Katerina was cutting the cake with such force, it seemed like it had done something to offend her. The knife crunched through the sponge, crumbs scattering onto the tablecloth, while Svetlana reached out again and again to catch them before they hit the floor. Misha was turning twenty-seven. He sat at the head of the table in a brand new blue shirt—one he had bought for himself—trying to wave off every toast. All evening, Valery made sure his sister’s glass was never empty, knowing that without wine, Katerina tended to go silent, but with wine, the stories would flow.
«And I haven’t even told you the best part,» Katerina said, licking her finger and pointing it at her brother. «Last Saturday, Valerka snuck into the shed again, to our grandfather’s old wardrobe. He planned to take it apart for planks, but turns out, wasps had built a nest in there—just as big as my head!»
«Nothing’s as big as your head,» Mikhail grumbled.
«It is! He sent me a photo—I nearly dropped my phone when I saw it.»
Svetlana placed a plate of cake in front of her son and turned to her husband.
«Which Saturday was this? You told me you were helping Gena with his car.»
Valery reached for a napkin and started wiping his completely clean fingers.
«I did stop by Gena’s, and then I swung by the dacha afterwards.»
«So why didn’t you tell me about it?»
Katerina raised her eyebrows, looking first at her brother, then at Svetlana. Her face was genuinely surprised, like someone being asked the date and not knowing why.
«Svet, what’s wrong? I thought you knew! He and Ira have been going to the dacha together for a year now.»
Upstairs, the neighbors’ washing machine started its loud cycle, and suddenly the entire kitchen filled with its hum. Katerina slowly set her glass back on the table without taking a sip. Mikhail buried his face in his plate, picking at a cream rose with his fork.
«Mishka,» Valery said loudly, «tell your mother about the promotion. She doesn’t know yet.»
«Dad, let’s talk about it later.»
«What do you mean later? We’re all family here! Come on, tell us.»
Valery patted his son on the shoulder, slid a plate of cold cuts toward him, kept nodding and repeating questions. His eyes darted back and forth—from the decanter, to Mikhail, to the tablecloth—but never once met his wife’s. Svetlana took his fork, which lay diagonally across his plate, and placed it neatly next to his knife.
«Valera,» she said quietly, and only then did he go silent. «How long were you planning to wait before telling me about this?»
Katerina rustled her napkin. Mikhail pushed his half-eaten cake away.
«Svet, it’s not what you think,» Valery muttered into his glass.
«I haven’t thought anything yet. I just asked a question.»
Everyone decided to drive Katerina home, since she refused to call a cab. All the way there, she sat in the back clutching a bag of leftover aspic, repeating about five times that she would definitely call tomorrow. When they arrived at her building, she tapped on Svetlana’s window, wanting to say something, but Svetlana stared straight ahead. Her sister-in-law just waved and left.
As soon as they heard the entrance door slam behind Katerina, Svetlana unbuckled her seatbelt and turned her whole body to face her husband.
«Well? I’m listening.»
«Svet, can we at least get home first?»
«No way, talk now! If we wait until we’re home, you’ll go take a shower, then say you have a headache, and then you’ll be snoring. Right here, right now!»
Valery turned off the engine and placed both hands on the steering wheel.
«Yes, I went to the dacha with Ira. A few times. There’s nothing going on between us and there never was, do you hear me? She works as an accountant for Gena—you saw her at his birthday, the one in the green dress. She was helping me with a work issue, that’s all.»
He spoke evenly, without hesitation, and Svetlana almost nodded. Then suddenly she started counting off on her fingers.
«Wait a minute. In May, you left on Saturday at six in the morning and said you were going to a work site. In July, you were talking to someone on the phone on the balcony and closed the door behind you, even though it was thirty degrees outside. And in August, when I suggested we go to the dacha together to pick apples, you yelled at me saying there was nothing to do there and I’d just be in the way. Did that not happen?»
«I didn’t yell.»
«You did yell! You threw the remote at the couch and it was missing its cover for a week after!»
Valery rubbed his nose and began speaking more softly, as if that could soften his words.
«Honestly, Ira’s been at the dacha more than you. She already knows where the shed key is, where the meter is, where we shut off the water.»
«She knows where our meter is?» Svetlana slapped the glove compartment so hard it flew open and receipts poured out. «I’ve been married for twenty years and I don’t know where the meter is, but she does!»
«Svet, please don’t yell, people are walking by.»
