“Are you seriously sitting there choosing a TV for my mother for forty-eight thousand?” Irina asked so quietly that even the kettle on the stove hissed as if it felt guilty. Oleg looked up from the laptop. On the screen gleamed a huge black panel, so important and smooth it looked as though it was […]
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— Did you really give her the keys? To my apartment? Anton, just say yes or no, without that “well, listen” of yours. Anton stood barefoot in the middle of the hallway, wearing stretched-out house pants, with the face of a man who had not been woken up on a Sunday morning, but summoned to […]
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“Call your village bumpkin over. Let’s give people something to laugh at!” Eleonora Genrikhovna adjusted the diamond brooch on the lapel of her jacket and measured me with a contemptuous look. “Respectable people from the city will be gathering at my anniversary celebration. They need contrast. Let them see what hopeless backwater my son pulled […]
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Arseny had always been used to achieving everything in life on his own. Back in his school years, he earned extra money washing cars, and later he ran around in the evenings handing out advertising flyers at different locations. The pay was not much, but it was his own money, and he could spend it […]
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“Sell your apartment and put the money into the family budget. You’ll live with me!” her mother-in-law declared. Tanya had never dreamed of a luxurious wedding. When her friends excitedly flipped through catalogs of wedding dresses, banquet halls, and decorations, Tatiana preferred not to take part in those conversations. All she wanted was to meet […]
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Liza had never known what maternal love was. Oksana, her mother, was home very rarely, and even during those brief moments, it seemed as though she did not notice her daughter at all. Liza knew nothing about her father either, and she never asked. And while for other children that question usually mattered deeply, Liza […]
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