“Open the champagne, Igor. Today we have a very special reason to celebrate.”
Gennady Arkadyevich stood at the head of the large oak table. He always stood whenever he made a toast. A crystal glass gleamed in his hand, and his face wore the particular kind of self-satisfaction seen in people who have just decided someone else’s fate.
I sat at the far end of the table.
That seat was always reserved for me because Raisa Timofeyevna liked arranging guests according to age and importance. Igor sat beside me, obediently twisting the wire cage from the champagne bottle. Across from us sat his sister, Alina. She watched her father with shining eyes, nodding eagerly.
“What’s the occasion, Dad?” Alina asked, although her expression made it obvious that she already knew the answer.
“You’ll find out. Everything in its own time.” Gennady Arkadyevich smiled condescendingly. “Come on, son, start pouring. Raisa, move the salads closer.”
My mother-in-law gave a theatrical sigh and pushed the crystal salad bowl forward. The table was covered with Olivier salad, layered herring, and aspic—the traditional display of family prosperity.
“Yulia, darling, why aren’t you eating anything?” Raisa Timofeyevna peered at me over her glasses. “Are you on one of your diets again? Who do you think I prepared all this for?”
“I am eating, Raisa Timofeyevna. Thank you. Everything is delicious.”
“Yes, yes, of course. You’re used to restaurant food because of your job. How could our simple home cooking possibly compare?”
I said nothing and adjusted the fork on my napkin.
Inside my handbag, resting beside the leg of my chair, was a thick yellow envelope. I had collected it from the post office a month earlier. It contained three sheets of heavy paper stamped with red official seals.
I had been carrying it around ever since, almost out of habit. I still had not decided what to do with it.
“Has everyone got a drink?” Gennady Arkadyevich raised his glass. “Good. Then listen. Family is the most important thing. Family means standing together. One for all.”
Igor nodded.
He always nodded whenever his father spoke about family.
“Our Alina will be getting married soon. Young people need somewhere to live.”
“Dad, we were planning to take out a mortgage,” Alina said modestly, lowering her eyes.
“What mortgage? You think I’ll let my daughter bury herself in debt while I’m still alive? Interest rates are outrageous right now. Twenty percent! You’ll spend your entire lives working for the bank.”
I took a sip of mineral water. Igor stopped chewing.
“Our family has assets,” Gennady Arkadyevich continued, looking first at me and then at Igor. “And those assets should be put to good use. Land should not stand empty, overgrown with weeds.”
The word land seemed to hover above the table.
I looked at the man standing at its head.
Three years earlier, I had bought a plot of land—ten hundred square meters near a pine forest. I had purchased it myself, before marrying Igor, using my own savings. I had dreamed of building a small country house there.
Then we got married. There were rented apartments, car repairs, household expenses, and everyday life. The land remained untouched.
“Gennady Arkadyevich, which plot are you talking about?” I asked evenly.
“Ours, Yulia. Our family asset.” He smiled at me the way adults smile at children who ask foolish questions. “I’ve been thinking. Why should it sit there unused? Alina needs a house. The location is perfect. The forest is nearby.”
“It is my land.”
“Oh, Yulia, don’t start.” Raisa Timofeyevna pressed a hand to her chest. “We’re one family. How can you divide everything into mine and yours? Igor has invested so much money in your car, and he never keeps count.”
“The car belongs to both of us.” I looked at Igor. He was concentrating intensely on cutting his meat patty. “I bought the land before we were married.”
“Legally, yes,” Gennady Arkadyevich said, setting down his glass. “But morally, it is a resource belonging to this family. And as the head of this family, I have made a decision.”
He slipped a hand inside his jacket.
He had dressed especially for the occasion. A jacket, in his own home, on a Saturday evening.
“Igor.” I touched my husband’s sleeve. “Did you know about this?”
Igor did not look up.
“Yulia, Dad has a point. What good is the land doing just sitting there? Alina needs it more than we do.”
I slowly lowered my hands into my lap. My handbag brushed against my leg, and the yellow envelope inside rustled softly.
