— We weren’t doing this for ourselves. You’re going through a difficult time right now, so we decided to take care of everything for you.
Galina Petrovna placed her cup on the table and smoothed out the sheet of paper as though she were straightening a tablecloth before a festive dinner. Elena stared at it, unable to move. A little more than two weeks had passed. She was still wearing dark clothes, barely sleeping, and struggling to make herself eat.
There were four items on the sheet, written in neat handwriting.
The three-bedroom apartment — for Elena and Dmitry.
Their current apartment — for Oksana and her children.
The country house — for Galina Petrovna and Viktor Andreyevich.
The car — “they would decide later who needed it more.”
Elena read it twice. Then once again.
She thought she must have misheard something. Or misunderstood.
But the words on the paper did not change.
Her mother-in-law looked at her with mild bewilderment — genuine, almost offended.
Elena raised her eyes.
Her parents had died.
And their property had already been divided up.
Elena had grown up in a family where money had never been the main subject of conversation.
Her father, Sergei Nikolaevich, worked as an engineer at a factory and took quiet pride in it without making a fuss. On weekends, he would disappear into the garage, spending hours tinkering with tools and humming something unintelligible under his breath.
Her mother, Marina Viktorovna, worked as a librarian, grew peonies at the country house, and dried apples for compote every autumn.
They had never been wealthy, but over the years they had managed to acquire a spacious three-bedroom apartment, a small timber country house in the suburbs with a stove and an old apple tree, and a car that Elena’s father maintained with such care that one might have thought it was a living member of the family.
Elena was their only child.
She was accustomed to the quiet of their home, the smell of books and machine oil, and the understanding that everything there had been earned through hard work and carefully preserved.
She had met Dmitry at work.
At the beginning of their marriage, Galina Petrovna behaved tolerably enough — loud, excessively attentive, but tolerable.
Later, Elena began to understand that her mother-in-law’s “care” was of a particular kind.
She offered advice no one had asked for, took an interest in their finances, and could decide things without warning “for the good of the family.”
Dmitry always reacted the same way.
— You know what Mom is like. She only wants what’s best.
Elena knew.
She simply did not always understand why Galina Petrovna’s version of “what’s best” so rarely coincided with what Elena herself wanted.
Everything changed one ordinary evening.
Her father came home from the garage with a dull headache, lay down on the sofa, and asked everyone not to make any noise.
By morning, he was worse.
He collapsed unconscious in the hallway.
“A severe stroke,” the doctor said briefly, avoiding Elena’s eyes.
After that, Elena began going to the hospital every day.
She bought medication, spoke with doctors, and listened to evasive answers.
Her mother almost stopped eating.
One day Elena found her in the kitchen setting two plates on the table out of habit, one for each of them. Then Marina Viktorovna stood there for a long time, staring at the second plate as if she no longer knew what to do with it.
— Mom, Dad needs you alive. Don’t destroy yourself along with him, — Elena said.
Marina Viktorovna looked up at her and shook her head.
— Until he wakes up, I have no right to think about myself.
Dmitry sent several messages.
“Hang in there.”
“You’re doing great.”
Once Elena asked him to stop by her mother’s place and bring some groceries.
He promised he would.
Then he forgot.
Galina Petrovna called too.
But her questions were different.
Who was paying the bills for Elena’s parents’ apartment?
What would happen to the country house?
Elena did not pay much attention to it.
At the time, it seemed impossible to her that anyone could care about property while a man was lying unconscious in a hospital.
She was wrong.
Sergei Nikolaevich died a month later without ever regaining consciousness.
Elena learned about it from the doctor on duty — briefly, in a hospital corridor, between two other conversations.
She called her mother.
Marina Viktorovna rushed to the hospital but arrived too late.
Several hours later, an ambulance had to be called for her right there in the lobby.
Her heart.
For two days the doctors tried to stabilize her condition.
Then they came out to Elena wearing the same expression they had worn the first time.
Elena arranged the funerals herself, almost numb, operating on autopilot.
