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Phone buzzed on the table, lighting up a social media notification. Tamara Igorevna, my mother-in-law, had posted a new photo. “Enjoying the Turkish sunshine!” the caption read. In the picture she was smiling happily with a cocktail in hand against a backdrop of azure sea. I zoomed in on the background. Just automatically. There, at […]

“Get away from me immediately! I can’t stand my sister and her kids anymore!” “Sveta, get out of my apartment—right now!” I can’t put up with my sister and her brats any longer. In a small town near Vladimir, where the morning shouts of the market mix with the smell of fresh rolls, my life […]

It had been only three weeks since we buried our mother, and my brother had already called an appraiser for the house. In the yard of our parents’ home in Volgograd, apples were dropping one after another, thudding dully against the ground. The house—a small two-room place from the 1970s with a wooden veranda—seemed smaller […]

Love checked the bank app notifications while she waited for the bus. Her salary as a sales manager at a large IT company allowed for a comfortable life—eighty thousand a month plus bonuses. Igor worked as a mechanic at a factory, earned about thirty thousand, and didn’t make much effort to look for anything better. […]

— “Karina, you should at least eat properly,” my mother-in-law, Zinaida Arkadyevna, said, her voice scraping my nerves like a dull knife. “You’ve gone practically transparent. What is our Dmitry thinking? Skin and bones.” I slowly lifted my eyes from the plate with the barely touched salad. The entire Voropayev family was at the table. […]

“You just don’t know how to present yourself,” Kristina drawled, stirring her cocktail with a straw. A bracelet studded with stones glittered on her wrist. She said it with that light, almost careless condescension that was her calling card. “It’s not about presentation,” Olya Yeremina answered quietly, studying a crack on her cup of cheap […]

Through the heavy curtains, the last rays of evening light seeped in, spreading across the expensive Persian rug in weary, dull streaks. The air in the living room—usually scented with rare flowers and exquisite perfume—felt heavy today, electrified, charged with the sense that a storm was coming. “Katya again? Valery, do you seriously think I’m […]

— “Mom’s turning sixty in two days, so clear out for a week—she can’t stand the sight of you,” my husband announced… Tatyana absentmindedly ran her finger over the fogged-up window, tracing strange patterns as the October evening slowly settled over the damp courtyard. The radiators hadn’t been turned on yet, and a clammy chill […]