“A Wife, a Cook, and a Wallet”—Her Sister-in-Law Revealed Her Husband’s Words, but at Easter She Left Them Sitting at an Empty Table
Lena took the groceries out of the bags, placed them on the kitchen table, and calculated everything in her head: two kilograms of cottage cheese, four packs of butter, sugar, vanilla, raisins, candied fruit—and that was only for the Easter cakes.
Eight thousand rubles had already disappeared from her card at Pyaterochka, and this was only the first shopping trip. She still had to buy meat, fish, vegetables for the salads, and ingredients for the aspic that her father-in-law demanded every year.
“Otherwise, what kind of holiday is it?”
There were four days left until Easter.
Igor looked into the kitchen, took a mandarin from one of the bags, and said casually:
“Mom and Yulia will come early on Saturday, around ten. Seryoga and Nastya will be there too, along with Uncle Lyosha and Aunt Valya. Dima from work wanted to stop by with his wife, so I told him, of course.”
“How many people altogether?”
“About twenty. Maybe twenty-two. The usual.”
“Igor, I wanted to invite Sveta. She’s alone this year. Kostik is in the army, and she’s having a difficult time.”
“Lena, come on. Why Sveta? She’ll show up and spend the entire evening talking about her problems. It’s a family holiday, not a therapy session.”
“Sveta is my sister.”
“I know who Sveta is. I’m explaining that you’re cooking for twenty people, while I decide whom we invite. Everyone does what they’re good at, right?”
He slapped the mandarin against his palm, peeled it, stuffed half of it into his mouth, and walked away.
Lena stood there with a pack of butter in her hand.
She placed it in the refrigerator, closed the door, took out the notebook in which she kept her grocery lists, and stared at the numbers for a long time.
Easter in the Gurov family was celebrated like an official state reception.
Lena began preparing a week in advance. On Monday, she made the dough for the Easter cakes so it could rise properly twice. On Tuesday, she cooked the aspic and worked on the other preparations. Wednesday was for salads, sliced appetizers, and casseroles. Thursday was for the main course. On Friday, she finished everything, arranged the dishes, washed all the tableware, and polished the glasses.
On Saturday, she started at six in the morning, setting the table on the veranda if the weather was warm or in the large living room if it was cold.
They lived in Domodedovo, outside Moscow. It was not a summer cottage but their permanent home, which Igor had inherited from his grandfather.
Every year, that house became the headquarters of the family Easter feast.
Twenty people meant three courses. It meant tablecloths that Lena starched herself. It meant a separate children’s table because Yulia, Igor’s sister, brought her two children, and Dima brought two more.
Four Easter cakes, three kinds of salad, roast turkey, aspic, fish, cold cuts, cottage-cheese paskha, and dyed eggs. Lena colored approximately forty eggs with onion skins, just as her mother had taught her.
Twenty people ate everything in four hours.
Lena ate in the kitchen after everyone had left. She ate standing up, directly from the serving dishes, because she always forgot to prepare a plate for herself.
Ten years.
Every Easter.
Not once had it been any different.
In the third year, Lena suggested inviting her school friend Masha, whom she had known for twenty-five years.
“Lena, this isn’t just a casual gathering,” Igor had said. “It’s Easter. Let’s invite your friends another time.”
In the fifth year, she asked to invite Aunt Zina, her late mother’s sister. The woman was over eighty and would have appreciated the invitation.
“She’s hard of hearing,” Igor said. “She’ll be uncomfortable in such a large group. We’re thinking about what’s best for her, aren’t we?”
Every time, Lena nodded.
Igor always spoke gently and logically, even as though he were being considerate.
Yet every year, the guest list consisted of his mother, his sister, his friends, and his colleagues.
The people Lena cared about remained outside the door.
On Wednesday, Lena was kneading dough. Her hands were covered in flour up to her elbows, her back was already aching, and the radio in the kitchen was droning on about traffic jams on Kashirskoye Highway.
Yulia had come to “help,” which meant that she was sitting in the next room with her phone while Artyom and Sonya ran around the house.
Lena stepped into the hallway to wipe her hands on a towel hanging from a hook near the door because the kitchen towel was completely soaked.
