petrovna rose to her feet. “You stay. This is your choice. You made it yourself.”
She left them standing there together in the middle of all the festive glitter, which now looked like nothing more than garbage.
That same evening, Vera, Olya, and Galina Petrovna sat in Vera’s kitchen. No men. Just tea with mint.
Outside, a gentle snow was falling, covering the city in a clean white blanket.
“Thank you for letting me come,” Galina Petrovna said softly, warming her hands around the cup. There was no trace left in her voice of those old commanding notes—only exhaustion and wisdom that had arrived at too high a cost.
“The tea is lovely,” Olya smiled, taking a bite of a cookie. “So, have you finally gotten a closer look at the little bee, Galina Petrovna?”
Her mother-in-law gave a sad, knowing smile as she watched the steam rise from her cup.
“The minute we stopped dancing around her, the sting became obvious,” Vera said, pouring more hot water. “But do you know the most interesting thing? A bee only gets one sting. Once it uses it, it dies. And we keep living.”
Vera looked at her mother-in-law and realized her anger was gone. All that remained was a calm, cool understanding that everything had finally fallen into place. Everyone had received exactly what they deserved. The ones who worked had found peace and warm tea in a quiet kitchen. The drones were left with coldness and loneliness inside a gilded cage.
And that was justice.
