— Lyova, tights don’t go on your head! Take them off right now, we’re late!
Inna was fastening Masha’s jacket with one hand while trying to pull the second child’s boot out from under the kitchen table with the other. Lyova was running around the chairs with gray tights over his head, shouting that he was a ninja, while Masha whined that the zipper was biting her and that she wasn’t going to kindergarten today because Sonya pushed people.
On the table, taking up half the available space, stood a box containing a brand-new blender. White and glossy, with a picture of strawberries and a woman smiling as if she had dreamed her entire life of grinding nuts.
Yesterday had been Inna and Denis’s anniversary. Eight years since their wedding.
“A perfectly normal gift, by the way,” Denis had said when Inna stared at the box a little too long. “You wanted to make cream soups.”
Inna had never wanted to make cream soups. Once, she had mentioned that Katya had a good blender and that it was convenient for mixing pancake batter. That had been six months ago, when their old mixer had started smoking right over the bowl.
Back then Denis had checked the price on his phone and whistled.
“Forget it. We’ll stir it with a fork. It’s not a restaurant.”
But yesterday he had brought home that exact blender, set it on the table, and asked whether she was happy. Inna had said she was delighted, kissed him on the cheek, and had even managed to wipe from her face the expression that might have ruined the evening.
Denis ordered sushi rolls. The children ate only the cucumbers and smeared soy sauce all over the tablecloth. After putting them to bed, Inna fell asleep beside Masha and never even waited for Denis to open the bottle of wine.
In the morning, he already had his shoes on and was searching the pockets of his jacket for his keys.
“In, have you seen my documents?”
“They were on the dresser. Lyova, give me the boot! Don’t throw it—give it to Mommy!”
“They’re not on the dresser.”
“Then they’re in the car. Denis, tie Masha’s scarf, please.”
“I’m already late.”
Inna’s phone was lying on the table beside the blender box. The screen lit up, and she glanced at it automatically, expecting another message from the parents’ group chat. Since six in the morning, they had been debating whether the children needed white T-shirts for the autumn celebration and why the teacher wasn’t answering.
Denis’s name appeared on the screen.
Underneath it was a photograph of a delicate gold bracelet resting on a black velvet cushion.
“Got it. I think it’ll look amazing with your emerald dress…”
Inna managed to read the message twice. The first time quickly, without understanding. The second time word by word.
Emerald dress.
She reached for the phone, knocked her elbow against a mug of water, and caught it just before it toppled off the edge. The screen went dark, and when Inna opened the chat, the photograph was already gone.
The message had been deleted for both sides.
“In, I’m running!” Denis shouted from the hallway. “I’m seriously late!”
“Denis!”
The door slammed before she had decided what exactly she wanted to ask.
Lyova ran out of the kitchen wearing only one boot.
“Mom, do ninjas go to kindergarten?”
Inna stared at the gray line in the conversation showing that the message had been deleted. Above it, Denis had written the night before, “Should I buy bread?” Higher up, she had sent him a picture of Masha with her nose covered in marker.
“Mom!”
“What?”
“Do ninjas go to kindergarten?”
“Everyone goes. Ninjas and regular people. Come on, put on your other boot.”
For several seconds she rummaged through the children’s hats, then slammed the closet door shut and crouched in front of her son.
“Give me your foot.”
“That’s the other one.”
“Lyova, just give me whichever one you’ve got!”
He stopped smiling and obediently held out his right foot. Inna forced the left boot onto it, shoved his heel down, muttered a curse under her breath, and only then realized what she had done.
“Mom, it hurts.”
“Sorry, sweetheart. One second.”
Masha was already standing by the door, clutching the jammed zipper.
“Is Daddy coming home today?”
“Of course he is. Where else would he go?”
She said it too sharply. Masha looked up at her but didn’t ask anything else.
Inna practically marched the children to kindergarten. Lyova stopped twice to check for ice in the puddles even though it was October and there was no ice yet. Masha insisted that Inna not hold her hand, then a minute later grabbed her mother’s sleeve at the crossing.
In the changing room, the teacher reminded her about the craft project made from natural materials.
“Tomorrow is your last day, Inna Sergeyevna.”
“Yes, of course. We’ll make it.”
“You said that yesterday too.”
Inna nodded and stuffed Masha’s mittens into Lyova’s cubby. Without a word, the teacher moved them to the correct place.
When the children went into their classroom, Inna took out her phone. The message was still gone. She tapped Denis’s name, looked at the time of his last activity, and immediately closed the app.
Then she opened it again.
