My Husband Was Leaving Me for Another Woman, but Left the Bills to Me — I Zeroed Out Both
Galina found the tickets by accident. She reached into the pocket of his jacket for a lighter to start the stove and pulled out two yellow slips of paper, folded in half.
One was in the name of R. V. Dontsov. The other was in the name of E. S. Kravtsova.
She stood in the hallway, holding those tickets between two fingers as if they were something hot. The stove remained unlit. The borscht had been sitting in the pot since morning, already cold, with a film of fat on the surface.
Roman came home at eight. He took off his shoes, walked into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator. Galina sat at the table and watched him take out the kefir.
“Why didn’t you heat anything up?”
“I didn’t feel like it.”
He shrugged slightly. Poured kefir into a glass, took a sip, wiped his lips with the back of his hand. A habit that used to make her shudder. Now she didn’t care.
“Roma.”
“Hm?”
“Who is E. S. Kravtsova?”
The glass froze halfway to his lips. She saw his knuckles turn white. Then he set the glass down on the table, carefully, exactly in the center of the ring left by old mugs.
“Where did you…”
“From your jacket pocket. Two tickets. December seventeenth, Sochi.”
He was silent for about ten seconds. Then he sat down beside her and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He had a habit of rubbing the bridge of his nose when he lied. Or when he was getting ready to lie.
“It’s for work.”
“For work. In Sochi. With a woman.”
“A colleague.”
“Colleague Kravtsova. And you bought her a ticket.”
Galina spoke evenly. Without pressure. Her voice came from somewhere deep in her stomach, calm and smooth, like water in a glass. She herself was surprised by that calmness. Nothing was trembling inside. Inside, it was empty and echoing, like an apartment stairwell at night.
She dug up the story with Kravtsova in two days.
Elena Sergeevna, thirty-one years old, procurement manager at the construction company where Roman worked. Galina found her social media page in four minutes. Photos with a cat, photos with friends, a photo in front of the restaurant where Roman had “stayed late at a corporate party” in October.
In one picture, the edge of his hand appeared. She recognized the watch. The very one she had given him for his thirty-fifth birthday. A dial with a blue shimmer, a leather strap.
Galina closed the laptop and went to the bathroom. She turned on the water. Not cold and not hot, but warm, the kind you could place your hands under and stand there for a long time until your thoughts stopped jumping.
The water ran. She stood there.
The mirror above the sink fogged up around the edges. Her face blurred in it, and for a second it seemed as if it wasn’t her face. Someone else’s. Some woman who was being abandoned, while she stood there listening to the sound of running water.
Then she turned off the tap. Dried her hands with a towel. The towel smelled of his cologne. She threw it into the laundry basket.
On the third day after the tickets, Roman started the conversation himself.
They were having dinner. Pasta with canned stew, because Galina had stopped cooking anything complicated. Not out of revenge. She simply couldn’t bring herself to stand at the stove for an hour and a half for a man who, in a week, would leave for Sochi with another woman.
“Gal, we need to talk.”
She twirled a piece of pasta around her fork. Waited.
“I was thinking how to say it. I thought for a long time. I didn’t want it to happen like this.”
“How did you want it?”
“Normally. Like decent people.”
She looked at him. Five foot ten, broad shoulders, a dimpled chin, a receding hairline at the temples that embarrassed him. For twelve years, she had woken up beside this man. For twelve years, she had listened to him snore on his left side and toss and turn toward morning.
“Then say it normally.”
“I’m leaving.”
The pasta slipped off her fork. Fell back into the plate.
“To Kravtsova?”
He nodded.
“With your things?”
“Gradually. I don’t want to tear everything apart. I want to do it like a human being. The apartment will stay with you. I’m not making any claims to it.”
The apartment. Forty-one square meters on the third floor of a panel apartment building in Biryulyovo. The wallpaper in the hallway was peeling near the baseboard. The linoleum in the kitchen had bubbled up near the refrigerator. The radiator in the bedroom worked only every other time.
“How noble,” she said.
