And it did: a real, heavy quiet filled the rooms. After a while, the cat crept out from under the bed, settled beside her, and looked up at Victoria as if it had finally recognized who truly ran the place.
Victoria took down a glass, poured herself a little wine, sank onto the couch, and suddenly felt something she had not felt in years: this apartment belonged to her. No чуж shadows in the corners, no чуж smells in the air, no endless “that’s not how we do things in our family.”
A week passed. Seven whole days of peace. Seven evenings without anyone shouting, “Victoria, where are my socks?” Seven mornings without her mother-in-law’s watchful whisper: “Coffee is bad for you at your age…” It was almost paradise. Still, Victoria knew better than to trust the calm. The storm had not gone away; it was merely pretending.
Sure enough, on Sunday around lunchtime, the doorbell rang. Long, insistent, ominous—like an alarm bell. Victoria looked through the peephole and smiled. Ethan stood on the other side, unshaven, holding a bouquet of carnations. Carnations. The kind of flowers people brought not to celebrations, but to the opposite of them.
“Hi,” he said, eyes lowered. “Can we talk?”
“Of course,” she replied. “Out here.”
“Victoria, don’t make a scene.”
“Ethan, the scene ended last Friday. The performers left, and the clowns went home too.”
He shifted forward a little, testing how far she would let him go.
“I was thinking… maybe we both overreacted.”
“Both?” Her eyebrow lifted slightly. “I put up with it for seven years, and you call this an overreaction?”
Ethan placed the flowers on the shelf, as if laying claim to territory.
“Mom is worried. She says maybe you’re going through some kind of crisis…”
“My crisis, Ethan, was that my patience finally ran out.”
He nodded, uncertain what to do with his hands.
“Then maybe… I could move back in?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because your suitcase and your mother have already found each other. Don’t interfere with their happiness.”
A few days later, Nancy arrived. She carried a bag of tangerines and wore the expression of someone summoned for questioning.
“Victoria, naturally, I understand everything. Work, exhaustion… But we are family.”
“We were family, Nancy, right up until you decided my kitchen was your vacation home.”
Her mother-in-law carefully arranged the tangerines on the table, as though citrus fruit could serve as an apology.
“I only wanted Ethan to live somewhere warm and cared for. He isn’t very practical, you know.”
“Remind me how old he is?” Victoria asked, taking mugs from the cabinet.
“Men are like children. They need a woman who will…”
“Feed them, clean up after them, and deliver moral lectures? Thank you, I’m tired.”
Nancy rolled her eyes.
“You are too proud. A person cannot live like that, Victoria. Life requires softness.”
“And you are far too certain that life is your kitchen. I’m not setting foot in it again.”
That same evening, Laura called—one of Ethan’s relatives—with enough tragedy in her voice to bury a whole neighborhood.
“Victoria, sweetheart, how could you do this to Ethan?”
“And what he did to me was acceptable?”
“He’s a man. Men have their weaknesses.”
“So do I,” Victoria said. “For instance, I don’t enjoy being used as a doormat.”
After the call ended, Victoria spent a long time walking back and forth through the apartment, unable to sit still.