New Year’s Eve promised to be magical, but beneath the clinking glasses and festive lights, a carefully planned retribution was hiding. While everyone was preparing to make a wish to the chiming of the clock, a young woman was preparing completely different surprises for her family.
— Happy New Year, mother-in-law! Here is your gift.
“Eviction Notice.” These words sounded like a bolt from the blue.
— And for you, darling, the divorce papers.
Kira saw her husband’s apartment for the first time two weeks after the wedding. Before that, they rented a studio on the outskirts because Artem said it was impossible to live with his mother. Despotic, always dissatisfied with everything… Kira nodded, believed him, and was glad that at least in this they were lucky. They could start with a clean slate, without parental supervision.
But at the end of the first month of living together, the money ran out. Artem worked as a manager in a construction company. His income was unstable: sometimes thirty thousand, sometimes fifty, depending on which projects were completed. Kira worked as an accountant in a small firm for forty-five. The studio rent ate up twenty-eight. And when it was time to pay for the second time, Artem sighed:
— Maybe we should move in with my mom after all? Well, at least for a while, until we save up for something of our own.
Kira gritted her teeth. She knew that “for a while” never works out in such stories. But there was no choice. Continuing to save for rent meant getting into debt.
The apartment turned out to be a three-room flat in an old brick building not far from the center. Bright rooms, high ceilings, parquet flooring. Her mother-in-law, Zhanna Borisovna, met her at the door with a strained smile. Tall, bony, with short-cropped, steel-colored hair. A massive chain around her neck, three rings with stones on her fingers. She was dressed in a house suit that, as Kira later realized, cost more than her monthly salary.
— Well, hello, lovebirds! — said Zhanna Borisovna. — Come in, make yourselves at home. Artem, do you remember your room? Go on in there.
Kira had expected something worse, but the first week went by relatively peacefully. Zhanna Borisovna worked at the tax office, came home late, had dinner, and went to her bedroom. In the mornings, they hardly crossed paths. Artem left early, Kira a little later, and her mother-in-law was the last to get up.
The problems began in the second week when Kira decided to make dinner. She bought groceries for one and a half thousand, made a roast, a salad, and baked a charlotte. Zhanna Borisovna came in, looked at the table, and pursed her lips.
— You’re quite the homemaker, — she said. — Just next time, warn me what you’re going to cook. I bought a chicken, and now I don’t know what to do with it.
Kira smiled uncertainly:
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