“Let her transfer the dacha into your name first, and then you can calmly divorce her,” Galina Arkadyevna’s voice drifted so clearly through the open window that Lidia stopped in the middle of the path. “The important thing is not to rush now and not to give yourself away.”
Only a minute earlier, Lidia had been thinking about how foolish it had been to come to the dacha in her work clothes. Wednesday had turned out hot and stuffy, and after leaving the office she had wanted nothing more than to go home. But that morning, a neighbor from the gardening community had sent her a photograph: after the strong wind during the night, one of the branches of the old apple tree had fallen right beside the greenhouse. Lidia decided not to put it off until Friday and stopped by after work, bringing gloves and a folding saw with her.
Arseny was certain his wife would not arrive until the weekend.
His car was parked in the yard. Beside it stood his mother’s white car.
Lidia had been surprised when she saw them from the gate, but assumed Arseny had brought his mother to pick some vegetables. She was already about to call out a greeting when she heard her own name.
And now she stood beside the porch, her keys resting in her palm.
“What if she changes her mind?” Arseny asked.
“She won’t. Just don’t pressure her. You know how stubborn Lidia is. The harder you push, the more she resists. You have to be careful.”
Lidia slowly moved her hand away from the door handle.
Galina Arkadyevna spoke in exactly the same voice she normally used when recommending a brand of laundry detergent or saying that it was time to harvest the zucchini. There was no nervousness and no uncertainty in her voice. It was as though she were discussing an entirely ordinary family matter.
“It’s a good plot,” her mother-in-law continued. “The house is old, of course, but land is valuable these days. If half of it belongs to you, you’ll be in a completely different position.”
Lidia took out her phone.
Her first impulse was to walk inside and ask them whether she was interrupting their business meeting. But almost immediately, she changed her mind.
If they were speaking this freely, it would be better to hear everything.
She turned on the recorder, lowered the brightness of the screen, and stepped slightly away from the window so they would not notice her from inside.
“I’ve already been thinking about getting divorced,” Arseny said. “I just don’t want to drag this out for another few months.”
“You’ll endure it.”
“Mom, that’s easy for you to say.”
“And is it easy for you to walk away with nothing but the apartment you inherited from your grandmother? How many years have you spent in this marriage?”
“What does the number of years have to do with anything?”
“It has everything to do with it. She has an apartment, a dacha, and a car. And you’re going to leave with exactly what you came with.”
Lidia gave the faintest of smiles.
So that, apparently, was the great injustice of the past several years: Arseny would be leaving the marriage with his own property rather than hers.
She stopped moving altogether.
Every sentence that followed became more interesting than the one before it.
Lidia had bought the dacha five years earlier. At that time, Arseny had not even existed in her life.
At first, even calling it a “dacha” seemed too grand. It was a plot in an old gardening community with a small wooden house whose porch leaned to one side, a shed, and an overgrown corner where the previous owner had spent years dumping old boards.
That had not frightened Lidia.
She wanted somewhere she could go in the summer after a long working week, open the windows, walk barefoot through the grass, and spend at least a couple of days without hearing the neighbors through the walls of her city apartment.
She had bought the property herself.
During the first year, she replaced part of the roof and repaired the porch. The following year, she had proper running water installed in the house. Later she replaced the electrical wiring, ordered new gates, and demolished a collapsing outbuilding.
She did everything gradually.
Not because she dreamed of building some grand country estate, but because she enjoyed seeing the results of her own decisions.
Arseny came into her life later.
They met through mutual friends at a summer festival in the city. They dated for about nine months. Sometimes they went to the dacha together, and sometimes they spent weekends at Lidia’s apartment, but neither of them rushed to move in together.
That was one of the things she liked about Arseny back then.
He did not immediately try to occupy half her wardrobe, start calling her apartment “ours” after spending three nights there, or make plans for property that had nothing to do with him.
After nine months, they decided to live together.
Arseny moved into Lidia’s three-room apartment. She had owned it long before she met him as well.
About a year later, they officially registered their marriage.
The dacha remained Lidia’s property, just as it had been before the wedding. Arseny knew that, and for several years he had shown no interest whatsoever in the legal details.
He came along, helped with small repairs, grilled meat, and mowed the grass. Sometimes he complained that Lidia spent too much time on the property, and in winter he even suggested selling it.
“We don’t go there for half the year anyway.”