Katya was waiting for Inna in the parking lot because she was supposed to drive her to work. They had arranged it yesterday. Inna opened the passenger door, but instead of getting in, she put her bag on the seat and then pulled it out again.
“What’s wrong with you?” Katya stopped searching for something in the glove compartment. “Dropped the kids off?”
“Dropped them off.”
“Then get in. I’m freezing.”
Inna sat down and closed the door. The car smelled of new plastic and Katya’s sweet chewing gum. A small yellow duck dangled from the mirror. Katya had bought it at a gas station and, for some reason, called it Gennady.
“You’re white as a sheet,” Katya said. “Did the teacher lecture you again?”
Inna showed her the phone.
“What am I looking at?”
“There was a message here. From Denis. Now it’s deleted without a trace.”
Katya took the phone and held it closer to her face, even though there was nothing there to enlarge.
“What did it say?”
Inna told her. At first calmly, almost word for word, but when she got to the part about the emerald dress, her voice trembled. She turned toward the window and stared at a woman in a red jacket leading a little girl toward kindergarten with a huge bag of leaves.
“He deleted it for both sides, do you understand?” Inna took the phone back. “I didn’t even have time to open it. I only saw the notification. A gold bracelet, thin. And he wrote, ‘Got it.’ Then something about a dress. I don’t own an emerald dress. I don’t have anything green at all!”
“Maybe he didn’t mean to send it to you?”
Inna looked at her.
“Thanks, Katya. I feel so much better now.”
“That’s not what I meant. Maybe it was for his sister, for example. Or someone at work asked him to choose a gift.”
“He doesn’t have a sister.”
“I know he doesn’t. I’m just considering possibilities.”
“‘With your emerald dress,’” Inna repeated. “He knows what dresses women at work own?”
Katya sighed and put both hands on the steering wheel.
“Just don’t call him right now.”
“What am I supposed to do? Go to work and check reports?”
“If you call him, he’ll say you read it wrong. Or that a colleague asked him for help. Or that the message wasn’t from him at all. You can’t prove anything.”
“But I can ask him!”
“You can. And then he’ll start covering up whatever he hasn’t covered up already.”
“I’m not going to follow him.”
“Not yet.”
“Then what am I supposed to do?”
Katya looked at her more carefully.
“Stay quiet until tonight, at least. You have children, In. Don’t make a drastic decision over one notification.”
“Are you seriously bringing up the kids right now?”
“I’m not telling you to tolerate cheating. I’m saying you should first find out whether he’s actually cheating. If you interrogate him now, he’ll play dumb. Denis is good at that.”
“He’s not like that!”
Katya lowered her eyes and adjusted the duck hanging from the mirror. Gennady swayed from side to side.
“Fine. Then he’ll calmly explain everything when there’s something to explain.”
Inna opened the door.
“I need to get to work.”
“We’re supposed to be going together.”
“I’ll walk.”
“Inna, sit down properly. I’m not accusing you!”
“It sounds like I’m already some hysterical woman who saw somebody else’s bracelet and decided to destroy her family.”
“You haven’t destroyed anything yet.”
“Yet?”
Katya leaned over and pulled Inna’s door shut.
“I’ll drive past their office at lunchtime.”
“Why?”
“To see who he comes out with. There’s a café on the ground floor. Half the employees eat there by the window.”
“No.”
Katya started the car. Inna buckled her seat belt, but the strap twisted, and she spent a long time tugging at it near her shoulder.
“Just look,” she said when they pulled out of the parking lot. “Don’t take pictures. And don’t go up to him.”
“Of course.”
“And if he’s alone, don’t go there again.”
“All right.”
“Katya, I’m serious!”
“So am I.”
At work, Inna opened her chat with Denis three times and closed it each time without writing anything. At half past ten, he sent her a funny video of a man trying to assemble a child’s bed and ending up trapped inside it.
Normally Inna would have replied with a laughing emoji. Today she left it unread, then remembered Denis would notice and opened it.
“Why are you so quiet?” came two minutes later.
She typed, “What color are my dresses?” Read it. Deleted it.
“Lots of work,” she sent instead.
Denis replied with a heart.
Katya didn’t write before lunch. At 12:40, Inna sent her a question mark, but the message remained unread. At 1:10, Katya called.
“Just don’t get worked up, okay?”
“You saw him?”
“I did.”
Inna pressed the phone between her ear and shoulder and began moving papers from one pile to another.
“Was he alone?”
“At first. Then a girl came up to him.”
“What girl?”
“Brunette. Young. Maybe twenty-seven.”
