Lyudmila Ivanovna grabbed the shovel leaning against the fence.
“Get out of here!” she screamed. “Get off my property! You come here shouting and intimidating my daughter!”
“Mom!” Irina stared at her mother in shock.
“Be quiet!” Lyudmila Ivanovna snapped. “I’ll handle this! And you”—she pointed the shovel at Andrei—“get out! And you can shove your money…”
“Where?” he asked calmly, grabbing the handle. “You’re so brave, aren’t you? Brave enough to steal. Brave enough to lie. Go on, finish your sentence!”
The old woman yanked the shovel toward herself. Andrei released it, and Lyudmila Ivanovna stumbled backward from the momentum…
Irina had been born in a small village that smelled of hay and fresh cow’s milk. Her childhood had passed among vegetable beds, apple trees, and endless garden chores. She remembered her father digging potatoes beneath the scorching sun, then sitting on the porch and silently watching the sunset.
After her father died, Lyudmila Ivanovna sold the village house. The money was enough to buy a tiny apartment in the city. Mother and daughter began a new life, but the older woman never stopped longing for the land.
Almost fifteen years passed. Lyudmila Ivanovna saved every spare ruble. Eventually, she accumulated enough to purchase a small country plot with a modest cottage.
“Irisha, just look at this beauty!” she exclaimed when they visited it for the first time. “Six hundred square meters of pure happiness! I’ll grow tomatoes here, cucumbers there, and zucchini over there!”
“I’m happy for you,” Irina said with a smile, looking at the crooked fence and the plot overgrown with weeds.
“Once we put some work into it, it’ll be perfect!” Lyudmila Ivanovna was already planning the garden beds in her mind. “You’ll help your mother, won’t you?”
Irina nodded. At the time, she believed helping would not be particularly burdensome.
From May until September, her mother moved to the country cottage. She woke at sunrise and went to bed after sunset. Every square meter of land was planted with something useful or beautiful.
When Irina met Andrei, her life began moving at a completely different pace. They dated for two years and then got married. The young couple settled into a rented apartment and began making plans for their future.
“Andryusha, shall we go to Mom’s cottage on Saturday?” Irina asked after their first month of married life.
“For a barbecue?” he asked enthusiastically. “I’ll bring the grill and marinate the meat!”
“Well… we can have a barbecue too,” his wife replied evasively.
Irina would remember her husband’s first visit to the cottage for a long time.
Andrei arrived wearing light-colored shorts and brand-new sneakers. Lyudmila Ivanovna greeted him with a shovel at the ready.
“My dear son-in-law!” she exclaimed happily. “At last, I have a helper! I need a compost pit in the corner of the plot. One meter by one meter, and about waist-deep.”
“I thought…” Andrei began, looking at his wife in confusion.
“You can think later. Dig first!” his mother-in-law said, handing him the shovel. “The soil is soft. You’ll finish in an hour. Irisha can weed the garden beds in the meantime.”
Andrei spent three hours digging. The soil was not soft at all; it was full of clay. By the time he climbed out of the pit, mosquitoes had bitten him all over, his back was aching, and his new sneakers had become lumps of mud.
“There, wonderful!” Lyudmila Ivanovna said approvingly. “Now help me move the boards for the compost box. They’re behind the cottage.”
“What about the barbecue?” Andrei asked cautiously.
“What barbecue? You come to the cottage to work, not to stuff your stomach!”
They did not return home until midnight. Andrei silently took a shower and went to bed.
“Ira, I don’t understand,” he said. “Your mother grows tons of vegetables, but it would be cheaper to buy them at the store. What’s the point of working yourself to death like this?”
“She enjoys it.”
“Well, I don’t!” His voice hardened. “I came there to relax, not to perform forced labor for some feudal landowner.”
“Don’t exaggerate,” Irina cut him off, remembering how her mother reacted to such remarks. “She simply loves working with the land.”
Andrei shook his head.