That was when she heard Yulia.
The door to the room was slightly open. Yulia had always spoken loudly—it was one of her most noticeable traits—and she never bothered lowering her voice.
“No, why would she be offended? She’s used to it. I think she even likes it. Seriously. Lena is like that—give her a list of jobs, and she’s happy. My husband says Igor has it made. His wife is his cook and his wallet at the same time. Seriously, she pays for everything with her own card. Igor says, why should he transfer money when she runs out and buys everything herself? And then he says it’s coming from their shared money. What shared money, Katya? Their shared money means his money belongs to him, while her salary goes toward groceries, the house, and all these celebrations.”
Yulia laughed briefly, as though she had just told a funny joke.
Lena stood in the hallway.
The flour was drying on her fingers.
The kitchen smelled of yeast—warm and alive. Lena had loved that smell all her life, but suddenly it became unbearable.
She returned to the kitchen and sat down on a stool.
Slowly, one finger at a time, she wiped her hands on her apron.
She had married Igor ten years earlier. During the first few years, they had celebrated modestly, with four or five people, and Igor had bought the groceries himself.
The grand celebrations had started five years ago, after Igor received a promotion and decided that Easter was “their family brand.”
“You understand, Lena,” he had said. “It’s important for our reputation.”
Since then, Lena had spent between fifteen and twenty-five thousand rubles on the Easter table every year.
Each year became more expensive. Prices rose, but the number of guests never decreased.
The previous year, the total had been twenty-two thousand rubles.
It had all come from her card.
Lena worked as an accountant for a construction company and earned sixty-five thousand rubles a month.
One-third of her April salary went toward a single celebration—a table where she was always the last person to sit down.
And apparently Igor had been bragging about it.
That was the most accurate word.
He had not been complaining or explaining.
He had been bragging.
He had bragged to Yulia. Lena had no idea who else he might have told.
She opened the banking app on her phone and scrolled through her transaction history from the previous April.
Pyaterochka.
Perekrestok.
The Butcher Shop.
Perekrestok again.
Pyaterochka again.
The market—a transfer of three thousand two hundred rubles directly to a vendor.
In March, there had been purchases from a household goods store: tablecloths, candles, and baking molds for the Easter cakes.
New Year’s Eve showed the same pattern.
Her father-in-law’s birthday was the same.
There was also International Women’s Day, when Igor had invited twelve people.
“We’ll celebrate,” he had said. “You don’t mind, do you? We’ll congratulate you at the same time.”
Lena had spent her own holiday standing in front of the stove.
If she added up all the holidays over the past five years—not only Easter, but New Year’s Eve, birthdays, and the May holidays—the total came to hundreds of thousands of rubles.
Lena’s rubles.
She calculated it approximately, using her memory and her bank statements.
The total was nearly four hundred thousand.
Four hundred thousand rubles spent on tables surrounded by people who were strangers to her.
She closed the app, covered the dough with a towel, washed her hands, walked out onto the porch, and called Sveta.
“Sveta, what are you doing for Easter?”
“Sitting at home. Why? I don’t feel like making a big effort just for myself.”
“Can I come to your place?”
There was a pause.
“Lena, what’s going on? What about Igor? What about your famous Easter table?”
“The table will survive without me. I want to come to you. I’ll bring an Easter cake, and we’ll dye eggs together. We’ll have a normal celebration.”
“Lena, are you serious? Come over. I’ll unfold the sofa for you. You can even stay the night.”
“We’ll see.”
Lena ended the call.
She looked across the yard at the large wooden table beneath the canopy—the table Igor brought outside every year “to make everything look impressive.”
She stood there for a while and then returned to the house.
On Thursday, Lena did not go to Pyaterochka.
She did not take out the baking molds.
She did not begin boiling meat for the aspic.
Instead, she drove into town and went to an arts-and-crafts store. She bought Easter egg-painting kits for Artyom and Sonya, Yulia’s children.
The children were not responsible for any of this.
She placed the bag on a shelf in the hallway so she would not forget to give it to them.