“They just came out together?”
“In, I was watching from the car. They went into the café.”
“It’s a workday. People from work go out to lunch together.”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying. So far, nothing.”
“And the dress?”
Katya was silent for a moment.
“I couldn’t see. She was wearing a coat.”
Inna lowered the first pile of papers onto the floor.
“You promised not to take pictures.”
“I didn’t.”
“Then how do you know she was a brunette?”
“Her hair was visible under her hat.”
“Was she wearing a hat or a coat?”
“Both a hat and a coat. It’s cold, you know.”
Inna closed her eyes.
“Don’t go there again.”
“Okay.”
“You hear me?”
“I hear you.”
That evening Denis brought pastries. Four pieces in a transparent box: two children’s ones covered in colorful sprinkles and two adult ones decorated with cream roses.
“Are we celebrating something?” Inna asked.
“Can’t I buy pastries for no reason?”
“You can.”
He kissed her on the cheek, took off his jacket, and went straight to wash his hands. Inna put the box in the refrigerator.
During dinner Denis told them how his boss had mixed up presentations and spent half an hour showing directors outdated figures. He laughed, imitated the man’s voice, and asked Masha about kindergarten.
Inna watched his hands.
There was a fresh scratch near the thumb of his right hand.
“Where did you get that?”
“What?”
“The scratch on your finger.”
Denis looked at it.
“Oh. Opening a box.”
“What box?”
“In, I don’t remember. Some box at work. With papers.”
“You cut your finger on paper?”
“Cardboard. What difference does it make?”
He didn’t look away or fall silent. He simply reached for the bread. Inna suddenly felt foolish and started cutting the burned edge off Masha’s cutlet.
After dinner Denis took the blender out of the box.
“Let’s test it while it’s still under warranty.”
“Now?”
“Why not? The kids can have a milkshake.”
He sliced a banana, poured in milk, and let Lyova press the button. The blender roared so loudly that Masha covered her ears and ran into the other room. Lyova burst out laughing and demanded they do it again.
“See? Useful thing,” Denis said. “And yesterday you didn’t look very happy about it.”
“I was happy, Denis.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
“I was tired.”
“You’re tired all the time lately!”
Inna unplugged the blender.
“I have two children almost the same age.”
“So do I, you know.”
“Of course.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. Pour the milkshake.”
He looked at her but didn’t argue. Ten minutes later he was sitting on the floor with the children, building a garage out of blocks. Lyova climbed onto his back, Masha brought her dolls, and Denis laughed and begged them not to break Daddy’s spine.
Inna put the blender back into its box. A drop of milk had dried on the transparent jug, and she scraped it off with her fingernail until the plastic squeaked.
That night Denis placed his hand on her thigh.
“Are you asleep?”
“Almost.”
“Come here.”
“Lyova might wake up.”
“He can always wake up.”
Inna lay facing the wall. Denis’s hand lingered a little longer, then disappeared.
“Are you mad at me?” he asked.
“For what?”
“That’s what I don’t understand.”
She wanted to turn around and ask about the message. She had already drawn a breath, but Masha coughed in the children’s room.
Inna immediately got up.
“I’ll check on her.”
Masha was asleep, having kicked off her blanket. Inna covered her, adjusted the pillow, and stayed beside her longer than necessary.
When she returned, Denis had already turned away and was breathing evenly.
The next day Katya wrote that she hadn’t gone anywhere else. Another day later, she sent a photograph of a cup of coffee and asked whether Inna was still alive.
“Everything’s fine,” Inna replied.
And at home, everything really did look fine. Denis picked up the children from kindergarten, bought food for Lyova’s fish—which technically belonged to Lyova but for some reason Denis always fed them. On Wednesday he repaired the cabinet door. On Thursday he called Inna during the day and asked what kind of apples he should buy.
Several times she convinced herself she had misunderstood what she had seen.
The bracelet could have been a gift from the entire department for a colleague. The emerald dress could have been discussed in a group chat. Denis could have deleted the message because he had immediately realized his mistake and didn’t want to explain someone else’s gift.
Each explanation lasted about ten minutes.
Then Inna remembered the word “amazing.”
Denis didn’t write things like that to colleagues over fifty when the department was buying them birthday gifts. In fact, he almost never wrote like that to anyone.
He had written like that to Inna once, before they were married, when she sent him a photograph of herself in a short blue dress.
On Friday Katya called at half past one.
“I lied to you.”
Inna stepped out of her office into the hallway.
“About what?”
“I went there again.”
“Why?”
