Nelly was watering the geraniums on the balcony when she overheard her husband talking on the phone in a soft, unfamiliar voice. Saturday, hotel, ring. Their anniversary was just five days away, and she decided this year he definitely wouldn’t forget it.
The watering can was almost empty when Gleb suddenly laughed just beyond the kitchen window. Nelly froze on the balcony, holding the green plastic watering can above the geranium, letting the thin stream pour into the soil until it wouldn’t absorb any more.
That laugh didn’t sound like his. The voice was his—husky, with that drawn-out last syllable he always used—but the laugh belonged to someone else. Light. He hadn’t laughed like that in fifteen years, back when they rented a tiny one-bedroom on Zavodskaya and ate dumplings straight from the pot.
“Don’t start, Kiryush. I told you, I’ll handle everything.”
Water spilled over the edge of the pot, down onto the tray, and then onto the tiles. Nelly still didn’t move.
“Saturday, just like we agreed. At ‘Sosnovy Bereg’, I’ve already paid for the room. No, she won’t find out anything. I’ll tell her there’s a handover in Tver. She never gets involved in my projects.”
A pause. The kitchen chair creaked—the one with the wobbly leg that Gleb had promised to fix back in March.
“Picked up the ring yesterday. You’ll see it for yourself. Okay, okay. Kisses. Go on now.”
She set the watering can on the balcony windowsill and noticed a dark puddle with specks of dirt spreading across the tiles toward her slippers. She needed a rag, which was hanging over the bathroom radiator. But to reach the bathroom, she’d have to walk through the kitchen.
Nelly stood there, just staring at the puddle.
She still made dinner. Turkey cutlets, buckwheat, and sliced cucumbers—just how Sonya liked them. Her hands worked on autopilot, neatly and precisely, as if they belonged to some other extremely capable woman who didn’t need to think about anything at all.
“Mom, why are you adding salt again?”
Sonya stood in the kitchen doorway, wearing her dad’s huge fishing t-shirt and holding her phone. Sixteen years old, already 170 centimeters tall, with a long, light fringe that she flicked off her forehead every five minutes.
“Did I?”
“I saw you. You already added some. The cutlets are going to taste like the ocean.”
Nelly glanced at the saltshaker in her hand. White, ceramic, with a blue rooster. She put it back, setting it next to the pepper shaker, perfectly straight.
“Call your dad, please.”
“He’s in the shower. Said he’s dog tired, has to get up at six again tomorrow.”
Water was running in the bathroom—she could hear it. Gleb always sang in the shower, softly, usually the same old song about ‘a star called the Sun.’ Today, he wasn’t singing. He was whistling.
At dinner, he ate quickly without looking up, his phone sitting next to his plate facedown. He used to place it screen up. When did that change? Nelly tried to remember but couldn’t. Maybe February. Maybe earlier.
“The cutlets are salty,” said Gleb.
“Mom salted them twice,” Sonya reported.
“It happens.”
He pushed his plate away and reached for his brown mug, the one with the chipped handle he’d been drinking tea from for seven years and refused to throw out. He took a sip. Then, as if remembering, he looked up at Nelly.
“I’m going to Tver on Saturday. The project is wrapping up, the client’s nervous, I need to be there. I’ll probably have to stay overnight.”
“Saturday,” Nelly repeated.
“Yeah. Why?”
Sonya huffed into her plate. Gleb glanced at his daughter, then at his wife, a short, deep crease appearing between his brows.
“What?”
“Dad, seriously? It’s Saturday. The eighteenth. You and Mom’s anniversary.”
Gleb set his mug down with extra care, as if it were filled right to the brim.
“Damn. Nel, I’m sorry. Things have been so hectic. Listen, I’ll try to reschedule. Or we can celebrate Sunday night? We’ll go to any restaurant you want.”
She stared at his hands. Wide palms, short nails dotted with white spots, a wedding ring on his finger so deeply embedded after eighteen years that he hadn’t been able to take it off for a long time.
“Sunday,” she said. “That’s fine.”
“You’re really not upset?”
“I’m really not.”
He smiled—wide and relieved—then reached across the table to gently touch her hand. Nelli didn’t move her hand away. She just stopped feeling it altogether, as if her hand now lay on the table separate from her.
That night, she couldn’t sleep. She lay on her side of the bed, facing the wall, listening to Gleb breathing. Even, with a slight whistle on each exhale. Calm. Like a man who has made all his decisions.
