“Why did you give my ticket to the seaside to your daughter?! My husband and I saved for this vacation for a whole year, and you decided your Irochka needed it more because she was tired?! And I’m not tired, then?! Get out of here, both you and your daughter, and give the ticket back, you thief!”
Svetlana hurled an empty plastic folder for travel documents onto the kitchen table with all her strength. The transparent piece of plastic hit the hard wooden tabletop with a sharp, ringing slap, slid across it, and nearly knocked over a heavy ceramic mug filled with hot tea.
Tamara Petrovna did not even flinch at the sudden sound. An elderly, heavyset woman with short permed hair and a double chin, she slowly took a sip from her cup, carefully bit off exactly half of an oatmeal cookie, chewed it thoroughly, and only then turned her completely calm, even openly patronizing gaze toward her daughter-in-law, who was choking with outrage. The mother-in-law sat on the stool in a relaxed pose, knees spread wide, as if she were in her own kitchen, even though she had arrived only an hour earlier, brazenly using her spare set of keys.
“Lower your tone, Svetochka. Making noise for the whole building over some trifle. And don’t you dare throw words like that around. I didn’t get into anyone else’s pocket, and I didn’t steal anything. My son, Andrey, bought the ticket from your shared family budget. Which means I have every moral right to manage those funds in a critical situation for our family.”
Svetlana planted both hands firmly on the edge of the table, looming over the insolent relative. There were less than four hours left before they had to leave for the airport. The suitcases were already packed and standing in the hallway. Just a couple of minutes earlier, she had gone into the bedroom to check the foreign passports and printed vouchers in the top drawer of the dresser one last time, only to find her husband’s documents there. Her own passport and boarding pass had simply vanished without a trace.
“Are you out of your mind?! What critical situation?! Your grown-up Irochka simply got divorced from her man again! That gives you absolutely no right to secretly come into my apartment, rummage through my dresser as if you live here, and steal my documents! This is outright theft!”
Tamara Petrovna wrinkled her fleshy nose in disgust as she swallowed the rest of the cookie. She slowly brushed crumbs from her bulky burgundy knitted cardigan and demonstratively let out a heavy sigh, showing with her whole appearance the colossal degree of exhaustion she felt from her daughter-in-law’s hopeless stupidity and lack of understanding.
“Ira is having an extremely severe nervous breakdown. The girl has been on pills for the second month now, she has lost so much weight, she’s all skin and bones. She urgently needs a radical change of scenery, fresh sea air, sunshine. The doctor said it plainly — she needs full rehabilitation! And you are a healthy young woman. Nothing will happen to you if you sit in this dusty city for a week or two. You and Andryusha are still young. You’ll earn more money and go wherever you want next year. But Irochka needs this trip right now, vitally, so she can recover.”
The absurdity and reinforced-concrete impenetrability of what she heard did not merely anger Svetlana — it instantly burned away every last trace of basic politeness in her. This hefty woman had quite seriously opened their personal belongings, taken a paid, named travel package, and was now calmly sitting in her kitchen, sipping hot tea and talking about some grand higher justice.
“I am not going to sponsor your daughter’s vacation and psychological rehabilitation at the expense of my lawful holiday!” Svetlana said in an icy tone, enunciating every word. “We worked our backs off for this hotel all year without days off! I took overtime shifts to pay for this flight to Turkey! This is my money! My well-earned rest! And you come here secretly and simply take what does not belong to you!”
The mother-in-law clicked her tongue in displeasure, expressing contempt with her whole appearance. With a sharp movement, she pushed the empty cup away from herself and leaned heavily on the table with her elbows, bending forward. Her small watery eyes narrowed into two prickly, malicious slits.
“The only things here that are yours are dust in the corners and rags in the wardrobe. My son brings the main money into this home. And Ira is his own blood, his younger sister. He is obligated to help her in a difficult moment, not warm his belly abroad. I simply took the initiative so we wouldn’t have to get into long, pointless discussions with you. Besides, the travel package was issued under Andrey’s name. He is listed as the main customer there, and you were just added as the second person. Changing that second name to Ira at the travel agency took exactly twenty minutes. I have a good acquaintance working there. She handled everything quickly and quietly, for old times’ sake.”