“I like it.”
“Well, if you like it, you like it.”
That was usually the end of the conversation.
Things began to change in the spring.
Arseny suddenly started talking about building a new house.
At first, he showed Lidia several photographs.
“Look. They build these frame houses now. We could demolish the old one, put up a new one, and then we could even come here in winter.”
Lidia looked through the designs.
She genuinely liked some of them.
Arseny became unexpectedly enthusiastic. He found a contractor he supposedly knew who could organize a construction crew. For several evenings in a row, he discussed the foundation, insulation, and the size of their future house.
Lidia even began to think that her husband had finally fallen in love with the dacha.
Then another element appeared in their conversations.
“If we’re going to build something serious, though, let’s put half of the property in my name.”
Lidia looked up from her laptop.
“Why?”
“I’m going to be investing in it. It’s strange to build a house on land that legally has nothing to do with you.”
There seemed to be some logic in his words.
“We haven’t even seen an estimate yet.”
“We’ll get one.”
“Then we’ll discuss it.”
Arseny did not argue.
A week later, he brought home printed designs.
Then he showed her his messages with the contractor.
Several days later, he returned to the subject of ownership.
“If I’m investing my time and money, I need some security.”
“What kind of security?”
“That you won’t say tomorrow, ‘Thanks for the new house, now get out.’”
Lidia had laughed.
“Are you already preparing yourself to be thrown out?”
“I’m just a realist.”
Standing beneath the window now, she remembered that sentence particularly well.
The realist had indeed prepared in advance.
Just for something entirely different.
“What did she say the last time?” Galina Arkadyevna asked.
“That she’d think about it.”
“Excellent. That means she didn’t refuse.”
“But she’s been thinking about it for two months.”
“Arseny, things like this aren’t done quickly.”
“We could at least arrange it as a gift.”
Lidia tightened her grip on her phone.
So they had even chosen the method already.
Not a sale of a share. Not an agreement about future investments.
A gift.
She kept listening.
“I told her it makes no sense to start construction until the ownership is settled,” Arseny said.
“That was the right thing to say. But don’t bring it up again for now.”
“Why?”
“Because if you start rushing her, she’ll become suspicious.”
“She’s already asked me why I suddenly care so much about the property.”
“See?”
Galina Arkadyevna paused and then added:
“You can hold out until autumn. It’s August now. She’ll transfer the share to you, then you live normally with her for another month. In October, you tell her the relationship is over. That way, nobody can accuse you of deliberately getting the property and immediately leaving.”
Lidia closed her eyes for several seconds.
Thoughtful.
Her mother-in-law had even calculated how much time should pass between the transfer and the divorce so that everything would look more respectable.
Arseny, however, was less patient.
“I don’t want to wait until October.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s asking questions.”
“What questions?”
“Why the new house has to belong to both of us. Why I never wanted to build anything before. Last week she asked why I needed a copy of the cadastral number.”
Lidia frowned.
That was something she had not known.
Her husband really had asked for a copy of the cadastral information, explaining that the contractor needed it to calculate the placement of the new house on the property.
“And what did you tell her?” his mother asked.
“That it was for the project.”
“Did she believe you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then don’t rush.”
“No, we need to move faster. I’ll talk to her again next week. I’ll tell her the contractor won’t wait.”
“Just be gentle.”
“Yes, I understand.”
The recording continued for another ten minutes.
During those ten minutes, Lidia learned that her husband had been planning to divorce her for several months.
That his mother knew about it.
That they were not actually discussing the divorce itself, but exclusively how to obtain part of someone else’s real estate before it happened.
That Arseny was not particularly interested in building a new house after all.
And that the contractor he supposedly knew existed mainly to make the story more convincing.
Then the subject changed.
Galina Arkadyevna began discussing what they should cook for the weekend.
Lidia stopped the recording.
There was no point standing beside the window any longer.
She quietly walked back to the gate and stepped out onto the road.
Two houses away lived Svetlana Sergeyevna, a retired woman who stayed in the gardening community all year round and kept an eye on neighboring properties.
Whenever Lidia went away for a long time or during winter, she left a spare gate key with her in case there was an emergency involving the water or electricity.
Svetlana Sergeyevna was watering flowers in front of her house.
“Lidochka? I thought you weren’t coming until Friday.”
“So did I.”
Her neighbor studied her more closely.
