“Let’s file for divorce, and I’ll take the mortgage in my name while you’re on maternity leave and not working,” suggested the cunning husband.
“Let’s get divorced. That would be fairer. I’ll take the mortgage in my name, and you can join later, when you finish maternity leave.”
Anya was sitting by the window, gently stroking her rounded belly, when her husband Dmitry said these words. In one hand, he held a cup of tea; in the other—a phone. His tone was dry and businesslike, as though he were discussing the purchase of a washing machine.
Anya looked up at him, trying to find even a hint of a joke in his face, but all she saw was cold determination.
“So you’ll sit at home, and I’ll be the one paying. That’s not fair,” Dmitry added without taking his eyes off the phone screen.
Anya caught her breath. She stared at her husband—at his neatly trimmed hair, the little mole above his left eyebrow that she once kissed so tenderly—and she didn’t recognize him. Sitting in front of her was a stranger, a man with a calculator instead of a heart.
Anya and Dmitry had been married for six years. They’d met back in university, in their third year, while studying in the reading room for exams. Dima sat beside her with a cup of coffee and a joke about formulas being easier to memorize in good company. He was a future programmer doing freelance work, she was an honors student dreaming of opening her own accounting office. Six months later they were already renting a tiny room together, with a shared bathroom on the floor. It was cramped, but fun—they cooked on a single electric burner, slept on a folding couch, and dreamed about the future.
“First, we’ll save for the down payment,” Dmitry would say, hugging her. “Then we’ll buy a two-room apartment in a new building. The kids’ room will face south so it gets sunlight.”
“And a balcony for sure,” Anya would add. “I’ll grow flowers there.”
After their modest wedding with only close family, they began saving. It became their shared mission, their guiding light through the storm of rental apartments and temporary discomforts.
They lived frugally, saving every penny. Anya worked as an accountant in a small firm and handled additional accounting remotely for several sole proprietors. She stayed up until midnight over documents, her eyes burning from the monitor, but she kept going. Dmitry found a job at an IT company. He earned a little more, but not by much—maybe five or seven thousand rubles difference.
Every month they proudly calculated their savings. They kept a special notebook—Anya neatly wrote the amounts in two columns: “Dima” and “Anya.” The numbers were almost identical.
Their parents couldn’t help. Anya’s mother, Nina Sergeyevna, lived alone in an old house near Kolomna on a small pension. Dmitry’s parents, Ivan Petrovich and Galina Nikolaevna, were barely making ends meet themselves, paying off a loan for a dacha they bought in their retirement.
“It’s okay, we’ll manage on our own,” Anya would say, kissing her husband on the cheek. “We’re a team.”
Three years ago, they moved into a rented two-room apartment—a step up. They finally had a separate bedroom and their own kitchen. They hung wedding and travel photos on the walls—they’d once gone to Sochi for a week, their only vacation in all those years.
When the pregnancy test showed two lines, Anya didn’t believe it at first. She bought three more—also positive. Dmitry spun her around the room, laughing and kissing her belly.
“Now we definitely need to buy an apartment!” he exclaimed. “Our baby needs a real home!”
By then, they had almost settled on a good option—a two-room apartment in a new building in Lyubertsy. Yes, it was far from the center, but it was theirs. They had saved just enough for the down payment.
But suddenly Dmitry began delaying. First the neighborhood wasn’t right—“too far from the metro,” then the floor plan—“the kitchen’s too small,” then the building wasn’t finished—“what if it’s a scam?” At first Anya agreed, searched for new options, but gradually she noticed: he found flaws in every apartment.
Every evening Dmitry sat at his laptop comparing mortgage rates and calculating things in Excel. He muttered about risks, crises, instability.
“Dima, we’ve already decided,” Anya would say softly, sitting down next to him. “Why are you dragging this out?”
“I need to think everything through,” he would reply without looking up. “This is a serious decision. For thirty years.”
When she tried to get involved, he brushed her off:
“Don’t worry about it. You’re tired as it is.”
The nausea was exhausting. Anya barely made it through work, the smells in the subway made her sick, but she continued handling her extra clients in the evenings.
“Maybe you should take maternity leave early?” Dmitry suggested once.
“But we’re saving for the apartment.”
“I’ll manage. They promised me a raise.”