Afterward, she stopped at a pastry shop near her office and bought one beautiful Easter cake covered in sugar icing for six hundred rubles, along with a box of cottage-cheese paskha.
They were for Sveta.
That evening, Igor entered the kitchen and sniffed the air.
“It doesn’t smell like anything. When are you starting the dough?”
“I’m not.”
“What do you mean? You didn’t have time today?”
“I’m not going to cook.”
He stared at her for about three seconds and then smirked.
“Lena, enough of this. We have twenty people coming. Mom is coming. Seryoga confirmed. What is this, some kind of protest?”
“I’m going to Sveta’s.”
“What Sveta?”
“My sister Sveta. My only sister. The one you haven’t allowed at this table for five years.”
“I never forbade her from coming. I said she didn’t fit the format. Those are two different things.”
“The format. Fine. Now I’m choosing my own format. A small table, two people, and one Easter cake.”
“Lena, twenty people are coming in two days.”
“They are your twenty people, Igor. Your mother, your sister, your friends, and your colleagues. You invited them, so you can feed them.”
“You’ve lost your mind.”
“No. Yulia says interesting things when she’s on the phone. Something about a convenient wife who serves as both a cook and a wallet. Those were your words, weren’t they?”
Igor looked away.
Not immediately, but he did.
“She twisted what I said.”
“Maybe she did. Did she also twist the charges on my bank card? I calculated everything, Igor. Over the past five years, nearly four hundred thousand rubles from my salary have gone toward these celebrations—your feasts with your guests. Have you ever transferred money to me for the groceries?”
“We’re a family. Everything belongs to both of us.”
“Something belongs to both people when both people make the decisions. When one person decides whom to invite while the other person pays and cooks, that isn’t sharing. That’s being waited on.”
He opened his mouth and then closed it.
It was obvious that he was searching for a response but could not find one.
Finally, he said:
“Lena, let’s not do this now.”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying. Not now. I need to pack my bag.”
And she really did pack one.
It was a small travel bag she used on business trips.
She packed underwear, a dress—the blue one she had bought for her anniversary and worn only once—shoes, a phone charger, and her documents.
She placed the bag containing the Easter cake and paskha beside the door.
Igor walked around the house.
He did not shout. Shouting was not his style. He never shouted.
He did something else.
He remained silent, and his silence became heavy and sticky. Then he dropped a single sentence that made Lena want to apologize, even though she had nothing to apologize for.
“Mom will be upset.”
Lena zipped her bag.
“People will ask where you are.”
Lena checked whether the iron had been switched off.
“Do you understand how ridiculous this is? You overheard one conversation, and now you’re ruining the holiday for the entire family?”
Lena stopped and turned toward him.
“One conversation. Yes. But that conversation explained something I had been unable to admit to myself for five years. It explained why I collapse into bed for two days after every celebration. Why there’s nothing left on my card by the end of the month. Why the people I care about are never invited here. I’m not angry with you, Igor. Everything has simply become clear.”
“What has become clear?”
“That I don’t want to live like this anymore.”
She picked up her bag.
Igor took a step after her.
“Lena, at least make the dough. I’ll do everything else myself.”
Lena nearly laughed.
“At least make the dough” meant four hours of work: kneading it, letting it rise twice, punching it down, shaping it, and letting it proof.
“I’ll do everything else myself” was being said by a man who needed instructions to fry an egg.
But Lena did not laugh.
Laughing would have been cruel, and she did not want to be cruel.
She wanted to stop being convenient.
That was something entirely different.
Friday passed in a strange silence.
Lena went to work, processed payment orders, and checked financial statements.
Igor sent her three messages.
The first said:
“Lena, stop being ridiculous. Let’s talk like normal people.”
The second said:
“I’ll tell Mom you’re sick.”
The third said:
“Yulia says she can help with the cooking.”
Lena read all three and did not answer any of them.
Yulia could help.
Yulia, who had not washed a single plate in that house in ten years.
Yulia, who arrived, sat in an armchair, unloaded responsibility for her children onto everyone else, and waited for Lena to serve the food, pour the drinks, and clean everything afterward.
Yulia was going to help cook for twenty people.
In one day.
