“Did you transfer two hundred thousand from our savings account?” Jana asked, gripping her phone so tightly her fingers turned white as the cold numbers on the banking app glowed back at her.
“Anton… tell me this is some kind of mistake.”
She stood in the middle of the hallway with one shoe missing, the air thick with the smell of shoe polish mixed with a чужой sweet perfume that wasn’t hers.
In the corner, Anton hurriedly stuffed snorkeling fins and a mask into a large bag, carefully avoiding her gaze as if none of this concerned him, while from the kitchen came the steady clinking of a spoon against porcelain.
“Jana, don’t make a big deal out of it,” he said finally, brushing imaginary dust off his jeans.
“I sent the money to my mom, her back is in terrible shape, the doctor prescribed treatments, Sochi is expensive right now, especially health resorts, I couldn’t send her somewhere cheap.”
Jana’s voice became unnaturally calm, but her eyes burned.
“So you spent our vacation money, the money we saved for a whole year, giving things up, and we were supposed to leave the day after tomorrow.”
At that moment, Zinaida Arkadyevna stepped out of the kitchen in an elegant sand-colored linen suit with heavy wooden beads around her neck, her expression full of superiority.
“To the seaside with us? Please, you’d only be in the way, you should be working, it’s peak season, Anton needs rest,” she said with a mocking smile.
Jana slowly turned to her husband, but Anton was busy zipping up the bag as if he hadn’t heard a word.“Did you transfer my ticket to her name behind my back?” Jana asked.
“Jana, stop this interrogation, Mom needs it more, I’m just doing my duty,” Anton snapped.Jana looked down at her hands, the green stain from florist tape still embedded in her finger, and something inside her quietly broke.
Without a word, she walked into the bedroom, pulled out an old gym bag from under the bed, and began packing.“What are you doing?” Anton appeared in the doorway.“I’m leaving,” Jana said quietly, forcing the zipper closed.
“I’m not going to live with someone who treats me like a convenient bank account and a replacement housekeeper.”“Where are you going?” Anton scoffed.
“You’ll be back in a month.”Jana silently pushed past him, walked out, and slammed the door so hard it echoed through the building.
It took her three days to find a small, damp apartment on the ground floor of an old block, where the walls smelled of moisture and at night a transformer hummed endlessly outside the window.
To avoid thinking, she took extra shifts at the greenhouse, her hands aching from heavy pots, dirt permanently under her nails, but the exhaustion helped her sleep.
Two weeks later, a tall man approached the counter, tense and irritated.“You sold me three dried-out thujas,” he said sharply, throwing down a crumpled receipt.
Jana calmly checked it.“You didn’t pick them up for two weeks, these plants don’t survive that.”“So it’s my fault?” he leaned closer.“Yes, but I can offer you a discount on a new batch,” she replied steadily.
The man, Ilya, hesitated, then nodded, and half an hour later they were loading heavy pots into his van in near silence“Sorry about earlier, rough time,” he muttered.
“It happens,” Jana replied.That evening, as she scrubbed her stove, her phone rang, Anton was calling, and she answered out of reflex, but instead heard Zinaida shouting.“Put that éclair back, look at yourself, only kefir!”
“Mom, stop it, I’m an adult, I want to go home, with Jana I could live normally!”Anton’s voice burst out before the call abruptly ended.Jana slowly set the phone down, feeling no satisfaction, only emptiness.
Three days later, Anton waited for her outside the greenhouse, looking exhausted, sunburned, and disheveled.“Jana… I was wrong, please come back, we’ll move, my mother won’t interfere anymore,” he said quietly.
Jana stopped.“You don’t want me back because you love me, you need someone to stand between you and her,” she replied calmly.Anton lowered his head.
“I won’t do that anymore,” Jana added and stepped onto the bus, leaving him behind.The next day, Zinaida called.“Jana, please, Anton is falling apart, he won’t eat, he won’t work!” she cried.
Jana answered coldly.“He became exactly what you raised him to be,” and hung up.When she stepped out of the storage room, Ilya was standing there with a paper bag.
“I brought you something,” he said awkwardly, handing it over, inside were two packs of expensive coffee.Jana gave a faint smile.“That’s too much.”
“No, it’s because you’re honest,” Ilya said.Jana looked at him for a moment, then nodded.“I have a coffee pot, break in ten minutes.”
As she walked between rows of green plants, she took a deep breath, the smell of soil and leaves surrounding her, the future uncertain, but for the first time she knew one thing for sure—she was finally living her own life.