“Because the first time I didn’t really see anything, and you were already starting to make excuses for him!”
“I didn’t ask you to!”
“I know. You can yell at me later. Are you at work?”
“Yes.”
“Go somewhere private.”
“I’m already alone.”
“You’d better sit down.”
“Katya, just tell me!”
There was street noise at the other end, then the sound of a car door slamming.
“I photographed them.”
Inna leaned her back against the wall.
“Who?”
“Denis and that girl. They were sitting in the café. Today she wasn’t wearing a coat.”
“And?”
“I’m sending it now.”
“Katya, what was she wearing?”
The phone vibrated briefly.
A photograph appeared on the screen, taken through the window. Denis sat at a table near the glass, leaning slightly forward. Opposite him was a brunette in a dark green dress.
He was holding her hand and running his thumb over her knuckles.
Inna enlarged the image. The girl’s face blurred, but a delicate gold bracelet gleamed brightly on her wrist.
“Is that it?” Katya asked.
Inna didn’t answer.
“In?”
“I think so.”
She opened the picture again, zoomed in on the girl’s wrist, then immediately zoomed back out.
Denis was smiling at her in a way he hadn’t smiled at anyone at home for a long time.
No noise. No children. No requests to buy apples or take out the trash.
He sat there without rushing, holding another woman’s hand in both of his.
“I’m coming to you,” Katya said.
“Don’t.”
“You shouldn’t be there alone.”
“I have a meeting in five minutes.”
Inna lowered the phone because a coworker was walking down the corridor carrying a folder.
“Everything okay?” the woman asked.
“Yes. Just got dizzy.”
“Want some water?”
“It’ll pass.”
She waited until the woman left, then raised the phone again.
“Katya, come over tonight. After nine. Once the kids are asleep.”
“And Denis?”
“Let him fall asleep too.”
But Denis was late that evening. He texted that they had an urgent report and came home almost at eleven. Katya waited in her car in the courtyard until Inna sent, “Come up.”
Denis took a shower and went to bed without even asking why Inna had a visitor so late.
“Just keep it down,” he called from the bedroom. “I have to get up early.”
Katya took off her shoes and went into the kitchen.
The blender box was still sitting on the table because Inna had never found a place for it.
“He’s home?” Katya whispered.
“Asleep.”
“That was fast.”
“He’s tired.”
Katya pursed her lips but said nothing. She sat at the table and opened the photographs on her phone.
There were more than Inna had seen that afternoon.
In one, Denis was handing the girl a napkin.
In another, she was saying something while he stared at her face, forgetting about the food on his plate.
In the third, their hands lay close together, Denis’s fingers touching her wrist just above the bracelet.
“At first I thought it was just lunch too,” Katya said. “People work together. Anything could happen. Then he took her hand. They almost kissed right there, but the waiter came over.”
“Maybe you saw it wrong?”
Katya slowly set the phone down, screen facing up.
“Inna!”
“I’m just saying. Through glass, from far away.”
“I recorded a video.”
“Don’t.”
“Look.”
“I said I don’t want to!”
Inna jumped up so abruptly that her knee hit the table. The blender box rocked, and Katya caught it with both hands.
Denis’s voice came from the bedroom.
“What are you doing in there?”
“Nothing!” Inna shouted. “We bumped the box.”
“Can you keep it down?”
“Yes!”
She waited until the apartment became quiet again, then sat down.
Katya moved the phone closer but didn’t play the video.
“Who is she?”
“Yulia. She works in their marketing department. I found her profile. Different surname, but half the people in their office are on her friends list.”
In the photographs, Yulia stood in front of a mirror, held a glass at someone’s birthday party, and sat on a windowsill with a cat.
The emerald dress appeared in her profile too.
Under a photograph posted a month earlier, someone had written, “That color is one hundred percent yours.”
Denis had reacted with a flame emoji.
Inna ran her finger over the screen several times.
The flame didn’t disappear.
“Six months ago he criticized this blender,” she said. “Remember? You and I were looking at them. He said it was too expensive. And now a bracelet.”
Katya put the phone away.
“There’s no point looking for the receipt. He probably didn’t pay from your joint card.”
“I’m not looking for a receipt.”
“And don’t touch his phone. If he notices, he’ll delete everything.”
“Everything’s probably already deleted!”
“What am I supposed to do, Katya?”
Her friend didn’t answer immediately.
“Ask him directly.”
“He’ll lie.”
“Then bluff. Tell him Yulia called you herself and told you everything.”
“She’ll tell him she didn’t.”