For a second, Svetlana was struck speechless by the incredible level of calculated, cold audacity with which this operation had been carried out. Tamara Petrovna had not simply grabbed a piece of paper from the table in a fleeting impulse. She had planned everything carefully. She had waited for the moment when neither of the owners was home, taken someone else’s documents, gone to the travel agency, and illegally reissued an expensive ticket to her grown, divorced daughter.
“So you thought everything through in advance, secretly reissued my documents behind my back, deprived me of my vacation, and now you just came here to have some tea and brazenly present me with the fact?” Svetlana’s voice lost all emotion, becoming dangerously quiet and hard, like a taut string.
“Why should I hide from you?” Tamara Petrovna snorted insolently, victoriously straightening her broad shoulders. “I did everything fairly and according to my conscience. Irochka will fly with her brother, get some good rest, and come to her senses after a painful breakup. Andryusha will keep an eye on her there so she doesn’t do anything stupid out of grief at a foreign resort. And you will sit at home, work, and maybe finally do a proper deep clean by the time they return. Nothing fatal has happened. Stop your hysterics. Everything has already been finally decided, paid for, and done.”
“Get up right now, take your phone, and call your daughter!” Svetlana hissed, leaning over the relative sitting at the table. “Tell her to turn around immediately, bring my documents back, and cancel your illegal scheme. Otherwise, I will throw you down the stairs right now, and you’ll tumble all the way to the first floor.”
Tamara Petrovna spread into a wide, openly mocking grin, revealing uneven yellowish teeth. She was not frightened by the threat at all, feeling like the full mistress of the situation. The elderly woman leisurely brushed a nonexistent speck of dust from her bulky burgundy cardigan and measured her daughter-in-law from head to toe with a contemptuous, annihilating stare.
“Throw down whoever you want, you twitchy thing,” the mother-in-law smirked brazenly, crossing one leg over the other. “It’s too late to wave your fists around and set conditions for me. Irochka is already in a taxi with her packed suitcase, taking the bypass road. In an hour she’ll be standing at the airport check-in counter for the flight. The ticket is officially issued in her name, and her foreign passport is in her purse. So you can burst from anger all you like, but she is the one flying to the seaside today. And Andryusha is flying with her. And you will stay here and behave quietly, unless you want me to tell my son how you talk to his mother.”
Svetlana did not waste time on meaningless shouting. She had no desire at all to continue a verbal skirmish with a person who had just proudly confessed to planned theft. A cold, hard lump of concentrated fury formed inside her. She silently stepped forward, closing the distance to a minimum. There would be no more persuasion.
Svetlana sharply thrust her hands forward and seized the thick knit of her mother-in-law’s cardigan at the shoulders with a dead grip. The heavy wool fabric stretched beneath her fingers. With a rough, incredibly strong jerk, Svetlana simply yanked the massive woman off the kitchen stool. Tamara Petrovna croaked loudly in surprise, lost her balance, and awkwardly pitched forward, miraculously avoiding hitting her face against the edge of the wooden table.
“Get out of my apartment! Now!” Svetlana commanded harshly, pressing her open palms into the mother-in-law’s broad, fleshy back and pushing her forcefully toward the narrow passage.
“Take your hands off me, you lunatic! What are you doing?!” Tamara Petrovna shrieked hysterically, desperately trying to slow herself down with her worn-out house slippers on the smooth kitchen linoleum.
Her heavy body was clumsy, and the sudden aggressive force from her daughter-in-law deprived her of any chance to seize the initiative. Svetlana acted methodically and with extreme harshness. She used her whole body, literally forcing the resisting relative out of the kitchen and into the hallway. The mother-in-law began breathing heavily, swatting back with her short, plump arms. She tried to brace her left shoulder against the doorframe to stop this humiliating eviction, but Svetlana landed a short, painful blow on her forearm, knocking away her point of support.
