Prologue

- Will we fight again? I thought you calmed down. Let's sit down and talk.

Having undressed and undressed, the husband goes into the bedroom, where he washes his hands in the bathroom and comes out to meet me.

- What shall we talk about? – I answer sharply, dodging again from his hands. His touches are unwanted, I don't want them! “About how you sent me for an abortion?”

- Don't take me out, Ksyusha! he warns. - I said enough! Stop twisting my words all the time! I didn't send you there! I said I'll come and we'll figure it out. I came. Let's discuss everything normally and for once not in a raised voice!

I look at him and don't know.

Her husband, who became a stranger, cold, not mine. Gleb trampled on our love, betrayed, destroyed me. And now he just stands opposite, with a stone expression on his face, and frightening rage smolders in his eyes.

- No, you said so! You don't have to back off! What, Gleb, don't you like when they push you against the wall? I spit in anger right in his face. “Thought you could make me look like a fool forever?” Or…” I trail off, and then I voice a terrible thought: “You were going to divorce me!” That's why you made me get rid of our baby!

“Let him say that I was wrong, let him deny and laugh at my accusations, let him!”

I stop breathing, unable to bear this conversation ...

- Ksyusha, come to your senses! Gleb barks impatiently. What are these ridiculous accusations? I'm not going to get divorced and I don't want to! I love you, what's wrong with you?!

“No, you don’t,” I quietly cry, shaking my head. - If he loved, he would not deceive me. I know you have another! And I know that only from me you do not want children. Even the fact that I'm already pregnant didn't stop you. You or the child? Was that your ultimatum? How I regret that I married you ...

“You don’t understand anything, you don’t want to listen to anything,” my husband cuts the air right in front of my face with the edge of his palm, and it seems to me that he’s about to hit, slap me in the face, as if I’m a hysterical woman who needs to be brought to life.

- So tell me, Gleb! Tell me what secrets are you hiding? Why did it become cold as soon as we arrived in Russia? I didn’t see you, we didn’t spend time together, you always worked, and at home you avoided me.

- I did not become cold, but Lord, Ksyusha! You work like hell on your own! We're both just busy. What were you imagining? Come to yourself! You began to annoy me when I said that I could not devote much time to you. Said it's not forever! But you didn't calm down! I brought it up! And you got your way, I began to come home on time, despite the fact that my partners had a double burden. I did it for you - and left to blame. Is it normal? Do you think so? What kind of nonsense about the other and abortion? I can't understand!

He ruffles his hair and walks around our bedroom like a mad, caged animal. And I'm scared again, I've never seen my husband so angry. Cold, reserved, calm. My real Gleb never yelled at me, didn’t swear, didn’t blame ... My Gleb from the past would never have signed me up for a medical abortion procedure ...

A chilling cold of awareness suddenly pierces my body, and I suddenly feel a strange calmness.

- And I'm in myself, Gleb, very much in myself, - I make a decision, and the words flow out of me like molten metal, burning my lips. - I'm finally ready to accept the truth, but I'm not going to put up with it. I'm over it! I'm leaving you.

He turns to me and looks like he doesn't understand. Blinks a couple of times and burns with an evil look.

- You're not going anywhere, Ksyusha! Do not dare!

He flies up to me and grabs my hand, pulling on himself. We fight, push, Gleb clamps me in a vise, forcing me to look directly into his eyes. Not a millimeter between us. I feel his hot breath and go crazy from the abyss of raging emotions tearing my heart apart!

- Let go! Let me go, Gleb!

- I won't let go! You are my wife!

“I can’t be the wife of a man who doesn’t want children with me!”

“We agreed, Ksyusha, that there would be no children,” he reminds me in an iron tone, piercing me with a look, twisting my insides with his cruel words, sifting them through tightly clenched teeth.

- But I changed my mind! I was a stupid youngster who thought that children were not needed for happiness. And they are needed, Gleb! I need! And you will have to let me go, since you are such a die-hard childfree, unable to accept my choice and change your selfishness! - with sobs I deliver my verdict.

You made this choice for us! he accuses again, not thinking that he is causing me enormous, unbearable pain.

He speaks words that cannot be erased or forgotten. He said them more than once, but I kept hoping, stupid, that he would change his mind. But it seems that he is only glad that the opportunity arose to get rid of the child under a plausible pretext. And if I have an abortion, then he will never want another child! He won't accept my choice not to be childfree!

“And you wanted to get rid of him!” I hate you for what you did! He also met with another behind my back! After that, only divorce. You disgust me, I'm sick of you!

With a sharp movement I push him away, and Gleb recoils, looking at me with a wild, fierce look, from which I shrink and shrivel.

- I didn't have anyone! - Throws with anger, grimacing. - You're crazy! I told you how it is. But you don't believe. Come up with something and do not leave this path. I don't know how to explain to you anymore. I really think we should live separately. At least a few days. Then you'll cool off and be able to listen to me. I married a normal adequate woman with firm foundations, I thought that we had common family values. You don't get enough of me, do you?

“Family, Gleb, that’s the point,” I try to convey to him, but I understand that there is no point in this. - Only for me, the family is also children. And you… To hell with it! I'm not going to explain! You are just hiding behind your alleged foundations, and at that time you are twisting an affair on the side! Who is she, Gleb? Your secretary with long legs? Did you have a baby on the side with her?

I make this attack in the hope that he will confess. So many words! But he does not bend in any way, convincing me that I came up with treason! Now it finally becomes clear to me - he holds me for an idiot. And he only confirms it in his own words.

“I didn’t cheat on you, you fool, how can you not understand? Have you brains on one side, or what, moved out? You don’t hear anything that I say – he freaks out and hits the closet with his fist.

I look and understand that a crack has formed on the white door from the impact. That's exactly how our marriage broke up, you can't fix it. Gleb ruined everything, how could he?

In a weak voice, I finally squeeze out, barely catching my breath from excitement:

You can talk to walls. I'm leaving. You are a danger to me. You're making me get rid of the baby. I will use these documents and will contact the police so that you are forbidden to approach me.

- So you turned everything upside down, Ksyusha, right? he says in a startlingly quiet voice. I have cold goosebumps running down my spine and fear gets under my skin. “You make me look like a monster and a scoundrel. Then I will complete your image, so to speak, for the sake of completeness! No, I didn’t cheat on you, I love you and want to save our marriage, but the very idea that you betrayed our agreement and secretly became pregnant is disgusting to me.

- Secretly? Ah secretly? - barely restraining my rage, I look at him with a wounded she-wolf. - You again?! I did explain! I forgot to take the damn pill because of my nerves! When I saw you with another woman. At our favorite restaurant. Who is she, Gleb? Who?

He is silent, looking down, and I expect that he will again deny the obvious, but Gleb, my Gleb, suddenly raises his head, and in his eyes I see a sentence. Our marriage. Our love. Our future. After all, there was still hope, I so wanted to believe him!

In the silence of the bedroom, fatal words are heard dividing our life into before and after:

She's just a business partner. You misunderstood everything, Ksyusha. And I told you about it.

I know he's lying. I see. And this is definitely the end