How long has this been going on? A month? A year?
The same thoughts kept circling in her head: “Kiryush.” “You’ll see for yourself.” “She doesn’t interfere with my projects.” That last part was true. Nelli never interfered. She was the chief accountant for a property management company—her own numbers, her own reports, tenants calling at nine at night to ask why their heating bill was so high. His projects, his foremen, his clients—they existed in a separate world, from which he came home smelling of concrete dust and exhaustion.
The clock on the bedside table read 3:12. She got up, pulled on her robe, and went to the kitchen.
His mug was on the table again—he hadn’t taken it to the sink. Nelli picked it up, turned it over in her hands. A dark ring stained the bottom, permanent from countless teas. She set the mug in the sink, turned on the tap. Water crashed into the bottom, making the mug tip and clatter against the metal, over and over. Nelli held it with both hands, watching as the tea dissolved and swirled down the drain.
Then she dried the mug with a towel and put it away. On the top shelf, behind the salad bowls.
In the morning, after the door closed behind Gleb and the elevator began to hum in the stairwell, she walked to the window and waited until his gray ‘work’ pickup truck drove out of the yard. Then she went to the hallway.
His jacket hung on the hook. Light, spring blue—the one he put on when he was headed to the office, not to the construction site. But today, he’d left in a different one. Nelli stood before the jacket, feeling a prickly warmth in her fingertips, like from washing dishes too long in hot water.
Why was she doing this? She already knew. She’d heard it all before.
No. She wanted to see for herself.
Inside the inner pocket were receipts. Gas station, hardware store, another gas station. And one slim, white one, folded in half with a golden jewelry salon logo from the mall on Leninsky. A ring—white gold, cubic zirconia. Engraving. An amount that made her stomach clench: nearly her entire salary.
And a receipt for the engraving order, attached by a paperclip. In the ‘text’ field, neatly handwritten block letters: ‘K. Forever.’
Nelly snapped a picture of the receipt with her phone, carefully folded it along the old crease, and tucked it back into her inside pocket. Then she hesitated, pulled it out again, and checked to make sure it was facing the right way.
It was.
She walked into the kitchen, sat down on a wobbly chair, and stared at the salt shaker with the blue rooster for a long time.
Faina showed up around lunchtime, even though Nelly hadn’t invited her. Her older sister always sensed these things from forty kilometers away in Podolsk—sometimes just from a single ‘hello’ in a message.
“You texted me ‘hello’ with a period,” Faina said from the doorway, kicking off her sneakers. “You never use a period. What happened?”
Faina was forty-five, half a head shorter than Nelly, stocky, with a short gray haircut she refused to dye, and a voice that could silence even high school seniors at the school where she’d taught PE for twenty years.
Nelly poured her some tea and put out some bagels. She told her everything. Briefly, step by step, the way she’d write an official memo: the balcony, the conversation, Saturday, ‘Sosnovy Bereg,’ the receipt, the engraving.
Faina listened silently, gripping a bagel in her fist until it finally snapped and crumbled onto the tablecloth.
“Unbelievable,” she finally said. “What a jerk. Eighteen years. And on your anniversary.”
“On our anniversary.”
“Did you tell him?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Nelly gathered the crumbs on the tablecloth into a small pile with her finger.
“Because he’ll say I misunderstood. That Kiryusha is a client. That the ring is for her daughter’s graduation. He’s good at this, Fai. He’s talked to clients for fifteen years. He can convince anyone that a crack in the concrete was part of the plan.”
“But there’s the receipt.”
“He’ll say someone slipped it to him. Or that it’s a gift for his mom. You know, Zinaida Pavlovna—her real name’s Klaudia, according to her passport, second name. He’ll always find something.”
Faina’s eyes went wide.
“Seriously?”
“No. I’m just imagining the ways he’ll try to wiggle out of it.”
Her sister laughed, short and angry, then stopped herself immediately.
“Nell. Why are you so calm? I’m shaking, and you’re just sitting there, gathering crumbs.”
Nelly looked up at her. Gray eyes, a little bulging like their mother’s. A small white scar above her right eyebrow, there since childhood—from the swing in the yard.
“I’m not calm.”
“Then what are you?”
“I don’t know. Not a muscle twitched when I found the receipt. That’s what scares me. I thought I’d scream. Or smash the dishes. But I just took a picture of it and put it back. The same way.”
