“I gave my apartment to Zhanna, so now let me spend my final years here!” Rimma Arkadyevna announced, placing her second suitcase by the door and pulling off her rain-soaked headscarf. “You can’t seriously expect me to sleep on the street.”
Nadezhda stood frozen with the keys in her hand. She’d just gotten back from work, a bag at her feet with milk, a loaf of bread, and a chicken for dinner. Asya peeked out from her room, saw her grandmother with the suitcases, and silently closed the door again.
“Rimma Arkadyevna, what happened? Did you and Zhanna have a fight?”
“We did.” The mother-in-law unbuttoned her coat and looked around, as if assessing where everything would go. “She told me I was a guest in her apartment. In my apartment, can you believe it? Where I lived for forty years. Vadik knows—I called him this afternoon.”
Vadik did know. But he hadn’t said a word to Nadezhda, even though they had messaged at lunchtime about who would pick up Asya from her swimming class.
She dialed her husband right there in the hallway. He didn’t pick up right away—it sounded like he was somewhere with cars buzzing in the background.
“Nadya, just let Mom stay for now. I’ll be home in an hour and we’ll talk about it.”
“How long is ‘for now’?”
“I’ll be there and we’ll talk,” he repeated, and then hung up.
Nadezhda put the kettle on and took out her mother-in-law’s favorite mug with sunflowers—the one that had been living at their place for eight years, just for her visits. Rimma Arkadyevna sat at the kitchen table, perfectly straight, sharing how Zhanna had talked on the phone in front of her, referring to their shared apartment as “the property.”
“The property!” her mother-in-law repeated. “I told her, ‘Have a little shame, I’m your mother.’ And she said, ‘It’s my property now, I decide what happens.’”
Nadezhda listened and nodded along. She felt sorry for this brittle, sensitive woman, whose chin trembled. But deep down, a heavy feeling was building, because she knew all too well how the word “for now” usually turned out in her husband’s family.
The apartment they lived in was hers. A two-room place on the fifth floor of a prefab building in Yaroslavl’s Zavozhsky district. Nadezhda had bought it in 2011, two years before the wedding, using her savings and the money her parents got from selling her grandmother’s house in the village. She’d even paid off the mortgage herself, still single at the time. Vadim moved in back in 2013—with just two bags and a guitar he never actually played.
One room was for her and Vadim. The other, smaller one, with a window facing the birches, was Asya’s. Twelve years old, sixth grade, posters of Korean pop stars, and a desk buried under English notebooks. This was her first space of her own—and Nadezhda still remembered her daughter picking out the wallpaper herself when she was just nine.
Vadim showed up just before nine. He kissed his mother, washed his hands for a long time, and then sat down across from Nadezhda, speaking in that steady voice he always used when a decision was already made without her:
“Mom needs her own room. She’s elderly—she needs peace and quiet. Asya can stay with us, we’ll get a pull-out bed. Or put a sofa in the kitchen, just for her to sleep on.”
“Vadim, Asya is twelve years old.”
“So what? When I was twelve, I shared a room with Zhanna and it was fine.”
“Exactly—with Zhanna,” Nadezhda answered quietly. “And then your mother gave the apartment to Zhanna.”
Rimma Arkadyevna set her mug down on the saucer with a loud clink.
“Are you going to start reproaching me now? I haven’t said a single unkind word to you in eight years.”
That was true. Nadezhda had also never said a bad word to her mother-in-law. For eight years, ever since her father-in-law passed away in 2018, she sent Rimma Arkadyevna eight, then ten thousand rubles every month, and every Saturday she brought bags of groceries—cottage cheese, buckwheat, blood pressure medication, cat food for the old cat Tikhon, who died the winter before last. At first, Vadim helped too, but then he had “issues at work,” and almost without realizing it, Nadezhda began paying for everything herself.
Over these eight years, Zhanna visited her mother on New Year’s and her birthday. She brought flowers and took photos with her for social media. But two years ago, in May 2024, Rimma Arkadyevna gifted her one-bedroom apartment on Krasnoperekopskaya to Zhanna.
Nadezhda found out by accident, half a year later, when her mother-in-law casually mentioned at the table: “Well, I signed it over to Zhanna, she needs it more, she’s on her own.” Vadim just shrugged and said it was his mother’s business. Nadezhda stayed silent. She’d gotten used to keeping quiet in this family because any question she asked would end in someone taking offense for a week, while Vadim would walk around sulking and sleep at the edge of the bed.
