Taisiya stood in the middle of the room with a measuring tape in her hand, figuring out where to place the shelving unit. The corner by the window was perfect: the light fell just right, and the desk would fit there without any unnecessary rearranging. She worked as a freelance interior designer, and a home office was not a whim but a necessity. This was where she kept material samples, catalogs, printed projects, and the laptop she used for video calls with clients.
The apartment was hers. She had bought it with money she had saved since her first job, adding a small amount left over from the sale of her grandmother’s dacha. She had handled the renovation herself — meaning she had chosen everything down to the last cabinet handle, negotiated with the workers herself, and inspected the finished work herself. It was an apartment where every detail had its reason.
She and Gleb had met two years earlier and married in May. Her husband worked as a design engineer, earned around eighty-five thousand, and was a calm, generally undemanding man. Before the wedding, they had talked at length about how they would live. Taisiya explained that the apartment was her space, that she was used to a certain order, and that it was better for guests to give advance notice. Gleb nodded and said he understood everything.
Taisiya believed him. That was her biggest mistake — not that she married him, but that she believed his words would remain true after the registry office.
Valeria Yuryevna appeared on the doorstep a week after the wedding. She simply rang the doorbell on Saturday at around eleven, when Taisiya had not even had breakfast yet, and walked in as if she had been there hundreds of times before.
“Well, show me how you’ve settled in here,” her mother-in-law said without taking off her coat, and headed down the hallway toward the rooms.
Taisiya stood by the coat rack and watched her go. Gleb came out of the kitchen with a cup of coffee, saw his mother, and broke into a smile.
“Mom, why didn’t you warn us?”
“What, am I not allowed?” Valeria Yuryevna turned from the doorway. “I won’t stay long. I just came to look.”
Taisiya said nothing. She went into the kitchen, put the kettle on, and made herself tea. She could hear her mother-in-law walking through the rooms, opening things, and commenting under her breath.
“Gleb,” came her voice from the living room, “why did you put the sofa here? It would be better by the window.”
“Mom, it’s convenient for us this way.”
“Convenient is when the light doesn’t glare on the screen. At our place, the sofa was always by the window.”
Taisiya took a large sip of tea.
Valeria Yuryevna’s visits became regular — once a week, sometimes more often. Her mother-in-law always came without calling, or called fifteen minutes ahead, which was practically the same thing. Every time, she found something that had been placed wrong, bought wrong, or was simply unnecessary.
“Taisiya, these curtains don’t block the light at all. You should get thicker ones.”
“I like these.”
“Well, that’s your business,” Valeria Yuryevna would say in the tone of someone who had just done everything possible.
Or:
“Why do you keep bread in this drawer? It will get damp there.”
“My bread box is occupied, and moisture doesn’t get in here.”
“Then you have a strange bread box.”
At moments like that, Gleb either stayed silent or said something neutral — so as not to offend his mother and not to argue with his wife. This was called diplomacy, though in reality it was simply a convenient position on the sidelines.
One evening, Taisiya could no longer hold back and said directly:
“Gleb, your mother comes without warning and starts explaining to me how to live in my own apartment. I don’t like it.”
Her husband looked up from his phone.
“She just wants to help. She’s always like that — she worries and wants everything to be good.”
“Good by her standards.”
“Taisiya, she doesn’t mean any harm. She’s getting used to us.”
“Gleb, this is my apartment. I’ve lived here for more than three years. I’m not going to get used to someone else’s lectures in my own home.”
“You’re exaggerating,” her husband said, and looked back at his phone.
Taisiya stared at him for several seconds. Then she got up and went to her office.
She was not exaggerating. She was observing.
In July, Gleb suggested hosting a family dinner — inviting Valeria Yuryevna and Yeseniya, his twenty-four-year-old sister, who worked as a sales consultant in a cosmetics store and had been living with their mother for the past few months after moving out of a friend’s place. Taisiya agreed without much enthusiasm, but she agreed. After all, it was not every week. She could host them.
She prepared a proper dinner: roast chicken, two salads, cold cuts, and wine. She set the table correctly — not formally, but neatly. Gleb greeted the guests in the hallway.
Valeria Yuryevna came in, looked around the hallway, and immediately said:
“Taisiya, did you finally remove that shoe shelf? I told you it was inconvenient.”
“Good evening, Valeria Yuryevna,” Taisiya answered from the kitchen.
Yeseniya went into the living room, looked around, then glanced toward the closed door of the second room.
“What’s in there?”
“My office.”
“Oh, a workroom.” Yeseniya nodded as if this were merely information for later use.
At the table, they first talked about nothing in particular — how they got there, what was new, while Valeria Yuryevna told stories about the neighbors. Taisiya ate and listened with half an ear. Then the conversation somehow smoothly shifted to Yeseniya: the girl had long wanted to live separately, it was cramped with her mother, and renting was expensive.
“Prices are absolutely insane,” Yeseniya said. “You can’t find a decent room for less than twenty-five thousand, and even for that money, who knows what you’ll get.”
“That’s true,” Gleb agreed.
Valeria Yuryevna put down her fork and looked at her daughter-in-law.
