“Let her transfer the country house to you first, and then you can divorce her without any trouble,” Galina Arkadyevna’s voice carried so clearly through the open window that Lydia stopped in the middle of the garden path. “The important thing is not to rush her. Don’t let her suspect anything.”
Only a minute earlier, Lydia had been thinking about how foolish it was to come to the country house in her office clothes.
Wednesday had been hot and stuffy. After a full day at work, all she had wanted was to go home, but that morning a neighbor from the gardening community had sent her a photo. During the night, a strong gust of wind had broken a large branch from the old apple tree, and it had fallen beside the greenhouse.
Lydia decided not to wait until Friday. She drove out after work, taking a pair of gloves and a folding saw with her.
Arseny was certain his wife wouldn’t arrive until the weekend.
His car was parked in the yard.
Beside it stood his mother’s white car.
Lydia had noticed both vehicles as soon as she reached the gate, but she assumed Arseny had brought his mother to pick vegetables.
She had been about to call out a greeting when she heard her own name.
 
Now she stood silently near the porch, her keys clenched in her palm.
“What if she changes her mind?” Arseny asked from inside the house.
“She won’t. Just don’t pressure her. Lydia is stubborn. The harder you push, the more she resists. You have to handle her carefully.”
Lydia slowly removed her hand from the door handle.
Galina Arkadyevna was speaking in exactly the same calm tone she used when discussing which laundry detergent was better or when the zucchini should be harvested.
There was no nervousness in her voice.
No hesitation.
It sounded as though she were talking about an ordinary family matter.
“The property is good,” her mother-in-law continued. “The house is old, of course, but land is valuable now. Once half of it belongs to you, you’ll be in a completely different position.”
 
Lydia took out her phone.
Her first instinct was to walk inside and ask whether she was interrupting their business meeting.
But almost immediately, she changed her mind.
If they were speaking this openly, it was better to hear everything.
She turned on the voice recorder, lowered the brightness of the screen, and stepped slightly away from the window so they wouldn’t notice her from inside.
“I’m already thinking about divorce,” Arseny said. “I just don’t want to drag it out for several more months.”
“You’ll survive.”
“Easy for you to say, Mom.”
“And is it easy for you to leave this marriage with nothing except your grandmother’s apartment? How many years have you two been married?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“It has everything to do with it. She has an apartment, a country house, and a car. And you’re going to walk away with exactly what you brought into the marriage.”
Lydia almost smiled.
So that was the great injustice Arseny had apparently been suffering from all these years.
He might leave the marriage with his own property instead of hers.
She remained completely still.
Every new sentence was becoming more revealing than the one before it.
Lydia had bought the country property five years earlier.
 
At the time, Arseny had not even existed in her life.
Calling it a “country house” had almost seemed too generous back then. It was a small plot in an old gardening cooperative, with a modest wooden cottage, a crooked porch, a shed, and an overgrown corner where the previous owner had dumped old boards for years.
None of that frightened Lydia.
She simply wanted a place where she could escape after a long workweek, open the windows, walk barefoot through the grass, and spend at least a couple of days without hearing neighbors through the walls of her city apartment.
She bought the property with her own money.
During the first year, she replaced part of the roof and repaired the porch.
The second year, she installed proper running water inside the cottage.
 
Later she replaced the electrical wiring, ordered new gates, and demolished an old outbuilding that had nearly collapsed.
She improved the place gradually.
Not because she dreamed of building some grand countryside estate, but because she loved seeing the results of her own decisions and work.
Arseny came later.
They met through mutual friends at a summer festival in the city.
They dated for about nine months.
Sometimes they went to the country house together. Sometimes they spent weekends at Lydia’s apartment. Neither of them rushed to move in together.
That had actually been one of the things she liked about him.
He didn’t immediately try to take over half her closet.
He didn’t start calling her apartment “ours” after spending three nights there.
And he never seemed interested in property that had nothing to do with him.
After nine months, they decided to live together.
Arseny moved into Lydia’s three-bedroom apartment.
It had also belonged to her long before she met him.
About a year later, they officially married.
 