“Let’s do this,” she said that evening. “Tonight Rimma Arkadyevna will sleep in Asya’s room, Asya will be with me. Vadim can sleep on the couch in the kitchen. Tomorrow is Saturday—we’ll sit down and calmly think things over.”
Vadim looked at her in surprise, but didn’t argue in front of his mother.
That night, Nadezhda lay next to her daughter, listening to her breathe into her pillow. Before falling asleep, Asya asked only one thing: “Mom, is Grandma going to stay with us forever?” Nadezhda answered no—and realized she wasn’t sure if it was true.
In the morning, Vadim went to his friend’s garage, saying he needed to deal with a battery. Rimma Arkadyevna was unpacking her suitcases. Nadezhda stepped into Asya’s room for her school uniform, only to find her mother-in-law had already taken down two posters from the wall and neatly placed them on the windowsill. In their place, she hung her own icon in a wooden frame.
“Rimma Arkadyevna, those are Asya’s things.”
“I didn’t throw them away, did I? They’re right there. I just couldn’t stand looking at those squinty faces, Nadya, could not sleep.”
On the chair was a cardboard folder with strings, old and worn, from Soviet times. Her mother-in-law noticed Nadezhda’s gaze and quickly tucked it into her suitcase, under her sweaters.
“Those are my documents,” she said. “My pension, insurance. Don’t touch them.”
Nadezhda hadn’t planned to.
While Asya was at English class that afternoon, she opened up the classified ads website. She couldn’t even explain why—she just couldn’t stop thinking about the word “property.” Krasnoperekopskaya Street, one-bedroom, second floor. The listing appeared on the third page, posted nine days ago. “Cozy apartment for rent, fresh renovation, fully furnished, long-term, 23,000 plus utilities. Available from November 1.”
The third photo showed the rug. Burgundy, with a medallion in the middle—the same rug Asya played on as a child when they visited Grandma. The cuckoo clock was still on the wall above the couch.
Nine days ago. And according to her mother-in-law, Rimma Arkadyevna and Zhanna only argued two days ago.
Nadezhda took screenshots and sat for a long time with her phone on her lap. It turned out that Zhanna had listed the apartment for rent back when her mother was still peacefully living there. So the argument wasn’t just accidental. Zhanna simply forced her own mother out to make the apartment available.
In the evening, when Vadim came home smelling of gasoline, she showed him the listing.
“Your sister is renting out mom’s apartment. From November first. She listed it on October nineteenth, when mom was still living there.”
Vadim stared at the screen much longer than it would take to read four lines.
“So what? It’s her apartment. She has every right to do that.”
“She has the right. But then let Zhanna figure out where her mother is going to live. She got the apartment. She gets the money from it. Why should mom have to stay in our daughter’s room?”
“Because she’s my mother.”
“She’s Zhanna’s mother too.”
“Zhanna lives alone, she has a one-bedroom and a mortgage, how would she take mom in?” Vadim pushed the phone aside. “Nadya, I don’t understand, do you begrudge a room for a family member?”
Rimma Arkadyevna came into the kitchen, and Nadezhda could tell by her face that she’d been standing in the hallway and had heard everything.
“So she’s renting it out,” said her mother-in-law. “And she told me she was going to do renovations. Said renovations would be bad for my health.”
She sat down, put her hands on the table, and suddenly looked very old. Nadezhda wanted to hug her, and would have, if a moment later Rimma Arkadyevna hadn’t said to her son:
“Vadik, don’t worry. I’ll give Asya my bed, mine has a nice orthopedic mattress. She can sleep on it in the kitchen.”
Nadezhda stepped out onto the balcony. October’s chill was in the air, and the birch trees under the window had nearly lost all their leaves. She stood there for about five minutes until her hands went numb, and suddenly she saw clearly how everything would go from here. First, Asya would sleep in the kitchen. Then Rimma Arkadyevna’s towels would show up in the bathroom, her jars in the closet, a shopping list from her on the fridge for Nadezhda. Then Rimma Arkadyevna would get herself officially registered at their place, because “how else will I see a doctor without being registered?” And each time, Vadim will say: “Just hang in there, it’s my mom.”
She put up with it because she was afraid. Not of her mother-in-law, but of Vadim leaving and telling Asya her mom had kicked grandma out. That she would be the bad one, the greedy one, the kind of “daughter-in-law” the neighbors whisper about in front of the building. That eight years of help would be dismissed with a single “no.”
On Sunday, Nadezhda called Zhanna herself.