Dmitry attended, helped carry several heavy bags, and said something appropriate at the graveside.
Beyond that, almost nothing.
Afterward, Elena returned to her parents’ apartment.
She could not force herself to leave.
Her father’s glasses were still lying on the armrest of his chair.
A shopping list in her mother’s handwriting was still attached to the refrigerator:
bread, kefir, buckwheat.
In the hallway stood her father’s old shoes — heavy and worn, their laces tied into neat bows.
On a kitchen shelf sat a jar of preserves with a paper label:
“Plum. August.”
Elena picked up the jar and held it for a long time.
Then she put it back.
The next day Dmitry came over.
He looked around like a man who had not come to visit his deceased in-laws’ home, but to inspect a property.
— Lena, have you already been to the notary?
She turned around.
— What?
— Well, we need to understand what we’re going to do with the apartment.
Elena stared at him for several seconds.
— Dima, they’ve only been gone for two weeks. Two weeks.
— I understand, — he said with a shrug. — But we have to start dealing with it sometime.
She did not answer.
She went into the kitchen and put the kettle on.
The shoes were still standing in the hallway.
The jar of preserves was still on the shelf.
Elena stood beside the stove, waiting for the water to boil, thinking that “sometime” certainly did not mean now.
Definitely not now.
Dmitry did not argue, but he left looking like a man who had failed to get the answer he wanted.
A few days later Dmitry suggested that they visit his mother.
“Just dinner, nothing special.”
Galina Petrovna had prepared meat patties, mashed potatoes, and beet salad.
Everything looked ordinary and familiar, like a typical family dinner.
Oksana came without her husband but brought both of her children, who immediately ran into the next room.
At the table they talked about prices, the weather, and how autumn had arrived unusually early that year.
Then, somehow, the conversation shifted to home renovations.
— We should have changed the wallpaper ages ago, — Oksana said, spooning more mashed potatoes onto her plate. — But everything costs a fortune now.
After a moment, she added:
— And soon the children will need separate rooms.
Galina Petrovna nodded and remarked casually:
— There’s going to be plenty of room in Lena’s parents’ three-bedroom apartment for just the two of them anyway.
Elena stopped chewing.
— Excuse me, — she said slowly. — Why are you discussing my apartment?
The table went silent.
The children could be heard shouting in the next room.
— Lena, they’re just thoughts, — Galina Petrovna said in a conciliatory tone. — We’re just talking.
— About someone else’s property, — Elena clarified.
No one answered.
Dmitry stared at his plate.
Oksana took a piece of bread.
Galina Petrovna adjusted the salt shaker.
Elena pushed back her chair and asked for tea.
The conversation returned to the weather, but something in the room had shifted, as though someone had knocked a painting crooked on the wall.
Everyone could see it.
Everyone pretended everything was normal.
On the drive home, Elena stared out the car window.
Streetlights drifted past.
Dmitry remained silent.
She kept thinking that she wanted to hear just one sentence from him.
A simple one.
“I’m on your side.”
He did not say it then.
He did not say it later either.
When they reached home, Elena got out of the car and said she was going back to her parents’ apartment.
Dmitry did not object.
Elena entered the apartment, switched on the kitchen light, and stood in the middle of the room for a long time without taking off her coat.
Then she opened the cupboard above the sink for no particular reason.
On the bottom shelf stood her father’s mug with a chipped handle.
She had wanted to throw it away a hundred times, and every time her father had said:
“It’s still fine. You can drink from it perfectly well.”
Elena picked up the mug.
Then she put it back.
In her mother’s room, a magazine lay open on the nightstand, one page folded at the corner.
Her mother had never liked bookmarks.
Elena sat down on the floor beside a box of documents and began sorting through the papers.
At the bottom, she found a sheet of graph paper covered in her father’s handwriting:
“Buy a light bulb. Check the kitchen faucet. Pick Marina up from work on Friday.”
She stared at that note for a long time.
Then she pressed it against her chest.
Her parents had not left her a fortune.