The country house remained Lydia’s separate property, exactly as it had been before the wedding.
Arseny knew that.
For years he showed no interest in the legal details.
He came along on weekends, fixed small things, grilled meat outside, and mowed the grass.
Sometimes he complained that Lydia spent too much time working on the property.
During winter, he occasionally suggested selling it.
“We don’t even go there for half the year.”
“I like it,” Lydia would reply.
“Well, if you like it, fine.”
And that was usually the end of the conversation.
Everything changed in the spring.
 
Arseny suddenly began talking about building a new house.
At first he showed Lydia several photographs.
“Look at these. They build prefab houses like this now. We could tear the old cottage down, put up a new one, and even come here in winter.”
Lydia looked through the designs.
Some of them genuinely appealed to her.
Arseny became unexpectedly enthusiastic.
He found a contractor he claimed he knew through someone else and said the man could organize a construction team.
For several evenings in a row, he discussed foundations, insulation, layouts, and the size of the future house.
Lydia actually started to believe her husband had finally grown to love the property.
Then a new subject appeared.
“If we’re going to build something serious,” Arseny said one evening, “we should transfer half the land into my name.”
Lydia looked up from her laptop.
“Why?”
“Because I’ll be investing in it. It would be strange to build a house on land I legally have no connection to.”
His argument sounded reasonable on the surface.
“We haven’t even seen an estimate yet.”
“We’ll get one.”
“Then we’ll discuss it.”
Arseny didn’t argue.
 
A week later, he brought home printed house plans.
Then he showed her messages from the contractor.
A few days later, he returned to the property issue again.
“If I’m putting my money and effort into this, I need some security.”
“What kind of security?”
“That you won’t say tomorrow, ‘Thanks for the new house, now get out.’”
Lydia had laughed at the time.
“You’re already preparing to be thrown out?”
“I’m just being realistic.”
Standing beneath the open window now, Lydia remembered that sentence especially well.
He really had been preparing.
Just not for what she had assumed.
“What did she say the last time you brought it up?” Galina Arkadyevna asked.
“She said she’d think about it.”
“Excellent. That means she didn’t refuse.”
“She’s been thinking for two months.”
“Arseny, things like this aren’t done overnight.”
“She could at least transfer it as a gift.”
Lydia tightened her grip on the phone.
So they had even chosen the legal method.
Not a sale.
Not an agreement connected to future construction expenses.
A gift.
 
She kept listening.
“I told her there’s no point starting construction without putting part of it in my name,” Arseny said.
“Good. But don’t bring it up again for a little while.”
“Why not?”
“If you rush her, she’ll get suspicious.”
“She already asked why I suddenly care so much about the property.”
“Exactly.”
Galina Arkadyevna paused.
“Wait until autumn. It’s August now. Once she gives you the share, live normally for another month. In October, tell her the relationship is over. That way no one can accuse you of taking the property and immediately leaving.”
Lydia closed her eyes for a few seconds.
How thoughtful.
Her mother-in-law had even calculated how much time should pass between the transfer and the divorce so it would look more respectable.
Arseny, however, was less patient.
“I don’t want to wait until October.”
 
“Why?”
“She’s asking questions.”
“What questions?”
“She asked why the new house has to belong to both of us. She asked why I never wanted to build anything there before. Last week she asked why I needed a copy of the cadastral number.”
Lydia frowned.
That part was new.
Arseny had indeed asked for the cadastral information, claiming the contractor needed it to determine where the new house could be placed on the plot.
“And what did you tell her?” his mother asked.
“That it was for the project.”
“Did she believe you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then stop rushing.”
“No. We need to move faster. I’ll talk to her again next week. I’ll say the contractor won’t wait.”
“Just be gentle about it.”
“I know.”
 
The conversation continued for another ten minutes.
During those ten minutes, Lydia learned that her husband had been thinking about divorce for months.
That his mother knew about it.
That what they were discussing was not whether he should end the marriage, but how he could acquire part of Lydia’s property before doing so.
She also learned that Arseny wasn’t particularly interested in building a new house at all.
The contractor was mostly part of the performance.
Then the conversation shifted.
Galina Arkadyevna began discussing what they should cook for the weekend.
Lydia stopped the recording.
There was no reason to remain near the window.
She quietly walked back toward the gate and stepped onto the road.
Two houses away lived Svetlana Sergeyevna, a retired woman who stayed in the gardening community year-round and kept an eye on neighboring properties.
Whenever Lydia traveled for long periods or stayed away during winter, she left a spare gate key with Svetlana in case of problems with the water or electricity.
The neighbor was watering flowers in front of her house.
 
