— Dear mother-in-law, either you return my things, or I’m filing a police report against you, — the daughter-in-law put her brazen mother-in-law in her place
— Tamara Ilyinichna… isn’t that my tea set? — Elena asked quietly as she stepped into her mother-in-law’s apartment.
Her new porcelain cups with delicate gold rims stood on the festive table. Beside them lay the linen table runner Elena had spent a long time choosing in a small shop just a week earlier. On the stove sat a saucepan from their new cookware set—the very nonstick collection she and her husband had saved up for over a long time.
Her mother-in-law did not even look embarrassed. She adjusted a napkin and calmly looked at her daughter-in-law.
— I borrowed them from you for a while. I wanted to see whether they were convenient to use. They were just sitting around unused anyway.
At that moment, Elena finally understood: the things had not been disappearing by accident at all.
It had started much earlier. Elena simply had not wanted to notice the obvious.
She and Sergey lived in their own two-room apartment on the third floor of an ordinary five-story apartment building. They had renovated it themselves two years earlier: hanging wallpaper in the evenings, laying laminate flooring on weekends, and painting the radiators. They did not have enough money to hire workers. Elena worked as an accountant for a small construction company, while Sergey was an engineer in a design department. Their salaries were modest, so every major purchase felt like a small family victory. They saved little by little, watched for discounts, and compared prices.
— There, now it finally feels truly cozy at home, — Elena smiled when they finally placed a new sofa in the living room.
Sergey put an arm around her shoulders and agreed.
— We’ll slowly get everything set up.
Her mother-in-law, Tamara Ilyinichna, had always seemed like a perfectly reasonable woman to Elena. She came over with homemade pies, watered their plants when the young couple went away, and never interfered in their lives. Elena was even happy that their relationship was so peaceful.
But after retiring, Tamara Ilyinichna seemed to change. More and more often, she said that she had spent too many years living for others and now wanted to surround herself with beautiful things. She changed her hairstyle, updated her wardrobe, began visiting friends more often, and always returned with new ideas.
— Look at how Nina Petrovna renovated her kitchen, — she would tell her son. — Everything is modern and pleasing to the eye. Meanwhile, all my things are still old.
One day, Elena finally bought the heavy cast frying pan she had dreamed about for a long time. She put it in the cupboard in the morning, but that evening she found an old scratched frying pan with a crooked handle in its place.
— Seryozha, where’s the new frying pan? — she asked in surprise.
— Mom took it. Hers was so old it had become unusable, — he replied calmly.
At the time, Elena decided it was an isolated incident.
As it turned out, she was wrong.
Over the next several months, more things disappeared from their apartment: the thick bedroom curtains she and Sergey had carefully chosen together, a set of bath towels, an expensive baking dish, decorative cushions, a new electric kettle, and even the desk lamp from the small study where Elena sometimes worked in the evenings.
Every time, it happened the same way.
Tamara Ilyinichna would come over while Elena was at work. Sergey would either let her in himself or leave her the keys. Then, a day or two later, Elena would notice that another new item had vanished without a trace.
— Seryozha, where are the curtains? — she asked one evening, stopping in the bedroom doorway.
— Mom took them. They suited her place better, — her husband answered calmly.
— But we bought them for our apartment.
— She’ll use them for a while and return them.
— Do you really think this is normal?
— Lena, don’t exaggerate. She’s my mother.
The conversations always ended the same way. Sergey saw no problem, while Elena increasingly felt that her opinion meant nothing in her own home.
It hurt especially badly when the linen tablecloth disappeared. It had been a birthday present from Elena’s sister, who had embroidered it herself over several months. A week later, Elena opened the family group chat and saw a photo from a dinner at her mother-in-law’s apartment. The very same tablecloth was spread across the table.
She stared at the phone screen for a long time.
After that, Elena stopped feeling happy about new purchases. Whenever she brought something new home, she could not help wondering how long it would remain in the apartment. Gradually, her own home stopped feeling like a place where she was free to decide what happened to her belongings.
The final straw was the robot vacuum cleaner.
She and Sergey had saved for it for almost six months. They had read reviews, compared models, and argued over which one to choose. When it was finally delivered, Elena smiled as she watched the white round robot navigate around the furniture and map the apartment.
