“Anna, where are you anyway? We’ve been standing outside your door for an hour!” Aunt Valya shouted indignantly into the phone.
Anna set her cup of coffee on the table and calmly looked out the window of her new apartment. Beyond the glass stretched a neighborhood unfamiliar to her relatives — quiet, green, and far from their usual routes.
“Outside which door?” she asked calmly.
“Outside yours! Katya and I came, we brought our suitcases, and some man opened the door and said his family lives here!”
Anna smiled faintly, taking a sip of fragrant coffee.
“That’s because I sold that apartment eight months ago.”
There was silence on the other end for several seconds. Then came a deep sigh.
“What do you mean, you sold it? Where do you live? Why didn’t you warn us?”
“Did you warn me that you were coming?” Anna replied softly.
Anna had always been considered the convenient one in the family. After moving to the regional center, she bought a two-room apartment near the train station, and her relatives quickly appreciated its location.
At first, it seemed harmless. Aunt Valya and her daughter Katya would stay for a couple of days during trips to see doctors.
“Annushka, you don’t mind, do you?” her aunt would ask, already standing on the doorstep with suitcases. “It’s only for two days. It’s foolish to waste money on a hotel.”
Then cousins from her father’s side began arriving, along with acquaintances of relatives and even distant family members Anna barely knew.
“Hi, I’m Seryoga, remember me?” a young man of about twenty-five would smile. “We last saw each other at your wedding. Aunt Valya gave me your address and said you wouldn’t mind.”
Guests rarely asked permission in advance. Usually, she would receive a message like:
“We’ve already bought the tickets. Meet us tomorrow evening.”
Anna gave in. She bought groceries, washed bed linens, and took time off work to hand over the keys. Her boss had already begun looking askance at her frequent absences.
Gradually, her apartment came to be seen by the relatives as a family hotel. In many of their phone contacts, she was saved as “Anna-station.”
Aunt Valya abused this arrangement most of all. She could open the refrigerator and complain:
“Yogurt again! Don’t you have any proper food at all?”
Or she would start making room in the wardrobe for her own things, carelessly pushing aside Anna’s neatly folded clothes.
“You don’t need this much space all to yourself anyway,” she liked to repeat. “When you get married, then you can start being greedy.”
Anna smiled, but inside, her irritation grew stronger and stronger.
The breaking point came after the May holidays. Anna returned from work, dreaming of a hot bath and silence. But from the stairwell she could already hear loud voices coming from her apartment.
She opened the door and froze. Suitcases and bags stood in the hallway, the smell of borscht drifted from the kitchen, and five guests had settled into the living room at once. Aunt Valya had decided to organize a family gathering and had given Anna’s address to relatives without warning.
Pots were boiling in the kitchen, someone else’s laundry was drying in the bathroom, and in the bedroom, a cousin was already unpacking her things into the wardrobe.
“Anya’s here!” Aunt Valya announced cheerfully. “We tidied up a little and put things in order. Your refrigerator was completely empty!”
“Aunt Valya, you could have at least called…”
“Why? We’re family!” her aunt waved her hand. “We won’t stay long, just a week. Lyudochka came from the Urals; we haven’t seen each other in ages!”
That night Anna slept on a folding cot in the kitchen. She lay there listening to snoring coming from her own bedroom and couldn’t fall asleep for a long time.
She suddenly realized that she no longer felt like the owner of her own home. Every vacation, every weekend, and even an ordinary evening could be ruined by an unexpected visit. Her life did not belong to her, but to an endless stream of relatives.
For the first time, she wanted to disappear from the entire family’s field of view.
A few months later, Anna was offered a good job in another district of the city. It was a department head position with a decent salary — exactly what she had dreamed of for the past few years.
The office was far from her old apartment, so she began thinking about moving. At first, the idea seemed temporary, but the more she thought about it, the more attractive the possibility of starting over became.
“You know, Mom, I’m selling the apartment,” she confessed to her mother over tea.
“Tired of the guests?” her mother asked understandingly.
“I want to live my own life. In my own home. Where no one rummages through my closets or teaches me how to live properly.”
Anna sold the apartment quickly — its location near the train station played its part. With the money she received, she bought a small but cozy apartment in a new residential complex on the other side of the city and moved without telling anyone.
She gave the new address only to her mother, once the last boxes had already been unpacked.
“Please don’t tell anyone,” she asked, hugging her mother at the doorway. “Not even Valya.”
“Is it really that bad?” her mother asked sadly.
“I just want to live peacefully for a while. I don’t want any guests at all. Well, except you, Mommy.”
Her mother only nodded understandingly and hugged her daughter tighter.
Eight months later, Aunt Valya and her daughter Katya decided to come to the city for a few days. They needed to undergo a medical examination at the regional hospital.
As usual, they warned no one in advance. In their minds, Anya’s apartment was always available.
Already standing outside the old apartment with heavy suitcases, soaked by the rain that had begun to fall, her aunt called Anna. Katya shifted nervously from one foot to the other, holding the bags.
When it turned out that the apartment had been sold long ago, a real scandal began.
“You should have warned us!” Aunt Valentina shouted into the phone. “How could you do this to your own family?”
“Why should I have warned you?” Anna replied calmly. “You never warned me about your visits.”
“We were counting on staying with you! We have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow!”
“And I wasn’t counting on turning my life back into a hotel.”
Her aunt showered her with accusations: ungrateful, heartless, forgot her family, traitor.
But for the first time, Anna did not justify herself and did not feel guilty.
“For so many years, you used my kindness and never once asked whether it was convenient for me. Good luck finding a hotel.”
After saying that, she calmly ended the call and turned off her phone.
For several weeks, the relatives actively discussed what she had done. Her mother’s phone rang nonstop with calls from outraged family members.
“She’s completely out of control!” Aunt Valya complained to anyone willing to listen. “She left her own aunt and cousin out on the street! We had to spend the night in a hotel, can you imagine?”
Some supported Aunt Valya and called Anna selfish. Others, especially the younger generation, admitted that she had long had the right to live the way she wanted.
“She did the right thing,” her cousin Mikhail said. “How long can people keep sitting on her neck? She has her own life.”
Attempts to find out her new address through her mother led nowhere. The woman kept her daughter’s secret.
“I don’t know where she lives,” she answered every question. “Some new district, far from the center.”
A month later, Uncle Viktor called. He needed to come for a conference.
“Anya, hi! Listen, I need somewhere to stay for three days…”
“Sorry, Uncle Vitya, that won’t work. Book a hotel. There are many good options in the center.”
“But we’re close family…”
“Exactly. That’s why I’m asking you to understand me. All the best.”
And that was where the conversation ended. For the first time, without long explanations and without guilt.
A year passed. One evening, Anna sat on the balcony of her new apartment with a glass of wine, looking at the city lights. In the distance, the rooftops of new buildings could be seen, while below, a cozy courtyard rustled quietly.
Her phone no longer exploded with messages about sudden arrivals. The relatives gradually got used to solving their own problems, booking hotels, or making arrangements with other acquaintances.
Sometimes she met with the family on holidays — on neutral territory, in restaurants or at her mother’s place. Their relationships became more restrained, but more honest.
“Are you happy?” her mother once asked when she came to visit by invitation.
“Yes, Mom. For the first time in many years — yes.”
And every time Anna closed the door of her apartment in the evening, she felt the same thing: peace and freedom, which she had lacked so badly all those previous years.