“Lidochka? I thought you weren’t coming until Friday.”
“So did I.”
Svetlana looked at her more carefully.
“Did something happen?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
Lydia asked for the spare key.
“Did you lose yours?”
“No. I just want this one back. I’ll bring you another sometime if necessary.”
Svetlana didn’t ask questions.
Lydia put the key in her bag, walked to the car, and drove away.
She didn’t call Arseny.
She didn’t send the recording to his mother.
She didn’t compose sarcastic messages.
Even the music in the car played as usual while she drove home.
Only one thing had changed.
Lydia now knew that later that evening she would be sitting across from a man who had spent months pretending to plan a future countryside home with her while privately discussing when to divorce her.
She arrived home before he did.
She changed clothes, opened her laptop, and finished a work email she hadn’t managed to send from the office.
Then she made dinner.
Arseny came home around eight.
“Have you been home long?” he asked.
“About an hour and a half.”
He took off his shoes and went into the kitchen.
Nothing in his expression suggested that only a few hours earlier he had been discussing a plan with his mother to obtain half of someone else’s property.
“I stopped by the country house today,” he said while opening the refrigerator.
Lydia looked up.
“Why?”
“To check the roof. After that wind, you never know.”
 
“And?”
“Everything’s fine.”
He said nothing about his mother.
“Were you there alone?”
Arseny hesitated.
Only for a second.
“Yes.”
Lydia looked at him and nodded.
“I see.”
He sat down for dinner.
For about ten minutes he talked about work, complained about traffic, and then, as if the thought had just casually occurred to him, returned to the very subject behind the entire performance.
“I’ve been thinking again about the country house.”
Lydia continued eating.
“And?”
“We really need to stop thinking of everything as yours and mine.”
She almost laughed.
Only hours earlier, his mother had been explaining why it was so important for him to obtain exactly half of what was still hers.
“Interesting idea.”
Arseny brightened.
“Exactly. We’ve been married for years. What’s the point of living like two separate people?”
“No point at all.”
He clearly hadn’t expected such quick agreement.
“So you understand?”
“Of course.”
“Then maybe next week we can go and get everything arranged.”
Lydia placed her fork beside her plate.
“Sure.”
Arseny smiled.
“Really?”
“But we’ll start with your apartment.”
His smile vanished.
 
“What apartment?”
“The one-bedroom apartment you inherited from your grandmother.”
He frowned.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“We just decided we should stop dividing property into yours and mine.”
Arseny leaned back in his chair.
“Lida, don’t mix up completely different things.”
“How are they different?”
“That apartment came from my grandmother.”
“I know.”
“It’s a memory of her.”
“I’m not arguing.”
“And inherited property is personal property.”
“Exactly.”
Lydia watched him with open curiosity.
Arseny became increasingly irritated.
“You know perfectly well what I mean.”
“Not yet.”
“The country house is different.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re going to build there together.”
“We haven’t started.”
“We will.”
“Then here’s a simple solution. Transfer half your grandmother’s apartment to me. After that, we can return to the question of transferring half my country property to you.”
Arseny pushed himself abruptly away from the table.
“I’m not transferring my apartment to anyone.”
“Not even your wife?”
“That’s completely different!”
“Why?”
“Because property is property. You never know what might happen.”
Lydia raised one eyebrow.
“For example, divorce?”
Arseny stared at her.
“What does divorce have to do with anything?”
“Just an example.”
 
“I’m not going to risk my apartment.”
“But you want me to risk my country house.”
“I’m your husband!”
“And I’m your wife.”
Silence filled the kitchen for several seconds.
Arseny stood up and walked toward the window.
“You know, sometimes it’s impossible to talk to you. You turn everything into some kind of competition.”
“I’m simply offering you exactly what you’re offering me.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Fine. Then yours remains yours. Mine remains mine.”
He turned sharply.
“That attitude is exactly why we can’t have a normal family.”
Lydia looked at him calmly.
“Did you really go to the country house today to check the roof?”
Arseny immediately became cautious.
“What else would I go for?”
“Just asking.”
He didn’t answer right away.
“Yes. The roof.”
Lydia didn’t return to the subject after dinner.
But now there was no doubt left.
The man who had just spent twenty minutes explaining why he would never risk his inherited apartment had spent the afternoon planning how to persuade his wife to give him half of her land.
The next morning, Lydia left for work before Arseny.
Before leaving, she opened the cabinet where she kept documents for the apartment, car, and country property.
She removed every document connected to the land.
The purchase agreement.
Registry extracts.
 
