My Husband Told the Story of My Shame at the Pool Party, but When He Saw Me Return Home, His Smile Suddenly Disappeared

At the moment when my husband told the neighbors that I was supposedly ashamed to go to the pool because of my own body, I was standing on the cold bathroom floor and watching his live broadcast. The phone was trembling in my hand, but not from shame. From anger.

Gleb’s face was visible on the screen. The August sun was burning in Karina’s yard, drops of water were falling from the pool, and loud music was playing. Beside him stood Marina Vovki in a white swimsuit, wearing my white linen robe.

I immediately recognized the small protruding thread at the third button. I had bought that robe on our first trip after our wedding. Gleb had kissed me then under the striped awning and told me:

“In this, you will always carry our honeymoon with you.”

Now Marina was laughing in the same robe, while Gleb was applying sun cream to her shoulders.

“Gleb, where is Evgenia?” Stephanie asked from behind the camera.

Gleb froze for a moment. Then he smiled again.

“She wasn’t in the mood today.”

“Did something happen to her?” Karina asked.

“No, she is simply… ashamed to appear by the pool. Lately she has been very anxious about her body.”

He waved his hand lightly in the air, as if showing my body. It was enough for everyone to understand. Yet it remained vague enough for him to deny everything later.

I turned off the screen. I put on a black swimsuit and looked at myself in the mirror for a long time. The body because of which Gleb had once loved me had suddenly become his weapon.

Ten minutes later I arrived at Karina’s gate. I stood barefoot on the hot stones. In my hand I held only the white robe, in whose pocket something heavy was moving.

Stephanie was the first to see me. She slowly lowered her phone. The conversations did not fall silent all at once; first the laughter stopped at the table, then by the pool, and finally the music disappeared too.

Gleb turned around.

“Eva, you were planning to stay at home.”

“You decided that.”

I approached Marina.

“Take off the robe.”

“Gleb told me you no longer used it,” she replied.

“Gleb decided many things instead of me today.”

“Don’t make a scene,” Gleb joined in softly. “Everyone can see that you are upset.”

“Everyone sees only what you showed them.”

Marina opened the buttons and handed me the robe. The fabric smelled of her perfume and sun cream. I put my hand into the pocket, and my fingers touched a small metal object.

I pulled out a brass key. It had a blue scratch near the head. It was the spare key to our house, which had disappeared from the kitchen drawer two weeks earlier.

“Why do you have this?” I asked Marina.

The color drained from her face. Gleb reached toward the key.

“Eva, give it to me. We will talk at home.”

I stepped back.

“Apparently Marina has already been in our house without me. So let us talk here.”

Karina turned off the music. Marina looked at Gleb and said quietly:

“He said that you agreed.”

“To what?”

For the first time Gleb could no longer smile. Stephanie opened her phone and took a step toward me.

“Evgenia, he wrote to all of us. He told us that if you behaved strangely, we should not call you…”

Gleb turned his head sharply.

“Stephanie, put the phone down.”

But she had already turned the screen toward me. At the end of the message it said: “After Saturday, no one will believe Evgenia anyway.”

At that same moment my phone lit up once more. The name of Nino, the lawyer, appeared on the screen. She had told me only one thing beforehand: if Gleb began the plan today, I should call her. I answered, and heard a voice:

“Evgenia, do not return home alone. Now enter the basement with that key and take the green folder…”

I turned on the call’s speaker. Everyone in the yard fell silent.

“What folder?” Gleb asked.

“The one whose existence you are not supposed to know about,” I replied.

Marina’s lips froze.

“Gleb, you told me this house already belonged to you.”

“Be quiet, Marina.”

“You told me Evgenia was ill and would sign everything for you.”

Gleb moved toward her, but Karina extended her arm in front of him.

“You will not touch anyone here.”

Nino said calmly from the phone:

“Evgenia, the key opens the basement’s inner door. The camera is already on. Do not move anything.”

My fingers were growing cold, although the sun was burning overhead. When the key disappeared two weeks earlier, I thought Gleb had simply misplaced it. Now I understood that someone needed to take something out of my house.

In the evening only Nino and Stephanie came home with me. The key fit the basement door. Inside, there was the smell of dust, dampness, and old paper. The green folder was waiting for me on a shelf.

Gleb shouted from the hallway:

“Eva, don’t open it!”

For the first time, his voice was truly frightened.

I placed the folder on the table. Nino put on a glove, opened the lock, and took out the first sheet. At its sight Stephanie held her breath.

This was not merely a house document. It was evidence that Gleb had been doing the same thing to others for a long time as he had been doing to me.

But the heaviest sheet was still lying at the very bottom of the folder…

Nino slowly took out the last sheet and flattened it on the table. The basement’s yellow light trembled on the paper. I was looking at the brass key pressed into my palm.

“Is this your signature?” Nino asked.

My name was written on the sheet. Below it was a statement as if I agreed to the sale of the house, to Marina moving there temporarily, and to psychological supervision because of my own will.

“No,” I said. “This is not my signature.”

“Gleb told me that you had signed it yourself,” Marina said in a whisper.

Gleb stood at the door. His face was ash-gray.

“Eva, Nino is distorting everything. You had not been stable in recent months. I was simply trying to help.”

“Then why did you lose my key?”

He found no answer.

Nino took a small memory card from the folder and inserted it into the laptop. Our kitchen appeared on the screen. The video had been recorded two weeks earlier. Gleb stood by the cabinet, while Marina sat in front of him.

“When Evgenia does not come on Saturday, everyone will see that she cannot live alone,” Gleb was saying. “The neighbors will sign. Then the doctor will easily confirm that I should make the decisions.”

“And the house?” Marina asked.

“The house will be transferred to me. If everything goes correctly, you will already be living here next week.”

In the video Marina picked up my robe.

“Should I wear this too?”

“Definitely. People must think that you have already taken her place.”

A heavy silence fell in the basement.

Marina covered her face with her hands.

“I did not know whether the signature was false. I thought you really had agreed.”

“You knew that you had taken my things,” I said.

“I thought soon none of it would be yours anymore.”

Gleb took one step toward me.

“This is a family matter. Using the video is illegal.”

“I installed the camera on the day the bank statements disappeared from my office,” I replied. “And Nino already has copies.”

For the first time he looked at me the way people look at an opponent.

“You planned all this in advance?”

“No. I simply finally believed my own words, not yours.”

Nino handed me a second document. It said that Gleb had been transferring money from our joint account into Marina’s name and paying rent for a separate apartment for her.

“That money was for my mother’s treatment,” I said.

Gleb lowered his eyes.

At that same moment Nino’s phone rang. She answered and listened for several seconds. Then she turned toward me.

“Evgenia, the bank is calling me. Gleb submitted an application to sell the house an hour ago. The buyer is already waiting at the notary.”

Gleb raised his head.

“That is impossible.”

“No,” Nino said. “What is impossible is that he thought you would let this pass calmly.”

Suddenly the sound of a car braking came from outside the door. Someone knocked three times on the basement door.

Nino looked out the window, and her face changed.

“It is not the police,” she said. “It is the buyer. And he is already holding the purchase agreement…”