“Denis won’t run to her first to check. He’ll panic and give himself away. I’m telling you.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“Then show him the photographs.”
Inna looked toward the bedroom. The door was slightly ajar. Behind it, Denis was sleeping after his urgent report, with his trousers draped over a chair and his socks lying beside the bed.
In the morning he would ask where his clean shirt was, take Masha to kindergarten, and kiss Inna on the cheek at the door.
“I can’t do it right now,” she said.
“You shouldn’t do it right now. The kids are home.”
“I can’t do it at all.”
“You can.”
“And then what? Suppose he tells me the truth. Where do I take the children? To my mother’s? To your place? We have a mortgage. Lyova cries at night when Denis is away on a business trip. Tomorrow Masha will ask why Daddy didn’t come home. What do I tell her?”
Katya reached for her hand, but Inna moved away and started straightening the blender box.
“First make him tell the truth,” Katya said quietly. “You’ll decide what comes next afterward. Not tonight.”
For three days, Inna waited for a moment when the children wouldn’t be home.
Denis seemed almost deliberately punctual. He came home on time, sat down to dinner with everyone, turned cartoons on for Masha, and asked Inna why she was so quiet.
On Monday morning, he left after promising he would be home late.
Inna took the children to kindergarten, asked to leave work after lunch, and went home.
She wasn’t planning to confront him that day.
She wanted to open her laptop, finish a report, and spend at least one hour alone in the apartment.
At four o’clock, a key turned in the lock.
Denis entered whistling, tossed his gloves onto the cabinet, and saw her standing by the sink.
“Oh, hey. Why are you home?”
“I took the afternoon off.”
“Are you sick?”
“No.”
He had already gone to the dresser and started opening drawers.
“I’m only here for a second. Forgot a folder. Blue one. Have you seen it?”
Inna dried her hands on a towel.
Denis found the folder, tucked it under his arm, and smiled.
“Okay, I’m running. I’ll be home around ten.”
She stepped between him and the door.
“Yulia called me.”
The smile remained on his face, but the hand holding his keys slowly lowered.
“What Yulia?”
Denis asked too quickly.
He didn’t ask who had called or how she had gotten Inna’s number. He simply pressed the blue folder more tightly against his side, and Inna saw the corner of his mouth twitch.
“The one from marketing,” she said. “The one you bought a bracelet for to go with her emerald dress.”
For several seconds Denis stared at her. Then he gave a short laugh and shook his head.
“In, what are you talking about?”
“She told me everything.”
“Who?”
“Yulia.”
“What Yulia? We probably have three Yulias there. Maybe four. Can you explain yourself properly?”
He sounded annoyed, almost confident, but he didn’t move toward the door.
The keys lay in his palm, and the metal ring tapped faintly against the edge of the folder.
Inna could hear her own breathing.
She was afraid of saying too much, mixing up details, giving away Katya and the photographs.
Denis was always good at noticing small inconsistencies. He could remember a week later that she had mentioned one time and then another.
“The one you’ve been seeing for six months.”
Denis snorted and put the folder on the dresser.
“Have you lost your mind?”
“No.”
“Some woman calls you, says she works with me, tells you a bunch of nonsense, and you believe her? It’s some kind of scam. Maybe spam. People come up with all kinds of things these days.”
“She knew about the message.”
He stopped fiddling with the keys.
“What message?”
“The one you sent me on our anniversary. With a photograph of the bracelet. Then deleted.”
“I didn’t send you anything.”
“You did.”
“Inna, you could’ve seen an ad. You get those notifications all the time.”
“It had your name on it! I’m not blind!”
“Then maybe somebody hacked the account. How should I know?”
He picked up the folder and took a step toward the door.
“I’m seriously late. Let’s talk calmly tonight, because right now you’re talking nonsense.”
Inna grabbed his sleeve.
“She told me the date, Denis!”
He stopped.
“What date?”
“When you started seeing each other. And she told me about the message. About how you sent it to the wrong person and deleted it immediately. Stop treating me like an idiot!”
She almost screamed the last sentence.
Denis pulled his arm free and glanced toward the children’s room, even though they weren’t home.
“Why are you shouting?”
“This isn’t the time to play the caring father. Answer me!”
“Answer what? Your fantasies?”
“Why did you buy her gold and give me a blender?”
Denis opened his mouth but said nothing.
His face turned red rapidly, and tiny beads of sweat appeared on his forehead.
Inna had seen him like this only once before, when he had forgotten to pay the insurance and gotten into a minor accident. Back then, too, he had spent a long time insisting that the letter from the insurance company must have gotten lost.