At lunchtime, Lena’s mother-in-law, Tamara Sergeyevna, called her.
Her voice was sweet, but there was something sharp beneath the sweetness.
“Lenochka, sweetheart, Igor said you weren’t feeling well. Tell me what you need. I’ll bring you some medicine.”
“Tamara Sergeyevna, I’m healthy. I’m celebrating with my sister this year.”
Silence.
One second.
Two.
Three.
When she spoke again, her voice was different—dry and cold.
“What do you mean, with your sister? What about the table? What about the guests?”
“Igor invited them, so Igor will organize everything.”
“Lena, do you understand what you’re doing? We have been coming to your house for Easter for ten years. The entire family. For ten years.”
“That is exactly why we’re taking a break this year.”
“Did that Sveta put this idea into your head? She has always been difficult.”
“Sveta has nothing to do with this, Tamara Sergeyevna. It is my decision.”
“Well, I’ll tell you something,” her mother-in-law said, switching to the tone Lena privately called her “prosecutor’s voice.” “I’m going to tell Igor that he needs to have a serious conversation with you. What kind of person abandons her family right before a holiday?”
“Go ahead and tell him,” Lena said.
Then she ended the call.
It was a strange feeling.
It was as though she had carried a heavy bag in one hand for so long that she had become accustomed to its weight and stopped noticing it. Now she had finally moved it to the other hand.
Her arm still ached, but now it ached from relief rather than from the weight.
On Saturday, Lena took the commuter train to Sveta’s apartment in Podolsk and arrived at ten in the morning.
Sveta lived in a one-room apartment on the third floor with a cat named Stierlitz and a ficus plant that occupied half the room.
“Wow,” Sveta said as she opened the door. “You’re wearing a dress. The blue one. I haven’t seen you wearing a dress in a hundred years.”
“I haven’t seen myself in one for a hundred years either.”
Sveta was four years younger than Lena. She was thin and sharp, with short hair and a habit of saying, “Oh, for goodness’ sake,” every three sentences.
Her son, Kostik, was completing his compulsory military service in Ryazan.
Sveta worried about him quietly. She did not complain, but she had lost weight and started making her coffee stronger.
“I brought you an Easter cake,” Lena said. “And paskha.”
“And I dyed the eggs. I used onion skins, the way Mom did. Oh, for goodness’ sake, they came out crooked, but at least they’re real.”
“Mom’s were always crooked.”
“Yes. And they were always the most delicious.”
They set a small table—the same folding table at which they had done their homework as children.
There was no tablecloth, so Sveta covered it with a clean linen towel.
They placed the Easter cake, the paskha, and the spotted brown-and-golden eggs on the table. The eggs were honestly quite unattractive.
There were two cups of coffee.
A saucer of food for Stierlitz stood on the floor.
Lena sat down, picked up an egg, and tapped it against Sveta’s.
“Christ is risen.”
“Truly He is risen.”
They ate slowly.
Sveta did not ask what had happened.
She did not offer advice or interfere.
She simply poured more coffee and said:
“I called Kostik this morning. They dyed eggs there too, can you imagine? He said they had enough onion skins in the cafeteria for an entire regiment.”
Lena laughed.
She truly laughed—not because it was particularly funny, but because it had been such a long time since she had laughed like that, for no specific reason, simply because she felt good.
“Sveta, do you remember how Mom always hid one egg at Easter?”
“Yes. It was for Dad. He would come home after his night shift, and she would give him a dyed egg wrapped in a towel. It was still warm.”
“And he would sit down, eat it with black bread, and say, ‘There. Now it feels like a holiday.’”
“I miss her, Lena.”
“So do I.”
They sat quietly for a while.
Stierlitz jumped onto Lena’s lap, turned around several times, and settled down.
Lena automatically scratched him behind the ear. Her fingers were soft and relaxed, unlike during her usual Easter celebrations, when by evening she could barely straighten them after hours of using knives and graters.
Her phone remained silent until two in the afternoon.
Then the messages started arriving, one after another.
Igor:
“I ordered delivery from two restaurants. Sixty-eight thousand rubles. Thank you for the wonderful holiday.”