“If she loves the land, she can love it by herself. Don’t drag me into that relationship.”
After several more visits, Andrei issued an ultimatum.
“I’m not going there anymore. It’s the same thing every time: dig this, carry that, hammer this, paint that. I come home feeling as though I’ve worked three shifts at a construction site. That isn’t rest. It’s hard labor.”
“You’re abandoning me?” Irina asked, offended.
“I’m abandoning the shovel. You’re an adult woman. You can visit your mother as often as you like.”
Irina was upset, but she did not argue. She continued visiting her mother every weekend and paying her labor tribute. Andrei remained in the city and took care of his own affairs.
Two years passed like that.
Her mother-in-law produced mountains of vegetables. Tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, pumpkins—everything grew in unbelievable quantities. She and her daughter could not possibly eat it all, nor could they preserve such enormous amounts.
“Zinaida Pavlovna, take a bucket of cucumbers!” Lyudmila Ivanovna called to her neighbor over the fence. “And take some zucchini too, before they spoil!”
“Thank you, Mila! You practically feed the entire neighborhood!”
Andrei discovered this by accident when Irina mentioned that she had once again helped load the harvest into the neighbors’ car.
“Wait,” he interrupted. “You work yourself to exhaustion in the garden every Saturday so your mother can feed half the settlement for free?”
“Well…”
“Brilliant!” Andrei slapped his knees. “Absolutely brilliant! We can’t save enough for a proper vacation, while Lyudmila Ivanovna runs a charity at our expense!”
“It’s her decision…”
“Her decision involves your time and your labor! Do you understand how absurd that is?”
Irina had no answer.
But age eventually took its toll.
One June morning, Irina’s phone rang unusually early.
“Sweetheart,” her mother said weakly, “I can’t get up. My back has seized so badly that I can’t straighten myself.”
Irina found her mother lying on the old sofa in the cottage. Lyudmila Ivanovna could not move without groaning. They had to call an ambulance.
After examining her, the doctors were unequivocal.
“No physical labor,” the doctor said. “You must not lift anything heavy, and bending over is strictly forbidden. If you want to remain able to walk at sixty-five, forget about gardening.”
Lyudmila Ivanovna took the diagnosis as a personal insult.
“What do you mean, forget about gardening? Who is going to do everything there?”
“Hire someone,” the doctor suggested with a shrug.
“Hire someone? With money?” Lyudmila Ivanovna stared at him as though he were insane.
There was no alternative.
After returning home from the hospital, her mother began pressuring her daughter.
“Irisha, you won’t abandon the plot, will you? So much has already been planted. It’ll all be ruined!”
“I’ll keep visiting,” her daughter promised.
“You won’t manage alone. Make Andrei help.”
Irina spoke to her husband. He listened and then said:
“All right. I’ll go. But only for your sake.”
The couple spent the next three weeks at the cottage. Andrei once again dug, weeded, repaired, and carried things. Irina helped as much as she could. Her mother-in-law sat in an armchair beneath the apple tree and issued instructions.
“Andrei, you’re thinning the carrots incorrectly! Leave that one and pull this one out!”
“I know how to thin carrots.”
“How could you possibly know? You’re a city man! Do as I say!”
“Irisha, tell your husband to listen to me! He’ll ruin everything!”
“If I ruin everything, perhaps you should try doing it yourself,” Andrei finally snapped.
“How dare you speak to your wife’s mother that way?” his mother-in-law cried. “I’m doing all this for you! Homegrown, environmentally clean vegetables! Not like the chemical-filled produce in stores!”
Andrei clenched his teeth and continued working.
Three weeks later, he said:
“This cannot continue. We’ve become unpaid farmhands. I have a solution.”
“What is it?”
“There’s a man living on the neighboring plot. Dmitry. He’ll take on any kind of work. We’ll pay him to handle everything.”
“You want to hire him?” Irina asked in surprise.
