Kharlamov opened the envelope with a business-like but not cold motion and began to read. I watched his eyes move across the lines, how his eyebrows occasionally raised slightly. At one point, he let out a quiet chuckle, set one sheet aside, and flipped to the next. When he reached the appendix, which discussed my emotional state, he paused, scanned the names of the signatories, the stamps, the dates, and slowly shook his head. Then he neatly folded the papers back and, looking at me over the desk, asked if I wanted to hear the truth or if I needed comfort. I gave a tired smile and said that my wife had already provided me with comfort, so I’d take the truth. He leaned back in his chair, folding his hands on his stomach, and calmly, without excessive emotion, stated that my situation was, to put it mildly, difficult. That Marina had indeed been preparing in advance, which was evident from the dates on the certificates and the way the lawsuit was drafted, that she had a good, experienced lawyer who knew how to emphasize the right points. And they also had a psychologist’s report in which I was described, carefully but insistently, as a person with an unstable psyche, prone to outbursts, with difficulties in controlling my emotions. At the bottom was the signature of a certain Valery Vorontsov, a Ph.D. and a specialist with impressive credentials. He asked if I knew this person. The name meant nothing to me. I shook my head, said I had never heard of him. Kharlamov thoughtfully tapped his pen on the desk and said that essentially, my wife had constructed a picture in which I appeared as a kind of domestic failure who lives off her, earns nothing, and is also unstable and, according to their version, could harm the child at any moment. And she, on the contrary, is a successful, stable, well-off mother, capable of giving her daughter the very best. Plus, the money in the accounts had long been withdrawn, and the house was legally structured in such a way that it was listed as being purchased with her personal funds, which meant that dividing it would be difficult. He immediately clarified that, by law, jointly acquired property is everything purchased during the marriage, even if it is registered in one person’s name. But if the lawsuit included proof that the house was supposedly bought with money received as a gift from her parents, and if this line of argument had been prepared in advance, we would have to fight hard to have it recognized as joint property. Kharlamov said right away that the court wasn’t obligated to listen to fairy tales about how I hadn’t contributed anything, but we would need to prove the opposite: pull up payments, find witnesses, people who knew the conditions we lived in.
As he spoke, I felt a growing sense of helplessness inside me. I saw how neatly and methodically Marina had been erasing me from our shared life long before the first shout. But at some point, Kharlamov suddenly stopped dissecting the papers and looked at me not as just another client, but as a person. He asked if it was true that I had taken care of the house and child all these years at her request, if it was true that I had left a stable job precisely because she had decided so. I nodded, told him how we had discussed the decision, how she had assured me that with her income, one working person would be enough for us, and I could fully dedicate myself to Sofya. He listened without interrupting, then sighed quietly and said that perhaps this very thing had become my most vulnerable point. “You need to understand the main thing right now,” he said, “they are really trying to make you a nobody. Legally, financially, and as a father. And if you just cry at night, they will crush you. Honestly.” I let out a choked laugh and said that’s exactly why I had come, because I couldn’t take on this machine alone. He nodded and, after a moment of silence, said he was willing to take the case, but he had to warn me right away: the road would be long, unpleasant, and often humiliating. I would have to listen to a lot of filth about myself, and officially, on the record. And the chances of everything ending nicely and quickly were, to put it mildly, not high. But to be honest, they still existed.
I hesitated, then finally exhaled what had been burning me since I crossed his threshold: I said that I had almost no money, that the joint account was empty, that even the small nest egg I had saved had disappeared, most likely also with Marina’s involvement. Kharlamov listened in silence, then said he understood, that in such cases one side often ends up with everything, and the other with only their eyes to cry with. But he couldn’t work for free either; he had a family, an office, expenses. He proposed a compromise that at that moment seemed like a life raft to me: he said we could sign an agreement where I would pay him a symbolic amount now, as much as I could scrape together, and the rest would not be a fixed fee but a percentage of what we managed to defend or recover at the end of the case. If we were completely unlucky, if we lost everything, he said he would accept it as his own risk. I felt the stone in my chest thaw a little, though just before it had felt like solid concrete. I said I would do everything possible to gather at least a little. He waved his hand, asked me not to turn him into a benefactor, and emphasized that this was not charity, but standard legal practice when a lawyer believes in a case.
After that, we spent a long time piecing together the initial picture of what had happened. He asked questions about how long Marina had been different, about my relationship with our daughter, whether there had ever been conflicts with neighbors or teachers, if there were witnesses to how I interact with the child. Sometimes he would return to the same episodes, asking for details, telling me not to smooth over the rough edges or portray myself as a saint, because everything would come out in court anyway.
When it was time to pick up Sofya from the gymnasium, I stood up and thanked him for at least not saying it was hopeless. We shook hands. And for the first time in the last 24 hours, I had a feeling that I wasn’t completely alone against this cold, well-oiled machine.
Outside, the air was damp and cool, a gray city day stretched over the city. I walked to the bus stop with the feeling that I had nothing in my hands but a thin folder from Kharlamov and a faint hope. But even that, compared to the rock bottom of the morning, felt almost like a luxury. Ahead of me was the gymnasium, Sofya, and this strange new life where every little detail could unexpectedly become either evidence against me or a saving hook to hold onto.
