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“Switch apartments with your brother—he has a family, and you don’t need such a big place!” Maria Viktorovna stirred her instant coffee briskly without looking at her son. Andrei tore himself away from his phone. From the next room came the crash of cartoons and shrieking children. The air was saturated with the smell of […]

“Let the one you gave the apartment to take care of you.” The words hung in the cramped kitchen like shards of broken glass. Yulia slowly set her phone on the table beside an untouched mug of cooling tea. For a few seconds the screen still glowed with the contact “Grandma,” then went dark. She […]

Ethan went rigid. Through the SUV’s tinted glass, his seven-year-old, Lily, stared back at him, face ashen, her small fists thudding weakly against the window. The heat outside hovered near 100°F; the air felt like it could scorch a lung. Maria Lopez, the housekeeper, cried out, “She’s not breathing!” and hurled a rock again. The […]

— Come on, Anya, you’re like a child. My money is mine. Yours is yours. Totally fair, — Dima leaned back on the sofa and laughed loud and heartily. That laugh, which a year ago had seemed genuine and infectious, now clanged in my ears like cheap metal. He looked down at me, and in […]

— Redo it. I want it on my desk by morning,” my boss Tamara’s voice clanked like a bolt being drawn. She tossed a folder with the report onto my desk. The corner of the pricey leather jabbed unpleasantly into my stack of papers. “Tamara Igorevna, but we submitted this project last week. Everything was […]

— “So this wreck is all you’ve managed to earn!” — those words lashed at Zhenya the whole way. — “What were you expecting, Zhenka? A happy life? Well done, you got what you deserve!” She dropped her heavy bags and sank onto an old stump. It had all started so well… Or had she […]

Elizaveta Prokhorovna Vorontsova swept the table with a heavy, all-knowing gaze. Her whole family was gathered. Her son, Vsevolod Prokhorovich, with his wife Larisa. Her daughter, Irina Prokhorovna, with her husband Boris. And Yekaterina Borisovna, her granddaughter Katya—slender as a reed, with quiet, observant eyes that adults mistakenly took for frightened. The air smelled of […]

Elena Vladimirovna was standing at the stove, stirring soup, when her husband walked into the kitchen and tossed an invitation onto the table. “Your class reunion,” Sergei said without looking up from his phone. “This Saturday.” She glanced at the invitation. Thirty years since graduation. A pretty card with gold lettering. “You’re going, right?” she […]

Little Alyonka, a four-year-old girl, was studying the “newcomer” who had recently appeared in their courtyard. He was a gray-haired pensioner sitting on a bench. In his hands he held a cane, which he leaned on like a wizard from a fairy tale. Alyonka asked him outright: “Grandpa, are you a wizard?” Getting a no […]

Anna stood in the kitchen, immersed in pleasant chores. Outside, morning was slowly breaking, filling the room with a soft golden light. Today she had a day off—the first after weeks of intense work—and she had planned every hour in advance. “Anyuta, how about we hit the shops? Refresh your wardrobe, have a little fun?” […]