“I’m Going to Have a Baby with Your Sister!” My Husband Announced, and I Just Laughed
“And what about a toast?” My husband’s voice cut through the rich aroma of roasted meat. “To family. May it only continue to grow.”
Stas raised his glass, but he wasn’t looking at me. His warm, slightly nervous gaze was fixed on my sister. On Lena. She sat across from him, nervously twisting the edge of her napkin and forcing a smile.
I pretended not to notice.
It was simply a habit I had developed over the past year. Not noticing how he helped her into her coat even when I was standing closer.
Not noticing how he laughed at her jokes—louder than he ever laughed at mine. Not noticing how they suddenly fell silent whenever I entered the room.
“To family,” I echoed, taking a sip of tart grape juice.
Lena flinched and finally raised her eyes to mine. There was such profound sorrow in them that, for a moment, I felt uneasy.
“Lena, is everything all right? You’re unusual… quiet today.”
She blinked, and the sorrow disappeared, replaced by her familiar, weary irony.
“There’s just a lot of work, Katya. Reports, deadlines. You know how it is.”
Of course I knew. We worked for the same company, only in different departments. And I knew that this was the quietest period of the entire year for Lena.
But I said nothing.
Another useful habit.
Stas suddenly cleared his throat, drawing our attention.
“Speaking of work, do you remember that project in another city I told you about? It’s been approved.”
Something tightened unpleasantly inside me.
“Approved? But you said it was only an idea. A rough proposal.”
“Well, there you have it.” He spread his hands, beaming. “I’m leaving in a month. For six months, maybe longer.”
He was speaking to me, but once again he was looking at Lena.
She stared down at her plate as though she had found the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything written there.
“Six months?” I repeated, and my voice betrayed me by trembling. “But we were planning to go on vacation this summer.”
“Katya, this is an opportunity!” he exclaimed passionately. “An opportunity like this comes only once in a lifetime! You want me to grow and develop professionally, don’t you?”
He was saying all the right things—the kind of things no one could argue with. Any normal wife would have started applauding and packing his suitcase.
But I wasn’t a normal wife.
I was a wife who had just seen her husband’s hand cover her sister’s beneath the table.
Only for a second.
A light, almost weightless touch.
Lena immediately pulled her hand away as though she had been burned.
I simply sat there and watched them—my radiant husband, so full of hope, and my sister, who looked as though she might crumble into dust right there on my kitchen chair.
The dinner ended awkwardly. Lena complained of a headache and said she wanted to go home.
“I’ll drive you,” Stas immediately volunteered. “I need to stop by the pharmacy anyway.”
“The pharmacy is in the opposite direction,” I remarked automatically.
“I’ll make a detour.” He was already putting on his jacket. “I don’t mind doing it for your sister.”
He turned toward me in the doorway. There was something new in his eyes.
It wasn’t pity.
It was more like determination, as though he were standing at the edge of a cliff and had finally decided to jump.
“We need to talk, Katya. Seriously. When I get back.”
He left, abandoning me alone in a room filled with the smells of a celebration that had never really happened and the ominous certainty that something terrible was coming.
For the next two weeks, I lived as though I were surrounded by fog.
Stas called every evening at exactly nine. He told me about his “project,” the new city, and the apartment he had supposedly rented. His voice over the phone sounded foreign and mechanical.
He was reporting to me rather than sharing his life with me.
He asked how I was doing, but never listened to the answer.
I tried to reach out to my sister.
“Lena, shall we go shopping this weekend? Or see a movie?”
But she kept slipping away.
“Oh, Katya, I’m exhausted. Let’s do it another time.”
She truly did look tired. She had lost weight, and dark circles had appeared beneath her eyes. Several times at work, I noticed her absentmindedly placing a hand over her stomach.
It was a strange, unfamiliar gesture.
The suspicion didn’t appear all at once. It grew slowly, like poisonous ivy wrapping itself around my heart.
At first, it was only a delicate shoot—when I accidentally noticed a pregnancy-test wrapper in her wastebasket.
Then she began wearing loose sweaters, even though she had always been proud of her figure.
The ivy grew stronger, and its thorns dug deeper and deeper.
I stopped waiting for Stas’s calls. I knew he was lying. His entire “project” was a fabrication.
But I didn’t know how to force them to tell me the truth.
The truth finally came unexpectedly on a Wednesday evening.
I was sitting on the sofa, staring blankly at the television’s dark screen, when my phone rang.
It was Stas.
“Hello,” I said.
He remained silent. All I could hear was his breathing.
“Stas? Has something happened?”
“I can’t keep lying anymore, Katya.” His voice was dull and devoid of emotion. “I’m not coming back. It isn’t because of the project.”
I remained silent too.
I waited.
“It’s because of Lena. We… we love each other.”
I closed my eyes.
The poisonous ivy inside me stopped growing. It simply froze, turning into stone.
“I’m going to have a baby with your sister!” he blurted out in a single breath, as though he were afraid that if he paused, he would never manage to say it.
In the emptiness that followed, I heard a strange sound. It was muffled and bubbling.
Only a second later did I realize that the sound was coming from me.
I was laughing.
Quietly at first, and then louder and louder.
It wasn’t joyful laughter. It was hysteria bursting from the deepest part of my soul.
I threw my head back and laughed while tears streamed down my cheeks. I laughed at the monstrous, ridiculous banality of it all.
A husband, a sister, and a baby.
It was like some cheap television drama I would never have chosen to watch.
“Katya?” Stas’s frightened voice came through the phone. “What’s wrong with you? Are you crying?”
“No,” I breathed when the laughter finally subsided. “Of course not. I’m not crying. I’ve just realized what an idiot you are, Stas.”
I ended the call.
