“I’m not putting pressure on him,” Yulia replied. “I’m defending my rights. Those are different things.”
“Defending her rights…” Lidia Vasilyevna shook her head. “Have you thought about the family? About what people will say?”
Natalia Mikhailovna, who had been silent until then, suddenly spoke:
“My daughter loses nothing by defending herself. But enduring and staying silent while she’s treated with contempt—that’s a loss. A real loss. Lidia Vasilyevna, I’ve watched my daughter for five years. How she faded, how she lowered her head, how she forgot herself. Enough is enough.”
Her mother-in-law fell silent, for the first time encountering direct resistance where she was used to meeting submission. She stood up, buttoned her coat.
“Well, as you wish. I hope you at least separate on good terms, without any mess.”
The day of signing the settlement agreement was overcast. The sky over Zhytomyr was covered with gray clouds, and a fine drizzle was falling. Gleb came with Lidia Vasilyevna; Yulia came alone, calm, in a simple dress she used to wear before her marriage. The lawyer presented the terms. Yulia would receive monetary compensation for her share of the joint payments on the apartment, and the rest of the property would be divided according to an inventory.
Gleb picked up a pen, ready to sign, but Lidia Vasilyevna couldn’t hold back:
“You brought it to this! You destroyed a family! Who will marry you now, a divorcée?”
Yulia raised her eyes and looked her mother-in-law straight in the face—for the first time in all these years, not looking away, not lowering her head.
“Lidia Vasilyevna, if marriage requires silently enduring humiliation and turning a blind eye to betrayal, I’m better off without such a marriage. And I will be happier than I was.”
Silence hung in the room. Gleb was quiet, not defending his mother, and this silence was more eloquent than any words. Yulia took the pen and signed. Her hand did not tremble.
As they were leaving the office, Gleb lingered in the doorway.
“Forgive me, if you can.”
“I hold no grudges,” she answered. “But there’s no going back.”
Yulia rented a one-bedroom apartment in a residential area, not far from her work—small, with a view of a playground, with someone else’s furniture and curtains. For the first few nights, the silence was oppressive, and dinner alone reminded her of the past, but she didn’t avoid these feelings, learning to live with them, to accept them as part of her new existence.
“You’ve changed, my daughter,” Natalia Mikhailovna said when Yulia visited her on the weekend. “You used to always look down, but now you look straight ahead.”
“Maybe because I stopped being afraid,” Yulia smiled. “It turns out loneliness isn’t as scary as I thought.”
Gleb called a month later, asking to meet. They saw each other in a coffee shop near her work. He had lost weight, there were dark circles under his eyes, and his whole appearance suggested that an empty apartment was not such a pleasant place after all.
“I didn’t think it would go this far,” he said, turning a cup of cold coffee in his hands.
“I’ve been thinking about it for a long time,” Yulia replied. “I was just afraid to admit it to myself.”
“Maybe we could try again? I’ve realized some things during this time. I realized I was wrong.”
She looked at him—at the man she had lived with for five years, whom she had once loved, whom she had trusted implicitly.
“Do you want to come back because you miss me, or because it’s inconvenient for you to be alone?”
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