Continuing to live under the same roof with a person who had coldly and calculatingly laid out my destruction in advance turned out to be such a quiet hell that even words seem too soft to describe it. Marina didn’t move out; she simply relocated to the guest room. And our house, which once felt warm, a little cramped, but ours, turned into a frozen battlefield where I had to coexist with my enemy every day, see her every morning, and yet pretend to live a normal life for Sofya’s sake.
In front of our daughter, Marina played the perfect mother, as if she had been doing nothing else her whole life. She suddenly started coming home from work earlier, no longer late at night as before, but in the evening, bringing expensive gifts, suggesting spontaneous weekend trips, visits to shopping malls, and parks. She always smiled a little too widely. One evening, she entered the living room with a huge box in her hands, shimmering with pictures of princesses, called Sofya over, sat her on her lap, and solemnly announced, “Look, darling, this is your new tablet.” She hugged her, like a picture in an advertisement, adding that this one was much better than the old one, with a better camera, and she had already installed games so the child wouldn’t have to bother. Sofya’s eyes lit up, she clapped her hands with genuine excitement, said thank you to Marina, and snuggled up to her. And at that moment, I was sitting off to the side on the sofa, folding freshly dried laundry, another pile of children’s t-shirts and socks, and felt a tight lump rise in my throat. I understood all too well what Marina was doing: she wasn’t just spoiling the child; she was buying her affection, her trust, her little heart. Marina turned on the new tablet, deliberately turned to me with that same mocking look you see on a person confident of their victory, and said to Sofya, “See, princess, when you live with me, you can get a new toy every week. Not just someone who only knows how to sweep the floor and cook soup.” At that moment, my hands over the laundry felt as if they had turned to ice. I wanted to snap, to scream, to snatch that box from her hands, to wipe that smirk off her face, but I knew that any strong reaction from me would immediately become another piece of evidence of what their papers described me as: irritable, unstable, dangerous. I slowly swallowed, lowered my gaze, and continued to silently fold the shirts. And her venom spread through the room while Sofya enthusiastically tapped her finger on the new bright screen.
From that evening on, the torture became daily. If I cooked dinner, Marina would come into the kitchen, try a spoonful, and say indifferently in front of Sofya, “Too salty again. Oh well, tomorrow we’ll order something normal, something tasty.” If I sat down with Sofya to do homework, she would literally stand between us, gently push me aside, and say to our daughter, “Let me help, Daddy explains things so confusingly, you might, God forbid, get a bad grade.” Gradually, I began to feel like a semi-transparent, almost invisible guest in this house, someone who was needed to keep things running but in whose existence no one was truly interested. I caught myself asking idiotic questions: am I really that bad at cooking, am I really so incapable of explaining homework to a child? Marina knew exactly where to strike. She was turning me into a worthless person, and Sofya was caught in the middle, as if between two walls. On one hand, she still reached out to me, hugged me, sought protection, but on the other, she couldn’t resist the gifts and attention from her mother. Sometimes she would literally hang on my neck, looking at me with that old, warm gaze, and other times, after another day with Marina, she would become a bit distant, especially when her mother would linger in the hallway after work, bend down to her, and whisper something in her ear for a long time, covering the little face with her hand.
One night, long after midnight when sleep wouldn’t come, I went up to the nursery just to look at Sofya, to make sure she was there, nearby, that she hadn’t been taken from me yet. I quietly opened the door. The room was semi-dark, a nightlight in the shape of an animal cast a soft yellow circle of light. Sofya was asleep, spread out across the bed. On the table by the window lay her new, shiny tablet, neatly placed on its stand. And when I bent down to adjust her blanket, I noticed that her hand was clutching something under the pillow. Not a soft toy, but a hard, flat object. I carefully lifted the edge of the pillow and froze. There lay her old, cheap tablet with the cracked screen. The very one I had scolded her for more than once, reminding her to take care of her things. I stood frozen for a second, staring at this strange scene: a new, expensive item on the table, and an old, time-worn tablet under the pillow like a secret talisman. I didn’t understand why she was hiding it when there was so much new and bright nearby. I decided it was just a child’s attachment to a familiar object, to its smell, its feel. I sighed mentally, carefully lowered the pillow back, and quietly left. At that time, I didn’t yet know that this worn-out tablet would become the very secret that would turn our story around. But I already felt questions coiling in my mind, questions for which there were no answers yet.
A few days passed, and one of them became the very outburst after which the illusion of any normal life finally crumbled. That day, as always, I arrived early at the gymnasium gates. On the way home, I was already thinking about how Sofya and I would knead dough together for her favorite chocolate cake; I had promised her, and she was excited. But the bell rang, the children started coming out, and she was nowhere to be seen. One class period passed, then another. I stood at the gate as if rooted to the spot, an icy lump slowly creeping from my stomach to my throat. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore, I called the gymnasium’s office, and a calm voice informed me that they had seen the girl’s mother, that Marina had picked Sofya up early, and everything was fine. The words “everything was fine” hit me like an electric shock. Marina hadn’t told me anything, not a word. I immediately started calling her, once, twice, three times. The phone was silent. Time stretched on thickly, like cold jelly. A little while passed, then more, the clock hands crept far past the usual time. I paced the living room from the window to the door, from the door to the table, my heart pounding somewhere in my throat. The most terrible scenarios flashed through my mind. Only late in the evening did I hear the sound of a car in the driveway. The door slammed, and Sofya burst into the hallway, laughing, with a bag full of bright trinkets, balloons, and some souvenirs from an amusement park. Marina followed with a smug, almost triumphant smile, as if returning from a successful performance…
Comments are closed.