“Are you putting me out?”
“I’m taking back my own home.” Veronica folded her hands in her lap. “You can pick up the keys tomorrow. Or the day after, if you prefer. But I will not keep listening to you call me useless inside my own apartment. That ends now.”
“Serge!” Claudia swung toward her son. “Are you going to let her speak to me like that?”
For a moment, Serge said nothing. Then he slowly shook his head.
“Mom, enough. Veronica is right. You can’t live here and insult my wife every single day. I’m tired. I dread coming home because I know there’s been another fight. I’m tired of being trapped between you. And I’m tired of my own cowardice.”
“So you’re choosing her over me? Over your own mother?”
“I’m choosing my family.” He looked at Veronica. “And peace. I want to come home without wondering when the next explosion is going to happen.”
Claudia snatched up the papers and stormed out of the kitchen. The bedroom door slammed so hard that the glass in the china cabinet rattled.
The next morning, Claudia emerged with two suitcases. Her face was stiff and blank, though her eyes were red. She passed Veronica without looking at her, took the keys to the new apartment from the table, and paused in the doorway.
“You tore my son away from me. He will never forgive you for this.”
“I gave him his wife back.” Veronica didn’t even lift her eyes from her laptop. “And I gave you exactly what you demanded—independence. Now you’ll be able to find a proper job, just like you advised me to do. Best of luck.”
The door closed with a hard bang.
Quiet settled over the apartment with such weight that Veronica could almost feel ten months of tension sliding off her shoulders. She went to the window and pushed it open. Fresh air swept inside, clearing away the stale, suffocating trace of someone else’s presence.
Serge called an hour later.
“She’s at my office,” he said. “Crying. Demanding that I make you change your mind.”
“And what did you tell her?”
“That it’s time she learned how to live on her own. That I’m exhausted from being pulled apart between the two of you.” He went silent for a breath. “And that you were right.”
Veronica closed her eyes and let out a long sigh.
“Thank you.”
“No. I should be thanking you for not leaving sooner. I was a coward, Veronica. For ten months, I was a coward.”
“But you aren’t now. That’s what matters.”
Three weeks later, Serge came into the apartment smiling.
“Mom found a job.”
“That was fast.”
“At the store closest to her building. As a cashier.” He shrugged off his coat and sat down at the table. “You know what she said? That it’s temporary. That soon she’ll find a real position, not work like that.”
Veronica arched an eyebrow.
“A real job, where people work themselves to the bone. Her words.”
“Exactly. But when she’s the one getting up at six in the morning to stand behind a register, suddenly it doesn’t count.” Serge shook his head. “She still doesn’t get it.”
“She will. Once she gets tired of ordering everyone else around.”
Serge stepped behind her, wrapped his arms around her, and rested his forehead against the top of her head.
“My boss said there’s a promotion coming next week. My salary should go up pretty nicely.”
“Serge, that’s wonderful!”
“I told him I’d still be making less than my wife.” He broke into a grin. “And I told him that part, too.”