“I’m serious. The apartment is yours. And Dashka… I’ll help.”
Dashka. Their daughter. Seven years old, second grade, braids he had never once braided. Galina squeezed the fork so hard the metal pressed into her palm.
“Help.”
“Child support, like I’m supposed to. Twenty-five percent.”
“You earn forty-five thousand, Roma.”
“Well… officially.”
She got up from the table. Put her plate in the sink. Turned on the water. It poured from the tap, and that familiar, everyday sound somehow seemed louder than usual. As if the water were falling not into the sink, but into an empty tin barrel.
Roman left five days later. He took his clothes, razor, laptop, and those same watches with the blue dial. He left half the furniture, the bicycle on the balcony, and a stack of papers on the kitchen table.
Galina went through that stack in the evening, after Dashka had fallen asleep.
Electricity bills. Water bills. Gas bills. Fine, that was small stuff. But beneath them lay something else.
A loan agreement.
Two hundred eighty thousand rubles. Taken out in March, when Roman said he was “taking it for bathroom repairs.” They never repaired the bathroom. Galina remembered: in April Roman got a new jacket, in May he changed his phone, and in June he “chipped in with the guys” for a gift for his boss.
The loan was in her name.
She reread the agreement three times. Borrower’s name: Galina Pavlovna Dontsova. At the bottom was her signature. She didn’t remember it. But the signature was similar. No, the signature was hers. She had signed then at the bank because Roman said it was more beneficial for the interest rate, because she had official income and a longer employment record.
And she had signed.
Because it was March. Because they were still “we.” Because she trusted him.
Now “we” was over. But the loan remained. Monthly payment: fourteen thousand two hundred rubles. Her cashier’s salary at Pyaterochka: thirty-two thousand.
Galina placed the agreement on the table, smoothed it with her palm, and stared at the numbers for a long time. The letters blurred. Not from tears, no. From exhaustion. Because her eyes did not want to read it, and her brain did not want to understand it.
Under the loan agreement lay another sheet. An application for a credit card. Limit: one hundred twenty thousand. Otkritie Bank. Issued to Galina Pavlovna Dontsova.
She didn’t remember the card either. No, she remembered: Roman had brought an envelope from the bank, said, “Just in case, if something urgent happens,” and she had shoved it into a drawer of the dresser. She had never used the card even once.
Galina went to the dresser. The card was lying in the same envelope, unopened. She opened the bank app on her phone. Credit card balance: minus eighty-seven thousand four hundred.
Eighty-seven thousand had been spent by someone using a card issued in her name.
Her fingers went cold. She placed the phone screen-down and sat on the floor by the dresser, leaning her back against the wall. The parquet was cold, and that cold rose up her spine, along her ribs, to the back of her head.
Dashka was sleeping in the next room. It was quiet behind the wall. Only the clock ticked in the kitchen, steady and indifferent.
In the morning she called her sister.
Tamara lived in Podolsk, worked as an accountant at a furniture factory, wore thick-framed glasses, and spoke as if she were constantly calculating something in her head.
“How much?”
“Two hundred eighty on the loan. Plus eighty-seven on the card.”
“Three hundred sixty-seven.”
“Toma, I don’t know what to do.”
“Did you sign it yourself?”
Galina closed her eyes. Rain rustled outside the window. November rain, fine and persistent, the kind that keeps falling until you forget there is any other weather.
“Yes.”
“Both papers?”
“The loan for sure. The card… I don’t remember. Probably that too.”
Tamara was silent for a moment. Galina could hear her tapping a pen on the table.
“Then legally it’s your debt, Gal. It doesn’t matter who spent it.”
“I know.”
“But there are options.”
“What options?”
“Wait. Give me the evening.”
Galina hung up and went to work. Eight hours behind the register. Scanner beeps, bags, cards, “thank you, come again.” Between scanning buckwheat and handing over her shift, she managed to calculate in her head: with her salary, it would take three and a half years to pay off the loan. Not counting the card. With the card, making minimum payments, four years or more.
