“I gave the apartment to Zhanna, so let me stay with you now!” Rimma Arkadyevna set her second suitcase down by the door and pulled off her rain-soaked scarf. “I can’t sleep outside, can I?”
Nadezhda stood there with her keys in hand. She’d just come home from work, and by her feet were bags with milk, a loaf of bread, and a chicken for dinner. Asya peeked out from her room, saw her grandmother with the suitcases, and silently shut the door again.
“Rimma Arkadyevna, what happened? Did you and Zhanna have a fight?”
“We did.” Her mother-in-law unbuttoned her coat and looked around, as if deciding where everything might go. “She told me I’m just a guest in her apartment. In MY apartment, you understand? Where I lived for forty years. Vadik knows—I called him earlier today.”
Vadik did know. But he hadn’t mentioned any of it to Nadezhda, even though they’d messaged at lunch about who was picking Asya up from the pool.
She dialed her husband right there in the hallway. He didn’t answer right away, and she could hear cars buzzing in the background.
“Nadya, let mom stay for now. I’ll be home in an hour and we’ll talk everything over.”
“For now—how long is that?”
“I’ll be home and we’ll talk,” he repeated, then hung up.
Nadezhda put on the kettle and took out her mother-in-law’s favorite sunflower mug from the cupboard—the one that had been living in their house for her visits for the last eight years. Rimma Arkadyevna sat at the kitchen table, perfectly straight, and told how Zhanna had talked on the phone with some woman right in front of her, and called their shared apartment an “object.”
“An object!” her mother-in-law repeated. “I said to her: have some shame talking like that in front of your mother. And she told me, ‘Mom, it’s my property, I decide.’”
Nadezhda listened and nodded. She felt sorry for this brittle, sensitive woman whose chin was trembling. And at the same time she felt a weight building under her ribs, because she knew all too well how ‘for now’ tended to end up in her husband’s family.
The apartment they lived in belonged to her. Two rooms, on the fifth floor of a panel building in Yaroslavl’s Zavolzhsky District. Nadezhda had bought it in 2011, two years before their wedding, using her own savings and money her parents got from selling her grandmother’s house in the village. She’d closed the mortgage herself, still unmarried. Vadim moved in during 2013 with two bags and a guitar he never actually played.
She and Vadim slept in one room. The second, a bit smaller, looked out on birch trees—Asya’s room. Twelve years old, sixth grade, posters of Korean pop stars and a desk buried under English workbooks. It was her first space of her own, and Nadezhda remembered how, at nine, Asya had picked out the wallpaper herself.
Vadim got home around 8:45 PM. He kissed his mother, washed his hands for a long time, then sat across from Nadezhda and spoke in that same flat tone he always used when the decision was already made without her:
“Mom needs her own room. She’s an elderly woman; she needs her peace. Asya can stay with us, we’ll get a folding bed. Or put a couch in the kitchen—she only needs a place to sleep.”
“Vadim, Asya is twelve years old.”
“So what? When I was twelve, I shared a room with Zhanna, and it was fine.”
“Exactly, with Zhanna,” Nadezhda quietly replied. “And that’s the apartment your mom later gave to Zhanna.”
Rimma Arkadyevna set her cup down loudly on the saucer.
“Are you really going to reproach me now? I haven’t said a single bad word to you in eight years.”
That was the truth. Nadezhda had never spoken harshly to her mother-in-law either. For the past eight years, ever since her father-in-law passed away in 2018, she sent eight, then ten thousand rubles every month to Rimma Arkadyevna. Every Saturday, she brought grocery bags: cottage cheese, buckwheat, blood pressure medication, food for the old cat Tikhon, who had died the winter before last. In the beginning, Vadim chipped in too, but then he claimed he was having “trouble at work,” and before she realized it, Nadezhda was covering everything alone.
Zhanna only visited her mother during those eight years on New Year’s and for her birthday. She brought flowers and took selfies together for her social media pages. But two years ago, in May 2024, Rimma Arkadyevna transferred the ownership of her one-room apartment on Krasnoperekopskaya to Zhanna as a gift.
Nadezhda found out about this by chance, half a year later, when her mother-in-law casually mentioned at the table, “But I already signed it over to Zhanna, she needs it more, she’s alone.” Vadim just shrugged, saying it was his mother’s decision. Nadezhda said nothing. She was used to keeping quiet with this family, because any question of hers would lead to a week-long sulk, and Vadim would walk around gloomy and sleep on the edge of the bed.