“Did something happen?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Lidia asked for the spare key.
“Did you lose yours?”
“No. I just want this one back. I’ll bring you another one later if necessary.”
Svetlana Sergeyevna did not ask any more questions.
Lidia put the key in her bag, walked back to her car, and drove away.
She did not call Arseny.
She did not send the recording to her mother-in-law.
She did not compose any sarcastic messages.
Even the music in her car played as usual on the drive home.
Only one thing had changed: Lidia now knew perfectly well that that evening she would see a man who had spent several months pretending to plan a shared country house with her while simultaneously discussing when to divorce her.
She arrived home before her husband.
She changed clothes, opened her laptop, and finished a work email she had not managed to send from the office.
Then she prepared dinner.
Arseny returned at around eight.
“Have you been home long?” he asked.
“About an hour and a half.”
He took off his shoes and walked into the kitchen.
There was nothing on his face to suggest that only a few hours earlier he had been discussing with his mother a plan to acquire someone else’s dacha.
“I stopped by the dacha today,” he said as he opened the refrigerator.
Lidia looked up.
“Why?”
“To check the roof. After that wind, you never know.”
“And?”
“Everything’s fine.”
Not a word about Galina Arkadyevna.
“Did you go alone?”
Arseny hesitated for a second.
Barely a second.
“Yes.”
Lidia looked at him and nodded.
“I see.”
He sat down to eat.
For about ten minutes, he talked about work and complained about the traffic. Then, as if casually, he returned to the subject that had been the reason for his entire performance that day.
“I’ve been thinking about the dacha again.”
Lidia calmly continued eating.
“And what did you decide?”
“We really need to stop dividing everything into yours and mine.”
She almost laughed.
Only a few hours earlier, his mother had explained how important it was for him to obtain exactly half of what was still “hers.”
“Interesting idea.”
Arseny brightened.
“Exactly. We’ve been married for years. What’s the point of living as though we’re each on our own?”
“None at all.”
He clearly had not expected her to agree so quickly.
“So you understand?”
“Of course.”
“Then we can go next week and get everything transferred.”
Lidia placed her fork beside her plate.
“All right.”
Arseny even smiled.
“Really?”
“But we’ll start with your apartment.”
His smile disappeared.
“What apartment?”
“The one-room apartment you inherited from your grandmother.”
He frowned.
“What does that have to do with this?”
“We just agreed that we should stop dividing property into yours and mine.”
Arseny leaned back in his chair.
“Lida, don’t confuse two completely different things.”
“What’s the difference?”
“I inherited that apartment from my grandmother.”
“I know.”
“It’s something I remember her by.”
“I’m not arguing with that.”
“And inherited property is personal property anyway.”
“Exactly.”
Lidia watched her husband with obvious interest.
Arseny was becoming increasingly irritated.
“You know perfectly well what I mean.”
“Not yet.”
“The dacha is different.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re planning to build there together.”
“We haven’t started.”
“We will.”
“Then I suggest a simple arrangement. You transfer half of your grandmother’s apartment to me. After that, we can return to discussing half of my dacha.”
Arseny abruptly pushed himself away from the table.
“I’m not transferring my apartment to anyone.”
“Not even your wife?”
“That’s completely different!”
“Why?”
“Because real estate is real estate. You never know what might happen someday.”
Lidia raised her eyebrows slightly.
“For example, a divorce?”
Arseny stared at her.
“What does divorce have to do with this?”
“Just an example.”
“I’m not going to risk my apartment.”
“But you’re asking me to risk my dacha.”
“I’m your husband!”
“And I’m your wife.”
For several seconds, the room went silent.
Arseny stood and walked over to the window.
“You know, sometimes it’s impossible to talk to you. You turn everything into a competition.”
“I simply offered you exactly what you’re offering me.”
“No, it isn’t the same thing.”
“Fine. Then yours remains yours. Mine remains mine.”
He turned sharply.
“It’s attitudes like that that make it impossible to have a normal family.”
Lidia looked at him calmly.
“Did you really go to the dacha today just to check the roof?”
Arseny immediately became wary.
“What else would I have gone for?”
“I was just asking.”
He did not answer immediately.
“Yes. For the roof.”
Lidia did not bring up the subject again after dinner.
But now there was truly no room left for doubt.
The man who had just spent twenty minutes explaining why he could not possibly risk his own inherited apartment had spent that morning planning how to persuade his wife to give him half of her property.
