Life stories 15/10/2025 17:18

My husband went to visit his “sick” parents, so I decided to surprise him and come without warning…



***

Every morning Yulia woke to the sound of raindrops tapping a relentless rhythm on the windowsill and saw the sky choked with gray, heavy clouds. The **dreary weather** seemed to perfectly match her internal state—anxious, uncertain, and increasingly filled with vague, shapeless suspicions.

For the third week in a row, her husband, Igor, packed a sports bag and announced the same simple, yet increasingly discordant, message:

“My parents aren’t feeling well. I’ll go to them for a couple of days to help out.”

The first time, Yulia accepted his words with immediate understanding. Her mother-in-law, Lyudmila Pavlovna, had recently had gallbladder surgery, and her father-in-law, Viktor Semyonovich, often complained of high blood pressure. At sixty-five, a sudden decline in health was certainly plausible.

“Of course, go,” his wife said, offering genuine sympathy. “Give them my best—tell them I’m worried too, and to take care.”

Igor left on Friday evening and returned Monday morning. He came back not just tired, but **emotionally withdrawn**, as if the weekend had been a grueling, unpleasant shift. When asked about his parents’ condition, he answered curtly and vaguely:

“They’re better. But still weak. They need constant supervision.”

“What exactly hurts your mom?” Yulia would press gently, trying to elicit a concrete detail.

“Everything hurts. It’s their age, Yulia,” her husband would wave off the question, refusing to meet her gaze for long.

The second time, the same story was repeated almost exactly a week later.

“Bad again?” his wife asked, her surprise now tinged with genuine concern.

“Mom fell and bruised herself badly. Dad’s nervous, which shot his blood pressure up. I have to go, **she can't manage alone**,” Igor explained, methodically tucking clean shirts into his duffel bag.

“Maybe I should come too? I could cook and help with the chores.”

“No need. It’s cramped there as it is. Better you stay home. You’ll just get in the way.”

Yulia conceded. Her relationship with her in-laws was always one of **respectful distance**. She was polite and kind but never imposed. Lyudmila Pavlovna was a reserved woman, cool rather than warm, and they had never established a close bond. The excuse of "cramped space" was therefore perfectly believable.

The third trip happened the following weekend, solidifying Yulia’s sense of **foreboding**.

“What is it this time?” Yulia asked, watching Igor pack jeans and a sweater into his bag with detached efficiency.

“Dad’s really bad now. His pressure is all over the place, dangerously high. Mom is completely exhausted and can’t handle it alone.”

“Did you call a doctor? A proper one?”

“We did. But you know what the local clinic doctors are like these days. He prescribed some pills and left. **They just don't care about the elderly.**”

Igor sounded convincing, but something in his tone felt **too rehearsed**, lacking the spontaneous, anxious emotion of a son truly terrified for his sick parents.

“Igor, maybe they should be hospitalized? If it’s that serious, they need professional care.”

“They don’t want to. They’re terrified of hospitals. They say it’s calmer at home, with family around.”

He closed the bag and gave his wife a quick, perfunctory kiss on the cheek.

“Don’t miss me. I’ll try to get things sorted quickly this time.”

---

## The Weight of Silence

After Igor left, Yulia was alone with a rapidly growing sense of profound unease. She tried to remember when she had last spoken to her mother-in-law on the phone. It had been about a month ago. Lyudmila Pavlovna had called to congratulate a friend on her birthday.

Back then, her mother-in-law had sounded lively, asked about Yulia’s work, and chatted enthusiastically about the dacha. **There were no complaints about her health**. On the contrary, she had boasted about the phenomenal tomato harvest and her robust plans for winter canning.

“Strange,” Yulia murmured, standing at the window and watching the relentless autumn rain. “If she’s feeling so bad, why hasn’t she called me? She usually lets me know about every ache and pain.”

On Monday, Igor came back even gloomier, his **emotional distance now bordering on hostility**.

“How are your parents?” his wife asked, forcing a cheerful tone.

“Dad’s better. Mom’s still weak, but stable.”

“And what did the local doctor say?”

“What doctor?” he asked sharply, confusion flickering in his eyes before he masked it.

“The local one. You said you called him last week.”

