The three of them showed up together, unannounced. They stood at the doorway with a folder of documents and the confidence that everything here belonged to them. Galina opened the door and said one thing, and after that, the folder was no longer needed.
The doorbell rang at half past nine in the morning on a Saturday. Galina was at the stove, stirring her porridge. Oatmeal made with water, no sugar, just as she’d grown used to over the past four years.
She wasn’t expecting any visitors. In fact, she wasn’t expecting anyone at all. After Viktor’s death, the world outside her apartment seemed unimportant, and she stopped reacting to every little sound.
But the doorbell rang again. Insistently and at length, the way people ring when they are sure of their right to enter.
Galina turned off the gas, wiped her hands on a towel, and headed to the door. She looked through the peephole.
Three people stood in the hallway. She recognized two right away: Anton, Viktor’s eldest son from his first marriage, and Zhanna, the middle child. The youngest, whom she’d only seen in photos, was there too. Kirill. He was around twenty-eight, no older.
Her fingers paused on the lock for a second. Then she turned the key.
She and Viktor had lived together for nineteen years. They met when she was thirty-nine and he was forty-three. Both had been through failed marriages, both cautious like people who’d already been hurt.
Viktor was an engineer at a factory, Galina worked as an accountant at a clinic. Nothing flashy, nothing cinematic. Just two people who felt warmer together.
Viktor had three children from his first marriage. Anton was sixteen then, Zhanna thirteen, and Kirill nine. His ex-wife, Tamara, took them to Tver almost right after the divorce. Viktor paid child support regularly, every month, down to the last ruble. He called on Sundays. The kids only answered sometimes.
Galina didn’t interfere with that part of his life. Not because she didn’t care, but because she understood: there was a pain there that she couldn’t heal.
“Do you talk to them?” she asked once, during their first year living together.
“I try. They don’t want to.”
“At all?”
He didn’t answer. He put his mug down on the table and stepped out onto the balcony. The mug was blue, with a crack in the handle. He’d only ever drink from that one.
Galina never asked again.
They bought the apartment together, three years after their wedding. A two-room place on the seventh floor, overlooking the park. They both saved up, took out a loan for ten years, and paid it off in seven. Galina remembered every payment because she took the money to the bank herself.
The country house came later. Six hundred square meters in Malakhovka, with an old shack that Viktor rebuilt with his own hands over four summers. She hauled buckets of mortar, painted the fence, and planted currant bushes. In the evenings, they’d sit on the porch, drinking tea from a thermos, with mosquitoes buzzing in the twilight like a tiny orchestra.
“You know,” he said one day, watching the sunset behind the birches, “For the first time in my life, I don’t feel like I have to rush anywhere.”
She rested her head on his shoulder. His shirt smelled of pine shavings and something warm and comforting, the scent of a man who’s worked with his hands all day.
It was July. He had eleven years left to live.
He passed away quietly. A heart attack at work, during his lunch break. The call from the ambulance came while Galina was at the store. She was standing by the shelf with grains, holding a pack of buckwheat, listening to an unfamiliar woman’s voice saying words that made no sense.
The pack slipped from her fingers. Buckwheat scattered across the floor. Another shopper approached and asked if everything was all right. Galina nodded and walked outside.
It took her twenty minutes to reach the hospital. Twenty minutes in which her whole world turned upside down.
Only Anton came for the funeral. Zhanna called to say she couldn’t get time off work. Kirill didn’t call at all.
Anton stood by the coffin with a stony face. He was thirty-five, broad-shouldered, with his father’s chin and his mother’s pale eyes. His hands stayed in the pockets of his jacket.
“Thank you for coming,” Galina said.
Anton nodded. He didn’t hug her. Didn’t look her in the eye. At the wake, he sat at the edge, ate his soup, and didn’t say a word. He left on the evening train.
Galina washed the dishes after the wake by herself. The apartment was so quiet she could hear the tap dripping in the kitchen. Viktor had always meant to fix it. He never got the chance.