The following day, Lidia left for work before Arseny.
Before leaving, she opened the cabinet where they kept the folders containing the documents for the apartment, car, and dacha.
She took every document relating to the property.
The purchase agreement.
The ownership extract.
The cadastral documents.
Old receipts related to the registration.
She put everything into a separate folder and took it to work. There, she locked it inside a metal cabinet to which only she had the key.
As she went back through the remaining papers, she noticed several sheets between the files.
At first, she assumed they belonged to Arseny.
Then she saw the heading.
List of Documents Required for a Gift Agreement Transferring a Share of a Land Plot.
Lidia sat down on the edge of the bed and read the entire page.
Arseny had marked several items with a pen.
Owner’s passport.
Recipient’s passport.
Documents establishing ownership.
Property extract.
Cadastral information.
On a separate sheet, he had written down questions he apparently intended to clarify.
Now she understood why he had needed information about the property and why, during the previous few weeks, he had repeatedly asked where the documents were kept.
Lidia photographed the papers and put them back exactly where she had found them.
There was no possibility of loans, forged signatures, or a secret transfer. Arseny could not give himself a share of property that belonged to her without her participation.
But he had certainly been preparing thoroughly.
That evening, her husband came home later than usual.
Lidia was waiting for him in the living room.
“Arseny, we need to talk.”
He glanced at the clock.
“Can it wait until tomorrow? I’m tired.”
“No. Today.”
From her tone, he immediately understood that this was not about some minor household matter.
He sat opposite her.
“What happened?”
“I was at the dacha yesterday.”
For several seconds, Arseny simply stared at his wife.
“Yesterday?”
“Wednesday.”
“But you said you were going Friday.”
“My plans changed.”
“What time did you arrive?”
That was exactly the question Lidia had been waiting for.
Not, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Not, “What happened with the branch?”
Not, “Why didn’t I see you?”
What time?
She picked up her phone.
“Approximately when your mother was explaining that after I transferred half the property to you, you should tolerate me for a little longer before divorcing me.”
Arseny went pale.
“What?”
Lidia played the recording.
Galina Arkadyevna’s voice came through the speaker:
“Let her transfer the dacha into your name first, and then you can calmly divorce her. The important thing is not to rush now and not to give yourself away.”
Lidia stopped the recording.
Arseny did not ask what else she had heard.
There was no point.
For several seconds, he stared at the phone. Then he looked up.
“Lida, it’s not what you think…”
“Which part isn’t?”
“Mom was just…”
“Don’t.”
“You took one sentence out of context.”
“I recorded much more than one sentence.”
Arseny rubbed his chin with his hand.
“We really did discuss divorce.”
“I heard you.”
“But I haven’t made a final decision.”
Lidia gave a short laugh.
“Interesting. You haven’t decided when you’re divorcing me yet, but you’ve already prepared a list of documents for the gift transfer.”
This time, his reaction was much more obvious.
“You went through my things?”
“The paper was lying among the documents for my property.”
“I was just finding out how the procedure worked.”
“Of course.”
“I wasn’t planning to deceive you.”
“Then explain why your mother told you not to give anything away.”
Arseny fell silent.
Lidia waited.
This time, she had no intention of helping him construct an excuse.
“I really have been thinking about divorce,” he finally said. “Things haven’t been good between us for a long time.”
“Maybe.”
“And yes, I thought it was unfair that after all these years I would be left with nothing.”
“You have an apartment.”
“A tiny one-room apartment.”
“It belongs to you.”
“But we used the dacha together.”
“Using something and owning it are two different things.”
“I worked there too.”
“You mowed the grass and repaired the fence a couple of times.”
“So now you’re going to count everything?”
“After you tried to get half of my property before divorcing me? Of course.”
Arseny raised his voice.
“I didn’t get anything!”
“Because you didn’t have time.”
He fell silent.
That sentence was more precise than any accusation could have been.
Lidia stood up.
“Since you’ve already been planning a divorce for several months, I suggest we don’t wait until October.”
“Are you serious?”
“Completely.”
“And you’re just going to end everything like this?”
“I’m not the one who came up with the ending. You simply intended to tell me about it later—after I transferred the dacha to you.”
“Lidia…”
“You’re not getting a share. I’ve removed the documents. And I have no intention of dragging out the divorce either.”