The hysteria disappeared as suddenly as it had begun, leaving behind a ringing, crystalline clarity.
The stone inside me wasn’t weighing me down.
On the contrary, it gave me something solid to stand on.
I got up, dressed, and went outside. Almost automatically, I called a taxi.
Lena opened the door.
She was wearing only a robe. Her hair was disheveled, and her eyes were red from crying. When she saw me, she recoiled.
“Katya… Did he tell you? I’m sorry, I—”
“Where is he?” I interrupted, stepping inside.
My voice sounded level and calm.
Far too calm.
“He… he isn’t here. He’s in another city.”
I looked around her small studio apartment.
A man’s jacket hung by the door. His sneakers stood near the threshold. Two wineglasses were sitting on the coffee table.
“Stop lying, Lena. At least now.”
She shrank into herself.
“Katya, I know this is terrible! But we couldn’t help it! We love each other so much!”
She continued speaking—about feelings that had suddenly flared up and about how much they had suffered.
I wasn’t listening.
I waited for her to run out of words.
“You’re pregnant,” I said when she finally fell silent.
It wasn’t a question.
“Yes,” she whispered, instinctively covering her stomach with one hand. “We’re going to have a baby.”
I walked right up to her.
She flinched, expecting a slap, a scream—anything.
“Lena,” I said, looking directly into her eyes. “Why didn’t you ask me before sleeping with my husband and planning a family with him?”
“Ask you what?” she said, confused.
“I would have told you. It isn’t a secret. At least, not to me. Stas and I tried to have a baby for three years. We went through every possible examination and saw every kind of doctor.”
I paused, allowing my words to sink in.
“Stas is infertile, Lena. Completely infertile. It’s a medical fact confirmed by countless tests. He cannot father children. Ever.”
My sister’s expression slowly began to change.
First confusion, then denial, and finally horror.
The horror was so primitive and overwhelming that, for a moment, I almost felt sorry for her.
“No,” she whispered. “You’re lying. You only want to hurt me. He… he said the problem was with you.”
“Of course he did.” I smiled bitterly. “It was easier for him that way. Easier to lie to you and to himself. Easier to steal your life than to admit his own inadequacy.”
I turned and walked toward the door.
“So congratulations, little sister. You really are going to have a baby. But my husband has absolutely nothing to do with it.”
I closed the door behind me, leaving her alone inside the collapsed house of cards she had called her “great love.”
The night air seemed wonderfully fresh.
I took a deep breath.
For the first time in a very long while, breathing felt easy.
Five years passed.
Is five years a long time or a short one?
It is long enough for old scars to stop aching whenever the weather changes.
Long enough to learn a new language, change careers, and move to a city where you can see the sea directly from your bedroom window.
I was sitting in a small café on the waterfront, lazily stirring the foam on my cappuccino.
A light breeze played with a paper napkin, while seagulls cried somewhere in the distance.
I was waiting for Andrei. We were planning to drive out of town and choose a puppy from an animal shelter.
The thought warmed me from within, filling me with quiet, peaceful happiness.
The bell above the café door rang, and I glanced casually in that direction.
Then I froze.
A woman had entered, holding a little boy by the hand. She was thin, with a drawn face and lifeless eyes.
She wore a shapeless gray cardigan that made her look even more washed out.
I wouldn’t have recognized her if it hadn’t been for the familiar curve of her lips.
Lena.
She noticed me almost immediately.
She flinched, and panic distorted her face for a moment. She wanted to turn around and leave, but the boy was already pulling her toward the pastry display.
“Mommy, I want that one with the berry!”
Lena whispered something to him. Then, gathering her courage, she led him to a table in the far corner, as far away from me as possible.
I looked away, pretending to be deeply fascinated by the pattern on my cup.
But I could feel her tense gaze against my back.
The stone that had once filled my chest had turned to dust long ago, but now it felt as though one tiny fragment had stirred.
I felt neither anger nor resentment.
Only a strange, distant sadness.
Their order arrived quickly. The boy wrinkled his nose adorably as he ate his pastry.
He was a handsome, fair-haired child.
He looked nothing like Stas or Lena.
I had already decided that I would simply wait for Andrei and leave without saying a word.
But then Lena stood and walked toward my table.
“Hello,” she said quietly, almost in a whisper.
“Hello, Lena.”
She shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other.
“I… I didn’t know you lived here. We’re only passing through.”
“It happens.” I shrugged.
“How are you?” she forced herself to ask.
“I’m doing well.”
The silence stretched between us.
Her son watched us curiously.
“Katya, I…” She hesitated. “I wanted to say that I’m sorry. I know it’s too late and that it doesn’t change anything. But I… I was such a fool.”
She looked at me with desperate hope.
She was waiting for an answer—for forgiveness or perhaps even a reproach. Anything that would prove I still cared.
But I didn’t.
“It’s all in the past, Lena,” I said evenly. “Live your life.”
Tears glistened in her eyes.
She understood.
She understood that, to me, she was nothing more than a ghost from the past—a page I had turned and would never read again.
The bell above the café door rang once more.
Andrei walked in, smiling and carrying two small bouquets of wild daisies.
“Sorry I’m late. These are for you.”
He handed me the flowers and only then noticed Lena.
He didn’t know who she was. To him, she was simply a strange woman who, for some reason, was crying beside the table of the woman he loved.
“Has something happened?” he asked with genuine concern.
“No.” I smiled at him as I accepted the flowers. “Nothing at all. This woman was just leaving.”
Lena silently nodded, turned around, and walked back to her son.
I breathed in the honeyed scent of the daisies.
Everything was exactly as it should be.
Everyone had their own road.
And mine led forward—toward the sea, the sunlight, and the man who gave me wildflowers simply because he wanted to.
For no reason at all.