Four months passed after the funeral. Galina slowly got used to the silence, to the empty spot on the hanger where his jacket used to be, to the shelf in the bathroom where his razor still sat. She didn’t put his things away. She couldn’t, and she didn’t want to.
In February, Zhanna called. Her voice was businesslike and quick.
“Galina Petrovna, we’d like to discuss the matter of the inheritance.”
“What matter?”
“The apartment and the summer house. Dad didn’t leave a will, did he?”
Galina’s fingers gripped the phone a little tighter.
“He did.”
The line went silent. Then Zhanna said:
“We’d like to see the document. Can we come by?”
“Come by.”
The conversation lasted less than two minutes. But afterwards, Galina stayed in the kitchen until dark without turning the lights on. The kettle cooled on the stove. Streetlights came on outside, and the shadows of tree branches fell across the ceiling like cracks.
And so they came. All three of them. They stood on the doorstep, bringing the February cold with them—and something else. Something that felt foreign.
“Come in,” Galina said, stepping back into the hallway.
Anton entered first. Then Zhanna, short with a sharp nose and dark eyebrows that almost met above her nose. She held a transparent folder full of documents. Kirill came in last, glancing around like someone in a stranger’s home searching for something familiar.
Galina led them into the living room. She set out the cups. Turned on the kettle.
“Tea? Coffee?”
“We won’t stay long,” said Zhanna. Not rudely, but not politely either. Just as a fact.
Anton sat on the couch, resting his hands on his knees. Kirill stayed by the window. Galina noticed he was looking at Viktor’s photo on the bookshelf. It was an old photo, from before she’d met him. Viktor was young, with thick dark hair and laughing.
Kirill looked at the picture as though he was trying to remember something he never knew.
“Galina Petrovna,” Zhanna began, opening her folder. “We consulted with a lawyer. By law, as the children of the deceased, we’re entitled to a compulsory share, even if there’s a will.”
She spoke clearly, like she was giving a presentation. It was obvious she had prepared for this.
“The apartment and the country house were purchased during the marriage, so half belong to you as the spouse. The other half is divided among the direct heirs. That’s the three of us, and you.”
Galina listened silently.
“We don’t want a conflict,” Anton added, keeping his eyes down. “But it’s our right.”
The kettle boiled. Galina got up, went to the kitchen. She poured water into a glass and drank it in one gulp, even though she wasn’t thirsty. Her hands were steady, but inside, something trembled like a taut string that had just been plucked.
She came back into the room with a folder—not theirs, but her own. It was brown, worn, held together by a rubber band.
Four years ago, a week before his heart attack, Viktor had come home from work earlier than usual. He sat down at the kitchen table and called her over.
“Galya, sit down.”
She sat. From the look on his face, she knew this was going to be a serious conversation.
“I went to the notary today.”
“Why?”
“I wrote a will.”
She wanted to say something like “Are you sick?” or “Don’t say such things.” But she kept quiet. Because from the look in his eyes, she knew he had been thinking about this for a long time.
“Everything to you,” he said. “The apartment, the country house. Everything.”
“What about the children?”
“Galya.”
“Vitya, what about the children?”
He stood up. Paced around the kitchen. Opened the window, then closed it. Stood by the fridge, as if he’d forgotten why he went there.
“I call them every Sunday. Twelve years. Anton picks up once a month. Zhanna stopped answering three years ago. Kirill has never called, not once in his life.”
His voice grew quieter.
“I sent money on their birthdays. Every year. To Anton, Zhanna, Kirill. The envelopes always came back unopened.”
“Tamara?”
“Tamara told the kids that I left the family for another woman.”
He turned to her. His eyes were dry, but red around the edges, like people who are long used to not crying.
“You know that’s not true. I left when she put my things out on the staircase. After I found out about Seryozha.”
Galina knew. About Seryozha, about the suitcases in the hallway, about how he lived two months on a friend’s cot. Viktor told her everything in that first year, slowly, in pieces, like someone digging through the wreckage.
“I can’t leave them what you and I built together. You and me. Every ruble. Every board in that country house.”
“But they’re your children.”
“I know.”
He sat back down. Took her hand. His palm was rough, with a callus on his thumb from the planer.
