“Fifteen minutes,” Viktor said without looking up from his phone. “Pack your things and get out. In fifteen minutes, I’m locking the door.”
Katya stood in the hallway clutching a wet towel to her chest. She had just stepped out of the bathroom. Her hair was damp, old slippers were on her feet, and a worn robe hung around her shoulders.
A minute earlier, she had been a woman with a home and a husband.
Now she had fifteen minutes.
“Vitya, can we at least talk?”
“There’s nothing to talk about. Fourteen minutes.”
He wasn’t shouting. That somehow made it worse. His voice was flat and businesslike, as though he were announcing the departure of a train.
Katya went into the bedroom and began stuffing clothes into a bag. Her hands shook so badly that half the things fell onto the floor.
Eight years.
She had lived in this apartment for eight years. Eight years of dinners, laundry, illnesses, arguments, reconciliations, and ordinary evenings that she had once mistaken for a life together.
And now Viktor wanted another woman to move in.
Her name was Alina. She was twenty-six and worked at his fitness club. Katya had discovered their messages a month earlier—hearts, pet names, promises, photographs.
She had waited for him to confess.
Instead, that morning, he had simply said:
“I have another woman. I want her to live here. Pack your things.”
Katya dressed quickly, threw her documents, wallet, charger, jeans, and a sweater into the bag, then walked back into the hallway.
Viktor held out his hand.
“The keys.”
Katya stared at the key ring.
Apartment key. Entrance key. Mailbox key.
Eight years on one ring.
Slowly, she removed them and placed them in his palm.
“Do you understand what you’re doing?” she asked.
“I do. I should’ve done it sooner.”
She stepped onto the landing.
The door closed behind her.
The lock turned once.
Then twice.
Katya stood there staring at the door.
It was three in the afternoon.
Her mother lived six hundred kilometers away. Her closest friend had a husband, two children, and a tiny apartment. Katya barely had any cash.
Viktor had always controlled their finances.
“Why do you need a separate account?” he used to say. “We’re a family.”
A family.
Katya slowly walked downstairs and stepped outside.
Cold October wind swept yellow leaves across the courtyard.
She stood beside the entrance with her bag, not knowing where to go.
Then she noticed the silver Toyota parked across from the building.
The driver’s door opened.
A gray-haired man stepped out.
“Nikolai Petrovich?”
It was Viktor’s father.
He was sixty-eight, a retired carpenter who lived in a village forty kilometers away. His wife had died three years earlier, and since then he had lived alone.
He looked at Katya’s wet hair, swollen eyes, and bag.
Then he looked up toward Viktor’s windows.
“Get in the car, daughter.”
Katya blinked.
“What?”
“Get in. I’ll explain.”
She obeyed because her legs barely held her.
Once inside, Nikolai Petrovich started the engine but didn’t move.
“I know everything,” he said. “Vitya called me yesterday.”
Katya looked at him.
“He was bragging. Said he’d finally solved his problem. Found a young woman and planned to send you away.”
Nikolai Petrovich gripped the steering wheel.
“I asked him what kind of man throws his wife into the street after eight years. He told me you have no children, so there’s nothing holding you together.”
Katya lowered her eyes.
“He said, ‘Dad, stay out of it. It’s my life.’”
The older man shook his head.
“His life. As though that excuses everything.”
“It is his choice,” Katya whispered.
“Choice?” Nikolai Petrovich turned toward her. “A choice is when a man takes responsibility for what he does. Not when he replaces one woman with another and throws the first one away.”
He sighed.
“Two days ago, I rented an apartment for you. Two rooms. Clean. I paid three months in advance.”
Katya stared at him.
“You rented an apartment?”
“For me?”
“For who else?”
She looked at the dashboard, unable to speak.
“How did you know today was the day?”
“He told me yesterday he was going to ‘talk’ to you. I know my son. When he says talk, he means issue an ultimatum. I came here at noon.”
Katya checked the time.
“You’ve been waiting three hours?”
“Yes.”
Her eyes filled with tears again.
At the apartment on Lenin Street, Katya found simple furniture, a clean kitchen, and a small geranium on the windowsill.
There were also grocery bags on the table.
Bread, milk, eggs, tea, sugar, butter.
“You bought all this?”
“Who else?”
“Nikolai Petrovich…”
“Stop calling me that,” he said. “After eight years, call me Uncle Kolya. Or Dad, if you ever feel comfortable.”