Cadastral papers.
Old receipts.
Everything went into a separate folder.
She took it to work and locked it inside a metal cabinet for which only she had the key.
While checking the remaining papers, she noticed several loose sheets between the folders.
At first she assumed they belonged to Arseny.
Then she saw the heading.
Documents Required for the Gift Transfer of a Share in a Land Plot.
Lydia sat on the edge of the bed and read the entire page.
Several items had been marked with a pen.
Owner’s passport.
Recipient’s passport.
Proof of ownership.
Registry extract.
Cadastral information.
Another sheet contained handwritten questions that Arseny apparently intended to clarify.
Now Lydia understood why he had needed information about the land and why he had repeatedly asked where the property documents were kept.
She photographed the papers and returned them to exactly where she had found them.
There was no possibility of secretly transferring the property without her participation.
No forged loan.
No hidden transfer.
No false signature.
Arseny couldn’t legally give himself a share of property that belonged to her.
But he had certainly been preparing thoroughly.
That evening, he came home later than usual.
Lydia was waiting in the living room.
“Arseny, we need to talk.”
He glanced at the clock.
“Can we do it tomorrow? I’m tired.”
“No. Today.”
From her tone, he immediately understood that this wasn’t about some household issue.
He sat across from her.
“What happened?”
“I was at the country house yesterday.”
For several seconds, Arseny simply stared at her.
“Yesterday?”
“Wednesday.”
“You said you were going Friday.”
“Plans changed.”
“What time did you get there?”
That was exactly the question Lydia had expected.
Not why she hadn’t told him.
Not whether the broken branch had caused damage.
Not why he hadn’t seen her.
What time?
She picked up her phone.
“About the same time your mother was explaining that after I transferred half the property to you, you should tolerate me for a little longer before filing for divorce.”
Arseny went pale.
“What?”
 
Lydia played the recording.
Galina Arkadyevna’s voice came through the speaker.
“Let her transfer the country house to you first, and then divorce her. The important thing is not to rush her and not to give yourself away.”
Lydia stopped the audio.
Arseny didn’t ask what else she had heard.
There was no point.
He looked at the phone for several seconds before raising his eyes.
“Lida, it’s not what you think…”
“What part isn’t?”
“Mom was just…”
“Don’t.”
“You took one sentence out of context.”
“I recorded much more than one sentence.”
Arseny rubbed his chin with his palm.
 
“We really did discuss divorce.”
“I heard.”
“But I hadn’t made a final decision.”
Lydia gave a short laugh.
“Interesting. The divorce date still wasn’t final, but you already had a checklist for transferring the property as a gift.”
This time his reaction was more obvious.
“You went through my things?”
“The papers were mixed in with documents related to my property.”
“I was just looking into the procedure.”
“Of course.”
“I wasn’t trying to deceive you.”
“Then explain why your mother told you not to give anything away.”
Arseny fell silent.
Lydia waited.
This time she had no intention of helping him create an excuse.
“I really was thinking about divorce,” he finally said. “Things between us haven’t been good for a long time.”
“Maybe.”
“And yes, I thought it was unfair that after all these years I would leave with nothing.”
“You have an apartment.”
“A tiny one-bedroom apartment.”
“It belongs to you.”
“But we used the country house together.”
“Using something and owning it are not the same thing.”
“I worked there too.”
“You mowed the grass and repaired the fence a couple of times.”
“So now you’re going to count everything?”
“After you tried to obtain half my land before divorcing me? Absolutely.”
Arseny raised his voice.
“I didn’t get anything!”
“Because you didn’t have time.”
He fell silent.
That sentence landed harder than any accusation.
Lydia stood.
“Since you’ve already been planning a divorce for months, I suggest we don’t wait until October.”
“You’re serious?”
“Completely.”
 