“If they come to you after I’m gone, tell them one thing.”
“What?”
“Tell them: your father called every Sunday. Twelve years. And you didn’t pick up.”
Galina took the will out of the brown folder and placed it on the table. Next to it, she put statements: the loan contract for the apartment, signed by both of them. Receipts for building materials for the country house. Payment slips, each with her last name.
Zhanna reached for the will. She read it. Her face didn’t change, but her hand holding the paper quivered just a bit.
“This can be contested,” she said.
“It can,” Galina agreed. “Lawyers are expensive. And court cases take a long time.”
“We’re ready,” said Anton.
Silence. Next door, the neighbors’ TV droned on about the weather. In the kitchen, that same faucet dripped. Still.
Galina looked over at Kirill. He was still standing by the window, his eyes darting between his father’s photo and the floor.
“Kirill,” she called out.
He flinched.
“Do you remember your father?”
He didn’t answer. But his eyes said everything.
“Here,” Galina opened the bottom drawer of the dresser and took out a box. Just a regular shoebox, tied with twine.
Inside were envelopes. Lots of them. Galina had counted once. Thirty-six in total. Twelve for each child. Each envelope labeled in Viktor’s handwriting: “For Anton,” “For Zhanna,” “For Kirill.” With the year written, too.
“He sent these on your birthdays. Money and letters. All of them came back.”
Zhanna turned pale. Anton stared at the envelopes like someone looking at something they want to ignore, but can’t look away from.
“Mom used to say he never sent anything,” Kirill said quietly.
“Your mom said a lot of things.”
Galina didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t even change her tone. She just said it, the way people speak about things that stopped hurting long ago.
Zhanna stood up. She held a folder in her hands, her chin raised.
“That doesn’t change the legal side of things. We have a right to a share.”
“You do,” Galina nodded. “By law.”
She fell silent. Her gaze wandered around the room: the wallpaper she and Viktor glued up together with their neighbor Palych, the curtain rod he installed, cursing from the ladder, the dent in the door frame where he slipped with a heavy box and hit his shoulder.
Every corner remembered his hands.
“I won’t take you to court,” Galina said.
Zhanna exchanged a look with Anton.
“But I won’t give anything up either.”
“Then we’ll sue.”
“Go ahead.”
Silence fell again. Kirill shuffled by the window, shifting his weight from foot to foot. Anton sat motionless.
“Your father,” Galina said, and for the first time her voice dropped lower, softer, “called you every Sunday. For twelve years. You never answered the phone.”
The words dropped into the room like stones into a well. The silence that followed was so deep they could hear a car drive by outside, a door slam two floors below, and the ticking of the clock on the wall.
Zhanna opened her mouth then closed it. Anton bowed his head. And Kirill, the youngest, who had been nine when their mother took them to Tver, suddenly rushed to sit on a chair and covered his face with his hands.
Then there was a pause. A long one. Five minutes, maybe ten. Galina didn’t keep track. She stood by the dresser with the box of envelopes and waited. Not because she was hoping to hear apologies. Not because she wanted to win. Just because she’d made Viktor a promise.
Kirill was the first to speak.
“Can I… take my envelope?”
Galina came up to him. She untied the twine. Found the envelope marked “To Kirill, 2014.” Handed it to him.
He took it with both hands. His fingers were long, just like Viktor’s. And he had a callus on his index finger, as if he also worked with his hands.
“Is there a letter inside?”
“Yes, a letter and money. Five hundred rubles. He put five hundred in every time.”
“Five hundred rubles,” Kirill repeated, his voice sounding as though those five hundred rubles weighed more than the whole apartment and the country house together.
Zhanna stepped up to the box. Then stopped.
“May I?”
Galina nodded.
Zhanna pulled out her envelope. 2018. The last one, before Viktor stopped sending them, because the address had changed and no one had given him the new one.
She didn’t open it. She just held it, staring at her father’s handwriting. The letters were large, slanting to the right, just like everyone taught to write in Soviet schools.
Anton didn’t get up. He sat, hands resting on his knees, eyes cast down to the floor.