Four years. Dashka would be eleven. She would ask for new sneakers, and Galina would be paying for her ex-husband’s jacket and phone.
The scanner beeped. Milk, bread, sausages. A regular set.
“Do you need a bag?”
“Yes, a big one.”
She rang up the bag and smiled. The smile was familiar, work-related, stuck to her face like a sticker.
Tamara called back at nine in the evening.
“Write this down. First: you didn’t activate or use the card. All transactions can be traced. If he made the purchases, those are his expenses. You can sue.”
“Sue Roma?”
“Sue your ex-husband Dontsov, who spent money from a credit card issued to you without your knowledge.”
Galina was sitting in the kitchen. Dashka was doing homework in the room, and through the wall came her mumbling: she was reading a math problem aloud.
“And the loan?”
“The loan is harder. You signed the agreement, and the money came into your account.”
“Into his account, Toma. He asked me to transfer it right away.”
“Is there a bank statement?”
“There should be. At the bank.”
“Get the statement. Show that the money went to him. That doesn’t cancel your debt to the bank, but it gives you grounds to file a claim against him.”
Galina listened and wrote on the back of Dashka’s workbook for environmental studies. The letters came out large and crooked.
“Toma, he’ll say it was shared family spending.”
“What family, Gal? He left for another woman. You didn’t renovate the bathroom. What the money went toward will be visible from his purchases.”
“What if he transferred something to her?”
“Listen, I’ll find you a lawyer. A normal one, not expensive. A friend recommended one. He works with family cases.”
Behind the wall, Dashka stopped mumbling. Silence. Then footsteps, the creak of the door.
“Mom, when will Dad come?”
Galina looked at her daughter. Height four foot two, skinny, sharp knees, a marker stain on her right cheek. Her hair was tied in a ponytail she had made herself: crooked, with loose strands sticking out.
“Soon, baby.”
“He promised to show me how to skate.”
“He will.”
Dashka left. Galina turned toward the window. The rain continued. The glass had fogged up, and droplets crawled slowly down it, making trails through the condensation.
She went to the lawyer three days later. His office was on the first floor of an apartment building near Tsaritsyno metro station. A small sign, a shabby door, and inside it smelled of coffee and old paper.
The lawyer turned out to be a man of about fifty, with a neat beard and a habit of twirling a pen between his fingers.
“Two debts. A loan and a credit card.”
“Yes.”
“You signed the loan yourself, and the money was transferred to him?”
“To his card, the same day.”
“And the credit card?”
“It was lying in an envelope. I never touched it.”
He wrote something down. The pen flickered between his index and middle fingers.
“Did you bring the credit card statement?”
“Here.”
Galina handed him the printout. The lawyer scanned it, stopped, and raised his eyebrows.
“Purchases at Eldorado, purchases at Sportmaster, transfer to E. S. Kravtsova’s card for twenty-five thousand, another transfer to her for fifteen thousand…”
“Kravtsova. That’s her.”
“His girlfriend?”
“Now, yes.”
The lawyer put down his pen. Looked at her attentively.
“Galina Pavlovna, you need to do three things. First: file a police report for unauthorized use of the credit card. Second: file a lawsuit against your ex-husband to recover the amounts spent from the card and the loan amount transferred to his account. Third: contact the bank with a statement that the card was used without your knowledge.”
“Will that help?”
“With the card, most likely yes. There are transfers to a specific person, purchases not tied to your address. The loan is more complicated, but the statement works in your favor.”
She nodded. Stood up. The lawyer handed her a business card.
“And one more thing, Galina Pavlovna.”
“Yes?”
“Do not discuss money with your husband without witnesses. Better by messages, with dates.”
She stepped outside. The air was wet and heavy, smelling of gasoline and damp leaves. Near the metro, people were selling mandarins, and that bright orange color in the middle of gray November seemed almost offensive.
That evening, Roman called.
“Gal, did you block the card?”
“What card?”
She knew which one. But she wanted to hear it.
“The credit card. It got declined at the store.”