Sixty-eight thousand.
Lena read the number again.
Her monthly salary was sixty-five thousand.
So Igor had found the money.
When he needed it, the money had appeared.
Yet for five years, Lena had paid for everything herself, and her money had been considered “shared.”
Yulia sent a voice message.
Lena pressed play, intending to listen to at least the beginning.
“Lena, do you know that Mom’s blood pressure shot up? We almost had to call an ambulance. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? We’re sitting here like idiots, eating out of plastic containers. The children are asking where Aunt Lena is, and Aunt Lena, it turns out—”
Lena stopped the recording.
Enough.
Tamara Sergeyevna sent a short message:
“Elena, I thought you were a decent person.”
Then a message arrived from an unknown number.
“Hi, Lena, it’s Dima. Igor asked me to write to you. Can’t the two of you make up? He seems completely lost.”
Four messages.
In every one of them, Lena was guilty.
She had ruined everything.
She had abandoned everyone.
She had disappointed them.
Not one person mentioned that she had fed all of them at her own expense for five years.
Lena put her phone on silent.
“Are they bombarding you?” Sveta called from the kitchen.
“They are.”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake. Their unpaid servant failed to show up for her shift, and the entire collective farm collapsed.”
Lena chuckled.
Then she spoke—not so much to Sveta as to herself.
“I allowed it to happen. I nodded for ten years. ‘Yes, Igor. Of course, Igor. I’ll set the table now, Igor.’ I thought I was being wise. But it wasn’t wisdom. It was a habit. The habit of serving everyone and convincing myself it was normal.”
Sveta placed a second cup of coffee in front of her.
“Lena, normal is when they invite you to sit at the table. Not when you carry the entire table on your back and then thank everyone for allowing you to do it.”
It was true.
It was simple, uncomfortable, and impossible to qualify.
Igor was not the only person responsible.
Lena had allowed it into her life herself, year after year, plate after plate, one “Fine, I’ll survive” after another.
Toward evening, Igor called.
Lena hesitated before answering.
Finally, she picked up.
“Lena.”
“Yes?”
“Could you come home? Everyone has left. All these delivery containers are everywhere. The place is a mess, and there’s a mountain of dishes.”
He was not calling because he missed her.
He was calling because of the dishes.
“Igor, I’m not coming home today.”
“All right, you made your joke, proved your point, and everyone understood. Come home, and we’ll sort this out.”
“What exactly did you understand?”
“That we need to appreciate you. That we shouldn’t have treated you that way. I understand now. Mom understands too. Yulia will apologize.”
“Yulia will apologize?”
“Well, I’ll tell her to.”
“Igor, has anyone ever explained to you that an apology given on command isn’t an apology?”
“Lena, what do you want from me?”
“I don’t know yet. Honestly, I don’t know. I need time to think.”
“What is there to think about? We’ll sit down and talk like normal people.”
“Talking like normal people means you speak and I nod? That’s how it has been for ten years. I need to be alone.”
He fell silent.
Then he spoke quietly.
“Lena, come home. Without you, it’s as though we have no hands.”
No hands.
Exactly.
They needed hands to wash the dishes, clean the table, and throw away the containers.
“Good night, Igor.”
She ended the call.
It was a warm April evening.
Through the open window came the scent of damp earth and something fresh—perhaps bird cherry blossoms from somewhere nearby, or perhaps simply spring itself.
Sveta washed three plates, two cups, and one knife.
It took her less than a minute.
Stierlitz curled up beside Lena’s feet on the sofa.
A concert played quietly on television, although neither of them was watching it.
Lena picked up her phone.
There were fourteen notifications.
The latest message was from Igor, sent at eleven that evening:
“Lena, enough. Come home. Without you, it’s as though we have no hands.”
It was the second time.
Word for word, exactly what he had said over the phone.
He had not even noticed that he was repeating himself.
To him, it was not a request.
It was an order—simply wrapped in polite words.
Lena looked at the screen.
She did not block his number.
She did not write an answer.
She did not open the other messages.
She placed the phone facedown on the nightstand.
Then she stood up, walked to the sink, and washed her own cup.
