“Kostya said you’re planning to fly somewhere? And what about the dacha? I was counting on you to help me pick strawberries!”

— “Your apartment has been put up for sale; people will come to view it in half an hour,” my mother-in-law said.

The wealthy couple’s only son, gravely ill since adolescence, suddenly announced he was marrying a modest, naïve girl. To everyone’s shock, she took him...