My husband’s family held a family council in my home, but one question from me will wipe the smile from Pavel’s face

Pavel could no longer answer his mother when she said in a calm voice that leaving my home in the seventh month of pregnancy was a completely normal decision.

I was lying in the half-darkened bedroom and holding my breath. A faint smell of lavender rose from the pillow placed under my head, while my hands rested on my stomach. The baby had moved a little while ago, but now had fallen strangely silent, as if it too were listening to the voices coming from the kitchen.

“Pasha, being a man does not mean only bringing home a salary,” said Elena Mikhailovna. “The family needs a decision. Aliona needs a place to live.”

“Mother, we live here ourselves,” Pavel mumbled with difficulty.

“You? You and Olga?” Aliona chuckled. “Olga will soon give birth to a child, then the child’s expenses will begin. This apartment is large. You have two bedrooms. We will fit in one room too.”

I closed my eyes. I had lived with these people for three years and still thought the worst thing they could do was criticize my salad at a holiday table.

But they were planning to move into my room while I was lying a few meters away.

The wall clock showed ten minutes to four. From the kitchen came the sound of a spoon striking a cup. Every small clink sank into my heart.

“We should talk to Olga,” Pavel said.

“No,” his mother interrupted immediately. “You are not asking her anything. You are informing her. If you approach her softly now, she will have her way again.”

“She is pregnant.”

“Pregnancy does not mean that everyone’s life must revolve around her.”

Aliona’s chair scraped against the floor.

“Nika and I need a room. My child is already eight years old. School is starting. And you, Pasha, if you are my brother, you must help me at least once.”

Pavel sighed. His voice sounded as if he had already surrendered.

“And where are we supposed to go?”

“To Mother’s temporarily,” Aliona replied.

My body froze. His mother’s apartment was not even thirty-eight square meters. There was one folding sofa there, on which Pavel and I had once spent New Year’s night. And now they wanted a woman seven months pregnant to move there.

“Olga will not endure it for long,” Pavel said quietly.

These words hurt me more than hearing the plan itself. “Will not endure it” — as if I were an object that would be difficult to move.

I slowly got out of bed. My legs were trembling, but not from weakness. I took my phone from the bottom drawer of the wardrobe. Twenty-one percent remained on the screen. I turned on voice recording and put the device into my sweater pocket.

In the kitchen, his mother spoke again:

“Pasha, you must make her sign today.”

“What?”

“That statement saying you are temporarily giving the apartment to Aliona. Then we will think about selling it too. You will find a new home. Olga’s parents have a country house too, don’t they?”

My parents had died three years earlier. Everyone knew this.

The doorbell rang.

For several seconds silence fell in the kitchen. Then I heard an unfamiliar man’s voice:

“I brought the documents. Only signatures are needed.”

Pavel pushed back his chair. The lock on the door clicked. I looked at the phone screen and realized that I had no time left.

The bedroom door opened, Pavel’s footsteps came toward me, and his hand pressed against the door handle…

His hand stopped on the handle because at that same moment I opened the door from inside.

Pavel flinched as if he had entered not my room, but his secret. He held a brown folder with thin golden stripes on its corners. Behind him stood Elena Mikhailovna, while Aliona was hiding behind an unfamiliar man.

“Awake?” Pavel asked me.

“No,” I answered. “The walls simply had unusually good hearing today.”

Elena’s face changed, though only for a moment. Then she pressed her lips together.

“Olga, do not start a drama. We are only looking for a solution.”

“Expelling me from my own home is a solution?”

The unfamiliar man awkwardly lowered the folder. He wore a dark green tie and a silver-colored ring on his finger. The smell of paper and the smell of wet metal mixed together in the hallway.

“I am an assistant to a notary,” he said. “It is only a temporary-use agreement.”

“Who contacted you?”

He looked at Pavel.

“Mr. Pavel.”

Pavel immediately shook his head.

“I only asked for a consultation.”

“Signed forms are not brought for a consultation,” I said.

Aliona crossed her arms.

“I told you that pregnancy has disturbed her nerves, didn’t I? She sees an attack in everything.”

I looked toward her.

“You are planning to enter my home, Aliona.”

“Temporarily.”

“Were you waiting for my permission?”

“No one needs permission in a family.”

“Then why did you bring a notary’s employee?”

This time Pavel lowered his eyes like a guilty man. At that very moment I felt for the first time that my fear was slowly turning into anger.

I went into the kitchen. Four cups stood on the table, and in one of them a thin slice of lemon floated on the surface of the tea. It was my cup, the one Pavel left on the windowsill for me every morning. Now it was coming from his hand, and I no longer wanted any warm gesture connected with him.

“Where did this agreement come from?” I asked.

“A lawyer prepared it,” Elena said.