Faina looked at her for a long time. Then she reached across the table and placed her wide hand over Nelly’s.
“What do you want to do?”
“I want him to remember this anniversary.”
“How so?”
Nelly was silent. Outside, on the playground, someone was swinging on the squeaky swings—the ones that squeaked every spring, for as long as she had lived here.
“He wanted Kira to see the surprise. Well, I’ll prepare one. For both of them.”
The apartment was hers. Nelli knew that for sure, without needing any lawyers, but she still called one that very evening—a friend from a neighboring property management company. Her grandmother had left her the two-bedroom on the third floor in her will, two years before Nelli got married, and Gleb only registered there as her husband. Any inheritance received before marriage isn’t included in property division. The lawyer confirmed it with a calm, bored tone and added that the pickup truck was a trickier issue: it was bought during the marriage, on credit, and that loan had almost been paid off from their joint account. That, the lawyer said, could be settled later.
“And the child?” the lawyer asked. “Is the child a minor?”
“Sixteen.”
“Then child support until she turns eighteen. A quarter of the income, unless you both come to an amicable agreement. But I’m sure you will—you sound like reasonable people.”
Nelli thanked her, hung up, and realized she was finally able to breathe. It was a short, clenched exhale—like after carrying a heavy bag all the way from the subway and finally setting it down on the floor.
Then she opened her laptop.
Finding Kira turned out to be almost laughably easy. Gleb never hid his phone—there was never any need—and Nelli had once noticed the contact ‘Kira Sergeyevna Renovations.’ She’d assumed Kira was just a designer from some firm. Through social media, using the name and surname from a business card Gleb had accidentally left in the glovebox back in winter, and their city, Nelli found her profile. Thirty-three years old. Dark bobbed hair, sharp cheekbones, a mole by the left corner of her mouth. Photos of renovations, ‘before and after,’ white kitchens and gray walls. Lots of smiley faces in the captions. And in one photo—from a New Year’s party at some construction firm—there was Gleb in the background, standing by the table with tangerines, wearing that same blue jacket.
Nelli scrolled further. Last summer. The sea, a pier, a white sundress. Next to Kira stood a tall man with a shaved head and light stubble. The caption read, “With my beloved husband, six years together.”
She closed the laptop. Then opened it again. Found Kira’s husband’s profile. Timur. Thirty-six years old. A swimming instructor at the sports school. In his profile picture, he was holding a chubby four-year-old boy wearing blue swimming goggles.
That was the moment it hit her. Not because of the ring, not because of seeing ‘Kiryusha’ in the messages—but because of those blue goggles with the strap twisted at the back of the head. Her fingers turned so cold she had to tuck them under her armpits and sit hunched over the table.
On Saturday, this boy’s mom would also be leaving. Off to some ‘worksite in Tver,’ or something like that.
“Mom, who are you texting?”
Sonya was standing behind her, and Nelli hadn’t noticed her approach. The light from her phone screen glowed in the dim kitchen, with a message window open.
“It’s for work.”
“At eleven at night?”
“We have a leak at Sadovaya Street, building fourteen.”
Sonya leaned her hip against the counter and blew her bangs away from her forehead. She’d done that whenever she was nervous since she was a child, and Nelli suddenly realized her daughter had been doing it much more all week.
“Mom. I’m not a little kid.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t. You think I don’t notice anything. But I do see that Dad can’t find his mug and you don’t say a word. And that you’ve been acting like a robot for two days. And that he talks on the phone in the hallway.”
Nellie put her phone down face-first. Immediately she shuddered at the gesture, at how familiar it felt.
“Is he talking in the hallway?”
“Since March. I thought maybe he had problems at work. Maybe a loan. But then he told me, ‘Don’t tell Mom I’m on the staircase, she’ll get worried.’ And he gave me five hundred rubles. For the movies.”
Sonya fell silent. Her chin trembled—a small, stubborn chin, just like her dad’s.
“I took it, Mom. I was stupid, right? I took the five hundred rubles.”
Nellie stood up and hugged her. Her daughter was already taller than her, so Nellie had to hug her while looking at her sharp shoulder, at that ridiculous fishing T-shirt that still smelled like her father’s deodorant, because Sonya had been taking it from the closet for the second year now.
“You’re not stupid.”
“Then who is?”
“A child whose dad asked her for something. That’s not the same thing.”