«Let them walk! Why did you hide this for a year if there’s nothing going on between you? Tell me, you idiot!»
«I wanted to solve one thing first, and then tell you everything.»
«What thing?»
He stared at the steering wheel for a long time, then spoke as if apologizing to someone who wasn’t there.
«I can’t say yet.»
Svetlana gathered up the spilled receipts from the floor mat, shoved them back in the glove box, and slammed it shut. Then she buckled her seat belt.
«Start the car,» she said. «I won’t ask again.»
Olya arrived at the clinic just before closing, while Svetlana was stapling the doctors’ schedule for the next week. Her friend plopped down on the patient couch, kicked off her sneakers, and stretched out her legs.
«Come on, spill it already. On the phone you were just sighing.»
Svetlana told her everything—from the wasps in the shed to the remote without its cover—and the stapler clicked in her hands louder than it should have. She expected Olya to say what friends usually do: pack your things, kick him out, I always warned you. But instead, Olya scratched her ankle and asked something completely different.
«Listen, but how does Katya know?»
«What do you mean?»
«Think about it. If he’s having an affair and has been hiding it for a year, why would he tell his sister? Katya blabs about everything, you can’t tell her anything. Plus, she likes you—even if she’s silly. Sisters don’t tolerate their brothers’ lovers, they’re the first to tear them apart. But she’s sending her pictures of those wasps.»
The stapler clicked on empty, and Svetlana stared at the empty clip as if it might have something written on it.
«Maybe she’s in on it with them too.»
«Maybe,» Olya agreed easily. «Or maybe it’s not an affair at all. When was the last time you were at the dacha?»
Svetlana tried to remember honestly—and couldn’t.
At home, she found Valery at the stove. He was frying eggs, just like he always did when he didn’t want to sit down and have a proper dinner with her.
«I’m heading to the dacha tomorrow,» she said as she took off her boots. «You mentioned that Misha’s car documents are in the dresser out there—he’s been searching for them for two months now.»
Valery set the frying pan on the burner, turned on the gas, but didn’t add any oil.
«I’ll bring them myself. I need to go there this Saturday anyway.»
«No need. I’ll handle it myself.»
«Let’s go together, I’m free on Saturday.»
«Valera, give me the keys.»
He took the key ring off the hook in the hallway and held it in his fist for a long time, as if weighing it.
«That lock gets stuck. You won’t be able to open it.»
«I’ll open it,» Svetlana said, and pried open his fingers.
The lock didn’t stick. It opened smoothly on the first try, as if it was freshly oiled—that was the first thing she didn’t like.
The house looked nothing like it did when she was there before. The windows inside were sealed with insulation, barrels by the porch were flipped over, and hoses were coiled and hung neatly on nails along the wall. In the past, there was always a full barrel of rotten rainwater left by October, and every spring Valery would complain that it had burst again. On the kitchen table, under the salt shaker, was a note written in neat, round handwriting: sealant, two bags of sawdust, lightbulbs, mousetraps, paint roller. The handwriting was clearly feminine, small, with little swirls on the letter «d,» while Valery wrote so badly that even Mikhail couldn’t read his notes.
In the closet, where old blankets used to be stored, there were six new cans of paint and rolls of some kind of film. Svetlana opened one can and sniffed it for no real reason—she could see the paint was fresh.
Mikhail’s room was the smallest in the house. They once planned to add a veranda and even sketched out a plan right on the wallpaper in pencil, so their son would have his own space when he married. The plan remained on the wallpaper, and the extension was never built. In the dresser, instead of the car documents, there was a clear folder containing the very same plan, only redrawn neatly, with stamps and signatures. Beneath it, there was a cadastral extract dated last month, and a contract with an appraiser from some LLC Svetlana had never heard of. In the section ‘Purpose of appraisal,’ someone had handwritten: ‘for the completion of a transaction.’
She sat down on her son’s bed—the springs creaked under her—and called her husband.
«Are you selling the dacha?» she asked, skipping any greeting.
On the line, she heard Valery’s television in the background, then suddenly the sound cut off. The silence lasted so long that Svetlana checked her screen to make sure the call hadn’t dropped.
«I haven’t sold anything yet,» he finally said.
«Yet?!» she jumped up, and the folder slid from her lap to the floor. «Do you hear yourself? This is Misha’s dacha, this is mom’s dacha, I planted every currant here, and you’re bringing in appraisers! Who did you bring them here with, your Irina?»
