“What?” her husband’s voice faltered mid-word.
Lika carefully placed her phone face down and looked at Andrei calmly, almost tenderly.
“I rented out the apartment. Starting from the first of the month. An eleven-month contract. Good people. They pay on time, no delays.”
Andrei opened and closed his mouth several times, like a fish thrown onto the shore.
“Lika… are you serious?”
“Absolutely.”
“But that’s where… that’s where Masha was going to move in. We talked about it last night. You yourself said, ‘Fine, let her stay there until she finds a job and a place to rent.’”
Lika tilted her head slightly, studying her husband as if she were seeing him for the first time.
“Andrei, I said ‘fine’ exactly at the moment when, for the third time that evening, you repeated, ‘What would it cost you? She’s my sister.’ I was tired of saying the same thing over and over. So while you were washing the dishes, I simply finalized what I had been planning to do for a long time.”
He slowly lowered himself onto a chair. His shoulders sank, as if someone had pulled all the strength out of them at once.
“You could have at least warned me…”
“I did warn you. Many times. The last time was the day before yesterday, when you started again with, ‘Masha has no job, Masha has nowhere to live, Masha is depressed after the divorce.’ I told you then: ‘If she moves into my apartment, she’ll only leave it through court.’ You laughed. You said I was exaggerating.”
Andrei ran his palm over his face, as if trying to wipe away his exhaustion.
“So what now? Where is she supposed to go?”
“That’s no longer my problem,” Lika shrugged. “Masha has a mother. Masha has you. Masha has friends. There are plenty of options. My premarital apartment is no longer on that list.”
Silence settled between them. Only the wall clock ticked, and the refrigerator hummed softly.
“Do you understand that she’s crying on the phone to Mom right now?” Andrei finally asked, almost in a whisper. “That Mom has already called me three times asking what kind of monster of a daughter-in-law she has?”
Lika stood up, walked to the kettle, and poured herself some water. She drank slowly, in small sips.
“I understand that your mother is furious. I understand that Masha is panicking. I even understand that you’re very uncomfortable being caught between all of us right now. But do you know what else I understand?”
She turned to him. Her eyes were calm, her voice steady.
“That if I give in now, it won’t be a one-time favor. It will become a precedent. And after that, every time one of your relatives has a ‘difficult life situation,’ they’ll look in my direction. Not yours. Mine. Because you have nothing, and I do.”
Andrei was silent. For a long time.
“You could have at least… called me. Told me everything was already done.”
“And you could have at least once told your sister, ‘No, Masha, that’s not an option,’” Lika said, placing the glass on the table. “Just ‘no.’ Without ‘let’s think about it,’ without ‘maybe,’ without ‘I’ll talk to my wife.’ Just a firm ‘no, because this is my wife’s apartment, not our shared emergency fund for your problems.’”
He lowered his gaze to his hands. His fingers nervously picked at the edge of his T-shirt.
“I didn’t know she was already packing her things…”
“But I did,” Lika replied quietly. “Because yesterday at half past ten in the evening, she sent me a voice message: ‘Lika, tomorrow around lunchtime I’ll come with my suitcases. Leave the keys under the mat if you’re not home.’ No question. No ‘may I?’ As if it had already been decided.”
Andrei lifted his head. His eyes held a mixture of confusion and hurt.
“And you immediately ran to find tenants?”
“No. I posted the ad two weeks ago. I was just waiting for you to finally tell your sister ‘no.’ You didn’t. So this morning I signed the contract.”
He stood up. Took two steps toward the window, then back again.
“Mom says you did this on purpose to humiliate Masha. To show everyone who’s in charge in this house.”
“Mom can say whatever she wants,” Lika smiled faintly, but the smile came out bitter. “I’m not going to argue with her. I’m not going to argue with Masha either. And honestly, I’m tired of arguing with you too. I simply did what I should have done much earlier.”
Andrei looked at her for a long time, a very long time.
“Do you realize there’s going to be a war now?”
“The war was already happening, Andrei. You just didn’t notice it. Every time you came to me and said, ‘Lika, please help…’ And I helped. Masha with money for courses. Your aunt with her surgery. Your cousin with his car. And every time I thought, ‘Well, this is the last time.’ And then the next ‘last time’ came.”
She stepped closer. Her voice grew quieter, but firmer.
“I no longer want to be an ATM for your relatives. And I don’t want my apartment, the one I bought from my parents in installments over eight years, to turn into a transit station for everyone who has ‘temporarily nowhere to live.’”
Andrei swallowed.
