My Mother-in-Law Demanded a Restaurant for 60 Guests. I Said One Word, and She Fell Silent

My Mother-in-Law Demanded a Restaurant for 60 Guests. I Said One Word, and She Fell Silent
Galina Petrovna wanted a lavish wedding for her son. Sixty people, a restaurant, live music. Her daughter-in-law said one word, and the room went quiet.
The notebook appeared on Wednesday.
Galina Petrovna placed it on the kitchen table exactly between the sugar bowl and the little dish of dry biscuits, opened it to the first page, and ran her finger down the list. Sixty names. Some were underlined twice.
“Here,” she said without looking up. “I’ve thought everything through.”
Rita stood at the stove, stirring buckwheat. The spatula scraped along the bottom of the pot, and that sound was the only one in the apartment because Lyosha had not yet come home from work.
“Sixty people,” her mother-in-law continued. “That’s the minimum. I haven’t even added Zoya Vladimirovna yet, and she’ll be offended.”
Rita turned off the burner. The buckwheat smelled slightly burned. She had known this conversation would happen. She just hadn’t known the notebook would be so thick.
She and Lyosha had filed their marriage application two weeks earlier. Quietly, without announcements. They had gone to the registry office on Butyrskaya during their lunch break because they both worked nearby and it was convenient. Lyosha held her hand while the girl behind the counter filled out the form. His fingers were warm and slightly damp.
“June twenty-seventh,” the girl said. “Will that work?”
Lyosha looked at Rita. She nodded.
It was drizzling outside, so they went into the coffee shop across the street. Lyosha ordered an Americano, and Rita got tea with lemon. The mug was hot, and she warmed her palms against it, even though May was already warm.
“Should we tell Mom tonight?” he asked.
“Let’s do it tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow is Sunday. She’ll come with a pie.”
“Then we’ll tell her over pie.”
He smiled. Lyosha had a habit of smiling with only one side of his mouth, the left, as if the right side disagreed. Rita had known that smile for four years. Exactly as long as they had been together.
The pie on Sunday turned out to be cherry. Galina Petrovna brought it in foil, as always, placed it on the table, as always, and said, “Cut it while it’s hot,” as always. She was fifty-seven and wore burgundy blouses because her husband had once told her that burgundy suited her. Her husband had been gone for eight years, but the blouses remained.
Lyosha told her about the wedding between the second and third slice of pie. He simply said they had filed the application and that the date was June twenty-seventh.
Galina Petrovna put down her fork. Neatly, parallel to the edge of the plate.
“Lyoshenka.”
“Mom.”

“June twenty-seventh. That’s in five weeks.”
“Yes.”
She shifted her gaze to Rita. Her mother-in-law’s eyes were light brown, almost amber, and when she looked like that, without blinking, there was something feline in them, like a cat waiting patiently.
“And when were you planning to tell me?”
“We’re telling you now,” Rita replied.
“Two weeks after filing the application.”
“We wanted to get used to the idea ourselves first.”
Galina Petrovna said nothing. She picked up her fork, cut off a piece of pie, but did not put it in her mouth. She held it in the air.
“All right,” she said. “All right.”
And that evening, she said nothing more about the wedding. But as it turned out, she had started the notebook the very next day.
Rita worked as a logistics coordinator at a small transport company near Paveletskaya. Her salary was forty-eight thousand rubles, and it wasn’t much, but it was stable. Lyosha earned more. He was an engineer at a design bureau, but “more” meant seventy thousand, not seven hundred. A rented one-room apartment in Bibirevo, the metro twenty minutes away on foot, and a balcony that could fit one chair.
They were not poor. But they didn’t have extra money either.
They wanted a small wedding. Rita dreamed of something simple: sign the papers, have lunch with the closest people in some café, around ten guests. Rita’s mother lived in Kaluga and would come with her stepfather. Her friend Zhenya. Lyosha’s friend Pasha with his wife. Lyosha’s mother. Maybe two or three more people.
She had talked about this with Lyosha, and he had agreed. He had nodded with that same left side of his mouth.
“I don’t need a circus,” Rita said. “I need you and a decent lunch.”
“I agree.”
And everything had been decided.
Until Wednesday.
Galina Petrovna was standing in the hallway, not yet having taken off her beige coat, when she pulled the notebook out of her bag. Rita had only just opened the door for her.
“I won’t stay long,” her mother-in-law said. “No tea.”
But she went into the kitchen, sat down, and opened the notebook.
