“My apartment should be mine! I have nowhere to live! And I refuse to hear ‘no’!” — that’s how my mother-in-law confronted me.
“Do you even understand what you’ve done?!” Roman’s voice broke into a shout as the door slammed behind his mother.
Alina stood by the window, holding a cup of cold tea. The tea was trembling — just like her hands.
“I defended myself,” she answered quietly.
“You threw my mother out!” Roman tossed his jacket onto the chair. “Just kicked her out like a dog!”
“She was demanding my apartment!” Alina lifted her gaze. “I put up with your mother for three months, Roma. I stayed silent when she called me lazy. When she called me ‘an outsider’. When she interfered in every little thing — from dinner to the bedsheets. But today she crossed the line.”
Roman froze, then flared up again.
“Crossed the line? Are you sure it wasn’t you who crossed it?”
“It wasn’t me!” Alina slammed the cup down on the table. “I shouldn’t have to justify myself for protecting my home!”
Silence filled the kitchen. Outside, a tram hissed past, its wheels clattering loudly. Somewhere above, a door slammed.
“Rom,” Alina said quietly, “she would have destroyed us. You wouldn’t even notice how we’d start living by her rules.”
Roman sank into a chair. His face was gray, tired. He had spent the whole day at work, and now his family was finishing him off.
“I’m tired of all this,” he said hoarsely. “Of these fights, the yelling, the accusations. Of always being stuck between you two.”
“And I’m tired of always being the guilty one,” Alina replied. “Every time your mother is unhappy, it’s my fault. When you stay silent — it’s also my fault.”
She walked over to him and stood in front of him. There was no anger in her voice — only pain.
“You know, Rom,” she said, “I’m not a bad person. I just want to live in peace.”
He didn’t answer.
A week passed. The apartment was quiet again, but peace did not return.
Alina woke up in the mornings not from the sound of the radio, not from the smell of coffee — which Roman used to brew — but from a strange, sticky silence.
Roman started coming home later and later. Dinners sat cold on the table, and the TV droned dully in the corner. Alina stopped counting the days — everything blurred together: evening, night, morning.
“Late again?” she asked one night when he returned at midnight.
“Meeting,” he replied shortly, without lifting his eyes.
“Meetings until midnight?”
“Ali, don’t start.”
She sighed.
“I’m not starting. It’s just… you leave in the morning and come back at night. I barely see you.”
“Maybe that’s for the best,” he muttered, taking off his shoes. “We’re both exhausted.”
Alina bit her lip. Her chest tightened.
“For the best — are you serious right now?”
“Yes, I am,” he shot her a glance. “I can’t breathe in this apartment. Every corner is her yelling, your accusations, my attempts to make peace.”
“You think it’s easy for me?” Alina snapped. “I’ve been holding it together all this time only for us!”
“For us?” Roman let out a dry chuckle. “No, Ali — for yourself.”
She wanted to reply, but stayed silent. His words cut like a knife.
That weekend, Alina decided to visit a friend — just to escape, even for a day.
When she came back in the evening, the apartment smelled of men’s cologne and something unfamiliar — not her shampoo, not her cream.
There was a toothbrush in the bathroom. Pink.
She froze in the doorway. Her heart thrashed in her chest like a trapped bird.
Roman walked out of the bedroom in a home T-shirt, saw her — and froze as well.
“This… isn’t what you think,” he began, but the words hung uselessly in the air.
“And what do I think, Rom?” Alina asked. “That you’ve found someone else?”
He looked away.
“We were just talking.”
“In bed?”
“Don’t exaggerate,” he said irritably. “She’s a colleague. She has problems. I helped.”
“Helped?” Alina laughed. “Interesting way to help — giving her a toothbrush.”
“She brought it herself,” he muttered.
“So she already feels at home here.”
He stayed silent.
Alina spent the night in the kitchen. She sat staring out the window, trying to figure out exactly when everything went wrong.
Once, they used to laugh until they cried, argue over who would get up first to buy bread, make vacation plans.