“Hi. Mom is with us. You know this, right?”
“I know,” her sister-in-law’s voice was cheerful, with music playing in the background. “But what am I supposed to do, Nadya? She left on her own. I didn’t tell her to go.”
“You told her she was just a guest at your place.”
“She drove me crazy! You have no idea what she can be like.”
“I know. I’ve known her eight years, Zhanna. I visited her every Saturday. So, have you already rented out the apartment?”
There was a short pause, but Nadezhda noticed it.
“Who told you that?”
“The ad is still up on the site. With mom’s carpet in it.”
“Look, I don’t have to give you explanations. I have a mortgage, a car loan. Mom is living with her son, she’s fine. It’s more lively for her with you.” After a brief silence, Zhanna added in a softer, almost gentle voice: “Vadik isn’t against it. You two already decided this.”
“Who decided?”
“You did. He told me back in September that you had enough room.”
In September. Nadezhda hung up the phone and stared at the calendar on the fridge for a long time. There hadn’t been any arguments in September. In September, Rimma Arkadievna called on weekends, complained about her blood pressure, and thanked them for bringing cottage cheese.
She decided she must have misheard. Or maybe Zhanna was lying to shift the blame. Everyone in the family knew Zhanna was good at moving dates around.
But on Monday morning, as Vadim was shaving, his phone buzzed briefly on the nightstand. Nadezhda hadn’t planned to check it. But the screen lit up right as her hand was reaching for Asya’s keys. ‘Deposit of 11,500 ₽ from Zhanna Vyacheslavovna K.’
She jerked her hand back like she’d been burned. Then told herself, brothers and sisters send each other money sometimes. Maybe he’d lent her something. Maybe it was for the garage, for tires, for anything at all.
But that evening, she asked him anyway.
‘Zhanna sent you money today.’
Vadim looked up from his plate.
‘Were you snooping through my phone?’
‘It was on the nightstand, the screen just lit up. Eleven and a half thousand. What for?’
‘She’s paying back what she owes. I lent her money for insurance this summer.’ He answered quickly, maybe too smoothly, and immediately went on the attack: ‘And anyway, Nadya, let’s talk about something else. Mom’s been sleeping in Asya’s bed for four days now, and Asya’s in your room. That’s not normal. We need to fix this.’
‘I am fixing it,’ Nadezhda said.
She spent two evenings working over a spreadsheet. Not to start a fight, but simply because she was used to it: at work, in the supply department at the factory, she was valued for accounting for every last penny. Rimma Arkadievna’s pension was twenty-six thousand. If you added the ten thousand Nadezhda was already giving, and asked Zhanna to contribute at least half of the rent money to their mother, that made nearly fifty thousand. In the building next door, across the courtyard, there was a small one-bedroom apartment for rent for twenty-one thousand. The landlady, retired Valentina Petrovna, was delighted at the idea of an elderly tenant: “Quiet, tidy people, not like students.” Five minutes away on foot. Nadezhda could visit every day. They could hire a helper twice a week, and check with social services about extra care support.
On Wednesday, she laid all the facts out at dinner. She put the printed spreadsheets on the table between the bread box and the salad.
‘Rimma Arkadievna, I’m not kicking you out onto the street. I’m suggesting you live nearby, in your own place. With your things, with your armchair—which Zhanna will bring from your old apartment. I’ll come over. Asya will come over. You’ll have peace of mind, and so will we.’
Her mother-in-law stared at the pages, refusing to pick them up.
‘A rental,’ she said. ‘In my old age, moving around to other people’s corners.’
‘It’s next door. And Zhanna should give you the money from the rent. It’s your old apartment—you gave it to her. She should give you at least half.’
Vadim pushed his plate away.
‘So you’re kicking my mom out of the house. A week after her own daughter did the same. Nice. You know what that’s called? Betrayal. You’re betraying the family. My family.’
‘Vadim, for eight years…’
‘Oh, are you going to go on about your eight years again? Are you planning to bill her? For cottage cheese?’
Asya turned off the music in her room. Nadya noticed the sudden silence and realized her daughter was listening in on every word.
“I’m not sending you a bill. I’m protecting my child’s room in my own apartment.”
“In your apartment,” Vadim echoed. “That’s it, right there. Thirteen years together and you still call it yours. Fine, live in ‘your’ place. I’ll leave with Mom since we’re just outsiders here.”
The way Vadim said it, it was clear he expected her to be afraid. In the past, she would have been. She would have followed him into the hallway, said something like, ‘Wait, let’s not do this,’ and by nightfall Asya would already be sleeping in the kitchen.