“Here’s what we’ll do,” she said that evening. “Tonight Rimma Arkadyevna will sleep in Asya’s room, Asya will bunk with me, and Vadim can take the couch in the kitchen. Tomorrow’s Saturday—we’ll sit down and think things through calmly.”
Vadim looked at her in surprise, but didn’t argue in front of his mother.
At night, Nadezhda lay next to her daughter and listened to her softly snoring into the pillow. Before falling asleep, Asya asked just one question: “Mom, is grandma staying with us forever?” Nadezhda said no—but wasn’t sure if she’d told the truth.
In the morning, Vadim headed off to the garage to see his friend, claiming he had to fix a car battery. Rimma Arkadyevna was busy unpacking her suitcases. When Nadezhda entered Asya’s room for the school uniform, she saw her mother-in-law had already taken down two posters from the wall and neatly placed them on the window sill. In their place, she had hung her religious icon in a wooden frame.
“Rimma Arkadyevna, those are Asya’s things.”
“I didn’t throw them out. They’re just lying there. I can’t even look at those slanted-eyed faces, Nadya, I couldn’t sleep because of them.”
On the chair there was an old cardboard folder with strings, still from Soviet times. Her mother-in-law noticed where Nadezhda was looking and quickly put the folder in her suitcase, under her sweaters.
“Those are my documents,” she said. “Pension card, insurance policy. Don’t touch them.”
Nadezhda hadn’t planned to touch them anyway.
Later that day, while Asya was at English lessons, Nadezhda opened up a real estate site. She couldn’t even explain to herself why. She just couldn’t shake that phrase about “the property.” Krasnoperekopskaya Street, one-room, second floor. She found the listing on the third page, posted nine days ago. “Cozy apartment for rent, cosmetic renovation, fully furnished, long-term rental, 23,000 plus utilities. Available from November 1.”
In the third photo, there was a carpet—maroon, with a medallion in the center. The same one Asya played on with her building blocks as a child during visits to grandma’s. On the wall above the sofa, the cuckoo clock was still hanging.
Posted nine days ago. But according to Rimma Arkadyevna, she and Zhanna only had their falling out two days ago.
Nadezhda took screenshots and sat for a long time with the phone in her lap. It turned out that Zhanna had listed the apartment for rent even while her mother was still peacefully living there. So the argument hadn’t been accidental. Zhanna had simply forced her mother out to make the apartment available.
That evening, when Vadim came home, smelling of gasoline, she showed him the listing.
“Your sister is renting out Mom’s apartment. Starting from the first of November. She posted it on October nineteenth, when Mom was still living there.”
Vadim stared at the screen longer than it should have taken to read four lines.
“So what? It’s her apartment. She has the right.”
“She does. But then let Zhanna figure out where her mother is supposed to live. She got the apartment. She’s collecting money from it. Why should Mom have to sleep in our daughter’s room?”
“Because she’s my mother.”
“And Zhanna’s too.”
“Zhanna’s alone, she just has a one-bedroom that she’s paying off. Where is she supposed to put Mom?” Vadim pushed the phone away. “Nadya, I don’t get it—do you really begrudge a room to your own relative?”
Rimma Arkadyevna came into the kitchen, and from the look on her face, Nadezhda realized she’d been standing in the hallway, listening.
“So she’s renting it out,” her mother-in-law said. “She told me she was just going to be doing renovations. That it’s bad for me to be around during them.”
She sat down, placed her hands on the table, and all of a sudden looked truly old. Nadezhda wanted to hug her, and she would have, if Rimma Arkadyevna hadn’t spoken to her husband a moment later:
“Vadik, don’t worry. I’ll give Asya my bed. My mattress is a good one, orthopedic. She can sleep on it in the kitchen.”
Nadezhda stepped out onto the balcony. October was cold, and the birch trees outside the window had almost lost all their leaves. She stood there for five minutes until her hands went numb, and suddenly she saw clearly how things would go. First, Asya would be sleeping in the kitchen. Then, Rimma Arkadyevna’s towels would show up in the bathroom, her jars would fill the cupboards, and there’d be a list on the fridge of what Nadezhda should buy. Then Rimma Arkadyevna would get her officially registered there because, “How else can I see the doctor without a local residency?” And every time, Vadim would say, “Just hang in there, she’s my mom.”
She endured it all because she was afraid. Not of her mother-in-law, but that Vadim would leave and tell Asya that her mom kicked out grandma. That she’d be seen as the bad one, the greedy one, the kind of “daughter-in-law” neighbors gossiped about at the entrance. That all eight years of helping would instantly mean nothing because of one “no.”
On Sunday, Nadezhda called Zhanna herself.
