“Finally,” I sighed, feeling the key turn in the lock.
Viktor entered the apartment, dropped his travel bag on the floor, and wearily rubbed his face. It had been six months since he left for his work rotation. Six months we hadn’t seen each other.
He smelled of expensive cologne, dust, and a foreign city. I wanted to rush to him and hug him, but one of the babies was asleep in my arms, and the other had already started crying in the crib.
“What is this…” Viktor stopped in the doorway of the room. His gaze slid from one cradle to the other. “Anya, what’s going on?”
I forced a nervous smile, carefully rocking my son. My heart was racing — I had prepared this moment for so long, dreaming he would be happy.
“A surprise. We have twins. Boys.”
He was silent. Didn’t come closer, didn’t look at the children’s faces. His expression, extinguished after the long journey, turned stone cold. He looked at the two cribs as if they were shattered wreckage of his plans.
“A surprise?” he repeated hollowly. “You call this a surprise? We agreed to have one child. I was counting on just one.”
“Vitya, it just happened that way. Is that bad? They are our children. This is double happiness.”
“Happiness?” He smiled bitterly, and the chill of that sound ran down my spine. “I spent six months working in a harsh climate not for ‘double happiness.’”
“I was working to pay off the mortgage, to buy a car. Not to immediately take on a burden for twenty years ahead.”
His voice grew harsher.
“Did you even think about me? Who thought about me? I had plans! I wanted to start living for myself!”
Tears welled up in my eyes, but I held them back.
“Now our plans are these,” I nodded toward the children.
Viktor turned away to the window. I saw his shoulders tense, his neck stiffen. He wasn’t looking at them or at me. He was looking at his shattered dream.
“No,” he said firmly, sharply turning around. “Those are your plans. You gave birth to two — you raise them. I’m leaving. I want to live my own life.”
He didn’t shout; he spoke calmly, matter-of-factly — and that was why his words hurt even more.
He approached the wardrobe, flung open the door, and started pulling out clothes, throwing them directly into the bag on the floor. T-shirts, sweaters, jeans — everything flew in disorder.
“Vitya, stop! What are you doing? Think it over!” I took a step but stopped, not to wake the child in my arms.
“You’re the one who should think it over,” he threw over his shoulder. “I never agreed to this.”
He zipped up the bag, picked it up, and walked toward the door without looking back. I stood frozen, my mind spinning with confusion, disbelief, and an overwhelming sadness.
The door clicked shut behind him, and I felt the weight of the silence settle around me.
The babies were still, the house was still, but the emptiness in my chest screamed louder than any noise. My heart sank. I hadn’t just lost Viktor — I’d lost the dream we once shared. The dream of a life together. Now it was just me and the two little souls who needed me more than ever.
Years passed. I raised them on my own, loving them with every ounce of strength I had left. Viktor’s absence haunted me, but my boys were my reason to wake up every day, to fight for a future that was better than the one he had abandoned.
Then came the day when, at 30, my sons became the very thing Viktor had feared. They had their own business now, their own lives, their own plans. They built something successful, something I had never imagined.
I stood in the doorway of their office, watching them lead with confidence and strength. They had surpassed me in many ways, just as Viktor had once surpassed me in his ambitions.
“Mom, come in,” one of them said, his voice so much like his father’s.
I walked in, my heart swelling with pride. They had achieved what they set out to do — and in their success, I saw Viktor’s dreams come to life. But now, those dreams were no longer his.
“How’s everything going?” I asked them.
“Great,” they replied, eyes glowing with excitement.
And then, I looked at them both — my boys, the ones who grew up without their father, but somehow still managed to conquer the world in their own way.
“Your father would be proud of you,” I whispered, knowing he’d never see it. But somehow, I didn’t feel the ache of that loss anymore. The boys had made their own future — and in a way, they had made it better than what he could have ever imagined.
Viktor might have wanted to live his own life, but it was these two, his sons, who had inherited the strength to rise, the strength to build. And now, thirty years later, his boys had become the ones who called the shots.
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