“Starting August first, you’re staying at your mother’s until the sixteenth. Dmitry and Natalia will live here with Alyosha,” Maksim said calmly. “They need somewhere to stay for those two weeks.”
Irina stopped in the doorway of the small room.
Her computer monitor was lying on the dresser. The cables had been neatly wrapped up, and her desk had already been pushed against the wall.
She stared at it for a moment before looking at her husband.
“I’m supposed to leave my own apartment so your brother and his family can move in? Are you sure you haven’t mixed something up, darling?”
Maksim straightened.
“Don’t start. There are three of them, and Alyosha is only eight. Your mother’s one-room apartment is too small for them. You can stay there comfortably for two weeks.”
“And you?”
“I’m staying here. It’s closer to my work.”
Irina looked again at her dismantled workspace.
Maksim had decided that his brother, his wife, and their child needed the two-bedroom apartment. He would keep his usual routine, while she was expected to move somewhere he himself had no intention of going.
The apartment had belonged to Irina before they were married. Maksim had lived there with her for six years. He knew perfectly well that the smaller room was not some spare guest room. It was her office.
She worked from home several days a week, preparing estimates and calculations.
On the evening of July 30, Irina had planned to finish an important calculation.
Instead, she found herself trying to understand why her husband had dismantled her workspace without even discussing it with her.
“When do Dmitry and Natalia have to leave their old apartment?”
“August first. They can move into the new place on the sixteenth.”
“And when exactly did you decide that I was leaving?”
“Irina, what is there to discuss? Dmitry is my brother. He has a family. I want to help him.”
“Then help him. But I’m staying here.”
Maksim sighed impatiently.
“We both live here.”
“Exactly. That’s why it’s strange that I’m finding out the date of my own move after you’ve already taken apart my desk.”
Maksim released the edge of the desk.
“We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”
Irina knew that tactic well.
He wasn’t accepting her refusal. He was simply postponing the argument, as though by tomorrow her answer would somehow change on its own.
It wasn’t the first time.
Maksim often made arrangements with his family and informed Irina afterward. Sometimes he would agree with Dmitry that she would pick up Alyosha after his activities and tell her just before she was supposed to leave. Other times he invited relatives over on Sundays even though Irina had already told him she needed to work.
She would rearrange her plans.
Sometimes she argued. Sometimes she gave in just to avoid another unpleasant evening.
Maksim had apparently begun treating those compromises as permission to make decisions for both of them.
The next day, July 31, Dmitry called Maksim. Their conversation was brief.
A few minutes later, Maksim announced:
“They’re coming over. They want to figure out how everything will work tomorrow.”
“Let them come,” Irina replied. “We need to talk anyway.”
Dmitry and Natalia arrived without luggage. Alyosha was still staying with his grandmother.
Natalia had barely entered the hallway before she started listing everything they would need during the two weeks.
Irina stopped her.
“Wait. Maksim told me you’re planning to move in here tomorrow.”
Dmitry nodded.
“Yes. Until the sixteenth.”
“And what did Maksim tell you about me?”
Dmitry hesitated.
“He said you offered to stay at your mother’s. I told him I felt uncomfortable moving someone out of their own home, but he said it wasn’t a problem for you.”
Irina slowly turned toward her husband.
Maksim immediately frowned.
“Don’t twist my words. I said it was manageable.”
“You said something else,” Dmitry objected. “You told me Irina agreed and that the two of you had already discussed everything.”
Natalia looked from one brother to the other.
“Wait. You two never discussed this?”
“No,” Irina said.
Maksim stepped forward.
“Are we really going to turn this into a huge argument? We’re talking about two weeks, not six months.”
Dmitry shook his head.
“Maksim, I canceled the other temporary option yesterday precisely because you told me everything here was settled.”
“What was I supposed to do? Wait a week while you two discussed the same thing over and over?”
That was when Irina understood.
Maksim hadn’t confused her silence with agreement.
He simply hadn’t wanted to give her the opportunity to say no.
Natalia sat down heavily on the edge of the sofa.
“We have to leave our apartment tomorrow. If we can’t stay here, we need to find somewhere else right now.”