“So what now?”
“Now you go and tell your sister the truth. That the apartment is rented out. That she can’t move in. And that this is not my whim, but my legal right. Then you come back home, and you and I decide how to live from now on, once your family gets used to the fact that we no longer have a ‘free resource.’”
He was silent. Then he asked quietly:
“And if I can’t refuse them?”
Lika looked him straight in the eye.
“Then, Andrei, you’ll have to choose. Either you learn to say ‘no’ to your relatives, or I learn to say ‘no’ to you. And believe me, the second one will be much easier for me.”
She turned and left the kitchen. Andrei remained standing in the middle of the room, staring at the wet mark from the rag on the floor, which was already beginning to dry around the edges.
Forty minutes later, his phone rang. The screen showed “Mom.” He stared at the name for several seconds, then slowly declined the call.
But a minute later, a voice message arrived.
Standing in the hallway, Lika heard her mother-in-law almost shouting through the phone:
“Andrei, are you a man or a rag?! Your wife has just humiliated your sister in front of the whole family! Are you going to let this slide?!”
He didn’t answer. He simply put the phone on silent and laid it face down.
And Lika, leaning against the doorframe, suddenly thought that this was probably the first time in ten years that he had not rushed to call his mother back immediately.
And that thought made her feel both frightened and… a little easier to breathe.
The next day, Lika woke up earlier than usual. Andrei was still asleep, his face buried in the pillow, and he did not even move when she quietly left the bedroom. His phone lay on the kitchen table, face down, just as it had the previous evening. Lika didn’t touch it. She simply turned on the coffee machine and sat by the window, watching the sky slowly brighten above the rooftops.
Half an hour later, the first message arrived. From her mother-in-law, of course.
“Andrei, have you seen what your wife has done? Masha cried all night. She has no job and nowhere to live right now, and you’re silent. Call your mother.”
Lika read it without blinking. Then she carefully blocked the number. Not forever — just for today. She needed at least a few hours of silence.
Andrei appeared in the kitchen about forty minutes later. Unshaven, with red eyes. Apparently, he had tossed and turned half the night.
“Good morning,” he said hoarsely.
“Good morning,” Lika replied and placed a cup of coffee in front of him. No sugar. He always drank it without sugar when he was nervous.
He took the cup but didn’t drink. He simply held it in his hands, as if warming himself.
“Mom called five times during the night. I didn’t answer.”
“I know. Your phone kept buzzing on the table until two.”
Andrei nodded. Slowly, as if his neck barely obeyed him.
“Masha wrote to me yesterday. Asked me to come. Said she was sitting at the train station with two suitcases and a cat in a carrier. Said she had nowhere to go.”
Lika looked at him calmly. No judgment, no triumph. She simply waited.
“I answered that I’d come in an hour. I’ll take her to my office, let her sit on the sofa until we figure things out.”
“Fine,” Lika said. “That’s your choice.”
He suddenly lifted his eyes. There was something new in them. Not anger. Not resentment. Something between confusion and… determination?
“Lika… do you really think I always solved things at your expense?”
She hesitated slightly. Then answered honestly.
“Not always. But often. Especially over the last three years. Ever since we paid off the mortgage on this apartment and I still had that premarital one. Since then, every one of your relatives has looked at me like… a distribution point for help.”
Andrei lowered his head.
“I thought… I thought it was normal. That family means helping each other.”
“Family means helping each other mutually,” Lika corrected him quietly. “Not when some only ask and others only give. I helped. A lot. But now I want it to be different.”
He was silent for a long time. Then he asked almost in a whisper:
“And what if Mom comes here? Today? She said yesterday that she would ‘come to sort things out.’”
Lika shrugged.
“Let her come. I’ll listen to her. But I won’t let her in unless you yourself say you want to see her.”
Andrei looked at her in surprise.
“You seriously won’t let my mother into our home?”
“Into our home, I will. If you’re there and if she speaks calmly. But if she comes to shout, accuse, and demand the keys to my apartment — then no. I am not obligated to endure that in my own home.”
He stood up. Walked to the window. Stood there, looking down at the street.
“I’m going to Masha now. Then… then I’ll come back, and we’ll talk. Properly.”
“Fine,” Lika nodded. “I’ll be here.”
He left twenty minutes later. Silently, he kissed her on the temple — for the first time in the last day — and closed the door behind him.
Lika remained alone.