“I want to free both of us from slavery. I’ll transfer money to your mother, and she can pay Dmitry. Everyone will be happy.”
At first, his mother-in-law resisted.
“A stranger working on my property? He’ll break everything!”
“You said yourself that you’d die in the garden if no one helped you,” Andrei reminded her. “Here is your help.”
“It would be better if you two did it yourselves…”
“We can’t. We have our own lives.”
Lyudmila Ivanovna pursed her lips but eventually agreed.
The first transfer was made at the beginning of May: twenty thousand rubles to paint the cottage.
“Dmitry took an advance,” Lyudmila Ivanovna reported over the phone. “He says he’ll finish within a week.”
“Excellent,” Andrei said, pleased. “Let him work.”
A week later, he received a message:
“The cottage has been painted. It looks indescribably beautiful.”
The second transfer took place at the end of May: fifteen thousand rubles to repair the roof.
“Several sheets are worn through,” his mother-in-law explained. “Dmitry will replace and rearrange them.”
“Understood. I’ve sent the money.”
The third transfer came in June: thirty thousand rubles to install a greenhouse.
“It’s a wonderful polycarbonate greenhouse,” Lyudmila Ivanovna said enthusiastically. “With automatic ventilation! Dmitry is assembling it himself. We only needed to buy the materials.”
Andrei continued sending money without asking unnecessary questions. Irina kept visiting her mother, bringing groceries and helping with minor tasks. Everything appeared to be under control.
In July, another request arrived: ten thousand rubles for weeding and treating the garden beds against pests.
“Does Dmitry help regularly now?” Andrei asked his wife.
“Yes, of course. Mom is very pleased with him.”
August brought more expenses: twelve thousand rubles to repair the fence and eight thousand to clean the septic pit.
“That cottage is becoming an expensive pleasure,” Andrei remarked after calculating the total.
“At least the vegetables are homegrown,” Irina replied with the familiar phrase.
At the beginning of September, his mother-in-law called again.
“Andryusha, I need fifty thousand rubles.”
“Fifty?” He nearly choked on his tea. “For what?”
“A gazebo. I want to build a beautiful gazebo where I can sit with my friends and drink tea. Dmitry says he can finish it in two weeks.”
Andrei paused.
Fifty thousand was a serious amount. Over the summer, he had already transferred around one hundred thousand rubles. That was a respectable income for a hired worker.
“Lyudmila Ivanovna, how much do you pay Dmitry each month?”
“Well… it varies. It depends on the work.”
“Approximately?”
“Why do you need to know? I tell you what is needed, and you transfer the money. Everything is honest.”
“I’m simply curious.”
“Curiosity killed the cat!” his mother-in-law snapped. “Are you going to transfer the money for the gazebo or not?”
“I’ll think about it.”
Something did not add up.
Andrei found Dmitry’s number on his phone. He had saved it in the spring when they first arranged the help.
“Hello, Dmitry? This is Andrei, Irina’s husband. Lyudmila Ivanovna is my mother-in-law. She owns the neighboring cottage.”
“Oh, I remember you! You visited in the spring. How are things?”
“I wanted to ask how the plot is doing. Was there a lot of work over the summer?”
There was a pause.
“What work?”
“You’ve been helping Lyudmila Ivanovna, haven’t you? Painting the cottage, repairing the roof, installing the greenhouse…”
“Wait,” Dmitry said, sounding confused. “I only worked for her twice. That was in April. I cleared the rubbish from the plot after winter. She paid me three thousand rubles, and that was it. She never called me again.”
Andrei felt the blood rush to his face.
“Are you certain?”
“Absolutely. I keep records of all my jobs. Lyudmila Ivanovna: April, plot cleanup, three thousand rubles. That’s all.”
“Did you paint the cottage? Repair the roof?”
“No. The cottage is in terrible condition and has needed painting for years. The roof hasn’t been repaired either. I would have noticed.”
