His eyes widened. He threw the envelope aside and rushed towards me. He ran clumsily, stumbling in his unbuttoned shirt, and I noted with bitterness that he was running not like a son to his mother, but like a frightened child to the one who had always solved his problems. But there was no remorse in his eyes. There was the terror of loss.
“Mom!” he yelled, running up to the fence. He gripped the cold bars of the gate that separated us. “Mom, have you lost your mind? Do you see what they’re doing? Stop them!”
I looked at him calmly, feeling a strange detachment. Somewhere deep inside, a mother’s heart was bleeding, but my architect’s mind had already poured concrete over that foundation. “I can’t stop them, Trofim,” I said quietly. “This is no longer my house.”
“You couldn’t have done this!” His voice broke into a shriek. “It was 12 million! 12 million hryvnias, Mom! You spent all your savings on it! You couldn’t just give it away to some ex-cons! This is my inheritance!”
Money. Again, money. Not “this is our home,” not “your grandson grew up here.” 12 million. He saw not walls that held warmth, but numbers in a bank account.
“It was a home, Trofim,” I replied, my voice harder than steel. “I built it as a fortress for a family. But the family is no longer there. And if there’s no family, what’s the point of walls? Now it’s just an asset. A tax deduction.”
I paused, watching as, behind Trofim’s back, workers carried out a huge, tasteless painting in a golden frame from the living room—a portrait of Lukerya as an empress, which she had hung in the most prominent spot.
“And you know, Trofim,” I continued, nodding at the workers, “unlike you and your new relatives, these people know the value of a second chance. They know what it’s like to lose everything and start life over. You don’t know that. But you’re about to find out.”
“You’re a monster!” a scream rang out. Lukerya. She had seen me. Seeing the cause of her world’s collapse, she completely lost her human facade. Forgetting the guests, her status, the cold, she rushed towards me.
Her face was contorted with fury. Her mouth was open in a silent scream. Her hands were crooked, like the claws of a harpy. “It’s you! It’s all you, you old witch!” she shrieked, running across the lawn. “I’ll kill you! I’ll scratch your eyes out!”
She was running straight at me. Trofim recoiled, not trying to stop her. He just watched. But she didn’t make it. Her path was blocked. Silently, in unison, like a single mechanism.
Three of the foundation’s workers—the same ex-prisoners the guests were so afraid of—stepped forward and stood between me and the enraged fury. They didn’t raise their hands, didn’t make a single aggressive move. They just formed a wall. Shoulder to shoulder.
The huge guy with a scar across his cheek crossed his arms over his chest and looked down at Lukerya. There was so much calm, heavy contempt in his gaze that she crashed into it as if into a brick wall. She stopped half a meter from them, breathless, spittle flying from her mouth.
“Don’t touch me!” she hissed, trying to get around the human wall. “Let me go! I’ll show her! She took everything from me!” “Ma’am,” the big guy rumbled, without moving a muscle. “Step away from Pelageya Karpovna. Your reach isn’t long enough.”
Lukerya froze. She looked around. Her guests stood around her. Ladies in fur, officials with glasses, her daughter Anfisa, clutching her grandson. They were all looking at her. The floodlights mercilessly illuminated her contorted face, her running mascara, her disheveled hair.
She realized she was losing. That her performance was over. And then the hysteria turned into panic. Real, animal panic of a cornered beast that realizes its den is blocked by stones. She turned to Trofim. Then to Anfisa. Then back to me…