She didn’t clean, didn’t turn on the television. She simply sat in the kitchen and drank coffee that had already gone cold. She thought about how strangely everything had unfolded. Ten years of marriage. Ten years of compromises, concessions, and “fine, let it be.” And now — for the first time in all that time — she had said “no” and had not backed down.
Her phone vibrated. A message from her best friend, Olya.
“How are things? Has Andrei recovered from the shock yet?”
Lika smiled out of the corner of her mouth and replied:
“Not yet. But I think he’s started thinking.”
The answer came almost immediately.
“Well done. Hold on. If anything happens, stay at my place.”
Lika wrote back:
“Thanks. I’m managing for now.”
She put the phone aside and went into the room. She opened the wardrobe and took out an old box of photographs. The very one Andrei had always called her “boring archive.” There were pictures from her student years, her parents, her first job, her first mortgage. A photograph where she stood holding the keys to that very apartment — small, one-room, in an old panel building. But it was hers.
Lika looked at that photograph for a long time. She had been twenty-seven then. She worked two jobs, slept four hours a night, but she had been happy. Because it was hers. Not someone’s “we’ll help,” not someone’s “let’s borrow,” but truly hers. She carefully placed the photo back and closed the box.
At half past two, the doorbell rang.
Lika walked to the intercom. On the screen was her mother-in-law. Alone. Without Andrei. With a stern face and tightly pressed lips.
“Open up, Lidia,” she said into the intercom. “We need to talk.”
Lika was silent for a second. Then she answered calmly:
“Hello, Galina Ivanovna. Andrei isn’t home. Come when he is.”
“I didn’t come to see Andrei. I came to see you.”
“I understand. But I won’t talk without Andrei.”
A pause hung between them. A long one.
“What, are you afraid of me?” mockery appeared in her mother-in-law’s voice.
“No,” Lika replied. “I’m simply protecting my nerves. And yours too. Come this evening, when Andrei returns. Then we’ll all talk together.”
She disconnected the intercom. Galina Ivanovna stood by the entrance for about ten more minutes. Then she turned around and left. Lika returned to the kitchen. Sat down. And for the first time in the last day, she felt that she could breathe freely.
That evening, when Andrei returned — tired, with lowered shoulders, but with some new expression on his face — he did not begin telling her how everything had gone with Masha. He simply said:
“I took her to Aunt Lyuba’s in the Moscow region. There’s a room there. It’ll be enough for the first while.”
Lika nodded.
“Your mother came by,” she added. “I didn’t open the door.”
Andrei looked at her for a long time.
“You did the right thing.”
Then he came over and hugged her — tightly, almost painfully.
“I’m sorry,” he said into her hair. “I really… I really didn’t understand for a long time.”
Lika closed her eyes. She didn’t answer. She simply stood there, feeling his heart beating faster than usual.
And then the doorbell rang again. This time, it was Galina Ivanovna and Masha. Together.
Andrei looked at Lika. She gave a small nod.
“Open it,” she said quietly. “It’s time to talk.”
He went to the door.
Lika remained standing in the middle of the kitchen, looking at her hands. And for the first time in many years, she felt that they were not trembling.
Andrei opened the door. Galina Ivanovna stepped in first, followed by Masha. Both of them looked as if they had not slept all night. Masha had red eyes and a swollen face; her mother-in-law had a straight back and tightly pressed lips. In Masha’s hands was a small sports bag, apparently the little she had taken with her that day.
“Come in,” Andrei said quietly.
They went into the living room. Lika remained standing by the kitchen doorway, in no hurry to come closer. Andrei gestured for them to sit. Galina Ivanovna sat on the edge of the sofa. Masha sat beside her, lowering her head.
The silence was heavy, almost tangible.
Her mother-in-law spoke first. Her voice was low and restrained, but the familiar steel still broke through it.
“Andrei, I didn’t come here to make a scene. Although, to be honest, I want to. But I came to talk like a human being. Masha is desperate. She has nowhere to live. You’re her brother. And your wife…” She looked toward Lika. “She closed the only door in front of her that could have saved her.”
Andrei took a deep breath.
“Mom, it’s not the only door. And it’s not my apartment. It’s Lika’s. Premarital. She has every right to do with it what she considers necessary.”
Galina Ivanovna narrowed her eyes slightly.
“So you’re on her side now?”
“I’m on the side of the truth,” Andrei answered calmly. “And on the side of making sure our family finally stops solving problems at someone else’s expense.”
Masha lifted her head. Her voice trembled.
“Lika… I didn’t want to be a burden. I really thought… just for a couple of months. Until I got back on my feet. I would have paid the utilities, bought groceries…”
Lika stepped out of the kitchen, closer to the center of the room. She stopped two steps away from the sofa.