“What about the greenhouse?”
“There is no greenhouse. The beds are bare. She doesn’t even have any protective covering over them.”
Andrei thanked him and ended the call.
Andrei drove to the cottage, gripping the steering wheel as he sped down the damaged country road.
One thought kept circling in his mind.
One hundred thousand rubles.
One hundred thousand over the summer.
Where had it gone?
The plot greeted him with the same familiar sight: a crooked fence, a peeling cottage, and garden beds overgrown with weeds. There was no greenhouse, no fresh paint, and no repaired roof.
Lyudmila Ivanovna was sitting in a plastic chair near the cottage. Three large pots containing luxuriant roses stood beside her. Behind the cottage, Andrei noticed an entire collection of garden gnomes—at least twenty of them.
“Andryusha?” Lyudmila Ivanovna flinched. “What are you doing here?”
“Conducting an inspection,” he replied, walking slowly around the plot. “What an interesting greenhouse. So transparent that it’s invisible. And the new roof is invisible too. And the paint… what was the color called? Air?”
His mother-in-law’s face became blotchy.
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the one hundred thousand rubles I transferred to you over the summer. For work that was never done.”
At that moment, Irina came around the corner of the cottage carrying a bucket of water. She stopped when she saw her husband.
“Andrei…”
“Oh, my wife!” He spread his arms theatrically. “The woman who came here every week and somehow failed to notice that none of the work was being done! A strange case of blindness, isn’t it? Or were you both in on it?”
“I can explain…”
“You can?” He stepped toward her. “Then explain! Where is the thirty-thousand-ruble greenhouse? Where is the cottage that cost twenty thousand to paint? Where is the roof that cost fifteen thousand to repair?”
Irina lowered her eyes.
“I… I didn’t know you were transferring so much…”
“You didn’t know? You told me Dmitry was working! You said everything was fine! You lied to my face every week!”
“I wasn’t lying! I thought…”
“What did you think?”
His mother-in-law rose from her chair.
“Why are you shouting like this?” she shrieked. “So what if it was money? Did it make you poor?”
Andrei slowly turned toward her.
“Lyudmila Ivanovna, you took one hundred thousand rubles for work that did not exist. That is called theft.”
“What theft?” she squealed. “You transferred it voluntarily! I never asked you!”
“You never asked?” He pulled out his phone. “Here are the messages: ‘Andryusha, I need twenty thousand for painting.’ ‘Andryusha, the roof is leaking, I need fifteen thousand.’ ‘I want a greenhouse, transfer thirty thousand!’”
“So what? I’m your wife’s mother! You are obligated to help me!”
“Help, yes. Allow myself to be robbed, no.”
Lyudmila Ivanovna began trembling with rage.
“Robbed, he says! I worked myself to the bone my entire life! I raised my daughter alone! And now that I’m old, I’m not even allowed to buy myself a couple of roses?”
“A couple?” Andrei pointed at the pots. “Is that a couple? And what about the gnomes? How much does one of those ugly things cost—five thousand?”
“They are not ugly! They’re collectible figurines! Handmade!”
“Handmade at my expense!”
Irina attempted to intervene.
“Andrei, calm down…”
“Calm down?” He spun toward his wife. “You covered up this fraud for two months! You knew! You saw that nothing was being done here, and you remained silent! You deceived me too!”
“I didn’t want to…”
“Didn’t want what? To upset Mommy? But robbing your husband was perfectly acceptable?”
Irina began to cry.
“I was afraid…”
“Afraid of what?”
“That you would stop giving her money… that there would be a scandal…”
“There is going to be a scandal!” Andrei roared. “You chose her side! You betrayed me!”
Lyudmila Ivanovna grabbed the shovel leaning against the fence.
“Get out of here!” she screamed. “Get off my property! You come here shouting and intimidating my daughter!”
“Mom!” Irina stared at her mother in shock.