“I remember when he used to call,” he said. “Mom would answer and tell him we weren’t home. I was right there beside her.”
“How old were you?”
“Sixteen. Then seventeen. And then, at some point, I just stopped caring.”
He lifted his head. His eyes looked just like Viktor’s that night in the kitchen. Dry. Red around the edges.
“And then I did care again. But by then, it was too late.”
Galina put the kettle on. This time, no one refused.
The four of them sat at the table. They drank tea and munched on sushki that Galina had bought yesterday from the bakery across the street. The sushki were with poppy seeds, a bit dry—just how Viktor liked them.
No one mentioned the apartment. No one mentioned the dacha.
Zhanna asked:
“What was he like? In his last years?”
And Galina began to tell them. About how he rebuilt the dacha. How he would rise at five in the morning because he loved the house’s early quiet. How he cooked borscht on Saturdays and wouldn’t let anyone else near the stove. How he read every night, always with a pencil, underlining the lines that seemed important to him.
“He underlined things?” Kirill asked.
“Always. Later, I’d find his books and reread the passages he marked. It felt like he was leaving notes just for me.”
Kirill smiled. A small, crooked smile, with just one corner of his mouth—exactly like Viktor’s.
Anton listened in silence, hands wrapped around his mug as if he was cold, even though the apartment was warm.
“Did he love us?” he asked suddenly, and the question sounded like he was sixteen again.
Galina set her cup down on the table. She looked at him. At Zhanna. At Kirill.
“Every Sunday. For twelve years.”
An hour later, they got ready to leave. Zhanna put the folder of documents back in her bag. Silently, not looking at it, as if putting away something she was ashamed of.
At the door, Anton paused.
“Galina Petrovna.”
“Yes?”
“We won’t go to court.”
She nodded.
“Can we… come again? Not for this. Just to visit.”
Galina looked at him and saw Viktor—the jawline, the forehead, the habit of standing with his head slightly tilted to the right.
“Come by anytime.”
Zhanna was first out the door. Kirill followed, clutching to his chest an envelope with five hundred rubles and a letter that had waited for him twelve years.
Anton lingered on the threshold. Then he turned, walked back to the hallway, went to the box with envelopes and took his. 2015. Anton had been twenty-seven then.
“Thank you,” he said. And it was the first “thank you” Galina had ever heard from him.
The door closed.
Galina stood in the hallway. Silence. The deep kind that comes after something important, before everything settles.
Then she went into the kitchen. Washed four cups and set them on the drying rack. Put the sushki away in a bag.
She sat at the table.
On the table was a blue mug with a crack in the handle. She never drank from it. Not once. She kept it on the table as a fixed point in time.
“Vitya,” she said into the empty kitchen. “I passed it on.”
The faucet dripped. Just once. Then stopped.
On the bookshelf in the room was the last book he had been reading. There were pencil marks underlining lines on page one hundred forty-seven. She would open it sometimes, not for the words, but to see his handwriting in the margins.
In the margins he had written: “Galya, this is about us.”
She closed the book and put it back.
Outside, a February day was beginning: gray, damp, tinged with the scent of wet snow. Somewhere below, the entrance door slammed. Three pairs of footsteps faded across the courtyard.
Galina opened the window. Cold air rushed at her face, stinging her cheeks. She stood there for a minute, two, three. Breathing. And for the first time in four months, it felt like the air was just a bit lighter.
On the windowsill stood a pot with a violet. Viktor had brought it from the summer house in September, two days before his heart attack. The violet hadn’t blossomed all winter. It stood there, gray and dry, as though waiting for something too.
Galina watered it. The water soaked into the dry soil with a quiet rustle.
“It’s okay,” she told the violet. “Hang in there.”
They came again two weeks later. No folder, no lawyer. They brought a cake from Praga, which Zhanna bought at the train station, and a bag of tangerines.
They sat in the room, looking at old photographs. Viktor at the factory, Viktor fishing, Viktor on the dacha porch with a wood planer in hand and wood shavings in his hair.
Kirill lingered on each picture. He traced the edges of the photographs with his finger, as if he could touch—through the paper—what he had lost.
