My fingers tightened around the cold plastic USB stick as I slowly pulled my hand out of my apron pocket.
“Well, if everyone wants a perfect holiday so badly, let it be perfect all the way to the end,” I said, and stood up.
The chair slid softly across the parquet floor. No one moved. Only one of my aunts’ spoons clinked against her plate, then slipped into the sauce. As I walked past the table, I didn’t wipe the sauce off my collar a second time. I let them see it.
On the TV screen, a silent holiday concert was still playing. I bent down, plugged the USB into the side port, and pressed the remote.
The black screen suddenly flickered to a bluish file list. 04_APARTMENT. 05_AUTHORIZATION. 06_AUDIO_GALINA. 07_TRANSFERS.
Igor jumped up so abruptly that the chair leg screeched sharply against the floor.
“What are you doing?”
I didn’t even look at him.
“SIT DOWN. THIS ISN’T OVER YET.”
I don’t know what forced him back into his seat — my voice or the way the table seemed to turn against him — but he sat. Not fully. On the edge. Tense, hands on his knees, ready to spring up again at any moment.
I didn’t open the documents first.
I opened the audio recording.
At 21:14, on March 27, Galina Petrovna’s familiar, calm voice filled the speakers. The same tone she always used for the dirtiest things — quiet, steady, almost kind.
“Oh, she won’t understand anything. As long as she’s pregnant, she’s not thinking clearly. Just tell me when we can finally sell the apartment. Igor says it should be done before the birth. The deposit would come in very handy right now.”
It was as if the air in the room changed. It grew heavier. One of the uncles stopped eating.
One of my aunts began rubbing the cross on her necklace. My fifteen-year-old nephew, who had been looking at me in fear a moment ago, no longer blinked.
He stood beside my chair, just seconds ago straight and respectful, now as if he had sunk a few centimeters.
HE WASN’T ASHAMED. IT WAS BECAUSE HIS OWN VOICE, COLD AND FORMAL, FILLED MY LIVING ROOM AND PRESSED DOWN ON EVERYONE.
“That’s manipulated,” Igor said quickly. “Do you even understand what you’re doing?”
That’s when I opened the 05_AUTHORIZATION folder.
The document filled the entire screen. My ID number. My address. My name.
And the signature at the bottom — like mine, but only as much as a stranger’s hand can carefully imitate the angle of the letters. To the right, next to the photo — a zoomed-in detail.
The line was broken. The end of the name cut off. I had seen signatures like this many times at work. A rushed forgery, made in the hope that no one would look too closely.
With another click, the correspondence with the broker appeared. Dates, times, profile pictures, amounts.
April 5, 11:26: “Deposit of 85,000 HUF confirmed. Awaiting authorization from the owner.”
APRIL 5, 11:31: “SHE DOESN’T KNOW YET, WE’RE WORKING THROUGH HER SON.”
April 5, 11:33: “Will it be done by May?”
Igor didn’t turn pale all at once. First, the right side of his face twitched. Then slowly, as if he had swallowed something hard, his lower lip dropped.
“These are just drafts,” he said. “Nothing was decided yet.”
I pressed again.
A bank statement appeared on the screen. The lines kept scrolling like the steady ticks of a metronome.
₴186,000 — the closing of his old loan.
₴312,000 — renovations of my apartment.
$11,000 — THE DOWN PAYMENT FOR THE CAR HE SAID HE NEEDED TO “GET BACK TO NORMAL.”
And lastly — my transfer for the apartment valuation. The same money he used to pay the man who assessed my apartment before the sale.
“This circus,” I said, looking at him for the first time that evening, “this circus where a husband lives off his wife’s money for three years and then tries to sell her apartment before their child is even born.”
“Turn it off,” Galina Petrovna said quietly, though her voice was no longer steady. “People are eating.”
“No,” I replied. “Now they’ll listen.”
I played the second recording.
This time it wasn’t the broker.
It was her — and her short, dry, unmistakable laugh.
“Why? While she’s pregnant, everything needs to be settled. After that, she’ll start demanding rights, she’ll go to a lawyer.”
“RIGHT NOW THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IS THAT THE APARTMENT IS IN IGOR’S NAME. BECAUSE THIS GIRL THINKS EVERYTHING HERE BELONGS TO HER.”
From the far end of the table, someone whispered quietly:
“My God…”
