Marina Sergeevna was kneeling in front of the kitchen cabinet, holding the loose door in place with her shoulder while her other hand searched blindly in the dim light, trying to line up the hinge with two tiny screw holes.
The cabinet door had been hanging crookedly from a single screw for two years.
Back then, Igor had promised he would buy new hardware that weekend.
Then the next weekend.
And the next.
Eventually, he simply stopped noticing that the door hung unevenly and refused to close properly.
“Why not just keep hanging there?” Marina muttered to the empty kitchen. “You weren’t bothering anyone.”
But now, for some reason, she could no longer stand looking at it.
She went out to the balcony and brought back an old plastic box where she had stored screws, nails, pieces of wire, and mysterious keys for thirty years. She poured part of it onto a sheet of newspaper and searched for nearly twenty minutes.
Then she found it.
The right screw.
Slowly, patiently, she fixed the hinge. First one side, then the other. She adjusted it, tightened everything, and stepped back.
The door was straight.
Marina gently pushed it with her finger.
It closed softly.
Clicked.
For the first time in two years.
She remained sitting on the floor for a while, staring at that little cabinet door.
And strangely, that was what made her eyes sting.
Not the fact that her husband had left six weeks earlier.
Not the betrayal.
Not the humiliation.
That little door.
Because suddenly she understood something.
It had never really been about the cabinet.
She had been the one hanging there for years.
The phone rang while she was putting the screws back into the box.
The screen showed one name:
“Igor.”
Not “Igoryok,” the affectionate name she had used for twenty-five years.
She had changed it a week after he left.
Marina wiped her hands on her apron and answered only on the fourth ring.
“Yes?”
“Marina, hi.”
His voice sounded strange. Formal. Careful. The artificial lightness people use when they know they are uncomfortable.
“How are you?”
“I’m fine. What do you want?”
“I’m calling about my things. Remember? Some of my stuff is still there. My suits, my tools… and the big gray suitcase. The one on the top shelf in the storage room.”
“Come and get them.”
“I can come Saturday. Around noon. Is that okay?”
“It doesn’t matter to me. Come at noon.”
“Thank you.”
A pause.
“Listen… you didn’t change the locks, did you?”
Marina almost smiled.
“Yes. I did.”
“Oh. Right. Of course. That’s good.”
He said it quickly, as if her decision still somehow required his approval.
“I’ll call you from downstairs.”
“Fine.”
Marina ended the call first.
Six weeks earlier, Igor had packed his gym bag, stood in the doorway, and said:
“Marina, I can’t keep lying to you or myself. We both know we’ve been living like roommates for a long time.”
Then he added, staring somewhere past her shoulder:
“I met someone. With her, I can finally breathe again.”
Her name was Alina.
She was twenty-two years old.
A fourth-year student in the same department where Igor Vitalyevich had been teaching regional economics for twenty years.
Marina didn’t learn about her from Igor.
She learned from Lyuba, the neighbor from the third floor.
“Marina, don’t think I’m gossiping,” Lyuba had said carefully over the phone. “I just don’t want you hearing it from strangers. She’s a student. Very young. He rented her an apartment on Chekistov Street. They’re living there.”
“Thank you, Lyuba,” Marina had replied calmly. “I’m glad you told me.”
She didn’t cry that evening.
Or the next day.
The tears came two weeks later.
Quietly.
Angrily.
When nobody could see.
Then even those stopped.
And all that remained was silence.
A strange, echoing silence in an apartment where she had started repairing things herself.
An hour later, her daughter Dasha called by video.
“Mom, did you eat?”
“Yes,” Marina lied.
“I can tell by your eyes that you didn’t.”
“Dasha, I’m an adult woman. Stop worrying.”
Then she smiled slightly.
“Your father called.”
Dasha immediately became serious.
“What did he want?”
“He’s coming Saturday for his things.”
“For his suitcase?” Dasha said bitterly. “How symbolic. Like something from a movie.”
“Dasha…”
“Mom, I’m serious. Don’t let him talk to you alone. You know how he is. He comes in feeling guilty, and somehow he leaves making you feel like you’re the one who did something wrong.”
Marina smiled.
“I’ve known your father for twenty-five years. I can handle a suitcase.”
“Mom… how are you really?”
Marina was silent for a moment.
“You know what’s strange? I thought I would fall apart. I thought I wouldn’t survive it.”
She looked toward the repaired cabinet.
“But I fixed a cabinet door.”
“What cabinet door?”
“The one under the sink.”
“The one Dad kept promising to fix?”
“Yes.”
Marina laughed softly.
“It turned out all it needed was a screw and a screwdriver.”
Dasha’s voice became gentle.
“Mom… Dad promised a lot of things.”
“I know.”
Saturday arrived.
Marina woke up early. She cleaned the kitchen even though there was almost nothing to clean.
She took the old gray suitcase down from the top shelf and wiped away the dust.
They had bought it years ago when they planned a trip to Montenegro.
A trip they never took.
She folded his suits carefully.
Packed his tools into a separate box.
She wasn’t trying to punish him.
She wasn’t trying to hold onto anything.
Not his belongings.
Not him.
At half past eleven, Alina arrived.
She looked pale but determined.
Marina made her tea.
They barely spoke.
There was nothing left to say.
Five minutes before noon, the intercom rang.
“That’s him,” Marina said.
Alina went pale.
“Go open the door.”
“Me?”
“Yes.”
“But why?”
“Because you can’t run from fear forever.”
With shaking hands, Alina pressed the button.
The entrance door unlocked.
A few minutes later, they heard the elevator.
His footsteps.
The familiar heavy steps.
The sound of keys.
Then silence.
Igor had forgotten the locks had been changed.
The door opened.
Alina stood there.
Igor froze.
The prepared guilty smile disappeared from his face.
Because in that second, he understood everything.
The two separate worlds he had carefully kept apart had finally collided.
“Alina?”
Her voice trembled, but she didn’t move.
“Hello, Igor. I’ve been waiting for you.”
Then he saw Marina standing in the kitchen doorway.
“Marina… what is this?”
“Your things are ready,” she said calmly. “And apparently, there are things you two need to discuss.”
Igor stepped inside.
But not like a man coming home.
Not like someone who belonged there.
Like a stranger entering someone else’s apartment.
Because that was what he was now.
When he finally carried out his suitcase, his tools, and the last of his bags, he stopped at the doorway.
“Marina… I’m sorry.”
She looked at him for a long moment.
And realized something surprising.
She wasn’t angry anymore.
She was simply tired.
“Go, Igor.”
He pulled the suitcase toward the elevator.
The wheels bumped softly over the threshold.
Marina closed the door.
Quietly.
Not with anger.
Not with revenge.
Just finally.
She went back to the kitchen.
Put the kettle on.
Sat down at her own table.
In her own apartment.
In her own life.
Her eyes fell on the cabinet door.
The same one she had repaired.
She reached out and pushed it.
It closed smoothly.
Perfectly.
Clicked.
Exactly the way it was supposed to.
Marina smiled.
That evening, Dasha called.
“Well?” her daughter asked immediately. “Did he take his suitcase?”
“He did.”
“Was there a scene?”
Marina looked out the window.
“There was. Just not the one you expected.”
She smiled.
“Now tell me about that Kostya you mentioned.”
“Mom!”
Marina laughed.
“What? Why wait? Life is too short.”
And she sat there in her own kitchen.
In her own home.
Where nothing hung crooked anymore.
Everything was finally in its place.
Including her.
