“Since you gave the dacha to your friend’s son, Mom, now ask him for help,” the girl said after making the decision that would break up their family.
— That’s right. Mom already submitted the paperwork.
Her younger brother’s voice came muffled from the phone. Marina stood in the hallway, still in her coat. Water dripped from a wet umbrella onto the linoleum. Outside, a heavy rain lashed the cornice, and murky rivulets of water ran down the windowpane.
The phone screen still held a message from his cousin Larissa: “Congratulations to your mother on her decision. Kirill will finally have his own apartment. He’s done so much for her, he deserves it.”
Marina read it again. For the fourth time. But the meaning remained the same. The lakeside dacha her father had spent ten years building, fitting one beam after another, was passing into Kirill’s hands. Not hers or Ilya’s, her biological children’s, but the son of her mother’s friend.
