Anna’s breath caught as Sergey’s words echoed through the room. She stood frozen, staring at him in disbelief. He gripped a set of keys tightly, his usually animated face now a mask of irritation.
“I can’t do this anymore,” he repeated, his tone devoid of emotion. “Neither can I, nor my mother. Pack up the kids and move to Lipovka. The house is still standing, the roof is intact. You’ll manage.”
Anna looked at him as though he were a stranger. Ten years of marriage, three children—and now this? Lipovka was a near-abandoned village, a place of forgotten homes and empty roads. No shops, no schools, no future.
“Why…” she began, but he cut her off.
“Because I’m exhausted,” Sergey turned away, avoiding her gaze. “The constant complaints, the endless demands, the way you’ve let yourself go. Mom is right—you’ve become a hen. I don’t recognize the woman I married.”
A lump rose in her throat, but she swallowed it. Their children—Masha, Alyosha, and the eldest, Kirill—were asleep in the next room. Though, knowing Kirill, he had probably heard everything.
“And how will we live? Where will I work?” Her voice came out in a whisper.
Sergey tossed an envelope onto the table.
“There’s some money to get started. The house is in your name. If you’re so independent, prove it.”
Without another word, he turned and walked out. A moment later, the front door slammed shut.
Anna collapsed into a chair, her mind spinning. A single absurd thought surfaced: I baked his favorite apple pie this morning.
The house in Lipovka greeted them with silence and dust. Anna stepped inside, carrying sleepy Masha, while Kirill pushed open the wooden shutters. Sunlight streamed through the dirty windows, illuminating floating specks of dust in the stale air.
“It’s freezing,” Alyosha muttered, hugging himself.
“We’ll light the stove soon, and it’ll warm up,” Anna reassured him. “Kirill, help me?”
The boy nodded but remained quiet. Since their last night in the city, he had barely spoken.
The old stove still worked, and as the fire crackled, a bit of the house’s old warmth returned. Anna looked around, remembering childhood summers spent here—her grandmother’s fresh bread, the attic filled with drying herbs, the cool cellar stocked with apples. Now, it was just a hollow shell of the past.
That night, the four of them slept huddled together in the same bed. The children drifted off quickly, exhausted from the move. Anna lay awake, staring at the ceiling, wondering how her life had unraveled so completely.
The morning light revealed the full extent of their new reality. The yard was overgrown, the apple trees gnarled and unkempt, the barn sagging with decay. The well was covered in moss.
Anna surveyed it all and—unexpectedly—laughed. A bitter, desperate laugh.
This was her inheritance. Her new beginning.
The days that followed were a blur of exhaustion. She woke each morning hoping to hear the hum of the coffee machine, to see Sergey walking into the kitchen. But the house remained silent.
“Mom, when is Dad coming for us?” Masha asked one evening, her small face hopeful.
“Soon,” Anna lied. What else could she say?
Sergey ignored her calls. Once, he sent a single message: You have everything you need. Give me time.
Time for what? To realize what he’d lost? Or to erase them from his life completely?
By the end of the week, the money he had left was dwindling fast. The house needed repairs. They needed food. But most pressing was the realization—there was no work in Lipovka.
“Maybe you should return to the city?” suggested Polina Ivanovna, one of the last remaining villagers.
Anna shook her head. “We have nowhere to return to. Here, at least, we have a roof over our heads.”
That was the day she decided to clear the garden.
“Kirill, will you help?”
The boy hesitated, then nodded. They spent the day pulling weeds and breaking hardened earth. By evening, her hands were blistered, her back aching. And they had barely made a dent in the land.
As the sun set, Kirill finally spoke. “Why are we doing this?”
“To grow food. Potatoes, carrots, tomatoes…”
“No, I mean—why are we here? Why don’t we go back home?” His voice carried an edge beyond his years. “What really happened with you and Dad?”
Anna hesitated. Should she tell him the truth? That his father had abandoned them? That Sergey’s mother had always seen her as unworthy? That there was likely another woman?
“We need time to think,” she said carefully. “Sometimes adults need space to understand—”
“To understand if they still love each other,” Kirill finished for her. His eyes darkened. “Is it because of that woman? The one from the party?”
Anna’s stomach twisted. Valeriya—tall, elegant, ever-present. Just a colleague, Sergey had said.
“Maybe,” she admitted. “But remember, your dad loves you all. And I will do everything to make sure we’re okay. Even here.”
Kirill studied her for a moment before stepping forward and hugging her tightly.
“We’ll manage, Mom. You and me. And we’ll take care of the little ones.”
The work became their rhythm. Each day, they cleared more land. The children, at first reluctant, soon found excitement in the idea of creating something new. Masha designed a layout for the garden, insisting on flowers between the vegetable rows—“so it’s beautiful, like a park.”
Then, one afternoon, Anna’s shovel struck something hard.
She brushed away the dirt and gasped. A large, heavy coin glinted in the sunlight.
“Is it treasure?” Masha whispered, wide-eyed.
“I don’t know,” Anna murmured, wiping it clean. The profile of a man—possibly a tsar—stared back at her.
That evening, she found twelve more.
By the time the children were asleep, Anna sat at the table, spreading the coins under the lamplight. The dates—1897, 1899—hinted at a lost era. Her grandfather had once spoken of such coins, rare and valuable.
The next morning, she made a call.
“Uncle Viktor,” she said hesitantly. “I found something in the garden. Old coins. Heavy, gold. I think… I think they might be valuable.”
Silence. Then, his voice, tense with excitement.
“Anya, don’t say a word to anyone. I’ll be there in three hours.”
Uncle Viktor arrived right on time. The moment he saw the coins, his expression darkened with disbelief and wonder.
“This isn’t just a find,” he murmured. “This… this could change everything.”
A year later, the small village of Lipovka was no longer forgotten. Where abandoned houses once stood, new families had moved in. A historical museum—telling the story of the Levitsky family and their long-lost treasure—brought visitors from all over the country.
Anna stood at the entrance, welcoming a tour group.
“Our museum tells the story of how treasures can be hidden not just in the ground, but in the roots of family and history,” she said with a smile.
In the distance, Sergey’s SUV pulled up. He visited every weekend now. Not as her husband. But as a father. As a man who had finally realized what he had lost.
And maybe, just maybe, as someone who was trying to find his way back home.