«Svet, come home and let’s talk it out properly.»
«You should’ve talked properly a year ago!» she yelled, hanging up with such force that her fingernail throbbed.
Before leaving, she gathered all the papers, stuffed them in her bag along with the note about mousetraps, and tugged on the front door repeatedly until she was sure the lock was secure.
She didn’t go home. Instead, she pulled her car over at the edge of the gardening community and called her son.
«Misha, did you know Dad is selling the dacha?»
«Hi, Mom. Where are you, anyway? It sounds windy on your end.»
«Doesn’t matter where I am. Did you know?»
«Look, that’s something you and Dad need to sort out…»
«Misha,» she said quietly, «if you start lying to me like your father, I’ll come over and sit on your staircase until you tell me the truth. You know I will—I’ll sit there!»
Mikhail was silent for a moment, and she heard him quietly close a door and then sit down.
«He called me in the spring. Said they had a failed deal at his company and now he owes money. He wanted to sell the dacha fast before the interest piled up. I talked him out of it, told him the house would go for nothing if he hurried. I suggested selling equipment first and getting the extension properly registered so the plot would be valued higher, if things got really bad.»
«What kind of debt, Misha? How much?»
«I honestly don’t know, Mom. He never told me the whole amount.»
Svetlana gripped the steering wheel tightly with one hand, then let go, then squeezed it again.
«Fine. So where does Ira fit into all this?»
«She helped Dad with the paperwork. She’s an accountant, she knows how this stuff works. She also tried to find buyers for the equipment through her contacts—there were some machines and compressors, Dad couldn’t have handled that alone.»
«Is that all?»
Mikhail didn’t answer right away, and Svetlana heard him flicking a lighter, even though he’d quit smoking three years ago.
«Mom, please don’t get upset. She lent him money a few times.»
«How many times?»
«I didn’t keep track. He let it slip once when he was drinking on New Year’s, and then asked me not to tell you.»
Svetlana put the phone on her lap and watched as a tractor loaded with sacks of potatoes drove past her on the roadside. From the phone she could faintly hear, «Mom, are you there? Mom?» She lifted the phone back to her ear.
«I’m here,» she said. «Just tell me one thing: is he still borrowing from her?»
***
«I don’t know,» Mikhail said. «Mom, honestly, I don’t. He doesn’t talk to me about that anymore, like I’m a stranger too.»
Svetlana put the phone facedown on the passenger seat and sat by the roadside for another ten minutes with the engine running, until the same tractor passed by again, now empty.
Ira showed up two days later, on Wednesday, just before eight in the evening. Svetlana answered the door wearing a bathrobe, her hair still wet from the shower, and immediately recognized Ira by her green scarf—the same color as the dress she wore at Gena’s birthday. Valery was working late that night, and later Svetlana wondered if Ira had known that ahead of time.
«Good evening, Svetlana. Sorry for dropping by unannounced. Valery Petrovich left a blue folder with you, the one with the dacha documents inside. I really need it, the originals are in there.»
«So he left it with me, did he?» Svetlana said, holding the door with her shoulder. «Interesting. He didn’t give me anything; I took it out of the drawer myself.»
«Well, then you took it,» Ira agreed calmly. «Can I come in? It’s cold in the hallway.»
Svetlana stepped aside. Ira took off her shoes, neatly placed them toe to the wall, and went straight to the kitchen, without once asking where to go. The folder was on the windowsill; Svetlana grabbed it and held it tightly against her stomach.
«First, tell me one thing. Did anything happen between you and him?»
«No,» Ira didn’t even blink. «And it never has. I understand how it might look, but no.»
«Then what was it? A whole year of trips, phone calls on the balcony, your mouse traps!» Svetlana snatched a sheet of paper with round handwriting from the folder and slapped it on the table. «Did you write this?»
«Yes, I wrote it. He never remembers anything when we arrive—light bulbs are always missing.»
«Why did you keep going there?»
Ira sat down on a stool without waiting to be invited and folded her hands on her knees.
«Valery Petrovich was trying to sell some equipment through an acquaintance, and at his dacha he had passports for the machines, invoices, and old tools that could be sold too. I was sorting documents and calculating what everything was worth. I knew about his debts, yes. And I helped however I could.»
«Did you help with money, too?»
«With money as well.»
Svetlana expected Ira to look away or start fiddling with her scarf, but Ira sat up straight and looked at her with polite patience, the way people in clinics look at a patient who’s asking for the room number for the third time.