They stood like that for a long time. The neighbors’ TV droned through the wall, water murmured in the pipes. Then Sonya pulled away and wiped her nose with her palm.
“Are you going to throw him out?”
What do you say to a sixteen-year-old? The truth? Half the truth?
“I don’t know yet, Sony.”
“I know you’ve come up with something. You have that look. Like when you beat Aunt Faina at cards.”
Nellie couldn’t help it and laughed. For the first time in three days. Her laugh came out hoarse, as if she had a cold.
“You’re my detective.”
“I’m your daughter. Tell me what to do.”
“On Saturday, you’ll go to Aunt Faya’s place. For two days. Okay?”
Sonya looked at her intently, like an adult—long and searchingly, with a gaze Nellie no longer recognized.
“Okay. But then you’ll tell me everything. Absolutely everything.”
It took Nellie an hour and a half to compose the message to Timur. She kept erasing and starting over, but it always sounded either hysterical or like some anonymous letter from the nineties. In the end, she wrote it the way she’d address a tenant about past-due payments: dry and straight to the point.
“Hello, Timur. My name is Nellie. I am the wife of Gleb Rogov, who works with your wife on renovation projects. I have reason to believe that this Saturday, the two of them are going to the country hotel ‘Sosnovy Bereg’ together. I don’t want any drama or confrontations with you. I just thought you have a right to know. If you want, I can show you what I saw. If not, just delete this message and I won’t contact you again.”
She hit ‘send’ at 11:48 PM and went to put the kettle on—the last thing she wanted was to keep staring at her screen.
The kettle boiled. She poured hot water into her white mug with tulips, dropped in a tea bag. Then she remembered how her mother used to say: warm the mug first, then brew the tea, or it won’t have any flavor. Nellie never did it that way. She was always in a hurry.
Her phone buzzed on the table.
“Show me.”
She sent a receipt photo. The engraving. A screenshot from the office party, where Gleb was standing by the tangerines. The silence dragged on—ten minutes, maybe more. Nellie sipped her tea, hot and bitter, without tasting it, just feeling the burn on the roof of her mouth.
“I knew something was up. Since winter, she’s been going to these so-called ‘measurements’ on weekends. She says the clients are only free on Saturdays. My son keeps asking why Mom has gone out again.”
And a minute later:
“Have you planned something?”
Nelli looked at the dark window where the kitchen was reflected: the table, the rooster-shaped saltshaker, a forty-one-year-old woman in a gray robe, her light brown hair loosely tied in a low knot. The woman looked exhausted. But her lips were pressed together so tightly there were two short vertical lines at the corners of her mouth.
“Yes. Would you like to join in?”
They met on Thursday at the café near the metro. Timur arrived early and sat by the window, large and awkward in a sporty windbreaker, both hands gripping a glass of water. He was nearly six foot three, had a shaved head and light stubble, and a pale line on his left wrist where he must have taken off his watch and forgotten to put it back on.
“I didn’t think you’d come,” he said instead of a greeting. “I thought it was someone’s joke.”
“I didn’t think you’d come either.”
He gave a crooked smile. It was a sad kind of smile, only on one side of his face.
“Yesterday I looked at her phone—for the first time ever. I know the password, she never changed it, it’s Mishka’s birthday. There were a lot of messages. A lot.”
“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
“There’s nothing to really talk about. It’s all clear. He writes her ‘my girl’. She sends him pictures of hotel rooms and asks which is better—the one with the lake view or the one facing the forest.”
Timur took a sip of water. His hand was shaking, so the water spilled onto the plastic tabletop. He wiped it up carefully with a napkin until it was totally dry, then crumpled the napkin and squeezed it in his fist.
“So what do you want to do? Make a scene? Go beat him up? Honestly, I want to. But I have a son. I have to take him to daycare, not talk with the police.”
“No scenes,” Nelli said. “And no fighting. I want them to arrive at their hotel. Go into their restaurant. Sit down to dinner. And then see us.”
“Us?”
“Us—me and you. At the next table. We’ll be having a perfectly calm dinner. And there will be a cake on their table.”
Timur stared at her.
“What kind of cake?”
“A celebration cake. Gleb and I have our anniversary on Saturday. Eighteen years. He forgot, can you imagine? But I haven’t. I already ordered it. From the bakery on Sadovaya, they’re good there. With a special inscription.”