“How exactly are you planning to build on someone else’s property?” I asked, looking directly at my father-in-law.
He gave a smug little laugh and took a folded sheet of paper from his pocket.
“It isn’t someone else’s property anymore, Yulia. It belongs to Alina.”
THE HABIT OF GIVING THINGS AWAY
I stared at the white paper in his hand.
Three years earlier, shortly after our wedding, Gennady Arkadyevich had offered to help me.
“Yulia, the boundaries haven’t been officially surveyed. You’ll end up fighting with the neighbors over the fence. Let me handle it. I know how these gardening associations work.”
At the time, I was working around the clock. Event planning meant sleeping with my phone in my hand. I had no time to visit administrative offices or spend hours waiting at government service centers.
“Give me a general power of attorney,” he had said. “I’ll take care of everything. I’ll even pay the annual fees and taxes so you won’t have to think about them.”
So I did.
I signed a notarized power of attorney valid for three years, granting him the right to sign documents, delegate authority, and dispose of the property.
I knew it was risky. I had seen the way he commanded everyone in the family.
But I said nothing.
I gave him that document because I wanted to be a good daughter-in-law. I did not want to begin married life by showing suspicion.
That was my mistake.
My own private, quiet mistake.
I had chosen convenience over security.
“A general power of attorney gives me the right to transfer property,” Gennady Arkadyevich explained, tapping one finger against the table. “A deed of gift. Everything was done legally, through the property registry.”
“You gave my land to your daughter.”
It was not a question. I was simply stating a fact.
“I redistributed a family resource,” he corrected me. “Alina and her fiancé are starting work there tomorrow. They’ll clear the site and put up a temporary cabin.”
“Dad, thank you so much!” Alina jumped up and threw her arms around him. “Yulia, please don’t be upset. We’ll invite you over for barbecues every weekend!”
Raisa Timofeyevna dabbed at her eyes with a napkin.
“How touching. At last, our girl will have a little nest of her own. Yulia, you should be happy for her. You’re a career woman. You don’t have time for gardens and country houses. But our Alina is so domestic.”
I looked at Igor.
He sat hunched over his plate.
“Igor,” I said.
“Yulia, honestly.” He finally raised his head. There was panic in his eyes. “We weren’t doing anything with the land anyway. Dad paid all the association fees. Let’s not make a scene. We’re family.”
I remembered visiting the property a month earlier.
I had gone there for no particular reason. I simply wanted a little peace and quiet.
The plot was located at the edge of the gardening community. Beyond it was a ravine. When I bought the land, it had been nothing more than an overgrown field.
A month ago, however, I had found piles of construction waste there.
Broken bricks. Rusted reinforcing bars. Chunks of concrete. Old tires.
Someone had been dumping rubbish on the land for years. The neighbors told me the previous owner had started it, and afterward the head of the gardening association had looked the other way while people from the surrounding area continued bringing waste.
Then environmental inspectors from the district administration arrived.
I had not told Igor.
I had been trying to find a lawyer. I had submitted complaints and attempted to prove that I was not responsible for the dumping.
Three weeks later, a registered letter arrived.
The yellow envelope.
It contained a fine for maintaining an illegal waste site and an official order requiring the owner to clean the entire property at their own expense.
The fine and the estimated cost of removing forty truckloads of waste came to more than two million rubles.
“Yulia, why are you sitting there in silence?” my father-in-law asked, pulling me out of the memory. “Are you offended?”
“I’m trying to understand how this worked.” I lifted my glass of water. “You used my power of attorney to sign the deed of gift. You signed it on my behalf, transferring the land to Alina.”
“Exactly.” Gennady Arkadyevich sat down. “I handled everything properly. I waited in line at the public services office. I paid the registration fee. The land registry extract is already in Alina’s name.”
“So she is the owner now.”
“The sole legal owner.” His smile widened. “You see, Yulia, someone has to take responsibility. You young people are immature. You don’t know how to make difficult decisions. I’ve carried this family on my back my entire life—at the factory and at home. Without me pushing you, you’d still be sitting in rented apartments doing nothing. Everything I do is for your own good.”