“Here,” she began. “These are my coworkers. Former coworkers. Human resources, accounting, planning department. There were twelve of us, and we still call each other.”
Rita silently sat down opposite her.
“Here are the relatives. Aunt Valya from Tula, she has already asked. Uncle Zhenya and Natasha. The cousins: Olya, Sveta, Marinka. Marinka is in Voronezh, true, but she’ll come, I know she will.”
“Galina Petrovna…”
“Wait. Here are the neighbors. Nina Fyodorovna, Tamara from the fifth floor. They helped when we buried your father-in-law. We can’t not invite them.”
Her mother-in-law lifted her head. The kitchen smelled of cooling buckwheat and a little of chlorine from the washed floor. Outside the window, the avenue hummed.
“Sixty people,” Galina Petrovna repeated. “It’s not a whim. These are people who have known Lyosha since birth. People who supported me when Vitya died. People we cannot leave out.”
Rita looked at the list. Her mother-in-law’s handwriting was small, slanted, with little curls on certain letters. Penmanship school, Rita thought. Or a habit impossible to erase.
“I found a restaurant,” Galina Petrovna continued. “‘Beryozka’ on Dmitrovka. The hall holds eighty, but they can arrange it for sixty. Banquet, three courses, live music. A four-tier cake with swans.”
“With swans,” Rita repeated.
“With swans. It’s beautiful.”
Rita stood up. She went to the stove and moved the pot from one burner to another. Not because it was necessary. Her hands simply needed to move.
“How much does it cost?” she asked without turning around.
“I asked. At current prices, for sixty people, with music and cake, it comes to about four hundred and fifty thousand.”
Rita turned around.
“Four hundred and fifty thousand.”
“It can be a little cheaper without live music. But Lyosha likes live music.”
“Lyosha likes a guitar in the kitchen.”
“That’s different.”
Rita sat down again. She ran her finger along the edge of the table. There was a long scratch on the tabletop from a knife. She always caught it with her fingernail when she was nervous.
Lyosha came home at eight. He smelled of gasoline and something metallic. He kissed the top of Rita’s head, as usual. Then he saw the notebook on the table.
“Is this Mom’s?”
“Guess.”
He sat down and flipped through it. His eyebrows crept upward. He had thick dark brows, almost meeting over the bridge of his nose, and when they rose, two deep lines appeared on his forehead.
“Sixty people,” he said.
“Sixty.”
“Aunt Valya from Tula.”
“And Marinka from Voronezh. She’ll come, your mother knows.”
Lyosha closed the notebook. He rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“I’ll talk to her.”
“You always say that.”
“Because I always do talk to her.”
“And then you always do what she wants.”
He said nothing. Not because there was nothing to say. Because she was right, and they both knew it.
Rita put the notebook into the table drawer. She placed a towel on top of it. As if that could help.
The next evening, Galina Petrovna called. Rita was in the bathroom, brushing her teeth. The phone vibrated on the washing machine, the screen glowing with her mother-in-law’s name.
She spat out the toothpaste, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and answered.
“Ritochka, I’ve been thinking some more.”
“Good morning, Galina Petrovna. It’s evening already, but all right.”
“The Beryozka restaurant is free on Saturday. The twenty-seventh is Saturday, just right. I can pay the deposit tomorrow.”
“No.”
“What do you mean, no?”
“No deposit needs to be paid.”
“Why?”
“Because Lyosha and I planned a small wedding. Ten people. In a café.”
There was silence on the line. Rita could hear a television somewhere behind her mother-in-law’s wall. Some talk show, muffled voices.
“In a café,” Galina Petrovna repeated.
“Yes.”
“Ten people.”
“Maybe twelve.”
“Rita. My son is getting married once.”
“I’m getting married once too. And I don’t need swans on the cake.”
Her mother-in-law was silent for a moment. Then she said quietly but firmly:
“I thought you would understand. Vitya didn’t live to see this. He wanted so much to see Lyosha’s wedding. And if I cannot invite him, then at least let there be people who remember him.”
Rita leaned against the cold bathroom tile. Her legs felt heavy.
She had not expected that. She had not expected that behind the notebook and the swans stood a man who was no longer alive.
“Galina Petrovna,” she said. “I’ll call you back.”
And she hung up.
That night, she lay beside Lyosha and stared at the ceiling. The streetlamp outside drew a stripe across it, and the stripe trembled whenever cars passed the window.