“What does it say?”
“‘Gleb and Nelli. Eighteen years together. Thank you for everything.’”
He was silent for a long time. Then suddenly he grunted, then again, and his shoulders started to shake. Nelli didn’t realize at first that he was laughing silently, head bowed to the table.
“You’re a scary woman, Nelli.”
“I’m an accountant. I just like everything to add up right.”
On Friday evening, Gleb was packing his bag. Nelli was standing in the bedroom doorway, watching as he put things away. Not his work pants with the knee pockets, not his fleece jacket that smelled like cement. A new light blue shirt with the tag still on, which he bit off and stuffed in his pocket. The cologne she’d given him for the 23rd of February, which he almost never used. Swim trunks.
“Why the swim trunks?” Nelli asked.
He paused for a second. Just a second.
“The hotel has a pool. The client’s putting me up there. Maybe I’ll have time to swim after work.”
“In Tver?”
“In Tver, Nelli. Why are you interrogating me like a detective?”
He zipped up his bag, straightened up, and rubbed his lower back. The gray at his temples—there was a time she loved running her fingers through it, especially when he would fall asleep on her shoulder in front of the TV. Forty-four years old. The stomach he always sucked in whenever he looked at himself in the hallway mirror. He was even doing it now. But who was it for?
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I’m just thinking what I should pack for your trip.”
“No need. I’ll eat something when I get there.”
He walked over and kissed her on the temple. Quick, routine, almost like stamping a letter. She could smell his usual aftershave—he’d already sprayed it on. The night before he left. At home.
“I’ll be back Sunday, and we’ll go out somewhere. I promise.”
“You’ve promised me a lot of things already.”
“Like what?”
“Like fixing the chair.”
Gleb laughed with relief, as if he’d just heard a good joke.
“I’ll fix it. On Sunday. Everything on Sunday.”
He left on Saturday at eight in the morning. Sonya left for Faina’s at ten, with a backpack and a bag containing a box of chocolates for her aunt—and dad’s old sweater. Nelli didn’t ask why she packed the sweater.
The apartment fell quiet. She could hear the drip from the kitchen faucet, the one that should have been fixed long ago.
Nelli opened the closet in the hallway and pulled out two large checkered duffel bags—bags they had once used when moving out of their rented studio. They smelled of dust and a hint of mothballs, though she hadn’t bought any mothballs in at least ten years.
Packing up another person’s things turned out to be quick. She thought it would be painful, that it would drag on, that every shirt would bring a memory. But no. Shirts were just shirts. Socks, just socks. A razor, chargers, three pairs of work boots, and an album of stamps he’d collected as a child—and never opened since they’d gotten married.
She paused at just one thing.
A brown mug with a chipped rim sat on the top shelf behind some salad bowls, right where Nelli had hidden it that sleepless night. Gleb had searched for it for three days. He asked Sonya, asked her. Nelli would shrug… Nelli would throw up her hands. Sonya stayed silent.
She took the mug, wrapped it in newspaper, and placed it on top of the sweaters in the duffel.
Then she called the cargo taxi service and ordered delivery to Zinaida Pavlovna’s address. She’d called her mother-in-law the day before. The conversation was brief and very strange.
“Nelli, oh dear, are you out of your mind? What things?”
“His things, Zinaida Pavlovna. He’ll explain everything to you himself. On Sunday.”
“And what is he going to explain? What he’s done? Again?”
Nelli froze, phone pressed to her ear.
“Again?”
Her mother-in-law started coughing. A long, rough cough. Nelli listened to the sound, and in her head one single word turned over slowly, like a rusty gear.
“Zinaida Pavlovna. What do you mean, ‘again’?”
“Nothing, dear. I misspoke. Old age. I get mixed up.”
And she hung up.
Nelli stood in the hallway, surrounded by checkered duffel bags, staring at her reflection in the mirror. A woman in jeans and a T-shirt, hair pulled back. A scar above her eyebrow. Dry eyes.
Again.
Eighteen years. How many of them were ‘again’?
Sosnovy Bereg was nestled on the shore of the reservoir, surrounded by a pine forest, just two hours away from the city. Nelly made the drive in her little red car in an hour and fifty minutes, never once going over the speed limit. Her hands stayed steady on the wheel at the ten and two position – just like she was taught twenty years ago in driving school.