He sat beside the window.
“When Viktor was born, I promised myself I’d raise a decent man. Someone who keeps his word. Someone who doesn’t humiliate people.”
He looked down at his scarred carpenter’s hands.
“I failed somewhere.”
“That isn’t your fault,” Katya said.
“He’s my son. I’m not responsible for his choices, but I am responsible for what kind of father I was.”
Katya sat on the sofa.
For the first time that day, she felt the ground beneath her feet stop moving.
“You know,” she said quietly, “I felt invisible with Viktor.”
Uncle Kolya looked at her.
“One time I had a fever of thirty-nine. I could barely stand. Viktor came home, looked at me lying in bed, and asked where dinner was.”
“I know.”
Katya frowned.
“Masha told me,” he said, referring to his late wife. “She noticed how he treated you. She used to tell me, ‘Kolya, talk to your son before he breaks that girl.’”
Katya covered her face.
The tears finally came.
Uncle Kolya didn’t tell her to stop crying.
He simply sat beside her.
When she calmed down, he made tea.
“I bought oatmeal cookies,” he said. “Didn’t know which ones you liked.”
“They’re my favorite.”
“Good. Got something right today.”
He placed a hot cup in front of her.
“I paid three months of rent. That gives you time to breathe. You have work?”
“I’m an elementary school teacher.”
“Then you’ll survive. You have a job, a brain, and strength. The rest will come.”
Before leaving, he placed an envelope on the table.
“What’s this?”
“Money.”
“I can’t take it.”
“You can.”
“No.”
“It isn’t charity. It’s a debt to Masha.”
Katya looked at him.
“She would’ve wanted me to help you.”
At the door, he stopped.
“Katyusha.”
“Yes?”
“You’re a good person. Remember that. My son was too foolish to understand it.”
After he left, Katya opened the envelope.
Inside was more money than she expected.
Probably several months of his pension.
She cried again.
But this time the tears felt different.
That evening, Viktor called his father.
“Why did you go see Katya?”
“Because someone had to.”
“I told you not to interfere! It’s my life!”
“Your life is your responsibility,” his father answered. “When I have to clean up after you, it becomes my shame too.”
“We were already finished!”
“Then live with your decision.”
Nikolai Petrovich ended the call.
Over the next few months, Viktor lived with Alina.
At first everything felt perfect.
Restaurants. Movies. Coffee in bed.
Then ordinary life arrived.
Alina didn’t cook. She hated cleaning. She spent hours in the bathroom.
Then came arguments about money.
Eventually, Alina found messages between Viktor and another woman from work.
By New Year’s, she left.
Viktor came home to an empty apartment and found a note on the table.
“You’re boring. Good luck.”
He stood in the kitchen staring at it.
Then, absurdly, he wondered where dinner was.
He called Katya.
“Hello?”
Her voice sounded calm.
“Kat… it’s me.”
“What do you want?”
“Maybe we could meet?”
“No.”
“Please.”
“I can’t. I have borscht on the stove. Dad is coming.”
“What dad?”
“Your father.”
Viktor fell silent.
“He comes every Saturday,” Katya continued.
“He doesn’t visit me.”
“Because you never invite him.”
Another silence.
Then Katya said:
“Come Saturday if you want. There’s enough borscht for everyone.”
He didn’t come.
Not that Saturday.
Not the next.
But several weeks later, in January, Viktor drove to Lenin Street.
He stood outside Katya’s door and heard laughter inside.
Katya and his father.
His father, who had hardly smiled since his wife died.
They sounded like a family.
And suddenly Viktor understood something painful.
The family he had destroyed had not disappeared.
It had simply rebuilt itself without him.
He rang the bell.
Katya opened the door.
There was no anger in her face.
No triumph either.
“Are you staying for dinner?” she asked.
His father appeared behind her.
“Come in.”
Viktor stepped inside.
Katya placed a bowl of hot borscht in front of him.
He tasted it.
The same borscht he had eaten for eight years without ever appreciating it.
He looked up.
“It’s delicious.”
Then, after a pause, he added a word he had rarely used when it mattered.
“Thank you.”
Katya nodded.
Outside, January snow fell over the roofs, streets, and the old silver Toyota parked below.
And perhaps, somewhere beneath all that cold, something was finally beginning to thaw.