Lyosha slept on his side, facing the wall. He breathed evenly, with a slight whistle on every exhale.
Rita thought.
Four hundred and fifty thousand. It was almost their entire safety cushion. The money they had saved for the down payment on a mortgage. For more than a year, they had been putting aside little by little, denying themselves a vacation, new boots for Lyosha — he was walking around in old ones with a cracked sole patched with electrical tape — and weekend dinners at restaurants.
And Galina Petrovna wanted to spend it on one evening.
With swans.
But she didn’t know about the mortgage. They hadn’t told her. Every time, Lyosha waved it away: why burden Mom, we’ll handle it ourselves.
And now his mother had made a list of sixty people because she wanted her dead husband to look at his son through the eyes of those who remembered him.
Rita turned onto her side. She pulled the blanket up to her chin. Her fingers found the edge of the pillowcase and began to knead it, folding it into tiny pleats.
Why did she need swans? Why did she need three courses? Why did she need Aunt Valya from Tula, whom she had never seen?
But Galina Petrovna’s voice rang in her ears: “Vitya didn’t live to see this.”
And Rita did not know what to do with that.
In the morning, she called her mother.
Her mother lived in Kaluga, in a five-story building on the outskirts, with Rita’s stepfather Boris, who repaired washing machines and stayed silent at dinner. Her mother worked as a nurse at a clinic, and she had a low, hoarse voice, like a woman who had been tired for a long time but refused to show it.
“Mom, my mother-in-law wants a wedding for sixty people.”
“Wow.”
“In a restaurant. With live music. With a cake with swans.”
“Beautiful.”
“Four hundred and fifty thousand.”
A pause. Rita heard her mother moving something around in the kitchen. A glass clinked against the sink.
“Who’s paying?”
“Exactly.”
“She is?”
“She’s retired, Mom. Her pension is twenty-three thousand. Plus a little from tutoring; she teaches math.”
“So you are.”
“So we are.”
Her mother sighed. Not heavily, but the way people sigh when they know the answer yet want to let their daughter arrive at it herself.

“Ritka, did you talk to her properly?”
“I said no.”
“No is not a conversation. No is a wall. And right now, she doesn’t need a wall.”
“What does she need?”
“For you to hear why she wants this.”
Rita sat on the windowsill. The balcony door was slightly open, and the morning coolness drifted in. Down below, the yard keeper scraped a shovel along the asphalt, even though there was nothing to scrape. Just habit.
“She said Viktor Pavlovich didn’t live to see it.”
“There you go.”
“Mom, that’s still not a reason to spend half a million on a banquet.”
“It isn’t. But it is a reason to sit down and talk. Not by phone, not through Lyosha. The two of you. Over tea.”
Rita said nothing.
“Ritka?”
“I’m thinking.”
“Think. But don’t take too long. The wedding is in four weeks.”
She dragged it out for three days.
On Thursday, Galina Petrovna sent a photo of the hall at Beryozka. White tablecloths, crystal glasses, a wall panel with birch trees. Caption: “Beautiful, isn’t it?”
Rita did not reply.
On Friday, her mother-in-law called Lyosha. He spoke in the hallway, quietly, but the walls in a one-room apartment were like paper, and Rita heard every word.
“Mom, we decided on a small wedding… No, Mom… No, I understand… Mom, wait…”
He came back into the room looking as though he had been standing in the wind for an hour.
“She’s crying,” he said.
Rita sat on the bed with her legs tucked under her. She held a book she hadn’t been reading for twenty minutes.
“Lyosh.”
“What?”
“Sit down.”
He sat beside her. The bed creaked.
“Do you want a big wedding?” she asked.
“I want Mom not to cry and you not to be angry. Is that possible at the same time?”
Rita put the book on the nightstand. Its spine faced upward, the pages fanning open.
“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “But I’ll try.”
On Saturday morning, Rita went to Galina Petrovna’s place.
Her mother-in-law lived in Medvedkovo, in a two-room apartment on the eighth floor. The elevator smelled of old rubber and a little of lily of the valley because someone had hung an air freshener on the ventilation grate.
The door opened immediately. Galina Petrovna stood there in a house dress with tiny flowers and pink slippers. No makeup. No burgundy blouse. Rita thought it was the first time she had ever seen her like that. Unprotected.
“Come in,” her mother-in-law said. “The kettle’s hot.”