She was standing by the stove, heating soup for Dashka. Steam rose from the pot, settled on her face, on her forehead, and she felt that moisture, warm and unpleasant.
“Roma, that is my card.”
“Well, I know, but I was using it. You allowed it.”
“I didn’t allow it.”
“Gal, don’t start.”
“I’m not starting. I’m ending. The card is blocked. I filed a statement with the bank about the loan. There will be a police report about the card.”
Silence. Long, dense silence. She heard him breathing. And she heard another voice in the background, a woman’s, indistinct.
“Are you serious?”
“Of course.”
“Gal, we agreed. I left you the apartment.”
“You left me an apartment with ruined repairs and three hundred sixty-seven thousand in debts that you ran up yourself. That’s not a gift, Roma. That’s disgusting.”
He was silent.
“I’ll call you back.”
“Do that.”
She hung up. The soup boiled. She turned down the gas and sat on the stool. Her hands were shaking. But her voice had not trembled. And that was what mattered.
The next week, Galina filed a police report.
The officer on duty was young, with a bored face. He accepted the report and gave her a receipt.
“They’ll check within thirty days.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
She left the station and called Tamara.
“I filed it.”
“Well done. Now the lawsuit.”
“Toma, I’m scared.”
“Of course you’re scared. But living with his debts isn’t scary?”
Galina walked along the street beside the school fence. Dashka’s school. Behind the fence she could see the playground, a slide with peeling paint, swings. Empty: it was a workday.
“I think he’ll be angry.”
“Let him be angry. Anger doesn’t cancel out his spending on your card.”
“What if he doesn’t pay child support?”
“That’s what bailiffs are for, Gal. What, is this your first time?”
“First.”
Tamara sighed. And in that sigh there was so much: pity, irritation, exhaustion for her, for herself, for all women who sign papers because “we’re family.”
“All right. I’ll come on Saturday. I’ll bring a pie and the lawyer.”
“A lawyer on Saturday?”
“He said he can. Bring Dashka, let her play with Kira.”
Kira was Tamara’s daughter, the same age as Dashka. They were friends the way children are friends: desperately, loudly, without caution.
“Thank you, Toma.”
“You’re welcome, silly.”
Galina put the phone in her pocket. Her fingers were still trembling, but less now. As if every step along that wet street took away another little piece of the shaking.
Roman came for the rest of his things on Thursday.
Galina was at work. Dashka was picked up by their neighbor, Lyudmila Petrovna, an elderly woman with short hair and the habit of saying, “Don’t worry, child, everything gets ground down in the end.” Galina didn’t like that phrase, but she trusted the neighbor.
When she came home that evening, the apartment smelled unfamiliar. Not of cologne, no. Of something else. A presence that no longer belonged in that place. He had taken the bicycle from the balcony, a box of tools, and the photo album. The wedding one.
Galina walked through the apartment. On the wall in the hallway, there remained a rectangle, lighter than the wallpaper around it. Their photograph had hung there. The sea, 2019, Anapa. She in a white sundress, he in shorts, both tanned, both laughing.
Now there was a rectangle. A light spot on faded wallpaper.
Dashka sat on the sofa drawing.
“Mom, Dad took the album.”
“I see.”
“Were our pictures in there?”
“They were.”
“Will he bring it back?”
“I don’t know, baby.”
Dashka continued drawing. She was drawing a house with big windows and a dog in the yard. They had never had a dog. Roman didn’t want one. “Fur, dirt, responsibility,” he used to say. And Galina had agreed.
Now they could get a dog.
The thought came unexpectedly and caught her off guard. She realized she was smiling. Not a work smile, not a cashier’s smile, but a real one, crooked, the left corner of her mouth slightly higher than the right.
They filed the lawsuit in December.
The lawyer prepared everything in two days. Galina signed after reading every line twice. Every single one. She no longer signed anything without reading it.
A claim to recover from Roman Viktorovich Dontsov the amount of two hundred eighty thousand rubles, transferred from the plaintiff’s credit account to the defendant’s personal account. Plus an application to recognize the credit card expenses as unauthorized.