He spoke sincerely.
He truly believed that what he had done was noble.
He had taken something from one person and given it to another simply because he had decided he had the right.
“And you weren’t even planning to invite me to this family council?” I asked.
“Why create unnecessary stress?” Raisa Timofeyevna interrupted. “You’re always unhappy about something. You always have your own opinion. Gena handled everything quietly because he wanted it to be a surprise.”
“It certainly was.”
I nodded.
THE YELLOW ENVELOPE
“Let’s drink!” Raisa Timofeyevna raised her glass. “To a new beginning! To Alina’s happiness!”
They clinked glasses.
Igor also stretched his glass toward his sister, carefully avoiding my eyes. The ringing of crystal sounded unnaturally loud.
“We’ll go see the land tomorrow,” Alina chirped. “I’ve already hired a tractor for the morning. They said they could level everything in one shift. Then we’ll put up a fence.”
“A tractor is a good idea,” Gennady Arkadyevich agreed. “You need proper machinery. The most important thing is to mark the boundaries immediately.”
I bent down and opened my handbag.
The inside smelled of old leather and mint chewing gum. My fingers found the thick paper envelope.
I had not planned to take it out.
I had come here simply to have dinner.
I had intended to tell Igor about the fine later, at home, in private, so we could decide together whether to take out a loan to pay for the cleanup.
But Igor was drinking champagne to celebrate the theft of my land.
I removed the envelope and placed it on the table beside my plate.
A yellow rectangle against the white tablecloth.
“What is that?” my father-in-law asked, narrowing his eyes.
“Documents.”
I did not push the envelope toward him. I simply placed my palm over it.
“Gennady Arkadyevich, you said that assets should be put to work.”
“I did. And this one will be.”
“You transferred the land last week?”
“The registration went through on the eighth. Why?”
I nodded.
“One month ago, the district administration conducted an environmental inspection,” I said calmly.
My voice did not tremble. I was simply listing facts, the way I did during a work briefing before an event.
“An illegal dumping site was discovered on the property. Construction waste. Hazard class four.”
The table fell silent.
Alina stopped smiling.
“What dumping site?” Igor frowned. “There was only grass there.”
“There was grass three years ago. Since then, people have been dumping concrete and tires. The head of the gardening association ignored it. Then an inspection team arrived.”
I opened the envelope and removed the three sheets.
“This is an official order requiring the owner to correct violations of environmental law.” I unfolded the first document. “And this is the administrative fine. In cases involving this volume of environmental damage, the amount is calculated individually. On top of that, the owner is legally required to transport all the waste to a licensed disposal facility.”
I slid the papers across the table toward my father-in-law.
“The total claim is two million three hundred and forty thousand rubles.”
Gennady Arkadyevich did not touch the documents.
He stared at them as though they might electrocute him.
“What do you mean, two million?” Raisa Timofeyevna rose halfway from her chair. “Yulia, what kind of joke is this? What dumping site?”
“Our family dumping site,” I said, looking at her. “The one Gennady Arkadyevich so generously redistributed.”
My father-in-law finally reached for the papers. He read quickly, his lips moving silently.
“It says here that the owner is Golubeva Yulia Andreyevna.”
“It did,” I corrected him. “The letter arrived a month ago. I was the owner then.”
“Well, there you are!” Alina exclaimed with visible relief. “It’s your fine! You were the owner, so you have to pay it.”
I turned toward my sister-in-law.
“Alina, have you ever read the Civil Code?”
She blinked.
“When ownership is transferred, the new owner assumes the obligations connected to maintaining the property. If an obligation is attached to the land itself and the administration has already issued an order, then you are now responsible for carrying it out. You have been the legal owner since the eighth.”
“That’s nonsense!” Gennady Arkadyevich barked. “The fine was issued in your name!”