But Nadya stayed seated.
Vadim slammed the door and left. Rimma Arkadyevna gathered her papers, folded them, and took them to her room. Nadya washed the dishes, thinking she might have just destroyed her marriage over a foldout bed.
Vadim came back a day later, looking grim. He’d slept at a friend’s garage. He didn’t speak to her, only to his mother, and every morning he made a show of asking Rimma Arkadyevna if she’d slept well ‘in these conditions.’
On Friday, her mother-in-law herself came into the kitchen to see Nadya. She closed the door behind her—something she had never done before.
“Nadya, tell me honestly. Did you call Zhanka?”
“I did.”
“What did she say?”
“She said that Vadim told her back in September that we’d have enough space here.”
Rimma Arkadyevna was silent for a long time. Then she picked up the saltshaker, turned it in her hands, and set it back down.
“In September, he told me that you and Asya wanted to renovate, and that you’d move Asya into your bedroom. I was happy to hear it—thought maybe there would be room for me here if needed.” She looked up. “Was that not true?”
“We never planned any renovation.”
Her mother-in-law nodded, as if confirming something she’d already suspected. She left the room without another word.
On Saturday morning, Nadya went to see a lawyer. Not because she wanted to sue anyone, but because Vadim had thrown out in the hallway the night before: “Mom’s going to be registered here, and there’s nothing you can do about it.” She needed to know what was true and what wasn’t.
The lawyer, an older woman with glasses on a chain, listened to her carefully.
“The apartment is your premarital property, bought with your money, and the mortgage was paid off before marriage. Unless you’ve done some major renovations together with joint funds, it doesn’t become marital property. No one—not your husband, not your mother-in-law—can register her as a permanent resident without your consent as the owner. By the way, do you know what’s up with her own apartment? Have you seen the deed of gift?”
“No. I only know she gave it to her daughter.”
“Sometimes the contract includes a clause that lets the giver keep the right to live in the apartment. If that’s the case, it changes everything for her daughter. She couldn’t just rent it out and force her mother to leave. But guessing is pointless without the contract itself. Find it and bring it here—I’ll take a look.”
Nadya remembered the cardboard folder with ties that her mother-in-law had so quickly hidden under her sweaters.
The house was quiet. Vadim had left again, Asya was at her friend’s place. Rimma Arkadyevna was sitting by the window in her room.
Nadya didn’t want to snoop. She sat on the edge of Asya’s bed and said openly:
— Rimma Arkadyevna, can I see the gift agreement? I spoke to a lawyer. If there’s a clause that says you have the right to stay in your apartment, Zhanna can’t force you out just to rent it out.
Her mother-in-law slowly turned around.
— There is such a clause, — she said. — I insisted on it myself. The notary even said it was the right thing to do. For life.
— You knew?
— I knew. — Rimma Arkadyevna looked somewhere past her. — I’m not stupid, Nadya. I told this to Zhanna too, when she started trying to push me out. And she just laughed. She said, “Mom, go ahead, sue your own daughter. Vadik said you’d be better off with them.” Vadik said it. I thought he was just trying to take care of me. If a son takes his mother in, that means he’s a good son, right?
She stood up, opened her suitcase and took out a folder, untying the strings. On top was the agreement, and underneath, folded in half, was a sheet of graph paper torn from a notebook.
— I took this from Zhanna’s kitchen table, — her mother-in-law said. — The day I left. I don’t even know why. The handwriting is Vadim’s. Take a look.
Nadezhda unfolded the paper. The handwriting was definitely Vadim’s: small, tilted to the left—she’d recognize it anywhere. Written in a column:
“23 000 – rent.
Utilities – tenant.
Zh. – 11,500 (mortgage).
V. – 11,500 (car, until March ’27).
Mom—to us, until 1.11. N. will grumble but accept it.”
Nadezhda read it twice. “N. will grumble but accept it.” Eight years of her help and thirteen years of marriage were summed up in four words scribbled on a squared sheet.
Eleven and a half thousand—the amount that arrived on Monday. “Repaying debt.” The car loan Vadim claimed he was managing, but for the past few months he’d been borrowing from her “until payday.” The urgency “by the first of the month.” The September conversation about a fake renovation. The posters taken down on the second day: her mother-in-law was sure everything was decided, because her son said so.
