“You threw away the food my wife cooked and called it ‘slop’ in front of our children! You are humiliating the mother of my children in her own home! I am sick and tired of you trying to set up a dictatorship here! Either you apologize to her right now, or you will never see me or your grandchildren again!”
Alexei had repeated those words in his mind many times since.
Not because he was proud of having raised his voice.
But because he knew that some sentences only break free from a person when years of consideration finally cease to be consideration.
That evening, he came home a little later than usual.
It was 7:12 p.m.—a Wednesday—and damp dust still clung to the doormats at the building entrance because it had been raining all afternoon.
Alexei had worked ten hours, made two phone calls on his way home, and, while stopped at a traffic light, thought about how Maria was planning to make baked trout with vegetables.
It wasn’t a feast.
It was an ordinary dinner in an ordinary family, and therein lay its value.
Maria didn’t cook to impress anyone.
She cooked because Kirill only liked broccoli when it was lightly roasted, and Anja always pilfered the cherry tomatoes from the dish first.
She had collected these little habits the way other people collect jewelry.
Maria and Alexej had been married for nine years.
During those nine years, Maria had not run her home like a museum, but rather like a place where two children could breathe freely.
The kitchen was clean, bright, and practical, with white countertops, an oven that heated reliably, and a drawer where the children kept their own little napkin rings.
Galina Petrovna had hated this kitchen from the very beginning.
She did not always say openly that she hated it.
Sometimes she would simply run a finger over an empty countertop and ask whether there was any scent of life here at all.
Sometimes she would open the refrigerator as if examining a file, sighing over yogurt, fish, vegetable bins, and small glass containers of prepared meals.
