— Yesterday I saw it myself: your “poor” mom was striding cheerfully down the alley with her friend, laughing her head off. And today—on my birthday—she’s suddenly at death’s door? How convenient! Larisa was a Scorpio. Not just by horoscope, but by her very nature—prickly, closed-off, unable to tolerate hypocrisy and lies. She was already […]
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Elena Sergeyevna scrubbed at a stain on the kitchen oilcloth for a long time. The stain was old, ground in—an orange ring left by a hot mug of tea her husband had set down three years ago, back when he was considered a healthy man. Now that stain had become her point of support. When […]
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The one-and-a-half-carat diamond ring on my left ring finger shimmered, catching the light from the crystal chandelier in the Metropol restaurant. Igor had reserved a table by the window. He said he wanted everything to be perfect for meeting his parents. I adjusted my modest black mass-market dress, which I’d bought специально for this evening […]
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Olga stood at the living-room window, watching Lena get out of her car. Lena waved, smiling broadly, and headed for the porch. The third time in two weeks already. “Ol-ya!” Lena burst into the entryway with a bouquet of roses and a bag with wine. “How could I say no? Sergey insisted so much that […]
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Katya, let’s talk.” The voice she’d hoped never to hear this close again yanked her out of pleasant thoughts of a hot bath and a new series. It surfaced from behind a massive concrete column of the office complex like a predator from ambush. The evening air—cool, smelling of exhaust and wet asphalt—suddenly felt stale […]
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Nina never liked that blazer. It hung at the very back of the wardrobe—a bulky, polished monster that took up a third of the room and smelled of mothballs mixed with old paper. Vitya called the blazer his “concert one,” even though the last time they’d been to the conservatory was in 1989. Now the […]
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Victoria held the key in her hand—small, metal, yet heavy with an entire lifetime. As if it wasn’t a key at all, but a medal for surviving a strange discipline called “five years without joy.” The cold, prickly metal burned her fingers, and not because of the February frost—because of what it meant: every morning […]
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“What are these slippers doing in our entryway?” Antonina froze on the threshold without taking off her shoes and stared at the shabby blue house slippers—blue like paint left out on a shed two summers ago. Not hers. And definitely not Sergey’s. “Mom stopped by,” her husband’s voice drifted in from the kitchen. Even. Smooth […]
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A July evening in the two-room apartment on Stroiteley Street was especially stifling. Irina sat in an armchair by the window, turning over in her mind the events of the past few weeks. A thirty-five-year-old elementary school teacher, she had always been observant and good at noticing details that slipped past others. Those traits helped […]
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Do you even realize how I feel when I come home and see that everything’s been rearranged?” Polina stood in the middle of the living room, looking at her husband. Tension rang in her voice. “I’m the one paying the mortgage, and for some reason your mother has decided that she has a share in […]
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