“Show me your phone,” she said.
“Why?”
“Show me your messages with Yulia.”
“I have work conversations on there. I don’t have to show them to you.”
“You’re my husband!”
“So what? Does that give you the right to go through my phone?”
“I haven’t gone through it. I asked you to hand it over.”
“And I won’t. Because this is already abnormal.”
He spoke louder, as though hoping to overpower her with his voice.
Inna stepped back and suddenly noticed that Denis was holding the folder upside down. The papers inside had slipped toward the edge and crumpled.
“She said you promised to leave after New Year’s.”
Denis looked up.
Inna had made it up on the spot and immediately worried she had gone too far.
But he didn’t laugh.
He didn’t ask where she had gotten that idea.
He slowly set the folder on the floor.
“What exactly did she tell you?”
“Enough.”
“That doesn’t mean anything. What do you mean, ‘enough’?”
“Exactly what I said.”
“Inna, I’m asking you: what exact words did she use?”
“You’re not thinking about me right now. You’re trying to find out how much she told me!”
“I’m not trying to find out anything.”
“Then call her in front of me.”
He ran a hand over his face and sat on the edge of the ottoman.
The keys fell from his hand and hit the tile.
Denis didn’t bend to pick them up.
“Damn,” he said quietly.
Inna waited.
She wanted him to keep denying it. To get angry. To call her crazy.
As long as he lied, she could still cling to the possibility that Katya had seen it wrong, that the bracelet merely looked similar, that their hands in the photograph had only appeared intimate because of the angle.
Denis picked up the keys and placed them beside him.
“Fine.”
“What do you mean, ‘fine’?”
“Yes. We’re seeing each other.”
Inna stared at him and couldn’t understand why he said it in such an ordinary voice.
As if admitting he had scratched the car or forgotten to pay a bill.
“How long?”
Denis rubbed the back of his neck.
“What difference does it make?”
“How long?!”
“A few months.”
“Six months?”
He didn’t answer.
“Six months, Denis?”
“About that.”
Inna walked to the table and picked up a plate with some children’s cookies left on it.
That morning Masha had bitten the head off one of the little cookie people and announced that she would eat its stomach after kindergarten.
Inna had meant to put the cookies into a bag but had forgotten.
“In, just don’t…”
The plate smashed against the wall beside the refrigerator.
The crash was louder than Inna expected.
White shards scattered across the floor, one sliding underneath the cabinet, while cookie crumbs fell around the table leg.
Denis jumped up.
“Have you completely lost it?!”
“Six months?!”
“Calm down!”
“How am I supposed to calm down? Show me, Denis! Show me where the button is that I’m supposed to press, and I’ll calm down! You’ve been sleeping with another woman for six months!”
She grabbed a box of tissues from the table and threw it at him.
It struck his shoulder, burst open, and white tissues fluttered onto the floor.
“We have little kids! Two of them! I’m alone with them from morning till night. I take them to doctors alone, to kindergarten alone, I get up with them alone at night while you’re working late! You said you had reports!”
“We did have reports.”
“And Yulia!”
“Stop shouting!”
“What right do you have to tell me what to do?!”
Denis raised his hands in front of himself as though afraid she might hit him.
“I didn’t want it to happen like this…”
“How did you want it to happen? Were you waiting for me to figure it out myself and quietly clear out half the closet for you?”
“I wanted to sort things out.”
“For six months?”
“It wasn’t serious for the entire six months!”
Inna slammed her palm onto the table.
“And when did it become serious? Before the bracelet or after? When you were admiring her dress? When you were choosing my blender?”
“What does the blender have to do with anything?”
She laughed, and the laugh immediately turned into sobbing.
Inna wiped her face with her palms, but tears kept flowing. Her chin trembled, and her words came unevenly.
“Right. What does it have to do with anything? I desperately needed a blender. I somehow survived eight years without one, but clearly I couldn’t go on. And she gets gold because she has a pretty dress.”
“That’s not how it is!”
“Then how is it?”
“I wasn’t dividing you up by gifts!”
“No. You divided us perfectly. Here you have your wife, children, clean shirts, and mortgage. There you have a girl in a green dress who gets messages about how amazing she looks.”
“Don’t reduce everything to some stupid words!”
“What should I reduce it to? Great love?”
Denis turned away.
He looked at the broken pieces, then at the window, then at the clock above the door.
And suddenly Inna saw clearly that he was waiting for her to stop talking so he could say something he had already prepared in advance.
Maybe he had rehearsed it in the car or in the elevator on the way upstairs.