«I really don’t understand why he didn’t tell you,» Ira said. «He mentioned you’d find out eventually. And he talked about the note, said you knew about it and didn’t mind, since the dacha was in his name.»
«What note are you talking about?»
Ira fell silent. She slowly stood up, reached for the folder, and—Svetlana couldn’t even explain why—she handed it to her.
«Ask Valery Petrovich,» Ira said, already in the hallway, struggling to get her heel into her shoe. «Looks like I don’t know everything myself.»
The door closed quietly behind her, clicking shut, and Svetlana stood in the hallway for a long time with wet hair, drip by drip soaking her robe.
Valery came home just after nine. Svetlana was sitting in the kitchen in exactly the same position as when Ira left her, with the mouse trap paper lying in front of her on the table.
«Ira was here,» she said. «She took the folder. She told me about the note. Take off your coat and sit down.»
He didn’t take off his coat. He sat down in it, put his car keys on the table, and kept pushing them with his finger until they hit the edge.
«A year ago, Gena suggested we invest in something—a warehouse for rent. Everything was planned out, payback in eight months. I took the money we’d saved for the renovation, plus some from the credit card. Then Gena’s partner disappeared after three months with the money, changed his number—I can’t reach him anymore.»
«Our money? The renovation fund?» Svetlana jumped up. «I’ve been saving for three years for that renovation, didn’t take a single vacation! And you just gave it all away to some warehouse?!»
«I thought I’d pay it back before you noticed.»
«Then why didn’t you tell me when he disappeared?»
Valery finally took off his coat and threw it on the chair next to him.
«Because you would have just said it right away: let’s sell the apartment, call Misha. You’d solve everything in five minutes, and I’d end up spending my whole life as an idiot who robbed his own family. So I started borrowing from Ira instead. Little by little, with interest, just to pay off the credit card. I figured I’d sell off the machines and pay her back.»
«And what about the receipt?»
He didn’t answer right away, and Svetlana saw how the skin above his collar turned red.
«When the sum got big, she asked for some kind of guarantee. So I signed a loan agreement with the summer house as collateral. The summer house is in my name, I inherited it from my mother, so your signature wasn’t needed.»
«Wasn’t needed,» Svetlana repeated. «Of course. I was the one planting the currants, we used my bonus to fix the roof, but apparently my signature wasn’t required.»
«Svet…»
«So, she would go out there to see if ‘her’ dacha was still standing? Checking whether it had rotted away? Sealing the windows, making sure her merchandise was safe?»
Valery lowered his head and nodded.
«Does Misha know about the collateral?»
«No. Misha knows about the debt and the equipment. No one knows about the collateral.»
Svetlana picked up a piece of paper with mousetraps drawn on it from the table, tore it in half, then again, and tossed the shreds into the trash.
«You’re giving her the money back tomorrow and tearing up that contract.»
«With what money, Sveta? I don’t have it. If I did, I wouldn’t have been going to the dacha with her for a year!»
The next morning, Svetlana called Katerina from her car, parked by the clinic, ten minutes before her shift started.
«You knew!» she shouted as soon as Katerina answered. «You knew everything and still sat at my table, ate my cake! Friends don’t do this, sisters don’t do this!»
«Svet, wait, what are you talking about?»
«About his debts, about the collateral, about this Ira woman with her mousetraps!»
There was a clatter on the line, probably Katerina dropping a spoon.
«What collateral? I knew about the trips, yes. I told you as much, I thought you were aware. But I swear I had no idea about the debts. He just told me he had some trouble at work, that’s all.»
«And where did Ira come from?»
Katerina was silent for a while, and Svetlana could hear her walking around the apartment.
«I was the one who asked her,» Katerina finally said. «Back in spring. Valerka wasn’t himself—he’d call me at night, telling me he was going to sell the dacha and disappear somewhere. I was scared he’d secretly get rid of the house, and it would be too late. Ira is an accountant at Gena’s company, she knows about these things, so I called her to keep an eye on him.»
«And why didn’t you call me?»
«Svet, you’re always so…» Katerina hesitated. «You’ve got high blood pressure, you’ve got work. We thought you wouldn’t handle it well. Valerka said he’d tell you everything himself once he sorted it out.»
«We thought,» Svetlana repeated, and hung up.