“Oh, right. That doctor. He just said to keep an eye on things. If it gets worse—hospital.”

Igor quickly changed clothes and sat down at the computer, signaling the conversation was over. He was visibly desperate to drop the subject.

That evening, when her husband went to shower, Yulia did something she had never done. She picked up his phone. She had always believed that trust meant freedom from surveillance, but something—a cold, hard knot of certainty—told her she needed to look.

There were **no calls to his parents**. None outgoing, none incoming. For the past two weeks—no electronic contact at all with Lyudmila Pavlovna or Viktor Semyonovich.

“How can that be?” Yulia whispered, her mind racing to justify the void. “If Igor is staying with them, why would he need to call?”

But she knew the routine. Whenever her husband went away for any reason, his parents would phone Yulia at least once. To ask how she was, or whether she needed them to send anything back with their son. This time—**absolute, unnatural silence**.

The fourth trip was scheduled for the very next Friday.

“Your parents again?” Yulia clarified, the words feeling like sharp stones in her mouth.

“Yes. Mom’s running a high fever now. I’m afraid she caught a chill. **It’s a relapse.**”

“Igor, maybe I should go with you after all? I can help you take shifts watching them.”

“Why do you need extra trouble?” he snapped, his voice too loud. “You have enough work of your own.”

“It’s no trouble. In the end, they’re your parents—which makes them mine too. I *want* to help.”

“Yulia, don’t argue. It’s cramped there. And you’ll just catch whatever they’ve got. **I need you to stay healthy.**”

Igor spoke persuasively, but he pointedly avoided meeting her eyes. He packed in a hurry, his movements agitated, as if he were late for a train he couldn't miss.

“Which commuter train are you taking?” his wife asked, watching him closely.

“The regular one. Seven in the evening.”

“Want me to walk you to the station?”

“No need. I’ll get there myself.”

He kissed her quickly and hurried out, leaving Yulia in an apartment heavy with **unfinished sentences and blatant inconsistencies**.

---

## The Surprise Visit

Yulia spent Saturday morning trapped in a swirling mental storm. Her mind churned relentlessly, giving her no rest. On the one hand, it felt profoundly **unjust** to accuse her husband of such a cynical lie without absolute proof. On the other, too many strange things had piled up over the past month to ignore.

“Am I really just turning into a suspicious, hysterical wife?” Yulia scolded herself. “Maybe his parents truly are gravely ill, and I’m inventing problems out of nothing due to anxiety?”

By lunchtime, a decision solidified, born not of malice but of necessity. If her in-laws were truly sick, they would surely welcome their daughter-in-law’s care. Yulia decided to bake her mother’s signature homemade pie, buy fruit, put together some treats, and go visit her husband’s parents.

**“I’ll surprise them,”** she decided. “And I’ll surprise Igor too. A pleasant surprise, if I'm wrong. A necessary confrontation, if I'm right.”

The kitchen became a flurry of activity. Yulia kneaded dough for the fragrant pie. While it baked, filling the apartment with a false sense of domestic harmony, she ran to the store for fruit and juice.

By three o’clock everything was ready. The pie was cooling on the table; a bag of oranges and bananas stood by the door. Yulia changed into a pretty dress, applied a little makeup, and headed to the station.

On the train, she tried to cling to the original, innocent scenario: Igor would open the door, see his wife with bags of treats, blink in confusion, and then break into a smile.

“Yulia? What are you doing here?” he would say.

“I decided to visit,” she would reply. “To check on the patients and make sure you weren't starving.”

The trip to his parents’ house took an hour and a half. Lyudmila Pavlovna and Viktor Semyonovich lived in a small town outside Moscow, in a charming two-story house with a garden.

Yulia walked up to the familiar gate and rang the bell. A minute later the door opened and her mother-in-law appeared on the threshold.

“Yulia?” Lyudmila Pavlovna exclaimed in genuine surprise. “What a lovely surprise! What are you doing all the way out here?”

She looked **vibrant**. Rosy cheeks, clear, bright eyes, and absolutely no sign of fever or lingering illness. She wore a neat tracksuit, her hair neatly pulled back in a ponytail, looking like she’d just finished a brisk walk.

