Lida sat in an armchair in front of the television, knitting. Some detective show was on. She was trying to figure out which actor was playing the good guy and which one was the criminal, but she couldn’t make sense of it.
The knitting wasn’t distracting her—it was ordinary stockinette stitch: one row of knit stitches, then turn the work and make the second row in purl. The needles moved steadily, almost mechanically, creating an even piece of fabric for the gray sweater she was knitting for Mikhail.
It was her thoughts that distracted Lidia. Right now, they were not here but on the other side of the city, in a restaurant where Veronika—the girl Lida had been there for over the past seven years—was celebrating her wedding.
Mikhail was there—Veronika’s father and Lidia’s husband. Yana, the bride’s mother, was there too, along with relatives and friends.
Veronika had not invited Lidia.
Her explanation had been simple:
“Mom came to the wedding alone, without her husband Eduard. Why should I invite my father’s second wife?”
It sounded logical enough, if you didn’t know what had happened before.
Lidia had married Mikhail ten years earlier. He was divorced, and his only daughter, Veronika, lived with her mother, Yana. The girl was nine years old at the time.
Lidia had no problem with Mikhail staying in contact with his daughter, paying child support, and buying her gifts. A couple of times, Veronika stayed with them for several days when Yana went away on business. Lidia couldn’t have children of her own—she had told Mikhail that from the very beginning. Maybe that was exactly why she became so attached to Veronika.
They had been married for four years when Yana announced that she was marrying Eduard and moving abroad.
“Edik was offered a very lucrative contract overseas. I’m going with him, but we can’t take Veronika with us. Edik says it would complicate all the paperwork. Besides, we’d have to find a school for Nika there, which means we’d be tied to a particular place of residence because not every administrative district has schools she could attend. And Nika doesn’t speak German. Why do we need all those problems? Here she can finish school peacefully in four years and then go to university.”
And so thirteen-year-old Veronika moved into the three-room apartment where Mikhail and Lida lived. They became one family.
There were no serious conflicts between Lidia and Veronika. Of course, there were small everyday disagreements—anyone who has had a teenage girl in the family knows what that means. But Lidia never tried to pressure Veronika, and whenever a firm decision needed to be made, she stepped aside and let Mikhail handle it. He was her father; he had that right.
But Veronika’s education, parent-teacher meetings, extracurricular activities, tutors, illnesses, doctor’s appointments, birthday arrangements, buying clothes and shoes—all of that fell to Lidia.
For seven whole years.
Lidia even helped Veronika write a university term paper that she received an excellent grade for during her second year—it happened to be Lidia’s field of expertise.
And now twenty-year-old Veronika was getting married.
But Lidia was not among the guests.
Yana was there, even though she had visited her daughter only three times in those seven years. And even then, she hadn’t really come for her daughter—she had simply accompanied her husband when he had business in Moscow.
Of course, she was Veronika’s mother. No one could argue with that.
And who was Lidia?
Just her father’s second wife. Lidia knew that Mikhail had tried to talk to his daughter, but Nika had been adamant.
“Mom said she would feel uncomfortable in your wife’s presence,” his daughter explained. “And if I have to choose between Lidia and Mom, you understand perfectly well who I’m going to choose.”
Was Lida hurt?
Yes.
But she decided she could survive it.
She also thought that she simply needed to accept calmly the boundary Veronika had drawn between them.
I’m only her father’s second wife—and nothing more, she thought. Fine. If that’s the way she wants it, that’s the way it will be.
She put down her knitting, walked over to the window, and looked at the darkening sky.
Somewhere out there, in the restaurant, people were probably making toasts, music was playing, and the guests were dancing. Mikhail had probably already had too much to drink—he always became nervous before important occasions, and today there was the added tension surrounding the invitation.
She wasn’t angry with her husband.
He had tried. He really had tried to change his daughter’s mind.
“What can I do, Lida?” he had said three days before the wedding. “She’s an adult. She has the right to choose her guests.”
“Of course, Misha,” Lida had answered calmly. “I understand everything.”
And she really did understand.
She understood that Veronika would always choose her mother, even if that mother had visited her only three times in seven years.
She understood that blood ties were something no amount of term papers, tutors, or parent-teacher meetings could replace.
“Lida, maybe you could come anyway?” Mikhail suggested in one final desperate attempt. “You could just sit quietly in a corner. I’ll say you happened to drop by…”
“No, Misha,” Lida said firmly. “If I wasn’t invited, I’m not going. There’s no need to humiliate ourselves.”
Now she looked at the clock.
Ten-thirty.
The wedding was in full swing.
Nika’s fiancé had a one-room apartment of his own—his parents had bought it for him before the wedding. The newlyweds moved in there.
The apartment was empty, so Nika and her husband began furnishing it, buying furniture, dishes, and bed linen.
“Lida, are you off work today?” Mikhail asked one day. “Maybe you could go with Nika and help her choose curtains. She’s been looking for two weeks and still can’t decide. She asked you to help.”