Roman sent a message that same evening.
“Gal are you crazy or what. I thought we’d separate normally.”
She read it and did not reply. She placed the phone screen-down on the table. A habit that had appeared over the last month: not to see the screen until she decided she wanted to see it.
Half an hour later, another message.
“You realize court takes a long time and costs money.”
And an hour later.
“Why are you doing this. I left you the apartment.”
She read all three, took screenshots, and forwarded them to the lawyer. The lawyer replied briefly: “Excellent.”
They celebrated New Year’s as three: Galina, Dashka, and Tamara.
Tamara brought Olivier salad in a five-liter pot and a bottle of champagne. Dashka and Kira decorated the tree with tinsel and paper snowflakes. The tree was small, artificial, with one broken branch. But it glowed.
Galina sat in the kitchen, listened to the children squealing in the room, smelled mandarins, pine needles, and Olivier, and felt the warmth from the radiator, which had finally heated up properly.
“How are you?” Tamara asked.
“Fine.”
“Really fine or the usual ‘fine’?”
Galina looked at her sister. Tamara was standing by the stove, stirring mulled wine in a small pot. Her glasses had fogged up, and she looked over them, squinting.
“Really.”
“That’s good.”
They clinked glasses at midnight. Dashka made a wish. Kira made hers louder. Tamara made hers quietly, just moving her lips. Galina didn’t make any wish. She simply drank the champagne and felt the bubbles tickle her palate.
It was good. Not excellent. Not wonderful. Good. The way it feels good when the hardest part is already behind you, and the hardest part ahead has not yet begun.
In January, the bank responded.
The credit card was recognized as compromised. The bank requested explanations from Roman about the transactions. The transfers to Kravtsova had been recorded.
In February, a court summons arrived.
Roman called.
“Gal, maybe we can make an agreement? Without court?”
“What kind of agreement?”
“I’ll return part of it. Half. For the loan. And for the card too.”
“Half?”
“Well, I don’t have the whole amount right now.”
“I don’t have it either, Roma. But I’m the one who has to pay.”
He fell silent again. And again, in the background, there was a woman’s voice. E. S. Kravtsova. Elena Sergeevna. Thirty-one years old.
“Fine,” he said. “Then in court.”
“Then in court.”
Galina hung up. Sat down at the table. Dashka’s math notebook lay there, open on a page of examples. 45 minus 12 equals 33. 78 minus 35 equals 43.
Simple arithmetic. Subtraction. Dashka handled it better than Galina handled subtracting her own life from their shared one.
But she was learning.
The court hearing took place in March.
Galina wore a gray sweater and black trousers. She fixed her hair. Put on lipstick for the first time in three months. Not for court. For herself.
The courtroom was small. Wooden benches, worn down. One window, high up, with light falling at an angle and lying in a stripe across the floor.
Roman sat across the aisle. Freshly trimmed, in a new shirt. A woman sat beside him. Short, light-brown hair, drop earrings. Kravtsova.
Galina looked at her for one second. That was enough. An ordinary woman. Not more beautiful, not younger, not better. Just different.
The lawyer spoke evenly. Facts, statements, dates. Galina listened and looked at her hands. Her hands lay calmly on her knees. They did not tremble.
The judge asked Roman a question.
“Do you confirm that the loan amount of two hundred eighty thousand rubles was transferred to your personal account?”
“That was shared family money.”
“Do you have confirmation of joint expenses in that amount?”
He looked at his lawyer. The lawyer leafed through the papers.
“The bathroom… bathroom repairs.”
“Are there receipts, contracts, certificates of completed work?”
Silence.
Galina looked at the strip of light on the floor. Dust danced in it, fine and golden, as if nothing special were happening.
The decision was issued two weeks later.
The court ordered Roman Viktorovich Dontsov to pay the plaintiff two hundred eighty thousand rubles in compensation. The credit card matter was separated into a separate proceeding, but the police had already confirmed: the transactions had not been made by the plaintiff.