“Hi. Mom’s staying with us. Did you know?”
“I know,” her sister-in-law answered cheerfully, music playing in the background. “But what am I supposed to do, Nadya? She left on her own. I didn’t say anything to her.”
“You told her she was just visiting you.”
“She drove me crazy. You don’t know what she can be like.”
“I do know. I’ve known for eight years, Zhanna. I visited her every Saturday. Did you already rent out the apartment?”
There was a brief pause, but Nadezhda noticed it.
“Who told you that?”
“The listing is still up online. With Mom’s rug in the photos.”
“Look, I don’t owe you any explanations. I have a mortgage, I have a car loan. Mom is living with her son, it’s fine. She’s happier with you. — Zhanna paused and then added in a different, almost gentle tone: — Vadik isn’t against it, is he? You already decided.”
“Who decided?”
“Well, you guys. Back in September, he told me you had enough space.”
In September. Nadezhda hung up the phone and stared at the calendar on the fridge for a long time. There hadn’t been any argument in September. In September, Rimma Arkadyevna would call on weekends, complain about her blood pressure, and thank her for the cottage cheese.
She decided she must have misheard. Or maybe Zhanna was just lying to avoid responsibility. Zhanna was known in the family for shifting dates around.
But on Monday morning, while Vadim was shaving, his phone chimed briefly on the nightstand. Nadezhda hadn’t planned to look. The screen just happened to light up right next to her hand as she was searching for Asya’s keys. “Received 11,500 ₽ from Zhanna Vyacheslavovna K.”
She jerked her hand away like she was burned. Then told herself that brothers and sisters could transfer money to each other. Maybe he had loaned her some cash. Maybe it was for the garage, for tires, for anything at all.
But that evening, she decided to bring it up anyway.
‘Zhanna sent you money today.’
Vadim looked up from his plate.
‘Were you snooping in my phone?’
‘It was on the nightstand, the screen lit up. Eleven and a half thousand. What was that for?’
‘She’s just paying me back. I lent her money for insurance over the summer,’ he replied quickly—almost too smoothly. Then he went on the offensive: ‘Anyway, Nadya, let’s talk about something else. My mother has been sleeping in Asya’s bed for four days now, and Asya’s glued to your side. That’s not normal. We need to do something about it.’
‘I am doing something,’ Nadezhda replied.
She spent two evenings pouring over tables and figures. Not to provoke a scandal, but simply because it was what she was used to: at work, in the supply department at the factory, they valued her exactly for calculating everything down to the last ruble. Rimma Arkadyevna’s pension was twenty-six thousand. If you added the ten thousand Nadezhda was already giving, and asked Zhanna to give at least half the rent to their mother, it almost made fifty thousand altogether. Across the courtyard, in the neighboring building, a tiny one-bedroom apartment was available for twenty-one thousand. The owner, Valentina Petrovna, a retired woman herself, was happy to have an elderly tenant: ‘Quiet, tidy—not like students.’ Five minutes’ walk away. Nadezhda could visit every day. They could hire a helper twice a week or check with social services about caregiver options.
On Wednesday, she presented all of this at dinner, placing the printed pages on the table between the breadbox and the salad.
‘Rimma Arkadyevna, I’m not putting you out on the street. I’m suggesting you live nearby, in your own place. With your things, with your favorite armchair—Zhanna can bring it from that apartment. I’ll come visit. Asya will come visit. You’ll feel comfortable and we’ll have peace of mind.’
Her mother-in-law stared at the sheets but didn’t touch them.
‘In a rental,’ she said. ‘In old age, having to move from place to place.’
‘It’s just next door. And Zhanna should give you part of the rent money—it was your apartment, you gave it to her as a gift. She could at least return half to you.’
Vadim pushed his plate away.
‘So you’re kicking my mother out of the house. A week after her own daughter kicked her out. Nice. Know what that’s called? Betrayal. You’re betraying the family. My family.’
‘Vadim, for eight years…’
‘Enough about your eight years! Are you planning to bill her now? For the cottage cheese?’
Asya turned off her music in her room. Nadezhda noticed the sudden silence and realized her daughter was tuned in to every word.
“I’m not issuing an invoice. I’m protecting my child’s room in my own apartment.”
“In your own,” Vadim repeated. “There it is. We’ve lived here thirteen years, and you still call it ‘yours.’ Fine, go ahead—live in your own place. I’ll leave with Mom if we’re just outsiders here.”
He said it in a way that made it clear he expected her to be scared. In the past, she would have been. In the past, she would have followed him into the hallway, pleaded, ‘Come on, wait, let’s not do this,’ and by nightfall, Asya would have been sleeping in the kitchen again.