— Now cleaning will only take five minutes, — she said happily.
But one day, Elena came home earlier than usual and immediately noticed the empty space beside the charging station.
— Seryozha, where’s the vacuum cleaner?
Her husband was standing in the kitchen, calmly pouring himself a glass of water.
— Mom asked to borrow it for a few days. She wanted to see whether she needed one like it.
Elena said nothing. She silently put her jacket back on and left the apartment.
Half an hour later, she was ringing her mother-in-law’s doorbell.
Tamara Ilyinichna opened the door almost immediately. A familiar humming sound came from the room. The robot vacuum cleaner was slowly moving across the floor. Elena’s saucepan was in the kitchen, her curtains hung on the windows, and her decorative cushions lay on the sofa.
— Tamara Ilyinichna, why do my things keep ending up at your apartment one after another? — Elena asked calmly.
Her mother-in-law looked genuinely surprised.
— I’m not taking them forever. I just want to see whether they’re convenient to use. If I like them, I’ll buy the same things later.
She paused and then added, as though explaining something perfectly obvious:
— You and Seryozha will have plenty of chances to buy all these things again. I just want to enjoy living in a cozy home while I still can.
Elena did not justify herself or explain why she had arrived without warning.
She silently took out her phone and began taking photographs. The saucepan on the stove. The curtains on the windows. The cushions on the sofa. The robot vacuum cleaner, which continued moving around the room as though nothing unusual were happening.
Tamara Ilyinichna watched her in confusion.
— What are you doing?
— Documenting my belongings, — Elena answered calmly.
Then she opened a list on her phone showing the purchases, dates, store names, and amounts from her banking app. When Sergey arrived, Elena went through everything she had found in his mother’s apartment one item at a time.
— All of these things are going back home today, — she said. — Otherwise, I’ll have to contact the police and explain why they ended up here without my permission.
Sergey became visibly nervous.
— Lena, let’s not do that. We’re family…
Elena looked him straight in the eyes.
— No, Seryozha. It wasn’t your mother taking things from our home. You were the one giving her permission every single time.
Sergey lowered his head.
Those words hit him harder than any accusation could have.
That same evening, Sergey made several trips between the two apartments.
Without saying much, he loaded the belongings into the car, brought them home, and put them back in their places. At first, Tamara Ilyinichna tried to convince her son that the whole thing was ridiculous and that there was no reason to quarrel over dishes and curtains. But when she saw that he remained silent, she eventually stopped arguing.
Once everything was back, Elena carefully inspected the items.
The saucepan was scratched. The curtains had been snagged by cat claws—her mother-in-law had a ginger cat named Tikhon—and the new kettle was covered with a thick layer of limescale.
— These will have to be replaced, — Elena said calmly.
— Maybe we shouldn’t argue about that too? — Sergey asked quietly.
— It’s not about the scratches. We saved for these things for a long time, and they were treated as though they belonged to no one.
He remained silent for a long time, then let out a heavy sigh.
— I just didn’t want to argue with Mom. Every time, I thought giving in would be easier. Now I understand that I was wrong.
— I’m glad you finally understand, — Elena replied.
They talked until almost midnight. The next day, Sergey took back the keys to their apartment from his mother. From then on, no one could enter without being invited.
At first, Tamara Ilyinichna was offended and complained to her son that his own mother was being treated like a stranger. But gradually, things changed.
She now visited only when invited. During tea, she might notice something new, but she asked about it differently.
— That’s a beautiful tablecloth. Where did you buy it?
— At the shop near the park. I can give you the address if you’d like.
— Please do. It might come in handy.
For Tamara Ilyinichna’s birthday, Elena and Sergey gave her a new set of saucepans and a heavy cast frying pan—almost identical to the one she had once taken without asking.
Tamara Ilyinichna held the box silently in her hands for a long moment.
— Thank you… it’s a nice gift.
Elena simply smiled.
A few days later, she bought some new kitchen accessories and calmly arranged them in their places. For the first time in a long while, it did not cross her mind that one day they might disappear.
The most valuable thing they had gained was not the new belongings at all, but the boundaries of their family—boundaries Sergey had finally learned to protect.