The raise never came. And his conversations about the apartment grew stranger. Dmitry started using “I” instead of “we.” “I’ll take the mortgage,” “I’ll pick the bank,” “I’ll handle the documents.”
On Wednesday she came home early—she’d left work for an ultrasound. Dmitry didn’t know and expected her around eight as usual. When she entered the apartment, she heard his voice from the room. He was talking on the phone, apparently with Lyokha, his university friend.
“Yes, of course, she’ll be on maternity leave. Three years at home minimum, not earning anything. And I’ll be working alone… I don’t want to split the apartment fifty-fifty later, if something happens. I’ll be the one investing all this time while she’s with the baby…”
Anya froze in the doorway. Her heart was pounding so loudly she thought Dmitry might hear it. But he continued:
“Yes, I know. But it’s logical — the apartment should belong to the one who pays…”
At those words, something inside Anya broke. She quietly walked into the kitchen, sat down at the table, and stared for a long time out the window at the gray courtyard with its crooked playground. The man she trusted more than anyone in the world, with whom she had been building a shared future, turned out to be capable of such thoughts.
Dmitry came out half an hour later and looked surprised.
“You’re early.”
“I had an ultrasound. Everything’s good with the baby.”
“Great.”
And he went to take a shower, without asking about the baby’s gender or about the ultrasound images she was holding in her hands.
She didn’t make a scene then. She just pretended everything was the same. And then she began to act. While Dmitry slept, she read legal forums. She learned about maternity capital, about spouses’ rights to jointly acquired property, about how to protect her interests. She sat in the kitchen with a calculator almost until morning, calculating scenarios.
For the first time, a thought appeared: what if she lived without him? Scary. But could she live with a man who…
The next day, Dmitry walked into the room with the look of a “businessman” ready to close an important deal. In his hands were printed sheets with calculations, payment schedules, and comparisons of bank offers.
“Anya, I calculated everything,” he began, spreading the papers across the table. “Look, if we take the mortgage in my name only, the rate will be 11.5%. But if it’s in both our names, it’ll be 13%, because the bank will consider your maternity leave a risk. They might even refuse or give us a smaller amount. So it’s better to put it in my name. We live together anyway, what difference does it make whose name the papers are in?”
Anya carefully looked through the documents. The numbers blurred before her eyes.
“And what exactly are you suggesting?” she asked in an even tone.
“Well, like I said. We’ll get a fake divorce, I’ll take the mortgage in my name, and then when you go back to work, we’ll get married again and transfer half to you. Everything’s fair.”
“And what if something happens?” Anya tried to speak calmly. “What if you… don’t want to transfer it later?”
He smirked, and that smirk cut deeper than any words:
“What could happen? We’re a family. This is just practical… You don’t trust me?”
There was coldness in his eyes. The same coldness she’d seen when he talked to difficult clients or argued with his boss. A businesslike, calculated chill of a man who knows exactly what he wants to get.
“Think about it until the weekend,” he added and walked out, leaving the papers on the table.
Anya understood: he had already decided everything. These papers, calculations — all a performance so she would agree on her own.
“I’ll think about it,” she said.
That evening, while Dmitry slept, Anya took from the closet their shared squared notebook, the one where they had recorded expenses and savings since their very first apartment. A tradition they had started in that tiny rented room. By the light of a desk lamp, she flipped through the pages. Next to each month were two columns: “Dima” and “Anya.” And her numbers were no smaller. Sometimes he contributed more, sometimes she did. But overall — equal.
She turned to the last page. Six years of life turned into columns of numbers. In that time, she had contributed nine hundred eighty thousand rubles. Almost a million. And now he wanted to pretend her contribution didn’t exist, that everything was his accomplishment, his right to the apartment.
She closed the notebook and sat in the dark for a long time. The baby kicked inside her, as if sensing her tension. She stroked her belly:
“Everything will be alright, little one. Mommy will figure something out.”
This was her life, her work, her dreams. And she would not allow herself to be erased from this story.
In the morning, Dmitry brought up the “fake divorce” again. He sat across from Anya at the kitchen table, spreading butter on bread in a methodical way, speaking as if he was discussing a shopping list.
“Anya, a fake divorce to get a mortgage is normal practice. I’ve planned everything. We’ll register at the civil office next week. In a month we’ll get the divorce certificate, I’ll submit the bank documents right away. By New Year we’ll move into our own apartment.”