But Nadezhda stayed where she was.
Vadim slammed the door and left. Rimma Arkadyevna gathered her papers, folded them carefully in four, and took them to her room. Nadezhda washed the dishes and thought that she might have just ended her marriage over a folding bed.
Vadim returned a day later, still gloomy. He’d spent the night at a friend’s garage. He didn’t speak to her, only talked to his mother, and every morning he made a show of asking Rimma Arkadyevna if she ‘slept well under these circumstances.’
On Friday, her mother-in-law came to Nadezhda in the kitchen. She closed the door behind her—something she had never done before.
“Nadya, tell me honestly. Did you call Zhanka?”
“I did.”
“What did she say?”
“She said that in September Vadim told her there would be enough room for everyone at our place.”
Rimma Arkadyevna was silent for a long time. Then she picked up the salt shaker from the table, turned it over in her hands, and set it back down.
“In September, he told me that you and Asya were planning renovations and that Asya would move into your bedroom. I was happy about that—meant that, if needed, I’d have a spot here. She looked up. “Was that not true?”
“We never planned any renovations.”
Her mother-in-law nodded, like her worst suspicion had just been confirmed. Then she left without another word.
On Saturday morning, Nadezhda went to see a lawyer. Not because she wanted to sue anyone, but because Vadim had thrown out in the hallway the day before: “Mom will be registered here and you can’t get rid of her.” She needed to know what was true and what was a lie.
The lawyer, an older woman with glasses on a chain, listened to her carefully.
“The apartment is your pre-marital property, bought with your personal funds, and the mortgage was paid off before you got married. If you haven’t made major renovations using joint money, it doesn’t become marital property. No one can register your mother-in-law at your address as a permanent resident without your consent as the owner—not your husband and not your mother-in-law herself. But do you know what’s up with her own apartment? Have you seen the deed of gift?”
“No, I just know she gave it to her daughter.”
“Sometimes the deed includes a condition: the donor keeps the right to live in the apartment. If it says that, it changes things for her daughter. She can’t simply rent it out or kick her mother out if that’s the case. There’s no point guessing without the text of the deed. Find the document and bring it in, we’ll take a look.”
Nadezhda remembered the cardboard folder with ties that her mother-in-law had quickly hidden under her sweaters.
The house was quiet. Vadim had gone out again, Asya was at a friend’s place. Rimma Arkadyevna sat by her window in her room.
Nadezhda decided not to snoop. She sat down on the edge of Asya’s bed and said straight out:
“Rimma Arkadyevna, can I see the deed of gift? I spoke with a lawyer. If there’s a clause in it that allows you to keep living in the apartment, then Zhanna can’t force you out so she can rent it.”
Her mother-in-law slowly turned around.
“There is a clause,” she said. “I insisted on it myself. The notary even said it was the right thing to do. It’s for life.”
“You knew?”
“I knew.” Rimma Arkadyevna stared somewhere past her. “I’m not stupid, Nadya. I even told Zhenya when she tried to throw me out. She just laughed. She said, ‘Mom, go ahead and sue your own daughter. Vadik said you’ll be better off with them.’ Vadik said. I thought he really cared about me. A son taking in his mother—that means he’s a good son, right?”
She stood up, took a folder out of her suitcase, and untied the strings. On top was the deed of gift, and underneath was a sheet of graph paper torn from a notebook, folded in half.
“I took this from Zhanna’s kitchen table,” the mother-in-law said. “On the day I left. I’m not even sure why. The handwriting is Vadik’s. Take a look.”
Nadezhda unfolded the sheet. The handwriting was definitely Vadim’s—small and slanted to the left. She’d recognize it anywhere. Listed out:
“23,000 – rent.
Utilities – tenant.
Zh. – 11,500 (mortgage).
V. – 11,500 (car, until March ‘27).
Mom – to us, until 1.11. N. will grumble and get over it.”
Nadezhda read it twice. “N. will grumble and get over it.” Eight years of her help and thirteen years of marriage—summed up in just four words on a piece of graph paper.
Eleven and a half thousand, which arrived on Monday. “Repaying debt.” The car loan, which Vadim had said he was handling—but for the past few months he’d been borrowing from her “until payday.” The urgency—“by the first of the month.” The September conversation about a non-existent renovation. The posters taken down on the second day: her mother-in-law was sure the matter was settled, simply because her son told her it was.