She walked into the clinic, greeted the security guard, turned on the computer at the desk, and gave the first patient someone else’s file. The patient quietly handed it back, and Svetlana apologized repeatedly before going to the supply room and sitting on a box of shoe covers until the nurse called her.
On Saturday, she gathered everyone at her place. Mikhail was the first to arrive, bringing a bag of tangerines. Katerina showed up without any wine, and Valery spent the whole morning vacuuming the apartment even though the floor was already spotless. Svetlana covered the kitchen table with the oilcloth they usually used for making dumplings and placed a copy of the loan agreement on top—the one she managed to get from her husband the night before.
«Alright then,» she said once everyone was seated. «No one makes any more decisions about the dacha until each of you tells me exactly how much, according to your information, Valera owes. Misha, you start.»
«Mom, why are we doing this…»
«Because! You knew about the debt, so you must’ve heard a number.»
«Well, in the spring he told me it was three hundred. Maybe four hundred.»
«Katya?»
«I honestly have no idea, Svet, I swear.»
«Valera.»
Valery took the copy of the agreement as if he was going to check something, even though he knew it by heart.
«Ira’s is 1.1 million, with interest. The credit card—another two hundred eighty. And I owe Gena forty, but that’s not much.»
Katerina gasped and clapped her hand over her mouth. Mikhail gave his father a long, heavy look, then reached into the pocket of his jacket, which was hanging on the back of his chair, and placed a folded envelope on the oilcloth.
«Here’s two hundred. I’ve been saving since March, was planning to use it for a wedding, but that can wait.»
Svetlana took the envelope and slipped it back into her son’s shirt pocket, pressing it down with her hand so it wouldn’t fall out.
«Put it away. Right now. And I never want to see that again!»
«Mom, it’s my money.»
«Then keep it! Your father has lived fifty-one years, got himself into this mess, he can get himself out.»
Valery sat slouched, spinning his wedding ring on his finger. Svetlana turned to him.
«I’m not going to rescue you anymore, do you hear me? Deal with the bank yourself, sell your own equipment, call Ira and ask for a payment plan yourself. I’m not making a single call for you.»
«Understood.»
«But I’m not going to divorce you just because you lost your nerve, either. Twenty years together wasn’t for nothing.»
He looked up at her for the first time all week.
«One condition,» Svetlana said, tapping the agreement with her finger. «One more secret document behind my back, one more trip I only find out about from your sister over cake, and you’ll be moving to the dacha. To Ira, as collateral.»
Katerina let out a nervous giggle and immediately fell silent, while Mikhail took a tangerine from the bag and started peeling it carefully, in one long spiral, just like he did when he was a kid.
They never did sell the dacha. Valery went to the bank three times—once he came home angry and threw the folder on the sofa—but by late November he managed to negotiate a restructuring deal. The equipment was sold to a reseller from Podolsk for half the price, and Gena kept the compressors for what he was owed. Ira received her payments on schedule, by transfer, on the twentieth of each month, and she never set foot in their house again. When Gena’s birthday came in January, Svetlana and Valery just didn’t go.
One day in February, Valery came home from work and, without taking off his shoes, handed Svetlana a paper from the tax office.
«They’ve added another four thousand in penalties. I’ll pay it myself, just wanted you to know.»
Svetlana turned the note over in her hands, gave it back to him, and went to warm up dinner. By that time, she had stopped checking his phone, even though for the first two months she did it every night while he slept, and every time, she lay awake for hours afterwards, feeling ashamed.
Katerina arrived in the middle of March, bringing tomato seedlings in cut-off plastic bottles and spent the whole evening telling stories about her neighbor who won thirty thousand in the lottery. Already in the hallway, as she was zipping up her boot, she looked up.
«Are you planning to go to the dacha this summer? I’d love to come stay with you for a week, my back’s acting up again.»
«We are,» Svetlana replied. «Now, if Valery goes there with Ira, at least I’ll know why.»
Katerina burst out laughing so hard she dropped her glove. Valery, who was standing in the kitchen doorway with a towel in his hands, turned red to his ears and retreated back to the sink.
Svetlana smiled too, picked the glove up from the floor and handed it back to her sister-in-law, but didn’t let go of her hand right away.
«And Katya, please, never again think that I should be the last to know.»
Katerina stopped laughing, took the glove and nodded. Then she spent a long time struggling with the zipper on her other boot, which just didn’t want to fasten, while Svetlana stood nearby waiting, holding the door open.
