Her father saw Vera on the bus with Artem in her arms and turned so pale, as if a ghost from the past he feared to meet had appeared before him.
When she got off at the snow-covered bus stop in worn-out boots, holding her two-year-old son wrapped in an old snowsuit, he approached and asked in a trembling voice:
— “And where is the car I gave you two years ago for the birth of my grandson?”
Vera had to confess what she had been silent about for three years.
— “My husband took the keys on the very first day.”
He takes all her salary. And yesterday, her mother-in-law shouted that if Vera didn’t sign over the apartment, her father wouldn’t live to see the morning. And then Pyotr Nikolaevich silently took out his phone and uttered a phrase that changed everything. They don’t know what he did for the last 15 years.
Snow was falling in large flakes, settling on Vera’s shoulders and on the hood of Artem, who was sniffling and rubbing his reddened cheeks with his little fists. Bus number 12 drove away, leaving behind a cloud of exhaust fumes and dirty splashes on the asphalt.
Vera shifted her son to her other arm, feeling her muscles grow numb, and looked at the schedule board. The next one was in 20 minutes. She didn’t notice her father at first.
Pyotr Nikolaevich was walking from the grocery store with two bags in his hands, wearing his old sheepskin coat and a knitted hat that his mother had made for him while she was still alive. He stopped three meters from the bus stop, stared at his daughter, and his face turned gray.
— “My dear daughter, is that you?”
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