This wasn’t Zhanna’s idea. She only went along with it. Vadim came up with the plan. He convinced his sister to rent out the apartment and pushed his mother into a dispute so she’d move in with him and his wife. Then he and his sister split the rent. The first payment, apparently, was an advance from the new tenants.
“Rimma Arkadyevna,” Nadezhda didn’t recognize her own voice, it was so calm. “Do you understand what this all means?”
“I understand,” her mother-in-law sat back down. “My children got rid of me. Like a piece of property. One received a present and sold me to her brother for half the rent, and my son decided I could live with you for free because you’re kind and won’t say anything. I spent eight years thinking you helped me out of duty. But you were the only one who truly did it from the heart.”
She started to cry—an old woman’s sobs, clutching a crumpled handkerchief to her lips. Nadezhda sat beside her, and this time, she hugged her.
Vadim came home at seven. Nadezhda was waiting in the kitchen. On the table lay the deed of gift, opened to the right page, the graph paper sheet, and her printed copy of the rental ad. Rimma Arkadyevna sat at the head of the table in her best cardigan, as if she were expecting guests.
Vadim spotted the sheet and stopped in the doorway.
“What’s this?”
“You tell me,” said Nadezhda. “’N. will grumble and get over it.’ That’s your handwriting.”
“Nadya, this… this was just a rough plan. Zhanna and I were just thinking about what would be best for Mom. She was all alone there—it was hard for her…”
“It wasn’t hard for me,” said Rimma Arkadyevna. “It only became hard when your sister started telling me every single day: ‘Mom, you don’t belong here. Mom, Vadik is waiting for you.’ I thought she figured it out on her own. Turns out, she was following your note.”
“Mom, you don’t understand, I have a loan, my payment is twenty-eight thousand…”
“And I have a clause in my contract,” the mother-in-law put her dry hand on the papers. “For life. You were the one who drove me to the notary, you heard it yourself.”
Vadim looked at Nadezhda, as if searching for help. For thirteen years, she would have given that help. She would have found the words, smoothed things over, shown some sympathy.
“You called it betrayal when I wanted to rent an apartment next to ours for your mom,” said Nadezhda. “But then you moved her into our daughter’s room to save half the cost of someone else’s rent. And for a whole week, you watched Asya sleep next to me and said nothing.”
“Nadya, I was going to tell you later…”
“There is no later, Vadim.”
Even she was surprised at how easy that sounded. No yelling. Just a statement of fact.
Right there, Rimma Arkadyevna called Zhanna on speakerphone. At first, Zhanna yelled, then cried, then said: “It’s all Vadik, I never wanted this.” The mother-in-law replied that she didn’t care who wanted what, and that on Monday she would take the contract to a lawyer. The tenants who were supposed to move in on the first of November got their deposit back the next day. Zhanna returned it herself, after a lawyer—whom Nadezhda had taken the mother-in-law to—explained over the phone what could happen if they tried to rent out an apartment where the donor had a right to live.
Vadim left on Sunday. Not to his mother or his sister, but to that friend with the garage. He spent a long time packing, waiting for Nadezhda to come out into the hallway. She never did. She sat in the kitchen with Asya, checking her English homework.
Rimma Arkadyevna stayed with them until the end of the week. Before leaving, she hung Asya’s posters back on the wall, exactly in the old pinholes, and took her icon with her.
“Don’t see me off,” she said at the door. “Zhanna is coming to pick me up. She needs to get used to the idea that her mother is around not just for holidays.”
“Rimma Arkadyevna, call if you need anything.”
“I will,” the mother-in-law said while fastening her coat. “And come by on Saturdays. Just don’t bring cottage cheese, I’ve got enough money for my own now. Zhanna will give me some from her car, we agreed. Just come by for no special reason. We’ll have tea.”
In November, Nadezhda filed for divorce. There was hardly anything to divide: the apartment would remain hers, and the car—so hard-earned by Vadim—was in his name with its loan, and he’d have to deal with that on his own. He called several times, saying his mother turned her against him, that Zhanna twisted everything. Nadezhda listened and calmly replied that the note wasn’t written by his mother or Zhanna.
In December, she finally did what her daughter had been asking for two years: set up a proper desk by the window in Asya’s room, with a lamp and a bookshelf. Asya chose the color herself.
On Saturday, on her way to her mother-in-law’s place on Krasnoperekopskaya Street, Nadezhda stopped by the pastry shop and picked up some éclairs. Rimma Arkadyevna loved them with custard cream and never missed a chance to complain about the price. Walking carefully along the slippery sidewalk with the box of treats in hand, Nadezhda realized that for the first time in many years, she was visiting not out of obligation.
