“There Will Be No Money, Don’t Even Dream of It,” I Said to My Husband When He Started Digging Through the Drawers Looking for My Savings

“There Will Be No Money, Don’t Even Dream of It,” I Said to My Husband When He Started Searching Through the Drawers for My Savings November twilight settled over the city early, and every time Elena came home from work, she caught herself thinking that the day had barely even begun. The bus crawled through […]

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“What three hundred thousand? Have you decided to charge your own relatives money for renovations?” Aunt Katya asked in surprise.

Andrey Viktorovich Sokolov, thirty-eight years old, a construction foreman with fifteen years of experience, was sitting in his pickup truck near the unfinished residential complex “Rechnoy,” staring at his phone. Another message from his cousin: “Hey, Andryukha, hi! Listen, I need to redo the bathroom. You can get tiles at a discount, right? You know, […]

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“You belong at the stove; you’re not capable of anything more,” her husband humiliated her in front of the guests, but she didn’t let him get away with it.

Natalya wiped her hands on a towel and looked over the table with a critical eye. Roasted veal with apples, shrimp salad, tuna tartare, homemade pâté, three kinds of appetizers. The table setting was flawless: the white tablecloth she had carefully ironed, crystal glasses inherited from her grandmother, candles in silver candlesticks. Igor had ordered […]

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“Yeah, my dear brother gets the apartment, and I get the debts?” I couldn’t take it anymore and slammed my hand down on the notary’s desk.

The notary adjusted his glasses and looked down at the documents again. I stared at his neat hands with their well-groomed nails and thought of my mother’s hands — worn from work, always calloused, with broken nails. She never painted them. She used to say, “It’ll peel off at the dacha anyway.” At the dacha. […]

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