Now — strangers sharing the same apartment.
She remembered Roman once, before the wedding, saying:
“I don’t want to repeat my parents’ fate. I want everything between us to be honest.”
The irony — it was his parents who ruined everything. Or rather, one of them — Galina Petrovna.
Alina imagined her sitting in her rented room, calling her son and complaining:
“She threw me out, and you’re defending her.”
And Roman, torn between duty and love, listening yet again to his mother sobbing into the phone.
Her phone buzzed on the table. A message from Roman:
“We need to talk. Tomorrow.”
Morning.
He was sitting at the table, gloomy, unshaven. In front of him — a mug of cold coffee.
“I think we should live separately,” he said right away.
“So — get divorced?”
“No. Just… take a break.”
“Right. A break — until your colleague gets a new toothbrush?”
“Ali, enough!” he exploded. “I can’t live under this constant tension anymore!”
“And I can?!”
“I didn’t say it’s your fault. But maybe… we’ve both cornered ourselves.”
Alina laughed — bitterly, almost hysterically.
“In a corner? No, Rom — this isn’t a corner. This is the end.”
She stood up, walked to the window, and stared at the gray sky for a long time.
“When your mother moved in with us, I thought — I’ll endure it. For you. But you didn’t endure it yourself.”
He said nothing.
“Fine,” she said quietly. “Leave. But not on a break. For real.”
“You know, Romochka, I’m not a bad person,” Galina Petrovna sighed, looking at her son over a cup of cheap instant coffee. “It’s just that my life’s been hard. Nobody understands how difficult it is for a woman my age to be left alone.”
Roman stayed silent. He sat across from her, staring somewhere past her. The room in the rented flat was tiny: a bed, an old table, a wardrobe with peeling doors. It smelled of bleach and wet rags.
“I never asked you for anything but attention,” his mother went on, pretending not to notice how he avoided her gaze. “And you… you just abandoned me. For that…”
“Mom, stop,” he said wearily. “I didn’t abandon you. I’m just tired of the scandals. And don’t start about Alina again.”
“What, am I not allowed to tell the truth?” she snapped. “That wife of yours ruined everything! You used to be different — kind, caring. And now… cold.”
“Maybe I just grew up,” he replied quietly. “Or realized that living under constant pressure is impossible.”
“Pressure?!” Galina Petrovna jumped to her feet. “I gave my whole life to you! Worked, stayed up at night so you could get an education, so you’d have everything! And now I’m — pressure?!”
“Mom,” he stood up too, trying to stay calm. “Please don’t start again. I just came to check how you are.”
She turned to the window. Her reflection stared back at her — tired, with smudged lipstick and empty eyes.
“How am I? Nowhere. No son, no home. Sitting in a rented hole like some tenant.”
Roman sighed heavily.
“I’ll transfer you money for the next month. But Mom — please, don’t call Alina.”
“I’m not going to,” she said indignantly. “Let her live with her pride.”
Alina now lived alone.
Six months passed. She changed jobs — left the office where every corner reminded her of Roman and joined a small real estate agency. She worked long hours, ten hours a day, just to keep from thinking.
Each morning began the same: coffee, mirror, a quiet “hold on” before stepping out the door.
Friends invited her out — to parties, to cafés — but Alina almost always refused. She felt she no longer had the strength for other people’s conversations.
Sometimes, passing by their old building, she would catch herself searching for their former windows. The ones that once had white curtains and her African violets on the sill.
She had replanted the violets, but one of them had withered. Strangely, it was the one that used to stand closest to the sofa where Galina Petrovna slept.
One evening, when Alina returned home, she found an envelope in her mailbox.
No return address. The handwriting — painfully familiar.
“Alina, hello. Don’t be angry at me. I am very ill. Romka doesn’t speak to me. I am alone. Help me. Please.”
Signed: Galina Petrovna.
Alina stood in the stairwell for a long time, holding the letter. Then she went up to her apartment, tossed the envelope onto the table, and sat down.