“Hello, Lyudmila Pavlovna,” Yulia said, utterly taken aback. “I came to see you. Igor said you were sick. Very sick.”

“Sick?” her mother-in-law laughed heartily. “What illness? We’re healthy as horses, thank God! Where did you hear that nonsense?”

Yulia felt the blood drain from her face. Her heart hammered against her ribs, and the bags of treats suddenly felt like an **unbearably heavy burden of delusion**.

“But Igor… He said he was taking care of you. That you weren’t feeling well, running a fever.”

“Taking care of us?” Lyudmila shook her head, confusion etching her brow. “Yulenka, we haven’t seen our son in a week! Maybe longer! **He hasn't even called!**”

A voice came from deeper in the house: “Lyuda, who is it?”

“Yulia came to see us!” she called back.

Viktor Semyonovich appeared in the hallway. A sturdy, gray-haired seventy-year-old man, in work pants and a plaid shirt, smelling faintly of sawdust. He’d clearly just been tinkering happily in his workshop, far from a medical emergency.

“Oh, our daughter-in-law!” he brightened. “What brings you here? You don’t visit us often enough!”

“Viktor Semyonovich, where’s Igor?” Yulia asked bluntly, her voice now cold and flat.

“How should I know?” he shrugged, bewildered. “Maybe at work? Or at home with you?”

“He came here. He told me he was here because you were ill and needed constant care.”

Her father-in-law exchanged a look with his wife, one of sincere confusion, not conspiracy.

“Yulia, we’re fine. And we haven’t seen Igor in ages. When was it, Lyuda?”

“On Peter’s Day,” Lyudmila remembered. “In July. He came for his father’s birthday dinner. **That was months ago.**”

“That’s right. He hasn’t even called since then,” Viktor confirmed, shaking his head.

Something inside Yulia seemed to **snap**. Every one of her husband’s carefully crafted explanations, every worried trip to his “sick parents,” turned out to be a bold, unambiguous lie.

“Yulenka, what happened?” Lyudmila asked anxiously, finally realizing the gravity of the situation. “You look terribly pale. Come in, we’ll have tea.”

“Thank you, but I have to go,” the daughter-in-law muttered, already turning.

“How can you go? You just got here! And you brought a beautiful pie—I can smell it!” her mother-in-law protested.

“Another time.” Yulia handed them the bags, her gesture an act of final detachment. “These are for you. Please enjoy.”

“And where’s Igor?” her father-in-law asked, puzzled and concerned. “Tell him to call us!”

“I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “But I plan to find out.”

They watched her walk to the gate, their bewildered looks cementing the horrifying truth. Yulia headed for the bus stop, hardly feeling her legs, the weight of her realization replacing the weight of the treats.

---

## The Cold Clarity

In her head, thoughts piled up like wreckage: where had Igor been spending his weekends? With whom? Why use the **sacred, cynical cover** of his parents’ health? And most importantly—how long had this orchestrated deception been going on?

The bus ride to the station took half an hour. Yulia stared out the window at the gray landscapes and let the **cold clarity** wash over her. Every trip her husband had made now felt like a cruel mockery.

On the train, she took out her phone, intending to call her husband and unleash her fury. Then she changed her mind. What would she ask? *Where are you? With whom? Why are you lying?*

Better to wait at home. To look him in the eye while he delivered the next segment of his tired, fraudulent script.

Yulia got home at eight in the evening. The apartment was quiet and empty. She sat on the couch and waited, her heart strangely still.

Igor returned Monday morning, as usual. Keys clinked in the lock; the door opened. He came in tired and rumpled, carrying the same sports bag that had become the **symbol of his duplicity**.

“Hi,” Igor grunted, heading straight to the bedroom. “How was your quiet weekend?”

“Fine,” Yulia answered calmly. “How was yours, Igor?”

“Rough. My parents are really bad. Mom’s fever spiked again. We’re worn out.”

He spoke without looking up, tossing dirty laundry into the basket and pulling a small bottle of medicine out of his bag—a **final, reflexive gesture of performance**.

“Igor,” his wife called softly. “Look at me now.”

He raised his head. Anxiety, raw and exposed, flickered violently in his eyes.

“Where were you all these days?” Yulia asked directly, her voice devoid of emotion.