Anya lifted her eyes from her cup of tea. The baby moved inside her, as if listening too. She looked at her husband calmly — no tears, no trembling voice. For the first time in weeks, she didn’t feel like crying or arguing.
“You know, Dima,” she began, her voice steady and surprisingly calm. “Let’s really get divorced. Only for real. I’ll take my share of the savings and buy my own place. Maybe smaller and farther away. But it will be mine.”
Dmitry froze, the knife in his hand suspended mid-air. Crumbs scattered across the table.
“Have you lost your mind? Anya, you don’t know what you’re saying!”
“I know exactly what I’m saying. For the first time in a long time, I understand everything perfectly.”
“But this is… this is insane! You’re pregnant! What are you thinking about?!”
“My child. And about not wanting him to grow up in a home where his mother is nobody. Where she can be erased from documents like an unnecessary line.”
Dmitry jumped up and began pacing the kitchen.
“Anya, that’s not what I meant! It’s not that serious! It’s just paperwork, just a formality!”
“If it’s just a formality, why are you pushing so hard?”
He stopped, staring at her in confusion. Something like fear flickered in his eyes.
“Listen, let’s talk calmly. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I just thought it would be more practical…”
But Anya wasn’t listening anymore. She stood up and walked to the window. It had begun to rain, drops drumming against the glass. Inside her was a stunning clarity — not anger, not resentment, but crystal-clear certainty she was doing the right thing.
A week later Anya took a leave from work and moved to her mother’s house in Kolomna. She packed quickly — there wasn’t much. Her favorite books, a photo album, maternity clothes, a folder with documents. Dmitry was at work. She left him a note: “I’ll file for divorce myself. Please divide our savings according to our records. Be happy.”
Nina Sergeyevna met her daughter without unnecessary questions. She simply hugged her at the door, helped carry the bags, and sat her down at the table.
“Tea? With raspberries, like you like.”
In the evening, the phone rang — it was Galina Nikolaevna, her mother-in-law. Her voice was strict, admonishing.
“Anechka, what nonsense is this? Dima told me everything. You’re pregnant! Don’t you dare make a scandal! Think about the baby!”
Anya held the phone and looked out the window at the old apple tree in her mother’s garden.
“Galina Nikolaevna, I don’t need a scandal. I need a future.”
“What future? What are you talking about? You have a husband, there will be an apartment…”
“I will have my own apartment. Small, but mine.”
The next day, Anya went to the bank. She opened an account in her own name and transferred her share of the savings there — Dmitry didn’t argue, apparently deciding not to make things worse. The bank consultant, a young woman with kind eyes, explained in detail the terms of a mortgage for single mothers.
“With the maternity capital, you’ll have a good down payment. You’ll definitely be able to get a studio.”
That evening, she and her mother sat in the kitchen of the old house. Darkness was falling outside, the firewood crackled in the stove. Anya held a mug of tea with raspberry jam. For the first time in a long while, she could breathe easily.
Three months passed. The February morning was frosty but sunny. Anya stood in an empty studio on the third floor of a new building. The divorce had gone smoothly. Anya invested her savings into a small one-bedroom apartment in Kolomna. Yes, not Moscow, but hers. Thirty-two square meters — a kitchen-living area and a sleeping nook. The windows looked out onto a small river and a pine forest beyond it.
Her belly was already big, with less than a week left before the birth. Anya ran her hand along the white wall, imagining where she would put the crib, and where the changing table would stand.
Her phone vibrated in her pocket. A message from Dmitry — he still wrote once a week, persistently. “Anya, let’s talk. We need to discuss everything. I understand I was wrong. Let’s start over.”
She deleted the message without reading it to the end.
The keys to the studio were pleasantly cool in her palm. Her own keys. To her own apartment. Tiny, far from the city center — but her place. Here, no one could erase her, make her invisible, turn her into a burden.
The baby moved, nudged her from within.
“The most important thing is that we have a home where no one can erase us,” Anya whispered, stroking her belly. “Where we matter, just because we exist.”
Outside, ducks floated on the river. The sun rose higher, flooding the studio with warm light. Anya smiled. They would be okay. She knew it with perfect certainty.