“Oh, come on, Misha. She and I belong to different generations. I doubt she’d like what I chose. And if she followed my advice and later regretted it, that would be even worse. No. Let the young couple arrange everything themselves.”
“But she’s asking you…” “Misha, I don’t want to interfere. It’s their home, their life.”
There were several other occasions when Veronika asked Lidia for help, but Lidia always found some reason to refuse—gently, without being offensive, but firmly.
Mikhail was surprised and sometimes asked his wife why she had once again refused to help Veronika.
“Misha, I simply don’t want to impose my advice. Why interfere in the lives of young people? Let them do things the way they know how. If they realize they’ve made a mistake, they can redo it. That will be experience for them,” Lida would answer.
But one day, Veronika became deeply offended by her stepmother.
It happened three and a half years after the wedding.
By then, Veronika had given birth to a son.
The little boy was restless and slept badly. In six months, he had twice completely mixed up day and night. Veronika was exhausted. She had lost weight, and dark circles had formed beneath her eyes.
Her husband worked late and tried to spend as little time at home as possible—he was tired too.
There was no one to help.
So Veronika called her mother and asked her to come for at least a month to help with the baby.
“Mom, I sleep three hours a day. I don’t even have time to eat, never mind brush my hair. Please help me. Matvey is your grandson, after all, and you haven’t even seen him once.”
But Yana refused.
“Nikusha, you’ll have to manage somehow yourselves! How can I leave Edik here alone for an entire month? And plane tickets are so expensive right now. No, I can’t come. Ask Lida—she lives nearby.”
Veronika hesitated.
But desperation won.
She called Lida.
“Aunt Lida,” Veronika’s voice was quiet and exhausted. “I can’t cope. Mom can’t come, and my mother-in-law works. Could you help me with Matvey? At least for a week?”
Lida listened in silence.
She remembered the last ten years of her life.
She remembered the invisible line Veronika had drawn between them.
The words:
If I have to choose between Lidia and Mom…
The wedding where there had been no place for “her father’s second wife.”
A heavy silence hung over the phone.
“Oh, Veronika,” Lida finally said. “What kind of babysitter would I be? I’ve never had children of my own. I don’t even know how to hold such a small baby. No.”
“Aunt Lida!” Veronika protested, and there were tears in her voice. “Is it really so difficult for you to help me? You’re my father’s wife, after all!”
“Yes,” Lida answered calmly. “I really am just your father’s wife. I’m not your mother. I’m not your son’s grandmother. So I don’t understand why you’re offended with me. You were the one who decided that.”
She ended the call and froze.
It was cruel.
She knew that.
But it was honest.
Mikhail came home that evening looking grim.
“Lida, why?” he asked instead of greeting her. “Nika was crying. She said you refused to help her. What is she supposed to do now? She’s completely exhausted!”
“Misha, she chose her mother,” Lida answered calmly. “She said it herself: ‘If I have to choose between Lidia and Mom, you understand perfectly well who I’m going to choose.’ I accepted her choice. I’m only her father’s second wife. I have nothing to do with her life or with her child’s life. I don’t want to cross that boundary.”
“But she’s asking for help!” Mikhail exclaimed.
“She asked her mother for help, and her mother refused. And I’m not even her mother. I’m the person who wasn’t considered worthy of attending her wedding. Remember?”
Mikhail wanted to argue but stopped himself.
He remembered that conversation.
His daughter’s cold voice.
His own helplessness.
“But you used to help her,” he said quietly. “You took care of her for so many years, and now…”
“Now I’m simply following the rules of the game,” Lida answered. “I used to help because I thought we were a family. But they explained to me that I was mistaken. Let Yana come. She’s the mother and the grandmother. And I’m just your wife, Misha. That’s all.”
Veronika never asked her for help again.
Their relationship remained calm and civil. They saw each other at family celebrations, treated each other politely, and nothing more.
In the evenings, Lida read, knitted, and watched television.
She had learned to respect the boundaries Veronika had established.
Sometimes, it was true, Lida wondered whether everything might have been different if Veronika had invited her to the wedding.
But that would have been another story.
Outside the window, the city hummed—a city where her husband had a daughter, that daughter had a son, while Lida had only her husband and these quiet evenings.
And that was fine.
It was what she had chosen for herself the first time she asked:
Who am I to them?
And answered the question honestly.
That weekend, they would go to Veronika’s house—it was Matvey’s birthday. Lida had already bought him a construction set because he loved building things.
She wouldn’t call beforehand and ask whether she was allowed to come.
She would simply come with Mikhail, because he was a father and a grandfather.
And she was his wife.
The knitting needles moved.
One knit row, one purl row.
Steadily.
Without mistakes.
Just like her new life—without unnecessary expectations, without hoping for gratitude.
Just a smooth, even fabric, without patterns or complicated interweaving.
She had not stopped being part of this family.
And this was her life—quiet, peaceful, without demands or expectations.
Like stockinette stitch.
Even and predictable.