“You can’t stay here,” Irina said firmly.
Maksim turned toward her.
“They already gave up the other option!”
“I just found out about all of this.”
“Alyosha is going to have to move from one temporary place to another!”
“Alyosha has nothing to do with the fact that you made a decision for me. Don’t use him as a reason to force me out of my home.”
Dmitry finally lost patience.
“Maksim, enough. Irina didn’t even know yesterday that we were supposed to move here.”
“So what do you suggest?”
“We find another place.”
Natalia immediately took out her phone.
“I’ll contact the woman whose apartment we were going to rent. Maybe she hasn’t rented it yet.”
A few minutes earlier, Maksim had been speaking as though there was nothing left to decide except who would sleep where.
Now Dmitry and Natalia were searching for another apartment, barely speaking to him.
Irina stayed silent.
Eventually, Natalia stood.
“We’ll go. The sooner we start looking, the better.”
Dmitry paused in the doorway.
“Irina, I honestly thought this was your idea.”
“Now you know it wasn’t.”
“Yes.”
He turned to Maksim.
“Call me if you find something before we do.”
Then he and Natalia left.
Maksim remained in the hallway.
“Great. That went well.”
“What exactly?”
“I wanted to help my brother, and now I look like someone who lied to everyone.”
“You told him I agreed.”
“Because otherwise the discussion would have dragged on forever. You always find reasons why something is inconvenient for you.”
Irina walked back toward her desk.
“So you decided to remove the part of the conversation where I could say no.”
“Don’t twist this around.”
“I’m not twisting anything. Yesterday you dismantled my workspace. Today we discovered that Dmitry was already planning his life around an agreement that never existed.”
Maksim said nothing.
That evening, Dmitry and Natalia found a small apartment through a friend. It was available until August 16, but it cost considerably more than the place they had previously rejected.
Maksim told Irina he would pay the difference from his personal savings.
“Fine,” she said.
He clearly expected more.
She simply returned to her office.
The discussion was over.
On August first, Maksim helped Dmitry move.
Irina put her desk back where it belonged, reconnected her monitor, organized her papers, and finished the calculation she had been unable to complete the night before.
The move that never happened had already cost her an entire working day.
That evening Maksim came home.
“They’re settled,” he said. “The place is small, but they’ll manage for two weeks.”
“Good.”
He stood silently in the doorway.
“Dmitry barely speaks to me.”
“I imagine it wasn’t pleasant for him to discover that his plans were based on a conversation that never happened.”
“You’re still talking about that?”
“What else should I talk about? The problem isn’t that you wanted to help your brother. The problem is that you discussed Dmitry’s comfort with Dmitry. You decided what was convenient for yourself. And you simply assigned my inconvenience to me.”
Maksim looked ready to argue.
Irina continued.
“If you want to help your brother, help him. Give him money, drive him somewhere, spend your time helping him—whatever you think is appropriate. But my workspace and my home are not yours to sacrifice for someone else.”
This time, Maksim didn’t mention the two weeks.
“Okay.”
“I don’t need you to say ‘okay.’ I need you to make sure this never happens again.”
He nodded.
There were no grand promises.
No dramatic apologies.
Just an uncomfortable understanding that something had changed.
On August 16, Dmitry and Natalia moved into their new apartment.
The following evening, Dmitry messaged Irina. They had found some of Maksim’s belongings among their boxes, while they still had a charger that belonged to them.
He asked whether he and Natalia could stop by with Alyosha that evening.
This time, Maksim wasn’t involved.
Dmitry asked Irina directly.
She told him it was fine.
They came, exchanged the belongings, talked briefly, and left.
Dmitry had arranged everything with Irina himself.
Natalia didn’t ask about the rooms.
And Maksim didn’t speak on his wife’s behalf.
When the apartment became quiet again, Irina returned to her desk.
Her calculations were waiting.
Her monitor stood exactly where it belonged.
And for the first time in days, the small room felt completely hers again.
Nothing had been moved without asking her first.
And that, Irina realized, was not too much to expect from the person she shared her home with.