“Have you gone completely feral, you wretch?!” Tamara Petrovna screamed, stumbling over the edge of the rug in the entryway and crashing back-first into the built-in wardrobe. “I’ll find a way to deal with you! You’ll dance to my tune! I’ll throw you out of here, and you’ll go begging in the street! Andryusha will come, and he’ll quickly put your brains back in place for treating his mother like this! You are nobody here, and your name means nothing!”
Another powerful shove between the shoulder blades forced the mother-in-law past the packed suitcases standing by the wall and right up to the front door. Svetlana was breathing hard, but her grip did not weaken. She pinned the massive woman against the metal door, not giving her the chance to turn around and start using her fists.
“He’ll come, and he’ll fly out the door himself after your thief of a daughter if he doesn’t return my stolen ticket right now,” Svetlana replied in a perfectly even, merciless tone.
With her free right hand, she reached for the heavy lock, intending to turn the latch, fling the steel door wide open, and finally throw the screaming mother-in-law out onto the stairwell. But she did not manage to finish what she had started.
The lock clicked dryly from the outside. The key turned twice in the keyhole with a distinctive metallic scrape. The heavy door abruptly moved inward, forcing Svetlana to step back and Tamara Petrovna to awkwardly jump aside, straight onto the shoe bench.
Andrey stood in the doorway. He was wearing a light summer linen shirt and pale jeans, with a small travel bag containing documents slung over his shoulder. On his face was the satisfied smile of a man who had just closed all his work matters and was already mentally on the beach. That relaxed smile disappeared instantly the moment he crossed the threshold of his apartment.
Andrey froze in the doorway, blinking in surprise. His gaze slowly shifted from Svetlana, who was breathing hard and tense as a spring, to his disheveled mother, who had curled up on the bench, adjusting the burgundy cardigan twisted across her chest. The atmosphere in the narrow hallway was heated to the limit; the air smelled of sweat and Tamara Petrovna’s cheap perfume. The husband silently looked at the scene, clearly trying to understand why his mother was in their apartment on the day of departure and why his wife looked as if she were ready to kill someone with her bare hands right now.
“Andryusha, my son, thank God you came! She would have killed me just now! She attacked me with her fists and is throwing me out of the house!” Tamara Petrovna wailed instantly, changing her tone from brazenly mocking to pitiful.
She sank heavily onto the soft shoe bench, theatrically clutching the collar of her burgundy cardigan with her plump fingers, as if she had suddenly run out of air. The mother-in-law tried with her whole appearance to portray a defenseless victim of a cruel assault.
“Your mother broke into our apartment an hour ago, climbed into my dresser, and stole my passport along with the paid travel package,” Svetlana interrupted her sharply, ignoring the cheap performance and looking her husband straight in the eyes. “She reissued my ticket to your sister. Ira is now on her way to the airport with my documents. Call her immediately and tell her to turn the taxi around, otherwise I will throw your mother onto the stairs right now along with her insolence.”
Andrey slowly closed the front door behind him. He did not rush to his mother to comfort her, nor did he start shouting indignantly at his wife. Instead, he calmly hung his leather bag on the steel hook of the coat rack, slipped off his light summer shoes, and neatly placed them on the rubber mat beside the large packed suitcase. His face showed only mild irritation that his return from work had been overshadowed by a domestic scene in the hallway.
“Sveta, why are you yelling so the whole floor can hear? I could hear your shouting from the elevator,” her husband said in an even, completely everyday tone.
He walked past his tense wife into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, took out a bottle of mineral water, and drank several long gulps straight from the bottle. Svetlana followed him, unable to believe her eyes. Her husband was behaving as if nothing extraordinary had happened.
“Mom called me at work this morning,” Andrey continued, screwing the plastic cap back on. “We discussed everything and made a joint decision. Irka really is on the verge of a breakdown right now. The divorce hit her very hard. She’s all drawn and worn out, swallowing sedatives by the handful. Objectively, she needs this trip more right now. A change of climate will do her good.”