“Which lawyer?”

No one answered me.

The phone was warming in my pocket. The recording was still running. But one thing frightened me: if they realized now that I had heard everything, Pavel might take the phone away or destroy the documents.

“Sign it and let all this end,” Pavel told me. “We are still staying together.”

“Together? When you were dividing my home behind my back?”

“Aliona is really having a hard time.”

“I am having a hard time too, Pasha. I am seven months pregnant and I have a husband who no longer even dares to enter my room.”

Elena leaned against the table.

“You bought this apartment with Pavel’s money. Do not behave as if everything belongs to you.”

My heart dropped heavily once. This was exactly what they were counting on: the belief that I would never dare answer.

“Are you sure you know who this apartment belongs to?” I asked.

Pavel raised his head.

“What do you mean?”

I took the phone out of my pocket and placed it on the table. I had not stopped the recording yet.

“I mean that this conversation has already been saved.”

Aliona turned pale. The notary’s assistant took one step back.

And Elena lost her calm for the first time.

“You cannot prove anything.”

“I have not even tried yet.”

I placed the folder on the table. My surname was written on it, but underneath I could see a stamp I had never seen before.

Pavel clenched his fingers.

“Olga, this is just a formality.”

“Then read it aloud.”

Silence fell in the room. Pavel opened the folder, took out the first sheet, and his eyes widened. Then he looked at the second page, and the blood disappeared from his face.

“This signature…” he whispered.

“What is wrong with my signature?” I asked.

Pavel could not answer me. Just then my phone rang. On the screen appeared lawyer Nino Japaridze, the woman I had secretly contacted two weeks earlier.

I answered the call and said loudly:

“Nino, can you tell everyone now why they should not sign these documents?…”

Nino’s voice rang out clearly from the phone’s speaker.

“Because Pavel never bought this apartment. You are the owner, Olga. Fully and legally.”

Elena Mikhailovna sank into a chair. Aliona covered her mouth with her hand. Pavel looked at me as if he were seeing me for the first time.

“Impossible,” he said.

“Possible,” Nino replied. “The apartment was paid for with an inheritance left by Olga’s father. In the sale contract, the bank statements, and the public registry record, only Olga’s name is written as the owner.”

For several seconds I could not make a sound. I knew this truth, but hearing it aloud still felt as powerful as a window suddenly opening in a locked room.

Pavel took the folder in his hands.

“But this document contains Olga’s consent.”

“No,” Nino said. “This is a forged consent. I have already compared the signature with the samples kept at the bank. The difference is visible even to the eye.”

The notary’s assistant quickly opened his bag.

“I knew nothing about this forgery.”

“That is why I ask you not to touch the documents before leaving here,” I said.

The man immediately went toward the door.

“I will contact the police,” he said.

Elena cried out:

“No one is calling anyone anywhere!”

“They have already been called,” I answered.

I stopped the recording and picked up the phone. A confirmation message was visible on the screen: the audio file had been automatically sent to Nino’s email and my personal storage.

Pavel took one step forward.

“Olga, let’s talk.”

“You talked about me for three hours when you thought I could not hear you.”

“I did not want to throw you out.”

“But you signed.”

“Mother told me it was a temporary solution.”

Elena struck the table with her hand.

“I am fighting for everyone! Aliona is left alone, she cannot raise her child, while you are drowning in money!”

“My apartment is not a means of correcting your problems,” I said calmly.

Tears filled Aliona’s eyes.

“I did not know it was forged.”

“But you knew you did not have my consent.”

She could not answer.

Nino continued on the phone:

“Olga, today we will file a statement about forgery and an attempt at illegal appropriation of property. You should also know that we have found several suspicious transfers in your account during the last six months.”

I looked at Pavel.

“What transfers?”

His face became gray again.

“They were our common expenses.”

“From my inheritance account?”

The silence said everything.

Nino added in a low but stern voice:

“Part of the money was transferred to Aliona’s account. And part to a company registered in the name of Pavel’s friend.”

Elena looked at Aliona.

“Did you take the money?”

“Pasha told me Olga agreed!”

Pavel lowered his eyes.

I seemed to be standing in the middle of the room, but the floor no longer existed beneath my feet. My entire marriage turned into a question at once: how many things had been lies, and how much had been my desire to believe that no lie existed?

A strong knock sounded at the door.

Nino immediately said:

“Olga, do not open it until you know who it is.”

A man’s voice followed the second knock:

“Mr. Pavel, I urgently need to speak with you. It is the director of the company to whose account the money was transferred.”

Pavel looked at the door for the first time, as if his entire future were entering from there.

But the door was only the beginning. My phone rang again, and Nino quietly told me that she had received a second message from the bank — one whose existence Pavel did not yet know about…