“Taisiya, that’s what we wanted to talk about. You have a second room standing there — of course, you work in it, but Yeseniya could live there for a while. Temporarily, until she saves up enough for a normal rental.”
Taisiya stopped chewing.
“She wouldn’t get in the way,” Valeria Yuryevna continued. “The girl is tidy, she works, she’s hardly ever home.”
“I don’t need much space,” Yeseniya added with a slight smile. “A bed, a wardrobe — that’s all. I won’t stay long.”
Taisiya looked at Gleb. Her husband was staring into his plate with the expression of a person who knows the conversation will be uncomfortable and has already decided not to get involved.
“Gleb,” Taisiya said evenly, “did you know about this?”
“Well, we discussed it,” he said without raising his eyes.
“When?”
“Last week. Mom called, and I said we’d talk.”
“You didn’t talk to me.”
“Taisiya, well, we’re talking now,” Valeria Yuryevna cut in with the tone of a peacemaker. “It’s nothing terrible. Yeseniya isn’t a stranger. She’s Gleb’s sister. She’s family.”
“Valeria Yuryevna,” Taisiya said, “the second room is my office. My desk is there, my projects, my samples. I take video calls with clients there.”
“Well, you can move the desk to the bedroom,” her mother-in-law answered simply. “Or into the corner here, in the living room.”
“I am not moving the desk.”
“Why?” Yeseniya asked, genuinely not understanding.
“Because it is my office, and I arranged it for myself.”
“Taisiya,” Gleb finally raised his head, “Yeseniya would only stay temporarily. A few months, no more. Try to understand her situation.”
“A few months is not temporary,” Taisiya said. “That is living here.”
“You’re exaggerating.”
That word again. Taisiya folded her hands on the table.
“Gleb, you discussed this without me. You had already decided everything, and now you’re informing me over dinner. This isn’t a conversation. It’s an announcement.”
“Oh, don’t be like that,” Valeria Yuryevna frowned. “We’re talking as family. Yeseniya is one of us.”
“Valeria Yuryevna, ‘one of us’ is when people ask,” Taisiya replied, and there was neither anger nor hysteria in her voice — only the fatigue of someone explaining the obvious. “No one asked me.”
Dinner reached tea in awkward silence. Yeseniya said something about work, Valeria Yuryevna asked Gleb about his project. Taisiya cleared the table and thought that the conversation was not over — merely postponed.
It was postponed exactly until the moment her mother-in-law rose from the table and said:
“Taisiya, show me the room. I want to see what will need to be moved.”
“Nothing needs to be moved.”
“Oh, come now,” Valeria Yuryevna was already walking down the hallway. “Your desk is in the way there. If Yeseniya puts a bed there, the desk will have to be removed.”
Taisiya caught up with her mother-in-law at the office door.
“Valeria Yuryevna, wait.”
Her mother-in-law turned around, slightly surprised, with the look of a person being stopped for no reason.
“What?”
“You are going to look at my room in order to decide what I should remove from it. Do you understand how that sounds?”
“I’m helping.”
“No,” Taisiya said. “You’re taking charge. Those are different things.”
“Taisiya, don’t be like that,” Gleb said from the hallway. “Mom only wants what’s best.”
“Gleb, your mother has already decided that Yeseniya is going to live here, she’s already checking where to put the bed, and she’s already telling me where to put my things. In my apartment. And you think she simply wants what’s best?”
“Taisiya, that’s enough,” Valeria Yuryevna frowned. “I already said it’s temporary. A few months. Yeseniya has nowhere to live. You are not alone. You have a family.”
“Temporary is when people agree in advance,” Taisiya said. “Not when they come to dinner and say: prepare the room.”
Valeria Yuryevna straightened.
“You know, I thought you understood how things are done in a family.”
“How are they done?”
“Decently. When people don’t count every meter and don’t think only about themselves.”
Yeseniya nodded from behind her mother.
“I really wouldn’t get in the way. I’m at work all day.”
Taisiya looked at Yeseniya, then at Valeria Yuryevna, then at Gleb, who was standing by the wall as if what was happening concerned him least of all. Something in this picture — the mother, the sister, the husband, all three of them looking at her and waiting for her to simply agree — something in that picture clicked.
Taisiya opened the office door — not to let them in, but to show them.
“Look,” she said calmly. “The desk where I work. Shelves with projects. Material samples. Lighting that I spent three months choosing because I work with color. This is not a guest room. This is my workplace. And it will remain mine.”
“Taisiya,” Valeria Yuryevna began, “you could…”
“No,” Taisiya said. “I could not. And one more thing: enough coming here and telling me how to arrange the furniture, where to put the curtains, and where to keep the bread.” She closed the office door and turned to her mother-in-law. “Try giving orders in your own home. Here, we follow my rules.”
Valeria Yuryevna’s eyes widened.
“What did you say?”
“You heard me.”
“This… this is rudeness,” Valeria Yuryevna said, her voice trembling — not from hurt, but from confusion, because it seemed no one had ever spoken to her like that before. “Gleb, do you hear what your wife is saying to your mother?”