Galina read the decision on the stairwell landing, standing by the mailbox. The paper was ordinary, gray, with a blue stamp. The letters were small.
She folded the sheet and put it in her bag.
At home, she heated soup. Borscht, real borscht, with garlic and sour cream. She had started cooking again. Not for someone else. For herself and Dashka.
Dashka ate borscht and told her about school. About a boy named Yegor who had drawn a dog on the board and the teacher praised him. About her friend Mila, who brought a hamster to school in her pocket.
“Mom, can we get a hamster?”
“We’ll get a dog.”
“Really?!”
“Really.”
Dashka jumped up from the table and hugged her. Wrapped her arms around her neck, pressed cheek to cheek. The marker stain on her right cheek smeared.
Galina held her daughter and felt her warmth, her ribs under the thin T-shirt, her breathing, quick and joyful.
Outside the window, snow was falling. March snow, wet, unserious. It melted before it reached the ground.
Roman paid the first installment in April. Fifty thousand. The bailiffs found him quickly: his official salary had not gone anywhere.
Galina took the money to the bank. Partial repayment.
That evening, after Dashka had fallen asleep, she sat in the kitchen and counted. If he paid fifty thousand a month, the loan would be closed by autumn. If thirty, by winter. If he tried to avoid it, the bailiffs would take what was owed.
She opened the bank app. Looked at the loan balance. The number had decreased. Not by much. But it had decreased.
On the table stood a new mug. White, without a design, with an intact handle. She had bought it on sale for one hundred twenty rubles. She threw away the old one with the chipped rim.
Tamara sent a message: “How are things?”
Galina replied: “Counting.”
“What are you counting?”
“The months until zero.”
“They will come.”
She finished her tea. Washed the mug. Put it on the drying rack.
Then she turned off the kitchen light and went to check on Dashka. She was sleeping on her side, knees pulled up to her stomach, breathing evenly. On the floor beside the bed lay a drawing: a house with big windows and a dog in the yard.
Galina picked up the drawing, smoothed it, and placed it on the nightstand.
The dog in the drawing was ginger. With big ears.
She closed the door quietly so it would not creak.
In May, Galina closed the credit card. The bank wrote off the debt after confirmation from the police. Eighty-seven thousand four hundred rubles. Zeroed out.
She stood at the ATM and looked at the screen. Balance: zero. Debt: none.
A simple word. None.
She went outside. May smelled of lilacs and gasoline. Near the metro, people were selling strawberries, and a woman in an apron shouted, “Fresh, homemade, come get them!”
Galina bought a box. Brought it home. Dashka ate half of it while doing her homework, and her fingers turned pink.
Only the main loan remained. Two hundred thirty thousand. Roman was paying. More slowly than she wanted, but he was paying. The bailiffs did not let him forget.
Galina looked out the window. On the balcony, where the bicycle used to stand, there were now two pots of petunias. She had planted them last week. Purple and white.
They were blooming.
The loan reached zero in October.
Galina found out at work when she checked her phone during her break. The bank app showed zero. Not a kopeck left.
She put the phone on the counter and stood there for a minute, staring at the screen. Her colleague Sveta asked if everything was all right. Galina nodded.
That evening she called Tamara.
“Zero.”
“Both?”
“Both. The card in May, the loan today.”
Tamara was silent for three seconds. Then she said:
“Should I bring a pie?”
“Bring one.”
Galina hung up and sat down on the stool. The same one she had sat on a year earlier when she went through the stack of papers. The stool was old, with a scratch on one leg. She hadn’t replaced it. Why would she? It was sturdy.
Dashka ran into the kitchen.
“Mom, when are we going to choose a dog?”
“On Saturday.”
“Really?!”
She hugged her again. And again, there was marker on her cheek.
Galina held her daughter and looked at the table. The table was empty. No bills, no agreements, no papers with tiny letters and blue stamps.
Just a table. Wooden, slightly scratched. With a mug ring on the surface that she no longer tried to scrub away.
It was there.
And let it be.
