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“Mom, don’t eat that cake… I saw Grandma put something in it,” my son whispered quietly. The spoon froze in my hand. Dima tugged at the sleeve of the festive blouse I had only picked up from the parcel collection point yesterday. His fingers were cold and slightly damp with anxiety. I slowly lowered my […]

Larisa sat in the conference room, scrolling through the presentation for tomorrow’s meeting with clients. Numbers, charts, forecasts—the multimillion-ruble contract demanded her full concentration. Her phone vibrated at the worst possible moment. “Hi, sunshine! Mom needs help again. Call me when you’re free,” Igor wrote. Larisa exhaled and placed the phone face down. The third […]

Galina returned from her business trip a day early. The door was unlocked, and a pair of unfamiliar sandals stood in the entryway. She didn’t make a scene. She did something else instead. The sandals were red, with thin straps and a worn buckle on the left one. Size thirty-seven. Galina wore a thirty-nine. She […]

I stood in the kitchen doorway, holding a bag of groceries, unable to believe what I was seeing. Our cozy apartment, which I had spent so many months arranging and making comfortable, was now in complete chaos. The cabinet doors were wide open, their contents dumped onto the floor. Crumpled piles of clothes were sticking […]

Irina and Mikhail had been living in this apartment for four years. The apartment belonged to her; she had bought it before they got married. It was small, but arranged exactly the way Irina liked it: everything in its place, nothing unnecessary. Irina worked as an accountant for a construction company, while Mikhail was a […]

The alarm went off at seven, as usual. Yana reached around on the nightstand, silenced it, and lay there for another couple of minutes, staring at the crack in the ceiling of their rented apartment. It had appeared back in winter; the landlord had promised to fix it and then forgotten. Dmitry was already clattering […]

At a quarter to midnight, Maria was still sitting at her laptop, finishing a presentation for a new client. Taking on freelance work in addition to her regular job had long since become a habit rather than an exception. Her phone vibrated on the table, displaying her mother-in-law’s name. Larisa Pavlovna rarely called at such […]

This was how almost every other Sunday lunch at Galina Petrovna’s began—with that phrase from her husband, spoken quietly, almost as though he were apologizing for what was happening in the house. And the same thing had been happening for six years: Marina would sit down at the table, Galina Petrovna would pour the tea, […]