The phone buzzed on the table for the third time in five minutes. Irina didn’t need to look at the screen. Her mother-in-law never gave up after one ring.
She picked up.
“Irochka, sweetheart, where are you?” Tamara’s voice oozed sugary sweetness. “Mishenka and I have been waiting at the notary for half an hour! Today we’re signing the papers for the apartment, remember?”
Irina exhaled slowly. Of course she remembered. Hard to forget the day someone tries to take your home from you.
“I told you yesterday,” she said calmly. “I’m not coming.”
A short, sharp pause. Then Tamara’s voice hardened.
“This is for your own good. The apartment will be in Misha’s name. You’ll all live together. What’s the problem?”
“The problem,” Irina replied, “is that it’s my apartment. My parents left it to me. And I’m not signing anything.”
She hung up.
It had all started three months earlier, when Misha came home from visiting his mother, fidgeting, unable to speak. Finally, he blurted out her idea:
Irina should transfer the apartment to him. For ‘stability’.
Irina had laughed bitterly.
“Your mother wants me to give you my parents’ apartment ‘just in case’? No.”
From that moment, the pressure campaign began. Daily visits. Endless guilt trips. A “friendly” lawyer brought to Irina’s door without invitation. Misha repeating his mother’s arguments like a script.
And then one day Irina overheard the truth. Tamara, in her kitchen, telling her son:
“Either she signs the apartment over to you, or you threaten divorce.”
Irina stepped into the room.
“No need. I’ve already made my choice. You both can leave.”
Misha had nothing to say. He didn’t defend her. He didn’t defend their marriage. He simply left—to his mother, as always.
A week passed. More harassment. A message demanding she meet them at a notary. Misha wrote that he was confused and didn’t know who was right.
That was Irina’s final answer.
She packed her documents, contacted a lawyer, and prepared for divorce.
When Misha finally returned with flowers and apologies, she saw it clearly: he wasn’t here because he understood anything. He was here because his mother had sent him back to try again.
“Go,” she told him. “To your mother. Our marriage ends here.”
He shouted, slammed the door, threatened she’d regret it.
But Irina felt only relief.
She blocked his mother’s number, placed her documents safely back in the folder, and sat down with a cup of tea. Her apartment—her parents’ last gift—was still hers.
Tomorrow she would call the lawyer again.
She would start a new life. Her own.
Alone? Maybe.
But finally safe.
