Anastasia rasped that night, her breathing becoming shallow and whistling, like the sound of punctured bellows. “Come closer. Sit here, on the edge.”
Viktoria leaned in, and her mother-in-law’s bony fingers gripped her wrist with a strength one wouldn’t expect from a dying person. Her nails dug into the skin painfully, and her eyes, clouded by morphine, suddenly blazed with a piercing clarity that people sometimes have just before the end.
“I know,” the old woman whispered, pulling her daughter-in-law closer. “I know about this fake Vietnam trip. I know about his woman. Valerka… he’s not mine, daughter. He didn’t turn out like this because of me. He’s a foundling. I found him in ’86, on the hospital steps, in a blizzard.”
“Anastasia Prokhorovna, what are you saying?..”
“Be quiet and listen, there’s no time.” Her mother-in-law pulled her even closer, so that Viktoria could feel her weak, ragged breath on her cheek. “When you bury me, go to the homestead. There’s a cellar in the summer kitchen, you know where. Dig under the potato box. There’s a tin box, a candy box. I left everything for you, do you hear? It’s all yours. You became a daughter to me, Vika. a real daughter. But he… He’s a stranger. A stranger by blood and by soul.”
“Mom…” The word escaped on its own, for the first time in three years of marriage.
Anastasia smiled. For the first time in all these terrible months of illness, the wrinkles on her face smoothed out for a moment.
“That’s better.” She fell back onto the pillow, and her grip loosened. “I’m tired, daughter. I want to sleep. Just sit with me a little longer.”
Her mother-in-law’s hand slipped from Viktoria’s wrist and fell onto the blanket. Her breathing stopped so quietly, so imperceptibly, that it wasn’t immediately clear: she was gone.
Viktoria sat motionless, holding the icy hand in her warm ones, and listened to the blizzard howling outside, sweeping away the traces of her old life, carrying everything that came before this night into the white haze.
With trembling fingers, she dialed her husband’s number, but the calls went to voicemail—the subscriber was unavailable. Again. And again. On the sixth try, a message came through the messenger: “In a meeting, can’t talk. What happened?”
Viktoria typed, struggling to hit the letters: “Mom died.” Two blue checkmarks—read. And then silence. A long, endless silence in response.
He called three hours later, after Viktoria had already called for an ambulance to confirm the death and was sitting in the kitchen, staring blankly at the wall. His voice was full of feigned grief that made her jaw clench.
“How? When? I just talked to her yesterday! Oh God, Mommy!”
“You haven’t called her in two months, Valera,” she was surprised by how steady and cold her own voice sounded. “I checked her phone every day.”
“Vika, you’re in shock, you’re confused, that’s understandable.” He instantly switched to a sympathetic, condescending tone, the kind one uses with capricious children. “Listen, I know how hard this is for you, but I can’t come. The contract is in its final stage, you understand? If I leave now, the plant will lose millions, and I’ll be fired without severance pay.”
“You’re not coming to your own mother’s funeral?”
“Vika, please understand!” Irritation crept into his voice, which he tried to disguise as fatigue. “Just hold on a little longer. I’ll make it all up to you, I swear. I’ll pay back every penny.”
About twenty people gathered at the funeral in the cramped hall of the city crematorium. Three neighbors from the village who had arrived on an early bus, a couple of Anastasia’s distant relatives from Kryvyi Rih, and a few of Viktoria’s colleagues who came to support her and help carry the wreaths.
On a stool next to the deceased’s photograph, adorned with a black ribbon, stood a tablet with a video call. Valery, in a black shirt against a white hotel wall, had tears streaming down his cheeks so naturally that Viktoria couldn’t help but admire his acting talent.
“Mommy!” he sobbed into the screen, pressing a hand to his chest. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t make it… I was trying so hard to earn money for your treatment, I wanted so much to cure you!”
“Poor Valera!” the neighbors whispered, wiping their eyes with handkerchiefs. “Working so far away, trying so hard for his family, he couldn’t even say goodbye to his mother. What a cruel fate…”
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