This wasn’t Zhanna’s idea. Zhanna just agreed to it. Vadim came up with the plan. He convinced his sister to rent out the apartment and pushed their mother into conflict so she’d move in with him and his wife. Then he and his sister split the rent money. The first payment was probably the tenant’s deposit.
— Rimma Arkadyevna, — Nadezhda barely recognized her own voice, it was so calm. — Do you understand what this means?
— I understand, — her mother-in-law sat back down on the chair. — My children sold me. Like an apartment. One got a gift and sold me to her brother for half the rent, and my son decided I could just live at your place for free because you’re kind and won’t make a fuss. I spent eight years thinking you helped me out of duty. But you’re the only one who’s been truly fair to me.
She started to cry in an ugly, helpless, old-woman way, pressing a crumpled handkerchief to her lips. Nadezhda sat beside her and this time hugged her.
Vadim came back at seven. Nadezhda was waiting for him in the kitchen. On the table were the gift agreement, open to the right page, the graph paper, and her printout of the ad. Rimma Arkadyevna sat at the head of the table in her best blouse, as if she were going to visit someone.
Vadim saw the paper and stopped in the doorway.
— What’s this?
— You tell me, — answered Nadezhda. — “N. will grumble but accept it.” That’s your handwriting.
— Nadya, it’s… it was just a rough plan. Zhanna and I were trying to figure out what was best for Mom. She was there all alone, it was hard for her…
“It wasn’t hard for me,” said Rimma Arkadyevna. “It only became hard when your sister started hinting every day: Mom, you don’t belong here, Mom, Vadik is waiting for you. I thought it was her own idea at first. Turns out, she was following your note.”
“Mom, you don’t get it, I have a loan, my payment is twenty-eight thousand…”
“And my contract has a clause,” the mother-in-law put her dry hand on the papers. “For life. You took me to the notary yourself, you heard it yourself.”
Vadim looked at Nadezhda, as if searching for help. For thirteen years, she would have given it—found the right words, smoothed things over, comforted him.
“You called it betrayal when I suggested renting an apartment for your mom nearby,” Nadezhda said. “But you moved her into our daughter’s room to save on half someone else’s rent. And for a whole week, you watched Aseya sleep next to me and didn’t say a thing.”
“Nadya, I was going to… later…”
“There is no later, Vadim.”
She was surprised herself at how easily it came out. No shouting. Just as a statement of fact.
Rimma Arkadyevna called Zhanna right in front of them, with the phone on speaker. At first, Zhanna yelled, then she cried, then said, “It was all Vadik, I didn’t even want this.” The mother-in-law replied she didn’t care who wanted it, and that on Monday she would be going to a lawyer with her contract. The tenants who were supposed to move in on November 1st got their deposit back the next day. Zhanna returned it herself after the lawyer Nadyezhda took the mother-in-law to explained over the phone what could happen if they tried to rent out an apartment where the donor had a permanent right to live.
Vadim left on Sunday. Not to his mother or his sister, but to that same friend with the garage. He packed for a long time, waiting for Nadezhda to come out to the hallway. She never did. She stayed in the kitchen with Aseya, checking her English homework.
Rimma Arkadyevna stayed with them until the end of the week. Before leaving, she put Aseya’s posters back on the wall, exactly in the old holes from the pins, and took the icon with her.
“Don’t see me off,” she said at the door. “Zhanna’s coming for me. She should get used to her mother being around more than just on holidays.”
“Rimma Arkadyevna, call me if you need anything.”
“I will,” said the mother-in-law after a pause, buttoning her coat. “And come on Saturdays. But don’t bring cottage cheese—I can afford my own now. Zhanna will give me some from her car, we’ve agreed. Just come over for no reason. We’ll have tea.”
In November, Nadyezhda filed for divorce. There was almost nothing to split: the apartment remained hers, and the car Vadim had worked so hard to pay for was bought on his credit, so he’d have to deal with it himself. He called a few times, saying his mother turned her against him, that Zhanna twisted everything. Nadyezhda listened calmly and answered that it was neither his mother nor Zhanna who wrote the note.
In December, she finally did what her daughter had been asking for two years: she got a proper desk by the window in her room, with a lamp and a bookshelf. Aseya chose the color herself.
On Saturday, on her way to her mother-in-law’s place on Krasnoperekopskaya Street, Nadezhda stopped by a pastry shop and picked up some eclairs. Rimma Arkadyevna always loved the ones with custard cream, though she never failed to complain about the price. Walking along the slippery sidewalk with the box in her hand, Nadezhda realized that, for the first time in many years, she was visiting not out of obligation.
