— You’re on your own. Give the house to your sister—she has it hard with the children, — Mother said. — Things are easier for you. Try to understand that already. The balloons were blue and pink, along with one ridiculous green one that had stuck to the ceiling and refused to come down. Styosha […]
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Nika was laughing so hard that she kept toppling sideways onto the carpet, and Yulia had to catch her by her round little belly. Yulia snapped the fastener on the snowsuit, caught one leg, then the other, then a third—no, there was no third leg; the child was simply wriggling around like a wind-up toy. […]
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The new department greeted Olya with a steady hum of voices and a bewildering maze of desks. There were so many of them that her eyes kept wandering without finding anything to settle on. Olya stopped in the doorway, clutching a folder to her chest, and felt like someone who had walked through the wrong […]
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Boxes stood in towers in the hallway, labeled in marker: “fragile,” “very fragile,” and “seriously, don’t touch.” Alisa squeezed between them with a string of lights clenched between her teeth and flicked the switch. The little bulbs glowed warmly, and the bare apartment suddenly began to look like a home. “Ilya! Come look! I made […]
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The skating rink was closing. The lights above the ice blinked twice, and Alisa began gliding backward with her arms spread wide, looking like someone whose life was going wonderfully. Yegor hobbled after her, clinging to the barrier and pretending it was part of his strategy. The ice crunched beneath their skates as the music […]
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