The Weight of Empty Promises

The apartment door clicked shut behind Irina as she stepped into the dimly lit hallway. Her shoulders sagged under the weight of another endless day, and the cheap watch on her wrist—its leather strap cracked and peeling—showed it was nearly eleven at night. She let her purse slide from her shoulder onto the small table by the entrance, then pressed her fingers against her temples, trying to massage away the headache that had been building for hours.

The living room glowed with an eerie blue light. Anatoly sat sprawled on the sofa, his face illuminated by his phone screen, thumb scrolling endlessly through his social media feed. He didn’t look up. He didn’t say hello. He didn’t even acknowledge that she’d walked in.

Irina stood there for a moment, waiting for something—any sign that he’d noticed her arrival. When nothing came, she moved slowly toward the kitchen, her feet aching in shoes that had once been comfortable but now felt like instruments of torture after fourteen hours of standing.

The kitchen stopped her in her tracks. Dirty dishes formed precarious towers in the sink, plates crusted with dried food stacked haphazardly. Coffee cups with rings of brown residue lined the counter. Empty jars cluttered the windowsill, and the garbage bag had been overflowing for days. The air smelled stale, a mixture of old food and neglect.

Irina remembered when this apartment had felt like home. When they’d first moved in three years ago, she’d spent weekends painting the walls a warm cream color, hanging curtains she’d sewn herself, arranging photos and small decorative touches that made the space feel like theirs. Anatoly had helped her hang shelves, laughing as they struggled to get them level. They’d christened the apartment with a bottle of champagne and pizza on the floor because their furniture hadn’t arrived yet.

Now it looked like a place where people existed rather than lived. A lair, she thought bitterly. A cave where her husband hibernated while the world passed him by.

“Could you at least wash the dishes?” Irina heard the exhaustion in her own voice. “I’m dead on my feet after two shifts.”

She pushed a stray lock of hair behind her ear, noticing how greasy it felt. When was the last time she’d had the energy to properly wash her hair? To take care of herself? Everything had become about survival—working, sleeping just enough to function, working again.

“I’ll wash them tomorrow,” Anatoly muttered, his eyes never leaving the screen. His voice was flat, automatic, the response of someone who’d said the same thing so many times it had lost all meaning.

Irina felt something inside her chest tighten. Tomorrow. Always tomorrow. Tomorrow had been promised for three days now, and the dishes remained. Tomorrow had been promised for six months regarding a job, and he was still unemployed. Tomorrow had become a word that meant never.

She looked at the man on the sofa—her husband, the person she’d vowed to spend her life with—and tried to find traces of the man she’d fallen in love with. Where was the Anatoly who’d surprised her with flowers? Who’d wake up early to make her breakfast before important meetings? Who’d dance with her in this very kitchen to songs playing on the radio?

This version of Anatoly had stubble that was becoming a patchy beard, not because he was trying to grow one but because he couldn’t be bothered to shave. His hair stuck up at odd angles. He wore the same sweatpants he’d had on for three days. The athletic build she’d admired had softened around the middle from months of inactivity and takeout food.

Irina moved to the sofa and perched on its edge, as far from him as possible while still being on the same piece of furniture. She took a deep breath, steeling herself for a conversation she knew would go nowhere.

“Tolia, we need to talk.”

Anatoly’s jaw tightened. He set the phone aside with exaggerated care, as if she were interrupting something incredibly important rather than his endless scrolling through strangers’ vacation photos.

“Starting again?” He grimaced, his face contorting with annoyance. “Let’s do it tomorrow, okay? I’ve got a splitting headache.”

“Your head splits every day!” The words burst out of Irina before she could stop them, her voice shaking with frustration. “Six months have passed, Tolia! Six months since you quit your job, and you haven’t even written a résumé!”

Anatoly leapt up from the sofa, his face twisting with indignation. His sudden movement made her flinch—not because she thought he’d hurt her, but because of the intensity of his anger over what seemed like a reasonable observation.

“You think it’s easy to find a decent job without connections?” he shouted. “You think I can just waltz into some office and get hired? The job market is terrible! Everyone wants experience, references, someone on the inside to vouch for you! I’m not becoming a taxi driver or a courier like some kind of failure!”

Irina stood too, though her legs felt unsteady. “Nobody said taxi! Nobody mentioned courier! But you have to do something, Tolia. Anything! Our savings are vanishing. Yesterday you withdrew five thousand rubles. For what?”

His face flushed dark red. “Are you spying on me? Checking the bank account like I’m some kind of child who needs monitoring?”

“It’s our joint account! I see the transactions!”

“I’m a man!” Anatoly grabbed his jacket from the back of a chair. “I have the right to relax with my friends! I’ve earned that much!”

“Earned?” Irina’s voice rose to match his. “Earned how? While I work two jobs? While I come home at eleven at night and you can’t even manage to wash a dish?”

Tears welled in her eyes, blurring her vision. She hated crying in front of him now. It used to feel safe to be vulnerable with Anatoly, to let him see her at her weakest. Now it felt like handing him ammunition.