Something was pounding inside — not pity, not anger, but a kind of exhaustion mixed with obligation.
“Of course,” she said aloud to herself. “How could it be otherwise.”
She scrolled through her contacts. Roman’s number was still there.
Her fingers trembled as she pressed “call.”
“Hello?” — his voice was hoarse, as if he hadn’t slept all night.
“Hi,” she said quietly. “I got a letter from your mother.”
Pause.
“And what does it say?”
“She says she’s sick. Seems serious.”
“Yeah, I know,” he replied dully. “She was diagnosed with diabetes. Blood sugar nearly forty. She spent two weeks in the hospital.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because we weren’t speaking, Ali. Remember? You said yourself — ‘leave forever.’”
She closed her eyes.
“That doesn’t mean I want you both dead.”
Roman sighed.
“She’s at home now, alone. I tried to hire a caregiver, but she drove the woman out. Said she was ‘stealing food.’”
“Classic,” Alina said — and caught herself hearing warmth in her own voice. “Listen… if you want, I’ll go see her. Check on things.”
“You?” Roman sounded genuinely surprised. “After everything that happened?”
“Yes,” Alina replied softly. “Not for her. For myself. To put a full stop.”
A day later, she was standing at the door of that same rented flat. It didn’t open right away — first came coughing from inside, then heavy footsteps.
“Oh… it’s you,” said Galina Petrovna, leaning against the doorframe. She looked worn out: sunken face, inflamed eyes.
“May I come in?” Alina asked.
Her mother-in-law didn’t answer, but stepped back into the room.
Inside smelled of medicine and stale laundry. On the table — a pile of pills, beside it — half-eaten soup and a cup with dried coffee stains.
“I’m just sitting here, sick,” said Galina Petrovna quietly, as if apologizing. “No one visits. Not even my son.”
“Are you surprised?” Alina replied calmly. “You destroyed everything yourself.”
“I just wanted him to be near,” whispered the older woman. “Wanted him not to forget his mother.”
“And you forgot that he was a husband,” said Alina. “That he had a family.”
Galina Petrovna sat down, hugging her knees.
“You know… I thought I could fix it all. That he’d forgive. But now I understand — it’s too late.”
Silently, Alina took medicine, water, and a clean towel from her bag.
Then she reheated the soup, washed the dishes. All of it — without a word.
When she was about to leave, Galina Petrovna said quietly:
“I know I’m to blame. I’m not asking for forgiveness. Just… thank you for coming.”
Alina nodded and walked out.
A week later, Roman called.
“Mom’s gone,” he said. “In her sleep.”
Alina didn’t say a word. She just clenched the phone until it slipped from her hand.
The funeral was modest. A few neighbors, the district doctor, Roman and Alina.
After the ceremony, they walked silently along the cemetery path.
“She mentioned you,” he said. “Before she died. She said she had been wrong.”
“Too late,” Alina replied.
“Too late,” he echoed.
They stopped at the gate. The wind rustled the poplar branches, and leaves fell at their feet.
“You know,” Roman said quietly, “all this time I’ve been thinking about us. About whether maybe… there’s still a chance to rebuild.”
Alina looked at him — there was no anger in her eyes, only fatigue.
“Rebuild?” she repeated. “Rom, we’ve lost too much. Your mother, our home, our faith in each other. You can’t build again from that.”
He said nothing.
“Live,” she said. “Just live. Without me.”
She walked away without looking back.
In spring, Alina was rearranging her flowers on the windowsill again.
This time the violets stood firm, with large, rich purple blooms.
She looked at them and thought that maybe life could start over — not with smiles and kisses, but with silence in which, finally, one could breathe.
Her phone buzzed on the table. A new message:
“Alina, thank you for going to see Mom back then. Without you, I wouldn’t have made it in time. Take care. — R.”
She stared at the screen for a long time, then deleted the message.
She turned to the window, added fresh soil to the pot, and whispered:
“That’s it. Now — truly over.”