Galina Petrovna’s kitchen was small, six square meters, with yellow curtains and a calendar from the year before last on the wall. Magnets from Anapa and Kislovodsk were on the fridge. Three pots of violets stood on the windowsill, and the soil in them was damp, which meant she had watered them that morning.
They sat opposite each other. The tea was strong, with bergamot. Rita warmed her hands on the cup, even though the apartment was warm.
The notebook lay on the table.
Between them.
“Galina Petrovna,” Rita began.
“You can just say Galina.”
“Galina. I want to understand. Not argue. Understand.”
Her mother-in-law nodded. Her fingers rested on the notebook, as if she were holding down something alive.
“When Vitya got sick,” she began, and her voice trembled, but she mastered it, “people came to us. Every day. Nina Fyodorovna cooked broth. Tamara from the fifth floor brought apples from her village. Zoya Vladimirovna sat with him in the evenings while I went to the pharmacy.”
Rita listened. The tea cooled.
“When he was gone, they all came. All sixty people. They stood in this kitchen, in the hallway, on the stairs. And I understood: that is what family is. Not blood, but the people who come.”
Her mother-in-law fell silent. She looked out the window. Outside was the courtyard: swings, a sandbox with a blue border, and a poplar tree that had not been cut down only because the residents had written a collective complaint.
“I want them to come for joy,” Galina Petrovna said. “At least once. Not for a funeral.”
Rita placed her cup on the table. The cup was white with a thin gold rim, and there was a chip in the rim. Small, barely noticeable.
She could have said: I understand, but we don’t have the money.
She could have said: let’s compromise.
She could have said: this is your dream, not ours.
But she looked at her mother-in-law, at her hands resting on the notebook, at the chipped cup, at the violets on the windowsill, and said one word.
“Tell me.”
Galina Petrovna blinked.
“Tell you what?”
“About each one. From the list. Who these people are. Why they matter.”
Her mother-in-law opened the notebook. She ran her finger over the first name.
“Valentina Sergeyevna. Aunt Valya. Your father-in-law’s sister. She took Lyosha to his first day of school because Vitya and I were both working and couldn’t make it.”
Rita nodded.
“Next.”
“Yevgeny Palych. Uncle Zhenya. He gave Lyosha a bicycle for his tenth birthday. A green Kama. Lyosha rode halfway across the city on it.”
Her mother-in-law talked, and with every name, her voice grew steadier, as if she were remembering not a list, but a life. Every name was a story. Not a long one, sometimes only two sentences, but alive.
Nina Fyodorovna, who sewed Lyosha a snowman costume for the school performance. Tamara from the fifth floor, who let him come over to do homework when pipes were being replaced in their apartment. Zoya Vladimirovna, who taught him to play chess and deliberately lost to him for the first six months.
Rita listened. And somewhere around the twentieth name, she realized it was not a notebook.
It was an album.
They sat there for two hours. The tea cooled, was brewed again, and cooled once more. Galina Petrovna had reached the fifty-third name when Rita raised her hand.
“Stop.”
“What?”
“Let’s be honest.”
Her mother-in-law froze. The kitchen became quiet. Even the refrigerator stopped humming, as if it too were waiting.
“Lyosha and I don’t have four hundred and fifty thousand for a banquet,” Rita said. “Technically, we do. But that money is for a mortgage. For the down payment. For an apartment where we’ll live. Maybe with children.”
Galina Petrovna slowly closed the notebook.
“I didn’t know.”
“We didn’t tell you.”
“Why?”
“Lyosha didn’t want to burden you.”
Her mother-in-law lowered her eyes. Her fingers found the chip on the cup and lingered there.
“I thought you simply didn’t want a big wedding,” she said quietly. “I thought it was a whim. One of those modern things. Minimalism.”
“It isn’t minimalism. It’s math.”
Galina Petrovna stood. She went to the window. Her back was straight, her shoulders slightly lowered. Rita saw her clench and unclench her fingers.
“Rita.”
“Yes.”
“I’m ashamed.”
Rita did not answer right away. She stood, walked over, and stopped beside her. She did not hug her. She simply stood there.
“You don’t have to be,” she said. “You didn’t know.”
“I should have asked.”
“We should have told you. Lyosha should have. I should have too. We’re all guilty.”
Her mother-in-law turned around. Her eyes were shining, but she was not crying. She was holding herself together.
“So, a café for ten people?”
And that was when Rita smiled. For the first time all week.
She came home around lunchtime. Lyosha was sitting on the balcony, on the only chair, scrolling through something on his phone. The boots with the cracked sole were by the door; he still hadn’t bought new ones.