“Where else? At my parents’. I told you. Why are you acting like this?”

“Your parents are perfectly fine. They haven’t seen you in over a week, and they were confused when I asked about their health.”

Igor froze with a shirt in his hands. The air went out of the room.

“What are you talking about? **Did you actually go to my parents?**”

“I went to see them yesterday. I wanted to help with the ‘patients’ and surprise you. Lyudmila Pavlovna laughed when I asked about her supposed illness.”

His face went instantly, spectacularly pale.

“Yulia, you don’t understand the full situation…”

“What don’t I understand?” she cut him off, her voice rising now. “That you’ve been **lying to me for a solid month**? That you’re using your elderly parents as a shield for your own leisure time?”

“It’s not a lie... It’s complicated.”

“Then what is it?” Yulia stepped closer, her height making her presence commanding. “Igor, where did you spend the weekends? **With whom?**”

He turned sharply toward the window.

“I can’t explain right now. It's too difficult.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Yulia, trust me. It’s not what you think. **It’s not serious.**”

“And what do I think?” she asked coldly, challenging him to name the truth.

“Well… that I have someone. Another woman.”

“And isn’t that the case, Igor?”

Igor was silent. A minute passed, stretched thin by the weight of his guilt. At last, he sighed heavily, the sound of utter defeat.

“There is,” he admitted quietly.

Yulia nodded once. Strangely, she felt no burning rage, only **emptiness and cold, definitive certainty**.

“I see.”

“Yulia, it’s not serious! It’s just… it just happened a few weeks ago…”

“No, you said a month ago. And it didn’t just ‘happen.’ You chose it. And you chose to lie about it **using the health of your mother and father**.”

“I wanted to figure myself out. To understand what I needed from life.”

“And did you figure it out?”

He fell silent again, incapable of giving an answer.

“Igor, I’m asking: did you figure out what you need?”

“I don’t know,” he answered honestly, the answer of a deeply weak man.

“I do,” Yulia said, walking past him toward the bedroom. “I need someone who doesn’t lie. Who doesn’t hide behind supposedly sick parents for the sake of an affair.”

She took a small suitcase from the closet.

“What are you doing?” Igor asked, suddenly alarmed, the sight of the suitcase bringing reality crashing down.

“Packing,” Yulia said, placing in the essentials. “I’ll stay with a friend. While we sort out the next steps.”

“What do you mean, sort things out?”

“You with your feelings and your mistress. Me with the **divorce papers**.”

“Yulia, don’t rush! Let’s talk calmly! We can fix this!”

“About what?” She closed the suitcase, the sound like a final gavel. “About how you led me by the nose for a month? About how I worried over your perfectly healthy parents?”

“I never meant to hurt you this badly…”

“And so you hurt me even more deeply.”

Yulia took the necessary documents from the safe, put her phone and charger into her purse.

“If you want to explain something, call my lawyer. But I doubt you’ll find an excuse for a month of calculated, cynical lies.”

“What about our home? Our life? **Our family?**”

“Family is built on **trust**, Igor,” she replied, walking to the door. “The house can be divided through lawyers.”

She paused on the threshold.

“Wait,” Igor pleaded, his voice cracking. “Maybe we can still try? I’ll end everything right now, we’ll start over…”

“Start with what? With you lying about your sick parents again?”

“I won’t lie. I promise you.”

“Igor,” she said, looking him straight in the eye for the final time. “You promised to be a faithful husband. **You can see exactly how your promises have turned out.**”

She stepped out and closed the door gently but firmly. The stairwell was quiet.

A fine drizzle fell outside—the same rain as a month ago, when the first suspicion had taken root. Yulia raised the collar of her jacket and headed for the metro.

Her phone rang as she was going down into the underpass. Her husband’s name lit up the screen. Yulia declined the call and put the phone back in her bag.

The decision was made. She could no longer live with a man who had used the potential suffering of his own family as a cheap cover for an affair. Trust was destroyed—and so, irrevocably, was the marriage.

Ahead lay conversations with lawyers, the division of property, and a new life. But at least this life would be **honest**. No lies, no duplicity, and no more emotional fog.

The subway train carried Yulia away from the past toward an unknown, but honest, future.


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