“Masha, I believe you. You would have paid. You would have cleaned. You would have tried not to get in the way. But then ‘a couple of months’ would end, and ‘just a little longer’ would begin. Then Aunt Sveta would call — ‘What would it cost you? You have an empty room.’ Then a cousin — ‘Just three days, Lika, I swear.’ And then Andrei’s mother with a suitcase and the words, ‘I only came to help.’ I’ve already been through this. Not with you. With others. And every time it ended the same way: I became the guilty one if I said ‘no.’”
Masha lowered her gaze. Tears dripped onto her bag.
Galina Ivanovna straightened.
“So you decided in advance that all of us are parasites? That none of us is capable of behaving decently?”
“No,” Lika shook her head. “I decided that I would no longer test that on myself. I’m tired of being a testing ground for other people’s conscience.”
Andrei sat beside his mother. He placed a hand on her shoulder carefully, as if afraid she might push it away.
“Mom, listen. Lika and I have been together for ten years. Ten. And all this time I… I took her help and passed it on. Without asking if it was convenient for her. Without thinking about how much it cost her nerves. I thought family had to help. But in reality, I simply got used to there being a person who always said ‘yes.’ And I stopped noticing when it had already become hard for her.”
Galina Ivanovna looked at her son. For a long time. Then she shifted her gaze to Lika.
“And what do you want? For all of us to bow at your feet for every ruble?”
“I want you to treat me like a person, not like a resource,” Lika replied. “If you need help, ask. Normally. Without pressure, without reproaches, without ‘you wouldn’t refuse, would you?’ And if I say ‘no,’ then it means no. And that is not the end of the world. It is just a word.”
Masha suddenly sobbed louder.
“I didn’t want… I really didn’t want it to be like this. It’s just… after the divorce, everything collapsed. I thought at least here I would be accepted…”
Andrei turned to his sister.
“We will accept you. But not at Lika’s expense. I’ve already arranged with Aunt Lyuba — you’ll stay with her for a month. Then we’ll find you a room in a rented apartment. I’ll help with the first payment. But after that, you’ll manage on your own. You can do it. You always have.”
Masha looked at her brother in surprise.
“You… are serious?”
“Serious,” Andrei nodded. “And if Mom agrees, we’ll help you together. But not through Lika’s home. Through our shared efforts.”
Galina Ivanovna was silent for a very long time. Then she slowly stood up.
“I… I suppose I got too used to everything being solved quickly. That if something is needed, then it must be done. I didn’t think it could hurt someone.”
She looked at Lika. Directly. Without her usual mockery.
“Forgive me, Lida. I behaved… wrongly. I thought I had the right to demand. But I don’t have that right.”
Lika nodded. Not immediately. But she nodded.
“I accept your apology.”
Her mother-in-law took a step toward the door.
“We’ll go. Masha, get ready.”
Masha stood up. She approached Lika. She didn’t hug her — she simply touched her hand.
“Thank you… for not cutting me off completely. I understand now.”
When the door closed behind them, the apartment became very quiet.
Andrei came over to Lika. He hugged her from behind and rested his chin on her shoulder.
“I thought it would be worse,” he said quietly.
“So did I,” she answered.
“But… you were right. All this time.”
Lika turned in his arms. Looked into his eyes.
“I didn’t want to be right. I wanted you to finally see.”
He nodded. Slowly.
“I saw. And I won’t look away again.”
They stood like that for a long time. Simply embracing in the middle of the living room, listening to the ticking clock.
Then Andrei said:
“You know… maybe we should have a housewarming party? Just for the two of us. No guests. No relatives. Just us, wine, and the view of the river from the window.”
Lika smiled. For the first time in recent days — easily, without a trace of tension.
“Let’s. But I’m warning you: I’m not going to stay silent anymore if something is wrong.”
“You shouldn’t,” he replied. “I know how to listen now.”
They stepped out onto the balcony. The night was cold but clear. City lights glowed below. Somewhere far away, a car drove past. Somewhere nearby, the wind rustled softly.
Lika rested her head on Andrei’s shoulder.
“You know,” she said, “I thought that if I said ‘no,’ everything would fall apart. But it turned out the opposite. It became stronger.”
He kissed her temple.
“Because now this really is our home. Not a passageway.”
And they stood there, looking at the lights until they were completely cold. Then they returned to the warmth — to the place where nothing else needed to be proven. Where they could simply be together.