“Be quiet!” Lyudmila Ivanovna snapped. “I’ll handle this! And you”—she pointed the shovel at Andrei—“get out! And you can shove your money…”
“Where?” he asked calmly, grabbing the handle. “You’re so brave, aren’t you? Brave enough to steal. Brave enough to lie. Go on, finish your sentence!”
The old woman yanked the shovel toward herself. Andrei released it, and Lyudmila Ivanovna stumbled backward from the momentum.
Her foot slipped on the grass, which was still wet from the previous day’s rain.
She flailed her arms and fell directly into a huge puddle that had formed in a low area of the plot. Dirty water erupted around her in a fountain.
“Mother!” Irina rushed to help.
Andrei did not move.
Irina extended her hand. Lyudmila Ivanovna grabbed her wrist and pulled. Irina lost her footing on the same wet slope. Her legs slid apart, and she fell into the mud beside her mother.
The two women floundered in the brown sludge, trying to stand. The mud squelched and sloshed around them. His mother-in-law spat out dirty water and howled:
“Help us! Why are you just standing there?”
Andrei looked at them with disgust.
“You know,” he said quietly, “there’s an old saying: when people show you their true faces, believe them. You’ve shown me yours. Both of you.”
“Andrei!” Irina reached toward him with a mud-covered hand. “Please!”
“What else have you lied to me about?” he asked in an icy voice. “What else have you hidden?”
Irina did not answer.
“You’re silent. I understand.”
He turned around and walked toward his car.
Then he drove away.
At home, he packed a bag. Documents and enough clothes to last for a while. He left the apartment keys on the table.
Then he called a childhood friend.
“Kostya, can I stay with you for a week or two? I’ll explain when I see you.”
Irina called that evening. He did not answer.
She sent him a message:
“Forgive me. I’ll explain everything.”
He replied:
“There is nothing to explain. I understand everything now.”
Two days later, he received a message from his mother-in-law:
“Andrei, you are a grown man. You should understand that all kinds of things happen in families. Let’s forget this incident.”
He blocked her number.
On the third day, Irina came to Kostya’s apartment. She stood outside the entrance and called through the intercom.
“Andrei, come downstairs. We need to talk.”
“There’s nothing to discuss.”
“Please! I didn’t know she was asking for so much! I thought it was only a little money for small things!”
“You visited the plot every week. You saw that nothing was being done. You stayed silent. That was a choice—your choice. And you knew how much I was transferring. I told you.”
“She’s my mother! I couldn’t betray her!”
“You could have chosen not to lie to me.”
“I didn’t lie! I just… didn’t tell you everything!”
“Ira, leave.”
She left.
A week later, Andrei filed for divorce.
When Irina received the papers, she called him again.
“Are you serious? You’re divorcing me over some money?”
“Over trust,” he replied calmly. “There isn’t any left.”
“They were just cottage expenses! I’ll repay you!”
“It isn’t about the money. It’s about the fact that you looked me in the eyes for two months and told me everything was fine, even though you knew it was a lie. You chose her side. You betrayed me.”
“I didn’t betray you!”
“Call it whatever you like.”
The divorce proceeded quickly. They had no children and almost nothing to divide. They rented their apartment, and their shared property was minimal.
The last time Irina saw Andrei was in the courthouse corridor. He looked calm, almost relaxed. He nodded to her and walked past.
She returned to the empty apartment, which she would now have to pay for alone.
Then she called her mother.
“Well?” Lyudmila Ivanovna asked irritably.
“We’re divorced. Officially.”
“Good!” her mother snorted. “Good riddance to that miser! Making a scandal over a few pennies!”
“One hundred thousand rubles is not a few pennies.”
“He earns good money! He could have given more! It was his duty to help his wife’s family!”
Irina listened in silence.
“And you weren’t very clever either!” Lyudmila Ivanovna continued. “You should have handled him more skillfully! It’s your own fault for settling for so little!”
“I settled for too little?”