“And you’re just going to end everything like this?”
“I didn’t invent the ending. You simply planned to tell me about it later, after I transferred part of the property.”
“Lydia…”
“You’re not getting a share. I’ve removed the documents. And I’m not dragging out the divorce either.”
Arseny jumped to his feet.
“You can’t just throw me out of the apartment.”
Lydia looked at him.
“I can ask you to move out of my apartment. You’re not an owner here.”
“I’m your husband.”
“For now.”
“Where am I supposed to go?”
“To the one-bedroom apartment you spent twenty minutes defending yesterday as precious family property.”
He opened his mouth, then closed it.
There was nothing he could say.
Arseny continued arguing.
He said they needed at least a few days to think.
Then he claimed Lydia was acting emotionally.
After that he tried blaming his mother, saying the whole idea had come from her and he had merely listened.
Lydia picked up her phone again.
“Would you like me to play the part where you say you need to hurry and bring up the gift transfer again next week?”
Arseny turned away.
“No.”
“Then pack your things.”
He didn’t take everything that evening.
He loaded clothes, his laptop, documents, and several boxes of personal belongings into his car.
They agreed he would return the next day for the rest while Lydia was present.
She took his apartment key immediately.
Arseny wanted to keep it until the following day.
“Why?” Lydia asked.
“I still need to collect my things.”
“I’ll be home. I’ll open the door.”
“You really don’t trust me anymore?”
Lydia stared at him in disbelief.
“Are you seriously asking me that?”
He placed the key on the entryway table.
After he left, Lydia brought out a replacement lock cylinder she had bought some time earlier as a spare.
She got her tools and changed the lock herself.
Twenty minutes later, the door worked with a completely new key.
The following day, Arseny returned for the rest of his belongings.
Their conversation was brief.
He asked once more whether Lydia truly wanted a divorce.
“You wanted one before I did.”
“I could have changed my mind.”
 
“Before or after I transferred the property?”
Arseny frowned.
“Are you going to repeat that for the rest of your life?”
“No. After the divorce, I won’t have any reason to discuss my country house with you at all.”
They had no minor children together.
Neither intended to dispute jointly acquired property.
Arseny had no ownership rights to Lydia’s apartment or country property because both had been acquired by her before the marriage.
Likewise, the apartment inherited from his grandmother remained his separate property.
Once they both agreed to end the marriage without a property dispute, they filed the necessary divorce paperwork.
Galina Arkadyevna called Lydia several days later.
At first, she tried to speak as though the entire situation had been nothing more than a misunderstanding.
“I was only worried about my son.”
“So you advised him to obtain part of my country property before divorcing me?”
“Not the whole property. Just a share. He spent plenty of time there too.”
“Then he can count the hours and keep the memories.”
Her mother-in-law raised her voice.
“You were always far too calculating.”
“That’s exactly why the property is still mine.”
Lydia ended the call.
She had no desire to continue calculating who owed whom what after all the years of marriage.
Everything important had already been said beside that open window.
On Friday, Lydia went to the country house after all.
Just as she had originally planned.
Only this time, she went alone.
The August evening was warm.
Svetlana Sergeyevna waved to her over the fence.
“So, did you finally deal with that broken branch?”
Lydia looked toward the apple tree.
The branch was still lying beside the greenhouse.
“I’m about to.”
She changed clothes, took out the saw, and started trimming away the thinner limbs.
The work took less than an hour.
Afterward she walked around the property, checked the cottage door, locked the shed, and collected another old set of keys she had once made for Arseny.
The following weekend, she replaced the lock on the country house as well.
Not because she expected her former husband to appear in the middle of the night.
She simply no longer wanted to wonder how many copies of the keys might still exist in the hands of a man who had quietly studied the documents to her land.
Galina Arkadyevna had created what she believed was a careful plan.
Her son was supposed to spend several more weeks pretending to be a loving husband.
He would persuade Lydia to give him half the country property.
 
He would wait until autumn.
Then he would announce the divorce.
That way, Arseny would leave the marriage not only with his own apartment, but also with a share of his wife’s land.
They had considered almost everything.
Almost.
What they had failed to account for was one ordinary Wednesday in August.
Lydia arrived at the country house two days earlier than expected.
Not because she suspected anything.
Not because she wanted to check on her husband.
Not because some instinct warned her that something was wrong.
She came because a branch had broken off an old apple tree.
And one sentence, overheard by pure accident through an open window, made the divorce happen much sooner than her mother-in-law had planned.
The country house, however, never became part of it.
