Behind the glass of the visiting room sat the man she had once loved, broken, haggard in his prison uniform. Vadim confessed immediately, without wasting time on a preamble:
— You weren’t infertile. Mom was swapping your medication for regular multivitamins. We didn’t want a child that would tie us together for 18 years. We planned a clean divorce after we took the apartment. Angelina was supposed to give birth to the real heir.
Snezhana felt nausea rise in her throat. This wasn’t just fraud; it was a violation of her body, of her dream of motherhood.
— Now you’re free, — Vadim added with a pathetic attempt at a smile. — If you think about it, it’s even a blessing.
Snezhana left without looking back.
Another 10 years passed. Fifteen-year-old Anna, a tall girl with her father’s eyes and her mother’s stubbornness, brought home a new boyfriend, Maxim Shirokov, the captain of the school basketball team, a charming young man with a pearly white smile.
— I like that you’re not obsessed with money like other girls, — he told Anna at dinner.
Snezhana, hearing this phrase, almost dropped her fork. She recognized the pattern instantly; it was the predator’s opening line, the very access code Vadim had once used to unlock her heart.
— Maxim, — she said calmly, — I have a proposal for you. A summer job at the holding. It would look good on your resume.
Maxim beamed, until he heard that the job was in cargo sorting, starting at six in the morning for minimum wage.
— That’s kind of beneath me, — he grimaced.
Anna slowly placed her napkin on the table.
— My great-grandfather worked as a simple loader in the port. My father restores buildings with his own hands. Leave, Maxim.
Snezhana barely held back tears of pride. Her daughter didn’t have to hide under a bed to learn the truth. She had absorbed the lesson through example.
Larisa Arkadyevna died of cancer in the palliative care unit of a district hospital, and a nurse called Snezhana because her former mother-in-law had listed her as an emergency contact. She had no one else left.
— You came, — Larisa Arkadyevna whispered, withered to the bone, almost unrecognizable. — Why?
— Because I won, — Snezhana replied without malice. It was simply a fact.
— I was jealous of your light, — the dying woman admitted. — I wanted to steal it, but I only got burned.
Larisa Arkadyevna was afraid of dying. Snezhana took her cold hand.
— Close your eyes. It’s over. Let go.
The monitor went silent. Snezhana paid for the funeral. It was the last thing she did for the Yakovlev family…
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