“Who else is to blame? I warned you not to bring him to the plot! He should have been allowed to think everything was being done! But you kept dragging him here!”
“He came without warning.”
“You should have locked the gate!”
Irina suddenly felt nausea rising inside her.
“You know what…” She struggled to find the words. “Because of you, I lost my husband. My family. My normal life.”
“What kind of family was that?” her mother cried. “He didn’t love you! He was greedy and calculating!”
“He was honest. You weren’t. And by taking your side, I became dishonest too.”
“What nonsense are you talking about?”
“The truth.”
Irina ended the call.
Lyudmila Ivanovna remained alone in her country cottage.
The season was ending. The garden beds had become neglected because there was no one to weed them. The harvest rotted where it grew.
Her neighbor Zinaida Pavlovna visited one evening.
“Mila, where is your son-in-law? I haven’t seen him lately.”
“I don’t have a son-in-law anymore,” Lyudmila Ivanovna muttered. “They got divorced.”
“Oh, how terrible! Why?”
“He turned out to be greedy. They argued over money.”
Zinaida Pavlovna shook her head and left.
Two days later, the entire cottage settlement knew that Lyudmila Ivanovna had deceived her son-in-law out of a large sum of money.
Her neighbor Viktor Mikhailovich stopped greeting her. Zinaida Pavlovna no longer came to collect cucumbers. Even the elderly man from the house across the road, who had always waved to her, now looked away.
Dmitry, the hired worker whose name she had used, visited the plot.
“Why did you lie to your daughter’s husband and tell him I had been working for you?”
“That’s none of your business!”
“Now everyone looks at me as though I’m some kind of fraud! I earn my living honestly!”
“Get out!”
He left, slamming the gate behind him.
Lyudmila Ivanovna sat in her plastic chair and buried her head in her hands. The handmade gnomes surrounded her. The three pots of expensive roses were producing their final blossoms before autumn.
“How did this happen?” she muttered. “How? I only took a little money… for beauty… to make the place comfortable. How was I supposed to know he would start checking everything? How?”
She looked at the gnomes.
Twenty of them.
Each had cost between three and seven thousand rubles.
A collection.
Her pride.
The envy of the neighbors.
Now the neighbors would not speak to her.
“What did I even do?” she shouted into the empty air. “He was rich! One hundred thousand was nothing to him! And I saved money! I lived frugally! Don’t I have the right to a beautiful old age? Don’t I?”
No one answered.
Irina stopped visiting. She called rarely and spoke coldly.
“Bring me some groceries,” Lyudmila Ivanovna asked one day.
“Order a delivery.”
“That’s expensive!”
“I live alone now too. I pay the entire rent by myself. I don’t have any spare money.”
“This is your fault! You couldn’t even hold on to your man!”
“Goodbye.”
The line went silent.
Lyudmila Ivanovna threw her phone onto the table. Then she picked it up and checked whether it had broken. She could not afford a replacement.
“This is all his fault!” she hissed. “It’s all because of that miser! A normal son-in-law would have helped! A normal man would have understood! But this one decided to conduct an inspection! He imagined himself some kind of investigator!”
She grabbed the nearest gnome. It wore a red hat, had a white beard, and held a shovel in its hands. She raised it, preparing to smash it.
Then she stopped.
The gnome had cost six thousand eight hundred rubles.
Slowly, she placed it back in its spot.
“How did this happen?” she whispered again. “I had a daughter… I had a son-in-law… I received money every month… And now? Now I’m alone. Completely alone. With the gnomes.”
A rose dropped one of its petals.
It fell to the ground—red against black soil.
Lyudmila Ivanovna stared at it, unable to understand how one small deception had transformed into such a tremendous loss.
“I only wanted it to look beautiful…” Her voice trembled. “I only wanted beauty…”
The gnomes remained silent.
The roses were fading.
Gray clouds spread across the sky.
The season was ending.