Gleb pushed himself away from the wall.
“Taisiya, take it easy,” he said, and his voice carried exactly what Taisiya had been tolerating for months — that quiet reproach aimed at her, not at his mother. Always at her. She was always the one going too far, exaggerating, making things worse.
“Take it easy,” Taisiya repeated. “Gleb, your mother just told me I only think about myself. Did you hear that?”
“She meant…”
“She meant exactly what she said.” Taisiya took a step toward the hallway. “I am tired of being polite to people who walk through my home and explain to me how to live in it. I am tired of explaining to you that this is a problem and hearing in response that I’m exaggerating. And I am definitely not going to clear out my office for a person when no one even asked whether I wanted a roommate in my own apartment.”
“Taisiya, that’s ungrateful,” Yeseniya joined in. “We’ve been perfectly normal with you. Mom helped so much after the wedding.”
“Yeseniya,” Taisiya said patiently, “your mother came without calling, rearranged things no one had asked her to touch, and explained to me how to run a household in an apartment I bought myself. That is not help. That is intrusion.”
Yeseniya opened her mouth, then closed it.
“You’re being unfair,” Valeria Yuryevna said, and now her voice no longer carried confusion but offense — hot, almost righteous. “We are family. We wanted to help. And you…”
“Valeria Yuryevna,” Taisiya interrupted, “I make the decisions in this apartment. Not you. Not Gleb together with you behind my back. Me.”
“Gleb!” Her mother-in-law turned to her son. “Are you going to listen to this?”
Gleb looked at Taisiya with an expression that was hard to define in one word — there was confusion, something like displeasure, and beneath it all, something else that Taisiya recognized only now: he did not know whose side to take, because taking someone’s side meant losing something important. And he did not want to lose anything. He wanted everyone to simply come to an agreement.
“Taisiya,” Gleb said, “you’re right that we should have asked. But why like this, in front of Mom? We could have talked later…”
“Later?” Taisiya looked at her husband. “Your mother is already walking toward my office and discussing where to put a bed. What later?”
“I just want everything to be normal…”
“Gleb.” Taisiya said his name briefly and clearly. “You supported this conversation at the table today. You knew about Yeseniya. You didn’t tell me. You supported your mother when she went to look at the office. You supported her when she called me selfish. That is not neutrality. That is a choice.”
Gleb fell silent.
“If you think I’m wrong,” Taisiya continued, “and that your mother can come whenever she wants, take charge in my apartment, make decisions about my rooms, then all of you can live here together. Without me.” Taisiya walked into the hallway and opened the front door. “And tonight, I am asking all three of you to leave.”
Valeria Yuryevna looked at her daughter-in-law as if seeing her for the first time.
“You’re… throwing us out?”
“I’m asking you to leave,” Taisiya said. “That’s polite. I won’t ask a second time.”
Yeseniya picked up her bag from the sofa and looked at her brother.
“Gleb, come on, let’s go.”
Gleb stood in the middle of the living room and did not move. He looked from his mother to his wife. Taisiya stood by the open door and waited.
“Taisiya,” Gleb finally said, “we can talk normally. Tomorrow. When everyone calms down.”
“I am calm,” his wife answered. “And the door is open.”
Valeria Yuryevna raised her head and walked past Taisiya without looking at her. Yeseniya followed, muttering something under her breath. Gleb paused at the threshold.
“You understand this won’t solve the problem?” he said quietly.
“I understand,” Taisiya answered. “But at least tonight, there will only be me in my home.”
Gleb left. Taisiya closed the door. Turned the lock. She stood for a second with her back against the door. The apartment was silent — that special kind of silence that comes when the air finally stops trembling.
She returned to the office, turned on the desk lamp, and sat down in her work chair. An unfinished project lay on the desk: the layout of a small apartment that the client wanted to remodel for herself — remove the unnecessary, keep only what was needed, make the space comfortable specifically for her. Taisiya opened her laptop.
Gleb wrote an hour later. Briefly:
You went too far. Mom is upset. I’m spending the night at her place.
Taisiya read the message and put the phone aside.
Over the next few days, Gleb came by to pick up his things and then left. They spoke little — briefly, only when necessary. Several times, her husband tried to start a conversation about how Taisiya had been too harsh and should have acted differently.
His wife listened, answered calmly, and each time returned to one thing: you knew and did not tell me. You chose your mother every time you had to choose us.
Gleb did not argue. But he did not change either.
She filed for divorce herself, without intermediaries. Gleb did not object.
She changed the locks on Friday. A locksmith came and replaced both locks on the front door, and at her request, installed one on the office door too. Not because she was afraid, but because she wanted it that way. Simply so it would be there. So there would be a door behind which only she made the decisions.
After the locksmith left, Taisiya walked through the apartment. She stopped in the office. The desk was in its place, the shelves were in their place, the light fell exactly as it should. Everything was where it belonged.
She opened her laptop. She wrote to the client that the project was ready and they could review it. The client answered quickly:
I can’t wait. I’ll finally make everything the way I want it.
Taisiya smiled and started working.
