“Hi, Olenka! Listen, I’ve got something to ask you… not just a favor, a huge favor!” Marina’s voice, her sister-in-law, rang in the receiver with that affected enthusiasm Olya had learned to recognize as the prelude to something burdensome. “Hi, Marina. I’m listening,” Olya replied, pushing away a stack of archival folders with yellowed pages. […]
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Marina sat on the edge of the couch and counted her breaths so she wouldn’t snap. In the bedroom—a wheeled suitcase; in the hallway—Alexei’s jacket, smelling of someone else’s perfume. Behind the wall, their son was asleep. The apartment was breathing silence, like a hospital ward before an operation. Alexei was carefully folding his shirts, […]
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Natalya opened her eyes and saw a white ceiling. The bright light hurt her pupils, and the first thing that crossed her mind was where she was and why it hurt so much to breathe. Her chest felt as if it were clamped in a vise; every breath came with difficulty. “You’ve come to,” she […]
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“The apartment gets divided too,” my husband was running a ballpoint pen along the list he’d written on a sheet of graph paper. “That’s the law. Joint property.” I sat across from him in the lawyer’s office and watched the blue line slide along the rows: “Apartment on Sadovaya — split in half. Car — […]
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Lena, I’ve come back,” her ex-husband announced solemnly, as if he were declaring victory in a war. “I realized I made a huge mistake. You are the best woman in my life.” Standing on the doorstep was Viktor—her ex-husband twice over, the man she had divorced four years ago. In his hands was a bouquet […]
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Yana stood in the doorway of the apartment, holding the last box of her things. Alexei blocked her path, his face twisted with outrage. “I ALREADY EXPLAINED IT TO YOU. The divorce is finalized, the property’s divided. Your mother’s loan is not my problem.” “But you knew about that loan! We went to the bank […]
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“Why are you so fixated on my inheritance?!” Larisa snapped at her husband, who was once again sorting through the documents for the antique workshop. “It’s MINE! Want me to repeat that?” Andrey slowly raised his eyes from the folder of papers. Irritation flashed in his gaze, something he hadn’t bothered to hide for the […]
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Lena slowly raised her eyes from the book she’d been reading, curled up in the corner of the sofa. Something flickered in her brown eyes — a mix of tiredness and determination. “Yes, I didn’t let him in,” she replied calmly, slipping an old theater ticket in as a bookmark. “And I’m not going to.” […]
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Galina left the hospital at half past six. Her legs were buzzing, and her head was empty. Twelve hours in a row. A diabetic patient — coma, intensive care, the whole shift down the drain. She made it to the bus stop, sat down on a bench and closed her eyes. Just a minute. Just […]
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“Marina, baby, do you really have to go on that business trip this very weekend?” Her mother-in-law, Galina Pavlovna, was sitting in the kitchen, stirring her tea and carefully avoiding her daughter-in-law’s eyes. Marina looked up from her laptop in surprise. In three years of living with Igor, his mother had never been interested in […]
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