“Well?” he asked without looking up.
“Sit properly.”
“I am sitting properly.”
“Lyosh.”
He looked at her. Put the phone aside.
“I went to your mother’s.”
“I know. She texted.”
“What did she write?”
“‘Rita came. We’re talking.’ And a smiley face. Mom sent a smiley face.”
“Which one?”
“A flower.”
Rita sat down on the balcony floor, leaning her back against the railing. The concrete felt cold through her jeans.
“We’re not going to have a restaurant wedding for sixty people,” she said.
“I know.”
“But we’ll do something else.”
He waited.
“I suggested this to her. The courtyard. Her courtyard in Medvedkovo. Tables like on Victory Day. Long ones, pushed together, covered with tablecloths. Each of the sixty people brings one dish. One. Their best. Aunt Valya brings her aspic, Nina Fyodorovna her pies, Tamara her apple pie. Zoya Vladimirovna will probably bring something with cottage cheese.”
Lyosha looked at her. His brows were even, the lines on his forehead smoothed out.
“For music,” Rita continued, “we’ll find something cheap. Or Pasha can bring his speaker. He has a good one. I’ll bake the cake myself. Without swans.”
“You don’t know how to bake cakes.”
“I’ll learn. I have four weeks.”
“Three and a half.”
“Then three and a half.”
He was silent for a moment. Then he said:
“And Mom?”
“She cried.”
“Badly?”
“No. In a good way.”
Galina Petrovna called that evening. Her voice was different: not demanding, not quiet, but somehow new. Rita couldn’t find the word at first. Then she understood: grateful.
“Ritochka, I spoke to Nina Fyodorovna. She’ll make three kinds of pies. Meat, cabbage, and potato.”
“Excellent.”
“And Tamara said she’ll bring not only a pie, but her samovar too. A real one, charcoal-fired, from her grandmother.”
Rita smiled. She was standing in the kitchen, and the buckwheat on the stove smelled normal, not burned.
“Galina Petrovna.”
“Galina.”
“Galina. I need your help.”
“With what?”
“The cake. I don’t know how. At all.”
Her mother-in-law laughed. Not loudly, briefly, but it was real laughter. Not polite laughter.
“Come on Sunday. I’ll teach you. I have Vitya’s recipe. He loved honey cake.”
Rita looked at Lyosha, who was standing in the doorway, listening. He was smiling.
With both sides of his mouth.
On Sunday, Rita went to Medvedkovo. Her mother-in-law greeted her in a burgundy blouse and an apron. On the table were flour, eggs, a jar of honey, and butter in a paper wrapper.
“Vitya’s recipe,” Galina Petrovna said, placing a notebook page on the table. The paper was yellowed, the handwriting masculine and sweeping. “He wrote it down himself. When Lyosha was two.”
Rita took the page carefully, with two fingers, as if it might crumble.
“Honey cake. For Galka. Melt the honey in a double boiler, don’t overheat it. Cream: sour cream + sugar + vanilla, just a little. Thin layers, eight of them. Assemble in the evening so it soaks overnight.”
Below it, in a different color, was a note:
“Galka, don’t skimp on the honey. I’m serious.”
Rita placed the page on the table. She ran her finger over the last line.
“He was a good man,” she said.
“Yes,” her mother-in-law replied.
And she added nothing else.
They kneaded dough for two hours. Rita’s wrists ached, and a streak of flour appeared on her forehead, though she didn’t notice it. Galina Petrovna worked quickly and precisely, as if her hands remembered the movements on their own.
“Thinner,” she said. “Even thinner. The layer should be like paper.”
“It’s tearing.”
“It’s not tearing. You’re rushing.”
Rita slowed down. The rolling pin moved over the dough slowly and evenly. The dough yielded.
“There,” her mother-in-law said. “See? Patience.”
The first layer came out crooked. The second was a little better. The third was almost even. By the eighth, Rita no longer counted; she simply rolled, and Galina Petrovna silently nodded.
The kitchen smelled of honey and hot butter. It grew dark outside. They assembled the cake, spread each layer with sour cream frosting, and put it in the refrigerator.
“Until morning,” her mother-in-law said. “It will soak overnight. Just like Vitya wrote.”
Rita washed her hands. The water was hot, and it made her fingers tingle.
“Thank you,” she said.
Galina Petrovna stood by the sink, wiping the table with a cloth. Her movements were circular, familiar. She had done this a thousand times. Ten thousand.