They had left her a life — the life they had lived together.
Light bulbs.
Faucets.
Peonies at the country house.
A mug with a chipped handle.
She returned home around eleven.
Dmitry was waiting for her.
He said she had misunderstood his mother.
That everyone only wanted what was best.
— Where were you when Mom died? — Elena asked quietly.
He fell silent.
— You didn’t go to the hospital. You didn’t help. — Her voice remained even, without tears or hysteria. — But all of you had time to think about what I would inherit before any of you thought about how I was supposed to survive any of this.
Dmitry started saying something about his mother, about how worried she was.
Elena stood up.
She walked into the bedroom and opened the wardrobe.
— Lena, you’re emotional right now, — he said from the doorway.
— No, — she replied. — For the first time, I’m calm.
She packed her things carefully and without rushing.
For the first time in weeks, she did not cry.
The notary saw her three days later.
Elena arrived carrying a folder of documents — death certificates, her passport, papers for the apartment, the country house, and the car.
She did not ask her husband’s relatives for advice.
She did not call them at all.
Everything turned out to be simpler than she had expected.
And at the same time, more painful.
Every signature was an official confirmation that her parents were gone.
She kept the apartment.
She decided not to sell the country house for the time being.
First she would put it in order.
After that, she would see.
She kept the car too.
Her father had taken care of it for twenty years.
It was more than just a vehicle.
Galina Petrovna called the next day.
— Lena, I don’t understand how you can behave like this. Oksana was already counting on it. The children were expecting it.
— Galina Petrovna, — Elena replied calmly, — other people’s expectations do not turn my inheritance into communal property.
There was silence at the other end of the line.
— You’ve changed so much, — her mother-in-law finally said.
Her voice sounded offended, almost confused.
— Yes, — Elena agreed.
Then she hung up.
Dmitry tried several more times to talk to her.
He kept saying that she should not “destroy a family because of one argument.”
Elena explained it only once, calmly.
— This isn’t because of an argument. And it isn’t because of the inheritance. It’s because during the worst moment of my life, you weren’t there. But you were already keeping score of what I would inherit.
He had no answer.
She filed for divorce at the end of October.
Her hands did not shake.
She began putting her parents’ apartment in order slowly, without rushing.
She did not renovate it.
She simply removed unnecessary things and cleaned the windows.
She left her father’s bookcase where it was.
She moved her mother’s pots of geraniums onto the windowsill where they would get more sunlight.
She had the kitchen faucet replaced too.
She called a repairman and made sure it was done properly.
Her father had been meaning to replace it for a long time.
Now it no longer dripped.
On her first free weekend, she drove to the country house.
She cleared the overgrown path and opened the windows.
Under an old blanket in the corner, she discovered a box of photographs.
She sat down right there on the floor and opened the lid.
Almost a year passed.
Elena lived alone.
The divorce had been finalized without dramatic scenes.
Dmitry called for a while, then eventually stopped.
Galina Petrovna and Oksana also fell silent once they understood that the question of the inheritance had been closed forever.
The silence turned out not to be as frightening as Elena had feared.
At the beginning of September, she drove out to the country house.
She lit the stove.
It took three attempts, but she did it herself.
She put the kettle on.
Then she opened the old photo album she had found back in the spring.
The photographs had yellowed with age.
Some had no captions.
Her parents when they were young.
At the seaside.
Standing beside someone else’s car.
Then photographs of Elena herself, still very small.
In one picture, her father was holding her hand while her mother stood beside them, laughing with her eyes squeezed shut against the sunlight.
Elena stared at the photograph for a long time.
Then she began to cry.
Not from despair.
It came from something warm and unbearable at the same time.
From longing for people who could never return, yet who would always remain inside that house — in the smell of wood, in the creaking floorboards, in the old apple tree outside the window.
The wind rustled beyond the glass.
The kettle began to boil.
Her parents had left her an apartment, a country house, and a car.
But the real inheritance had turned out to be something else.
The understanding of her own worth.
And the right to decide for herself how she wanted to live.