Timur was already waiting in the parking lot. He wore the same windbreaker, but underneath he had on a crisp white t-shirt. He was smoking, and it was obvious it was his first cigarette in many years: he held it awkwardly between his thumb and forefinger and kept coughing.
“I quit when Mishka was born,” he said, tossing the cigarette butt into the bin. “Bought a pack this morning. Kinda funny.”
“It’s not funny.”
“Yeah, you’re right. It’s not funny.”
He looked down at her and suddenly asked:
“Are you alright?”
The question was so simple it made Nelly’s nose sting. All week, no one had asked her that. Not Faina, who immediately tried to save her, nor Sonya, who needed rescuing herself. But here was a stranger. Someone just like her.
“No,” she answered honestly. “And you?”
“Me neither. Let’s go. Otherwise I might change my mind.”
Inside, the restaurant was filled with the aroma of fried fish, pine from the open windows, and something sweet and vanilla-like drifting from the pastry kitchen. Panoramic windows offered views of the water, where the sun was gliding low and orange. There were tables with white cloths and fresh flowers in slender vases.
The hostess, a young woman named Alina with a name tag, recognized Nelly by her voice.
“You called about the cake, right? Everything is ready. We’ll set it on table seven when the guests are seated. Your husband made a reservation for eight o’clock.”
“My husband,” Nelly agreed calmly.
Alina blushed slightly, glanced at Timur, then back at Nelly. She seemed to understand everything. But work is work.
“Your table is next door, number eight. Just like you asked.”
They sat down. Nelly ordered fish she had no intention of eating and a mineral water. Timur stared at the menu for a while, then put it aside.
“I can’t eat anything. I couldn’t get a bite down.”
“Order something, at least. Otherwise everyone will stare at us.”
“They’ll look at us anyway.”
At 7:56 pm, two people walked into the restaurant.
Gleb was wearing that light blue shirt. He held Kira by the arm, confidently, just above her elbow, and leaned close, saying something to her. Kira laughed. She wore a red sundress with thin straps, her tanned shoulders bare, and her dark bob shining in the golden light. There was a beauty mark near the left corner of her mouth.
They looked beautiful. That was the worst part. As they walked through the dining room, other guests glanced up at them the way you look at happy people.
Alina led them to table seven, right by the window, a meter and a half from table eight. Gleb pulled out a chair for Kira. Nelly hadn’t seen him do that in ten years.
They sat down. That’s when Alina brought out the cake.
It was a small, white, three-tiered cake, decorated with cream roses and a message written in chocolate: “Gleb and Nelly. 18 years together. Thank you for everything.” Nearby, on a saucer, lay a velvet ring box. Nelly had taken it herself that morning while Gleb was warming up the car – she’d found the box in the pickup’s glove compartment inside a jewelry store bag. She opened it and set it on the saucer so the ring would be facing Kira. White gold, cubic zirconia, engraved.
“It’s from your wife,” Alina said crisply, sounding professional. “Happy anniversary.”
Kira read the inscription. Her face turned confused, then pale, then blotchy with red climbing from her neck up. She shifted her gaze to Gleb. Gleb was staring at the cake. His hand, resting on the tablecloth, slowly tightened, crushing the white fabric.
Then he lifted his head and saw Nelli.
She sat up straight in a turquoise dress she’d bought three years ago for Sonya’s ninth-grade graduation and hadn’t worn since. Her hands were clasped on the table in front of her. A glass of sparkling water. Nelli gave him a tiny smile, just at the corners of her mouth.
“Nel,” Gleb managed to say, his voice hoarse. “Nel, you… how did you…”
“Happy anniversary, Gleb.”
And then Kira noticed Timur.
The sound she made was like air leaking out of an inflatable mattress—soft, long, helpless.
“Tima?”
“Hey,” Timur said. “Mishka’s at my mom’s. Don’t worry. I told him you were out taking measurements.”
Kira jumped up so quickly her chair toppled backwards. Glasses clinked on the next table. The people in the room fell silent and turned their heads. Somebody at the bar giggled, then immediately stopped.
“Tima, it’s not what— I can explain—”
“You’ll explain. At home,” Timur said, not even standing. He just sat there, huge and still, fiddling with a fork on the tablecloth, twisting it back and forth. “I’m not doing this here. People are trying to enjoy themselves.”
Gleb got up and stepped toward table eight. Nelli saw the vein bulge and throb on his temple, the same one that always pulsed when he argued with the foremen on the phone.