“Did he always have shavings in his hair?” he asked.
“Always,” Galina smiled. “I shook them out every night. He used to say, ‘That’s my cologne.’”
Anton laughed. Briefly, awkwardly, like someone who hadn’t laughed in a long time.
Zhanna flipped through the album silently. When she reached a photograph of Viktor at the mailbox, envelopes in hand, she paused.
“Was he sending those to us?”
“Yes.”
“Every year?”
“Every year. On our birthdays.”
She closed the album. Rested her hands on the cover and sat still for a few seconds, as if counting something inside herself.
“We didn’t know,” she finally said. “Mom always said he didn’t care. That he chose a new life and forgot about us.”
“He never forgot anyone,” Galina replied. “That just wasn’t who he was.”
In March, Anton came alone. Without warning, on a weekday. He rang the doorbell, standing there with a wet umbrella.
“I wanted to go to the dacha. To have a look. Is that okay?”
Galina handed him the keys. He left in the morning and came back in the evening. His hands smelled of pine shavings. She noticed it as he gave her back the keys, and something squeezed tight inside her, so she had to turn toward the window and wait for the feeling to pass.
“The roof’s sagging a little,” he said. “I can fix it, if you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind.”
“And the fence. The paint’s peeling.”
“Viktor painted it every May.”
“I’ll paint it.”
He stood in the doorway—tall, broad-shouldered, his jacket dripping with water. And Galina thought, here he is standing just like Viktor used to after a day at the dacha, the same scent of wood, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, not knowing whether to leave or stay.
“Want some tea?” she asked.
“I’d love some.”
She set a blue mug in front of him, its handle cracked. For the first time in four years, someone was drinking from it.
Anton took the mug with both hands. He looked at the crack.
“Dad’s?”
Galina nodded.
He sipped his tea slowly, taking tiny sips, as if he was scared to finish it.
In May, they all went to the dacha—Galina, Anton, Zhanna, and Kirill. The weather was windy, the clouds hung low, and the birch trees bent as if bowing to someone unseen.
Anton fixed the roof. Kirill painted the fence. Zhanna washed the windows, even though Galina hadn’t asked her to.
Galina stood on the porch, watching them. Three adults who hadn’t come for an inheritance. Not for the square meters. Not for the garden plots.
They came for their father. The one they missed. The one they never truly had. The one they searched for now in every plank of this house, every nail, every stroke of paint on the fence.
The currant bush had already sprouted its first leaves. Galina had planted it the first summer she and Viktor bought the land. The bushes had grown wild over the years. Viktor used to trim them every spring.
“Does anybody know how to prune currants?” she called out into the yard.
Kirill turned around, paintbrush in hand.
“I’ll give it a try. Will you show me?”
She showed him. How to hold the pruners, which branches to choose, where to cut. He listened closely, tilting his head to the right. Just like Viktor used to.
“Like this?”
“A little lower. Yes. That’s right.”
He smiled. And his smile was so much that Galina turned away toward the house and stood for a moment, staring at the wall, until it passed.
In the evening, they sat on the porch. Tea from a thermos, poppy seed bagels. Mosquitoes buzzed in the twilight.
“You know,” Anton said, looking at the sunset behind the birches, “I think, for the first time in my life, I don’t feel in a hurry.”
Galina froze. The glass in her hand shook, tea splashed onto her fingers, hot.
Those were his words. Word for word.
Anton didn’t know. He couldn’t have known. He just said it.
She remained silent. Wiped her fingers on the edge of her sweater and looked at the sky. The sunset was wide, orange, spread across the whole horizon.
Somewhere far away, a dog barked. The wind had died down. The birch trees stopped bending and stood upright, just like people do when they finally stop resisting.
The thermos was still warm. She poured herself more.
The violet on the windowsill in her city apartment bloomed two days ago. A tiny purple flower, timid like the first word after a long silence.
Galina didn’t tell anyone about it. She just watered it that morning before leaving for the dacha. And the violet stood there now, in the empty apartment, on the windowsill, blooming.
