My husband asked me to give a kidney to his mother. “Prove your loyalty,” he said, and I agreed. Four days after the surgery, he came to my room, but he wasn’t alone.
Beside him walked a woman in a scarlet dress, and behind them, they wheeled in my mother-in-law in a wheelchair. Arseny threw an envelope with divorce papers onto my chest. But he didn’t know the most important thing.
Arina lost her parents on the highway when she had just turned nine. A truck crashed into their car at full speed. Her father didn’t even have time to turn the wheel, and her mother, sitting in the front seat, took the first impact. From that day on, her life was split in two. In one half remained her mother’s hands that smelled of vanilla cream and her father’s laughter on Sundays when he would toss her up to the ceiling and catch her at the last moment.
And in the other, there was only the orphanage with its echoing corridors, iron beds in a row, and the strange faces of caregivers who changed every six months and never remembered any of the children’s names.
After graduating, she received a diploma from an economics college not because she dreamed of accounting, but because it was the only free major with a dormitory. But without connections and money, even a modest position remained an unattainable dream. Employers would look at the line “orphanage graduate” on her application and politely promise to call back, which they never did.
Arina moved to the city and got a job as a consultant in a clothing boutique in a shopping center. The work was easy, the salary was small, but she could look at beautiful things every day and imagine that someday everything would change, that fate would notice her efforts and give her what she had been deprived of since childhood.
Arseny Rossinsky appeared in her life two and a half years ago. He came in to choose a gift for his mother’s anniversary, spent a long time looking through scarves and shawls, setting aside one then another. Tall, confident, with that special way of carrying himself that gives away people who have never known need and never counted money before a purchase.
Arina helped him choose a silk scarf with a subtle pattern, without fawning or pushing expensive items, although the sales commission would have been useful. He looked at her with unexpected interest, holding his gaze longer than politeness required.
— Do you always speak to customers so calmly? — he asked, paying with a no-limit credit card.
— And how should I?…
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