“What are you doing? Were you following me? Are you out of your mind?”
She spoke quietly. It was scarier than if she’d yelled; she could see it in the way he flinched back.
“I was watering the geraniums on the balcony, Gleb. You were talking in the kitchen. With the window open.”
He opened his mouth. Closed it.
“Your things are at my mom’s. Two duffel bags. The mover said Zinaida Pavlovna gave him tea. Please leave the apartment keys on the nightstand when you come for the rest. There’s not much left. I put your stamp album in.”
“Nel. Wait. Let’s talk. Not here. Let’s go outside.”
“We’ve talked for eighteen years. Mostly in the stairwell.”
Gleb flinched like he’d been struck. He understood. He finally understood how she knew about the stairwell. His face blurred, and for a moment Nelli glimpsed the old Gleb from Zavodskaya, eating dumplings out of the pot, afraid she would leave him for one of her classmates with a car.
“Sonya,” he muttered.
“Sonya’s at Faina’s. And she would’ve given you the five hundred rubles if you’d asked.”
Kira was at the window, pressing her palms to her cheeks. Then she grabbed her purse and almost ran for the exit. Timur stood up, tossed some bills on the table for the water he never drank, and nodded to Nelli—short, with a gratitude that made her lower lip tremble.
“Thank you,” he said. “Really. I couldn’t have done it like that.”
“You weren’t supposed to.”
He followed his wife out. Through the window, you could see them standing in the orange sunset on the parking lot, the two of them between the cars. Kira was talking, waving her hands. Timur was silent. Then he opened the door of his old station wagon for her. She got in. He got in. The car sat there for a long time before it moved.
Gleb slumped onto the chair at table number seven, right in front of the cake. He stared at the creamy roses, the little box, the inscription ’18 years together’.
“It’s a ring,” he said hoarsely, “I wanted to give it to her…”
“I know who you bought it for. ‘K. Forever.’ Nice engraving. The craftsman did a good job.”
Nelly stood up and grabbed her purse. Her legs held her up. She was surprised, the way you are when, after a long illness, you go outside for the first time and realize you don’t fall.
“Zinaida Pavlovna said ‘again’,” she suddenly said, already on her way out. She turned. “When I called her. She said, ‘what has he done again.'”
Gleb looked up at her. His eyes said it all. No explanation was needed anymore.
“When?” Nelly asked.
He didn’t reply. He stared at the tablecloth.
“When, Gleb?”
“A long time ago. Sonya was two. It didn’t mean anything, Nelly, I swear. It was just once… Mom found out by accident. I promised her I’d never do it again.”
Fourteen years. Nelly stood in the middle of the hall, the smell of vanilla and fried fish in the air, and she couldn’t get one scene out of her head: winter, Sonya was two, she had an ear infection, Nelly hadn’t slept for four nights carrying her around the apartment, rocking her, while Gleb called to say he was staying at the work site.
At the work site.
Always at the work site.
“Take the cake to Mom,” she said. “She has a sweet tooth.”
She drove home in the dark. Headlights picked out pines, road signs, the occasional oncoming car. After half an hour, she had to pull over because the road started to blur before her eyes. Nelly gripped the steering wheel, breathing in to the count of four and out to the count of six, just like she learned at a stress webinar she half-listened to at work.
There were no tears. There was something else: a light tremble in her knees that wouldn’t go away, and a nasty metallic taste in her mouth, as if she’d kept a coin in her cheek for too long.
Her phone rang. Gleb. She declined the call. He called again. She put her phone on silent and placed it face down on the passenger seat.
Then she flipped it back, screen side up.
No more hiding.
At 22:40, Timur messaged: “We made it home. We’re talking. I don’t know how this ends. But thank you—at least now I know what to say.”
Nelly replied: “Good luck to you. And to Mishka.”
She turned on the radio. They were singing something old, from her youth, about ‘a star named Sun.’ Nelly listened all the way through, not turning it off. Gleb used to sing that song in the shower. Now it was other people singing. The song was still good.
Faina brought Sonya home on Sunday afternoon. Her sister lugged a bag of homemade pies and a jar of raspberry jam into the kitchen, looked around, and immediately went to put the kettle on, as if it was her own home.
Sonya stopped at the threshold. She blew her bangs aside. Looked at her mother.
“Well?”
“That’s it,” Nelly said.
“Really over?”
