“So, you see, Natasha, life always restores balance in the end!” Herman’s voice rang with triumph and barely concealed smugness.
He blocked my way to the entrance of the apartment building, standing with his legs planted wide apart. The May evening was warm and calm, but my ex-husband clearly hadn’t come here just to enjoy the fresh air.
“You threw me out with boxes,” Herman continued dramatically, “and now fate itself is giving me support. God sees everything!”
I stopped and shifted the heavy grocery bag into my other hand. Behind Herman loomed Margarita Vasilyevna. My former mother-in-law looked unusually important, like a general before a parade. In one hand, she clutched a torn-open postal envelope. In the other, she held a bulky rustling bag, from which a straw hat for “the country house” coquettishly stuck out.
“Good evening,” I said with a polite nod. “Herman, what kind of support are you talking about? Did they give you a discounted transport pass?”
“Don’t be sarcastic,” Herman said condescendingly, adjusting the collar of his shirt and spreading his shoulders so broadly, as if invisible epaulettes had already landed on them. “We know everything. New circumstances, Natasha. Justice has been served.”
My eyes slid to the envelope in Margarita Vasilyevna’s hands, and the whole puzzle instantly came together.
A week earlier, I had received an official notice from a notary. A distant relative on my grandmother’s side, with whom I had kept a warm relationship over the past few years, had left me a large, solid house with a plot of land in the near Moscow suburbs. The place was wonderful, and the paperwork was perfectly clean. For me, it was a huge and very real stroke of luck.
But bureaucracy sometimes makes mistakes. Apparently, a duplicate notice had accidentally been sent to my old registered address — Margarita Vasilyevna’s apartment. These two had seen the notary office stamp, shamelessly opened the letter, spotted the sweet word “inheritance,” and immediately decided that fate had decided to compensate them for all their recent domestic suffering.
“Herman, fate didn’t give you anything,” I said evenly. “You simply heard the word ‘inheritance’ and already mentally placed your sofa there.”
Margarita Vasilyevna snorted indignantly and stepped forward, pushing her son slightly aside.
“Don’t be greedy!” she declared, businesslike, pulling a worn notebook from the pocket of her cardigan. “We’ve already discussed everything. We’ll live there in the summer. Gerochka needs fresh air after the divorce to recover from stress. I’ll plant vegetable beds and flowers.”
She opened the notebook, filled with large, sweeping handwriting.
“Here, I already sketched out a plan,” my former mother-in-law said, stabbing her finger at the page. “The second-floor room goes to Gera, the vegetable beds and big veranda go to Mother, and you, Natasha, simply don’t interfere. We’re not cruel people. You can come on weekends to grill shashlik, as long as you bring the food.”
They weren’t asking. They were behaving as if they had an absolute moral and legal right to someone else’s property simply because they existed.
“Herman, are you aware your mother has already assigned you a room?” I asked with a faint smile.
“We were one whole for twenty years!” Herman pressed a hand to his chest, trying to add theatrical depth to his voice. “As your former husband, I have a direct connection to your destiny. This is our shared resource, Natasha.”
“Herman, we haven’t been one whole for a long time,” I said, watching this celebration of someone else’s greed with mild disgust. “And even when we were, my relative’s inheritance didn’t become yours just because you knew how to rejoice loudly.”
It is astonishing how many people live inside a reality of their own invention. For some reason, they believe a stamp in a passport is a lifetime subscription to all of their partner’s property. But the law works differently. An inheritance received by one spouse through a will is that person’s exclusive personal property. And after a divorce, an ex-husband has no rights to it whatsoever, even if he considers himself the center of the universe.
“Natasha, you have no right to speak to me like that!” Herman frowned, realizing I was not rushing to hand him the keys. “I also invested twenty years into your life!”
“Gera, you invested an appetite, ambitions, and several bathrobes,” I replied calmly, unfastening my bag. “But inheritance is not granted according to the level of your self-confidence.”
I took out a folded copy of the will from my handbag — the very copy I had picked up from the notary that day — and handed it to my ex-husband.
“Margarita Vasilyevna, there is a mistake in the first line of your plan,” I said, nodding toward her notebook. “The heir is not Herman. The heir is me.”
Herman unfolded the paper. Margarita Vasilyevna stretched her neck, trying to peer at the text.
“But he is your former husband!” my ex-mother-in-law exclaimed with sincere outrage, refusing to believe that her summer plans were collapsing.
“Exactly. Former,” I said, taking the document back from the stunned Herman. “That is not a degree of kinship, Margarita Vasilyevna. It is a closed tab.”
Herman fell silent. In his mind, he was rereading that one line where my name — and only my name — was written in black and white. All his manufactured importance, all those squared shoulders and patronizing smiles, crumbled like old plaster. He realized there would be no country house for him. No second-floor room. No revenge.
Margarita Vasilyevna visibly deflated. She had already pictured herself as the lady of the estate. More than that, knowing her character, I had no doubt she had already told the entire building that “Gerochka now has a gorgeous house near Moscow.” Now she would have to painfully invent excuses for the neighbors as to why Gerochka would be spending the summer in her cramped apartment, staring at the television.
My former mother-in-law turned crimson with anger and disappointment. She looked at me, then shifted her scorching gaze to her slumped son.
She sharply shoved her bulky bag into his arms, and a pair of brand-new gardening gloves fell out.
“Carry it yourself!” she snapped, turning away. “You won’t be working in any garden beds now anyway!”
Herman awkwardly hugged the bag with the hat and dill seeds to his chest. He tried one last time to straighten his back and leave with dignity, but under his mother’s severe stare, he hunched even more and trudged after her.
I watched them go, feeling neither gloating nor joy.
Only absolute peace.
There are people who first divide up someone else’s happiness, then someone else’s money, then someone else’s houses. And every time, they are genuinely surprised when the door does not open in their direction.