“Say it,” she demanded. “Go on. I can see you want to say something.”
He sat on a chair and buried his head in his hands.
“I fell in love, In.”
For several seconds, she stopped crying.
“What?”
“I didn’t mean to. It just happened. At first we were only talking, then… Anyway, I really fell in love.”
Inna picked up a child’s plastic spoon from the table and squeezed it in her fist.
The spoon bent but didn’t break.
“He fell in love.”
“You asked for the truth.”
“I asked you not to sleep with another woman!”
“You and I haven’t really talked normally in a long time.”
“Who was I supposed to talk to? You came home at ten, ate, and went to bed with your phone.”
“Exactly. That’s what I mean. We’ve been living like…”
“Don’t you dare!” Inna screamed again. “Don’t you dare make it sound like the two of us went out and found Yulia for you together!”
“I’m not doing that.”
“You are! In another minute you’ll tell me it was my fault because I was tired and didn’t greet you at the door in lace underwear.”
“I never said that!”
“You will. You’ve got plenty of time.”
Denis lowered his hands and looked at her.
“It’s easy with her…”
“Of course it is. She doesn’t know Lyova won’t eat soup if there’s dill floating in it. She doesn’t wake you at four in the morning because Masha has a fever. She doesn’t ask you to pick up winter boots from the collection point. It’s easy for her too. You show up clean, cheerful, and without a bag of garbage in your hand.”
“Inna, why are you humiliating her? She has nothing to do with this!”
“She sleeps with a married man and wears the bracelet you bought while I was trying to figure out how to cover the kindergarten payment. But she has nothing to do with it. Of course.”
“She didn’t know at first…”
“And when she found out, did she immediately send you back home?”
Denis pressed his lips together.
“We weren’t trying to hurt you.”
“You two discussed that?”
He was silent.
“You discussed me?”
“Sometimes.”
Inna stepped toward him.
“What exactly? That I’m boring? That we don’t have enough sex? That I walk around the house in an old T-shirt? Did you complain to her about how difficult it is to live with me?”
“I don’t have to repeat every conversation we’ve ever had!”
“But you had to sleep with her?”
“Enough!”
Denis finally snapped too.
He slammed his palm onto the table, and the blender box rocked.
“I already said I’m guilty! What else do you want to hear?”
“I want you to stop talking to me as though I’m making you late for a date!”
“I have work.”
“At four you came back for a folder and were already late. Where were you going?”
He looked at the clock.
“To a meeting.”
“With her?”
“Not only with her.”
“Get out.”
“Inna, not now.”
“Now.”
“We’re both upset.”
“I said get out!”
She went into the hallway, pulled his sports bag from the closet, and threw it toward the door.
The bag hit the floor, its zipper clinking against the tile.
Denis followed her.
“Do you understand what you’re doing?”
“For the first time in three days, yes.”
“We have children.”
“Five minutes ago that didn’t stop you from being in love!”
“I can’t just get up and leave.”
“You can. Watch: you open the closet, put your things in the bag, and put on your jacket.”
“Where am I supposed to go?”
“To Yulia. Your mother. A hotel. Sleep on a folding bed at the office. I don’t care.”
“Yulia doesn’t have the space.”
Inna froze beside the closet.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“No. Repeat it.”
“I said I can’t go there. She rents an apartment with a roommate.”
Inna gave a short laugh.
“Well, look at that. Six months of great love, and you don’t even have anywhere to live.”
“Don’t start.”
“I’m already finished. Pack your things.”
Denis opened the closet and simply stared at the shelves for several seconds.
Then he started grabbing clothes at random: jeans, a sweater, two T-shirts.
“Can we at least talk tonight?” he asked. “After the kids are asleep.”
“No.”
“What are we going to tell them?”
“That you left on a business trip.”
“They’ll find out.”
“Not today. Tomorrow I’ll decide what to tell them.”
“You can’t decide that by yourself!”
“And you could make decisions by yourself for six months?”
Denis zipped the bag shut, then opened it again and went to the bathroom for his toothbrush.
Inna stood in the hallway with her hands pressed against her stomach.
The ticking of the kitchen clock carried through the apartment.
She had always thought it was almost silent, but now every click was distinct.
Denis returned with his toiletry bag.
“In, I didn’t want to leave like this.”
“How did you want to leave?”
“I don’t know…”
“Were you even planning to leave?”
He put the toiletry bag on the cabinet.
“I was planning to sort everything out.”
“When?”
“Maybe after New Year’s.”
Inna closed her eyes.
She had invented that sentence as a bluff.