“Rita.”
“Yes?”
“You said ‘tell me.’ That first time. One word.”
“Yes.”
“No one had ever asked me to tell them before.”
Rita did not answer. She walked over, took the cloth from her mother-in-law, and finished wiping the table herself.
June twenty-seventh fell on a Saturday, just as the calendar had promised.
In the morning, Rita put on a simple white dress, without lace or a train, bought on sale for three thousand eight hundred rubles. Lyosha put on the blue suit that had been hanging in his closet since his thesis defense, and new shoes. Galina Petrovna had bought the shoes. Silently. She placed the box by their door and left.
The registry office ceremony was quick. Twenty minutes. The girl behind the counter smiled when they signed. Lyosha kissed Rita, and his lips were dry from nerves.
Then they went to Medvedkovo.
Galina Petrovna’s courtyard was unrecognizable. Four long tables, made from kitchen and writing desks pushed together, covered with white tablecloths. On each one were wildflowers in compote jars. Nina Fyodorovna was arranging pies on trays. Tamara from the fifth floor was lighting the samovar. Uncle Zhenya had brought folding chairs in a trailer behind his old Moskvich and was setting them out while commanding his wife, who was not listening to him.
Aunt Valya arrived from Tula at six in the morning. Her aspic had set on the train.
Zoya Vladimirovna brought chess. She placed the set on a separate little table.
“For Lyosha,” she said. “For luck.”
Sixty-two people. Two came without an invitation: a neighbor from the first floor, who simply saw the tables in the courtyard and asked if he could join, and his wife, who brought a pot of borscht.
Galina Petrovna stood by the entrance in her burgundy blouse. The same one. She wore lipstick, which she usually did not. She looked at the courtyard, at the tables, at the people, at her son in his blue suit, and she did not cry.
They played music through Pasha’s speaker. The first song was David Tukhmanov’s “How Beautiful This World Is.” Then someone switched it to Antonov, and Aunt Valya went dancing between the tables, holding a pie in one hand.
The cake was brought out at nine in the evening. Honey cake. Eight layers. No swans.
Rita cut it with a kitchen knife, and the cream squeezed out between the layers, and everything was uneven, and one layer had slipped slightly on the side, but Galina Petrovna said:
“Beautiful.”
And it was true.
At eleven in the evening, the guests began to leave. Nina Fyodorovna carried away the empty trays. Tamara put out the samovar. Aunt Valya fell asleep on a folding chair, and Uncle Zhenya covered her with his jacket.
Rita sat on the bench by the entrance. Her shoes stood beside her, her bare feet resting on the cool asphalt. Lyosha brought her tea in a plastic cup and sat next to her.
Galina Petrovna came out of the entrance with a garbage bag. She saw them and stopped.
“Don’t leave yet,” she said.
“We’re not leaving,” Rita replied.
Her mother-in-law put the bag by the bin and came back. She sat on the bench on the other side of Lyosha. Three people on one bench. The courtyard was empty now, only a streetlamp burned, casting a circle of light onto the asphalt.
“Rita,” Galina Petrovna said.
“Yes?”
“Thank you.”
Rita did not answer. She simply moved closer. Lyosha’s shoulder was warm on one side. On the other side, beyond Lyosha, sat a woman in a burgundy blouse who had lost her husband eight years ago and today had found something else.
The streetlamp hummed.
It smelled of honey.
The notebook with sixty names lay at home on the kitchen table, open to the last page. There, after the final name, Galina Petrovna had added one more.
“Rita.”
The next morning, Rita woke up in Bibirevo, in their rented one-room apartment, beside her husband. One chair stood on the balcony. Outside the window, July was beginning.
On the nightstand lay the notebook page with the honey cake recipe. She had taken it the day before. Galina Petrovna had given it to her herself.
“Don’t skimp on the honey. I’m serious.”
Rita smiled without opening her eyes. The pillow smelled of someone else’s perfume: her mother-in-law had hugged her goodbye the night before, and the scent had remained in her hair.
The mortgage money was safe. The wedding had cost twelve thousand: tablecloths, flowers, plastic cups, and honey for the cake.
Everything else had been brought by people.
Sixty-two people who came not because they had been invited to a restaurant, but because they remembered a boy on a green Kama bicycle, a woman in a burgundy blouse, and a man who never skimped on honey.
Rita turned onto her side. Lyosha slept, whistling softly on the exhale.
Everything was right.
Everything was exactly as it should be.