“The fine was, yes. I’ll challenge it because I didn’t dump the waste there. But the order to clean the land is attached to the property. If the owner fails to remove the waste within two months, the administration can take legal action to seize the land. The cleanup alone will cost around one and a half million. I already requested estimates. Forty truckloads at forty thousand rubles per trip.”
The silence became heavy.
The only sound was the refrigerator humming in the kitchen.
“You did this on purpose,” Alina whispered.
She stared at me in horror.
“You knew about the fine, and you tricked us into taking the land!”
“Alina.” I gave a quiet laugh. “I did not give you the land. I wasn’t even invited to the family discussion, remember? Gennady Arkadyevich made the decision himself. Using the power of attorney.”
My father-in-law slowly lowered the documents onto the table.
His plan had malfunctioned.
The confidence with which he had lectured us only minutes earlier disappeared completely.
“You should have told us,” he said.
His voice was low and cold.
“Told whom?” I tilted my head. “You just explained that I’m immature and incapable of making decisions. You’re the one who carries responsibility for the whole family. So carry it. Two million three hundred and forty thousand rubles’ worth of responsibility.”
I turned toward Alina.
“You said you hired a tractor for tomorrow? Excellent. You can start loading the rubbish.”
“Yulia!” Igor jumped to his feet.
His chair crashed backward.
“What are you doing? That’s an enormous amount of money! Where is Alina supposed to get that kind of money?”
“I don’t have that kind of money!” Alina burst into tears. “Dad, do something! Cancel the gift!”
“A deed of gift cannot simply be canceled,” I said, carefully folding my napkin. “Unless I attempt to kill you. And I have no plans to do that.”
“We can terminate the agreement by mutual consent!” Gennady Arkadyevich slammed his fist against the table. “Tomorrow we’ll go to the public services office and transfer it back to you.”
“No.”
“What do you mean, no?”
“I mean exactly that.”
I stood up.
“I’m not signing anything. I don’t want land covered in illegal waste and tied to an environmental claim. You wanted an asset. You took it. Now you can own it.”
Raisa Timofeyevna grabbed her chest.
“Gena, my blood pressure…” she moaned. “My poor girl. My poor Alina. Why is this happening to us?”
She was not angry with her husband, the man who had caused the entire disaster.
She was grieving over the cruelty of the world.
The victim had returned to her favorite role.
“You won’t get away with this,” Gennady Arkadyevich said, glaring at me from beneath lowered brows.
His voice became quiet and threatening.
“We’ll drag you through every court in the country. We’ll prove that you deliberately misled us.”
“Go ahead.” I shrugged. “I didn’t transfer anything. You signed the documents. I learned about the transaction fifteen minutes ago, in front of witnesses. Over champagne.”
I looked at Igor.
He stood between his father and me, his eyes moving helplessly from one face to the other.
“Are you coming home?” I asked him.
He remained silent, staring at the crumpled napkin beside his plate.
“Yulia, how can you behave like this?” he muttered. “We have to solve this like decent people. This is Dad. This is Alina.”
“I understand.”
I picked up my handbag and closed the zipper.
No one tried to stop me.
Gennady Arkadyevich sat staring at the yellow papers. Alina sobbed loudly, smearing mascara down her cheeks. Raisa Timofeyevna checked her pulse.
I walked into the hallway, put on my coat and shoes, and opened the front door.
The lock clicked behind me.
The air outside was cool.
I walked to the bus stop and ordered a taxi. The app said the journey would take forty minutes.
I climbed into the back seat and watched the streetlights pass beyond the window.
I had not won.
The land I had chosen three years earlier was gone. The problems had gone with it, but that did not make me feel any lighter.
Igor had remained behind at the table, trying to rescue his father from the consequences of his own decisions.
I took out my phone and opened my banking app.
I transferred my half of the rent for the following month.
Only my half.
Then I opened an online marketplace.
For a long time, I had wanted to buy myself a good leather backpack to replace the old handbag that seemed designed to carry nothing but other people’s powers of attorney and yellow envelopes.
I pressed “Pay.”
The money left my account.
The order status changed to “Preparing for Delivery.”
I put away my phone and closed my eyes.