And now she had heard almost exactly the same words from him.
“So Yulia wasn’t lying.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing.”
Denis suddenly looked suspicious.
“Did she really call you?”
Inna looked him in the face.
“Get out!”
“Inna, she didn’t call you, did she?”
“What difference does it make now?”
“You lied to me!”
“Oh my God, Denis.”
“You deliberately said she told you everything!”
“And you confirmed everything.”
“That was a disgusting thing to do!”
Inna opened the front door.
“Get out while I can still speak to you normally.”
He put on his jacket, picked up the bag, and stopped on the threshold.
“I’ll pick up the kids from kindergarten tomorrow.”
“No.”
“I’m their father!”
“I’ll pick them up myself tomorrow.”
“You can’t stop me from seeing my children because of what happened between us!”
“I’m not stopping you. You’re leaving tonight. Tomorrow you can text me and we’ll decide.”
“You’re trying to punish me.”
“Right now I just don’t want to see you!”
He stepped across the threshold but held the door open with his hand.
“I still love the children.”
“I never said you didn’t.”
“And I haven’t stopped loving you…”
“Don’t.”
“I really didn’t want you to find out like this.”
“How did you want me to find out? In a year? When Yulia got pregnant? Or when the kids saw the two of you in a café themselves?”
“Don’t talk nonsense!”
“Close the door from the other side.”
Denis stood there for another few seconds, then released the handle.
The door closed quietly.
The lock didn’t click, and Inna opened it again.
“The key.”
He was standing by the elevator with the bag in his hand.
“What?”
“The apartment key.”
“Inna, this is my home too.”
“I don’t want you coming back in the middle of the night.”
“I’m not going to.”
“Give me the key.”
Denis took out his key ring, removed one key, and placed it in her palm.
“Happy now?”
Inna slammed the door and turned the lock.
She went back into the kitchen.
The broken shards still lay beside the wall. Between them was half of the cookie with its head bitten off.
Inna brought the dustpan over but crouched down and couldn’t immediately begin cleaning.
Her hands were trembling so badly that the brush tapped against the floor.
She gathered the large pieces, emptied them into the trash, and noticed a golden crumb from the cookie underneath the table.
She reached for it, sat down on the floor, and leaned her back against the wall.
Her phone was lying on the table.
Denis had written:
“I’m going to my mother’s. Call me when you calm down.”
Inna read it and locked the screen.
A minute later another message arrived.
“Please don’t say anything bad about me to the children.”
She turned the phone face down.
The blender stood on the table.
The box had been knocked during the argument and was slightly open. Through the gap she could see the transparent jug, washed after the banana milkshake.
That night Denis had asked why Inna wasn’t happy about the gift.
She had said she was tired, and he had been offended.
Inna stood up, picked up the box, and tried to put it in the cabinet, but there was no room.
On the top shelf were baking molds she had used only once. Below them lay the old mixer with its burned-out cord.
She put the blender back on the table.
A key turned in the lock in the hallway.
Inna straightened sharply.
Her first thought was that Denis had returned with another key.
She grabbed the edge of the table, ready to start shouting again.
The door opened, and Lyova burst into the apartment.
“Mom, we’re home!”
Masha came in behind him, her jacket unfastened, her hat in her hand.
Katya stood behind them carrying two children’s backpacks and a bag containing a craft made from pinecones.
“I picked them up,” she said quietly. “You weren’t answering.”
Lyova threw his jacket onto the floor and ran into the kitchen.
“Where’s Daddy?”
Inna looked at Katya.
She didn’t ask anything. She simply took off Masha’s wet boots and placed them on the mat.
“Mom, where’s Daddy?” Lyova asked again.
Inna closed her eyes, inhaled, and took her son’s hand.
“Daddy had to go away to take care of something.”
“For long?”
Masha was already standing beside them, looking up at her mother.
“I don’t know yet.”
“Is he coming home tonight?”
Inna ran her hand over her daughter’s tangled hair.
“Not tonight.”
Lyova frowned.
“Then who’s going to build the garage?”
“I will,” Katya said from the hallway. “But first everyone washes their hands.”
The children ran into the bathroom, arguing over who would turn on the water first.
Several seconds later Lyova shouted that Masha was pushing him, Masha started crying, and Katya went to separate them.
Inna remained beside the table.
Near the wall, a tiny shard of the broken plate glittered on the floor.
She bent down, picked it up between two fingers, and dropped it into the trash.
Then she closed the blender box and pushed it to the very edge of the table, making room for the children’s pinecone craft.