Svetlana felt the blood inside her instantly turn to ice. The monstrosity of what she had heard did not fit in her head. Her own husband, the man with whom she had saved every kopeck for a year, denying herself new clothes and café outings, had known about everything from the very beginning. He was a full accomplice in this planned theft.
“You made a joint decision? Regarding my vacation and my personal money?” Svetlana’s voice became quiet, hard, and dangerous, like a razor blade. “I took extra shifts at work. I worked weekends to pay for half the cost of that tour. And behind my back, you decided to give my ticket to your adult sister?”
“Oh, why do you have to start counting every kopeck and being petty?” Andrey grimaced as if from a toothache and leaned his back against the kitchen cabinets. “We’re family. We’re supposed to support each other in difficult situations. Money comes and goes. I’ll get my quarterly bonus in two months, and you and I will definitely fly somewhere. Egypt, for example, or we’ll go to Sochi and catch the velvet season. But Irka needs the sea right now. It’s vital for her. I’ll fly with her, make sure she doesn’t do anything stupid, distract her from sad thoughts. And you can sit at home for now, rest from work in peace and quiet. Don’t make a scandal over some piece of paper.”
Svetlana looked at Andrey as if she were seeing him for the first time in her life. A completely strange, utterly unfamiliar person stood before her. An insolent, self-absorbed egoist, completely convinced of his own infallible righteousness and his right to dispose of someone else’s life.
Tamara Petrovna, realizing that her son completely shared her position and that physical eviction no longer threatened her, instantly perked up. She stopped pretending to have a heart attack, rose heavily from the bench in the hallway, sauntered toward the kitchen, and arrogantly lifted her chin.
“You see, Svetochka, I told you right away. My son, unlike you, has a heart and a sense of duty toward his own sister. And you only think about your personal comfort and entertainment. Andryusha is right. You’ll sit at home; at least the apartment will air out. And in general, be grateful that you have such an understanding husband and caring brother.”
At that moment, the illusion of Svetlana’s marriage finally collapsed and crumbled into dust in her mind. All compromises, shared plans, and hopes for the future disappeared. Only one bare, ugly fact remained: these two people had openly and cynically wiped their feet on her, and now they were standing in her apartment, expecting her to meekly swallow the humiliation. Her husband’s betrayal was so shameless and ordinary that Svetlana lost all desire to try to explain or prove anything. A completely clear, cold-blooded plan of further action formed in her head.
“Sveta, enough sulking. Come help me check my travel bag instead, to see whether I packed all the chargers,” Andrey said condescendingly, lifting the bottle of mineral water from his mouth. “My taxi will be here in forty minutes. I still need to have a bite before the road.”
Svetlana said nothing. She silently turned around and walked out of the kitchen into the narrow hallway with a firm, measured step. There was no longer a single thought in her head about trying to appeal to these people’s conscience. Any words now lost all meaning, shattering against the deaf wall of their absolute selfishness and certainty of their own impunity. In the entryway, against the wall, stood her husband’s massive, fully packed suitcase. The dark-blue plastic gleamed dully in the light from the ceiling lamps. Inside were carefully chosen summer clothes, swim shorts, expensive sunglasses, and everything they had bought together for this long-awaited vacation on the coast.
Svetlana walked right up to the luggage. She did not open the zippers or throw the things out. The woman firmly grabbed the side rubberized handle with both hands, spread her legs wide for better support, and with one powerful, sharp jerk lifted the twenty-kilogram plastic case off the floor.
“Hey, what are you doing? Put it back, you’ll tear the handle off!” Andrey called out in displeasure, coming out of the kitchen and wiping his lips with the back of his hand.
He stepped into the hallway, not expecting any trick at all, and at that very moment Svetlana, using all the strength of her body, swung and hurled the heavy suitcase straight at her husband.
The heavy plastic block slammed into Andrey’s legs just below the knees with a dull, painful thud. The blow was so strong that the grown, sturdy man instantly lost his balance. He waved his arms absurdly in the air, trying to grab onto something; his legs buckled, and Andrey crashed onto the hard laminate with a loud curse. As he fell, he painfully struck his shoulder against the wooden corner of the shoe cabinet, and the plastic bottle of water slipped from his fingers and rolled across the floor, splashing out the remaining liquid.