“Really.”
Her daughter nodded. Then she walked to the cupboard, opened the top shelf where her father’s mug used to be, peeked inside, and closed it.
“Did you give it to him?”
“I did.”
“Good. It was cracked anyway.”
Sonya sat at the table, on the wobbly chair, and it squeaked under her like always, sadly and familiarly. She shifted around.
“He never fixed it, right?”
“He never did.”
“I’ll glue it myself. Aunt Faya has some wood glue, I saw it. Aunt Faya, can I have some?”
“Go ahead,” Faina called back from the stove. “And take the clamp too. It won’t hold without it.”
“What’s a clamp?”
“You’ll find out soon enough.”
Nelli watched them—her daughter in her father’s T-shirt, her sister with her short, gray hair pouring hot water into mugs and scolding the leaky faucet. And then, that tightness in Nelli’s chest, squeezed for a week, started to finally ease up. Not completely, but it was letting go.
“Mom,” Sonya said quietly, “Dad called me. Last night.”
“What did he say?”
“That you misunderstood everything. That it was a mistake. That he’s coming back.”
Nelli turned her mug with tulips in her hands.
“And what did you say?”
“I told him I’d send back the five hundred rubles. To his card. I already did.”
Faina snorted behind her so abruptly she almost spilled her tea.
“Just like you, Nelli.”
“Just like me,” Nelli agreed.
Gleb came for the rest of his things on Wednesday evening. She purposely stayed late at work, recounting the audit with the water company, even though it had already been checked. When she got home, the apartment was empty and clean. On the hallway table lay a keyring with a small hard hat—the one Sonya gave her father when she was about six.
Next to it was a note, folded in half. Nelli opened it up.
“Nelli. Forgive me if you can. I’ll file the paperwork myself so you won’t have to. We’ll make arrangements about Sonya; I’m not backing out, I’ll pay whatever’s needed. And extra, if you need it for her studies. My mom hasn’t spoken to me for a week. Kira and her husband went to his parents’ place in Tula. I’m alone now. Maybe it’s meant to be this way. G.”
She read it twice. Then she put the note in the drawer of the table, under the receipts for the electricity bill. She didn’t throw it away. There’s still time for that.
In the evening, Zinaida Pavlovna called. Her voice was old and cracked, and for the first time in eighteen years there wasn’t a trace of command in it.
“Nelli. I owe you an apology.”
“What for?”
“I knew back then. When Sonya was little. And I kept quiet. I thought I was saving the family. I thought he’d change his ways, since his mother found out. But he…”
Her mother-in-law fell silent. Nelli could hear her breathing into the phone, heavy and wheezing, just like her son.
“I ate the whole cake,” Zinaida Pavlovna suddenly said. “All of it. In three days. So sweet. Why did you order it so sweet?”
That’s when Nelli started to cry. For the first time in all of this. Sitting at the kitchen table, on a wobbly chair, with the phone pressed to her ear over cold tea. She cried and laughed at the same time and couldn’t stop, while her mother-in-law stayed silent on the line, waiting patiently, like people do with a child’s bout of hiccups.
“You should come visit,” Nelli said once she could speak again. “Come see Sonya. On Saturday. She learned to bake pies from Faina. They’re not tasty yet.”
“I’ll come,” Zinaida Pavlovna replied. “Is it okay?”
“It’s okay.”
On Saturday morning, Nelli stepped out onto the balcony with her green watering can. May was ending, lilacs were blooming in the yard, their scent sweet and a little bitter, like old perfume. On the playground, the swings squeaked. Someone below was beating dust out of a rug.
The geranium had put forth two new buds during the week—red, tight, not yet open.
She watered it carefully, pouring along the edge of the pot so the water wouldn’t spill onto the tray. Then she stood for a while, leaning her shoulder against the window frame, gazing out into the yard.
The kitchen window next to her was slightly open. From inside the kitchen came Sonya’s voice, frustrated and struggling with a clamp, and Faina’s voice, patiently teaching her how to tighten it properly. There was a smell of burnt pastries in the air. It seemed like the chair had finally been glued back together.
No one there was whispering. No one went out into the hallway.
Nellie went back to the kitchen, set the watering can down on the windowsill, and picked up the salt shaker with the blue rooster on it from the table. She turned it over in her fingers, then put it back next to the pepper shaker.
Not quite straight. A little askew.
And she left it just like that.