Arseny jumped to his feet.
“You can’t just throw me out of the house.”
Lidia looked at him.
“I can ask you to move out of my apartment. You don’t own it.”
“I’m your husband.”
“For now.”
“Where am I supposed to go?”
“To the one-room apartment you spent twenty minutes yesterday defending as a precious family memory.”
He opened his mouth and immediately closed it again.
There was nothing he could say to that.
Arseny continued trying to argue. He said they needed at least several days to think everything over. Then he accused Lidia of acting emotionally. After that, he tried to blame his mother, claiming that she had invented the entire plan and he had merely listened to her.
Lidia picked up her phone.
“Would you like me to play the part where you say you need to hurry and bring up the gift transfer again next week?”
Arseny turned away.
“No.”
“Then pack your things.”
He did not take everything that evening.
He loaded clothes, his laptop, documents, and several boxes of personal belongings into his car. They agreed that he would return for the rest the following day while Lidia was present.
She took back the apartment key immediately.
Arseny wanted to keep it until the next day.
“Why?”
“I still need to come back for my things.”
“I’ll be home. I’ll let you in.”
“You don’t trust me at all anymore?”
Lidia looked at him in surprise.
“Are you seriously asking me that?”
He placed the key on the cabinet.
After he left, Lidia took out a replacement lock cylinder for the front door that she had bought earlier as a spare. She brought out her tools and replaced the mechanism herself.
Naturally, she did not need anyone’s permission to do so.
Twenty minutes later, the door could only be opened with the new key.
The following day, Arseny came back for the rest of his belongings. Their conversation was brief.
Once again, he asked whether Lidia really wanted a divorce.
“You wanted one before I did.”
“I might have changed my mind.”
“Before or after the gift transfer?”
Arseny frowned.
“Are you going to repeat that for the rest of your life?”
“No. After the divorce, I’ll have no reason whatsoever to discuss the dacha with you.”
They had no minor children together. They had no jointly owned property they intended to divide, and Arseny had no rights to Lidia’s apartment or dacha because she had acquired both before the marriage. His grandmother’s apartment likewise remained his personal property.
Once they both finally agreed to end the marriage without a property dispute, they filed for divorce through the civil registry office.
Galina Arkadyevna called Lidia several days later.
At first, she tried to speak as though everything that had happened could be dismissed as a misunderstanding.
“I was simply worried about my son.”
“And that’s why you advised him to get my dacha before divorcing me?”
“Not the whole dacha. A share. He spent so much time there too.”
“Then he can count the hours and keep the memories.”
Her mother-in-law raised her voice.
“You were always far too calculating.”
“That’s exactly why the property is still mine.”
Lidia ended the conversation.
She had no desire to continue arguing about who owed whom what after years of marriage.
Everything important had already been said beside that open window.
On Friday, Lidia went to the dacha anyway.
Just as she had originally planned.
Only now she went alone.
The August evening was warm. Her neighbor, Svetlana Sergeyevna, waved to her over the fence and asked:
“So, did you take care of that branch?”
Lidia looked at the apple tree.
The same branch was still lying beside the greenhouse.
“I’m going to do it now.”
She changed clothes, took out the saw, and began cutting off the smaller branches.
The work took less than an hour.
Afterward, Lidia walked around the property, checked the door of the house, locked the shed, and collected another old set of keys she had once made for Arseny.
The following weekend, she replaced the lock cylinder on the door of the dacha herself as well.
Not because she expected nighttime visits from her soon-to-be ex-husband.
She simply no longer wanted to wonder how many copies of the keys might remain in the possession of a man who had secretly studied the documents for her property.
Galina Arkadyevna had devised what she believed was a careful plan.
Her son was supposed to spend several more weeks pretending to be a caring husband, convince Lidia to give him half of the dacha, wait until autumn, and only then announce the divorce. That way, Arseny would leave the marriage not only with his own apartment but also with a share of his wife’s land.
Many things in that plan had indeed been carefully thought out.
Except for one Wednesday in August.
Lidia arrived at the dacha two days earlier than she had said she would.
Not because she was suspicious.
Not because she wanted to check up on her husband.
Not even because she sensed that something was wrong.
It was simply because of a broken branch on an apple tree.
One sentence overheard by accident made the divorce happen much faster than her mother-in-law had planned.
And the dacha never became part of that divorce.