“Are you completely sick?! Were you trying to break my legs?!” Andrey howled, curling up on the floor and clutching his bruised shins with his hands.
His face twisted into a grimace of pain and sincere incomprehension. Tamara Petrovna, who only a second earlier had been smirking triumphantly in the kitchen, let out a short strangled squeak and pressed her back against the refrigerator, watching what was happening in horror.
Svetlana did not give her husband a single chance to come to his senses or get to his feet. She took two quick steps forward, seized the collar of his expensive linen shirt with both hands, and with incredible, primal force dragged the stunned man across the smooth floor straight toward the open front door. The thin linen fabric crackled, the upper buttons tore off with bits of cloth and scattered down the hallway with sharp taps. Andrey instinctively dug his heels into the mat, trying to slow himself down, but Svetlana had already pushed him out onto the stairwell. The man awkwardly collapsed onto the concrete step, staining his light jeans with dust from the building entrance.
“Get out, thief and traitor!” Svetlana commanded in an icy tone that tolerated no objection, looming over her husband as he sat on the concrete. “Fly to your resort, entertain your sister, wipe your mommy’s tears. But you will never come back into this apartment again. Your things are no longer here, and neither are you in my life.”
Without waiting for an answer, Svetlana turned around, grabbed the heavy suitcase lying in the hallway, and with one powerful kick threw it out onto the landing. The plastic wheels squeaked pitifully, the suitcase flipped over, and with a crash slammed into the iron stair railing, nearly sliding down to the flight below. The travel bag with documents flew after the suitcase and hit Andrey straight in the chest. Svetlana methodically, like a robot, grabbed her husband’s summer shoes from the rubber mat and hurled them through the open doorway, not caring where they landed.
Tamara Petrovna, realizing that the reprisal against her son had ended and that her turn was now coming, tried to slip sideways along the wall past her enraged daughter-in-law toward the exit. The elderly woman shuffled her feet in tiny steps, pulling her head into her shoulders and diligently avoiding eye contact.
“Now get out of here, quickly!” Svetlana roughly grabbed her mother-in-law by the thick knit of the burgundy cardigan on her back and gave her a powerful physical push.
The bulky woman flew out of the apartment like a cannonball, comically moving her feet in her worn-out slippers. She tripped over her son’s thrown shoes, awkwardly flailed her arms, and landed heavily right on top of the suitcase that had rolled out, miraculously avoiding breaking her neck.
“Andryusha! Call the police! She’s killing us!” the mother-in-law screamed hysterically, floundering on the stairwell floor in an attempt to get upright.
Andrey, finally realizing the full seriousness of what was happening, began slowly rising from the concrete steps. His face went blotchy red from humiliation and anger. He brushed off his dirty jeans, adjusted the torn collar of his shirt, and took a threatening step toward Svetlana, who was calmly standing in the doorway, blocking the way inside.
“You are going to calm down right now, pick up my things, carry them back into the hallway, and apologize to my mother for a long time,” Andrey hissed through his teeth, trying to regain his lost control over the situation. “Otherwise, I’ll leave right now, and you’ll be left alone. Without money, without a husband, and without any prospects. Do you understand me?”
Svetlana measured him with a cold, empty gaze. There was not a drop of fear in that gaze, not a shadow of doubt, not a gram of regret for the years they had lived together. Before her stood a pathetic, insolent man who had just tried to force her to pay for his relatives’ comfort with her own labor.
“You have already left, Andrey. Good riddance,” Svetlana said absolutely evenly, without a single emotion.
She took a step back into the entryway. Andrey jerked forward, trying to grab the edge of the metal door to keep her from closing it, but Svetlana was faster. Smoothly, but with maximum force, she pulled the steel panel toward herself. The metal met the doorframe with a dull thud, cutting off the mother-in-law’s screams and her husband’s indignant voice. Svetlana calmly turned the heavy lock knob four full times, cutting those people out of her life once and for all…