She remembered the dreams they used to share, lying in bed on Sunday mornings when neither of them had to work. They’d planned to save for a house—something modest but theirs, with a little yard where they could plant tomatoes and herbs. They’d talked about children, disagreeing playfully about names. They’d bookmarked travel destinations, fantasizing about trips they’d take once they had more money saved.

When had those dreams evaporated? When had their conversations transformed from dreams to accusations, from affection to excuses?

“I need some air,” Anatoly shoved his arms through the jacket sleeves. “Don’t wait up.”

“Tolia, please, we need to—”

But he was already moving toward the door. “I said don’t wait up!”

The door slammed so hard that a cup on the table jumped, its contents sloshing. A framed photo on the wall rattled. Irina collapsed back onto the sofa and buried her face in the pillow that had been supporting Anatoly’s head. It smelled of chips and unwashed hair and stale beer.

She remembered when Anatoly used to bring her roses—not on special occasions, just randomly, because he’d passed a flower stand and thought of her. He’d leave little notes around the apartment: on the bathroom mirror, tucked into her purse, stuck to the refrigerator. Simple things like “Good morning, beautiful” or “Can’t wait to see you tonight.” When had those stopped? She couldn’t even pinpoint the moment. The gestures had just faded away, like color slowly draining from a photograph left in the sun.

Now every conversation felt like a battlefield. They were combatants instead of partners, and Irina was so tired of fighting.

She pulled her phone from her pocket and opened the mobile banking app. The joint account showed a little over twenty thousand rubles remaining. Her most recent salary deposit—thirty-five thousand rubles—had barely lasted a week before being eaten up by rent, utilities, and groceries. And somehow, mysteriously, five thousand had vanished to Anatoly’s “relaxation with friends.”

Soon she would have to dip into her second account. The secret one Anatoly didn’t know about—or at least, she didn’t think he knew about it. The account where she’d been depositing small amounts whenever possible, dreaming of the day she’d have enough to buy a used car. Just something reliable to get her to work, to give her a sense of independence and accomplishment.

At the current rate, she’d be draining that account just to keep them afloat while Anatoly waited for the perfect job to materialize out of thin air.

Her phone buzzed with a text message. Katya, her friend from university: “How are you? Holding on?”

Irina gave a bitter smile at the screen. Holding on? That was generous. She was clinging by her fingertips to a marriage that was falling apart, to a husband who’d transformed into a stranger. Someone who looked like Anatoly, had his voice, but lacked everything that had made her fall in love with him—his ambition, his kindness, his partnership.

She glanced at the wedding photo on the wall—one of the few decorative touches that remained from when she’d cared about making the apartment beautiful. Anatoly stood in a sharp black suit, looking confident and proud. She wore her white dress, her face radiant with joy and hope. They gazed at each other like they were the only two people in the universe.

Where had that time gone? When exactly had Tolia stopped being her support and become a weight she carried? When had the balance shifted so completely that she was both the breadwinner and the homemaker, while he contributed nothing but complaints?

Irina knew something had to change. The endless struggle would crush her if it continued. Already she felt pieces of herself crumbling away—her optimism, her energy, her sense of self-worth. How long before there was nothing left of the woman she used to be?

But she still loved him. Despite everything, despite the anger and resentment and exhaustion, some part of her still loved the man he used to be. And that part still hoped, against all evidence to the contrary, that the old Anatoly would return. That one morning she’d wake up and find him in the kitchen making breakfast, sheepish and apologetic, ready to be a partner again.

Hope, she was learning, could be the cruelest thing of all.

In the morning, Irina woke before her alarm, jerked from sleep by anxiety more than any sense of being rested. Her eyes were puffy from crying, her head heavy and foggy. She lay still for a moment, listening to the sound of snoring from the living room.

Anatoly had staggered home at dawn—she’d heard him bumping into furniture, cursing softly. She’d pretended to be asleep, not wanting another confrontation. Now he was sprawled on the sofa, mouth open, still wearing his jacket.

She crept into the kitchen as quietly as possible, not wanting to wake him. The dishes remained, of course. Three days had become four. She briefly considered washing them herself, then stopped. No. If she kept enabling his laziness, it would never end.

Irina brewed tea and glanced at the calendar on the refrigerator. Wednesday—her extra shift at the mall’s accounting office. Eight hours with numbers and spreadsheets, trying to make other people’s finances balance while her own spiraled out of control. Then another four hours in the evening at a friend’s small business, helping with their books.

Twelve hours of work ahead of her. She felt exhausted just thinking about it.

“I wish I could take a day off,” she muttered to herself, massaging her temples. “Just one day to rest. To be human.”

But days off meant less money, and less money meant dipping into her car savings sooner. It meant continuing to be trapped, dependent on public transportation, unable to escape.

She showered quickly, the hot water helping to ease some of the tension in her shoulders. As she was drying her hair, her phone buzzed with a message from her boss at the accounting office.

“Good morning! Reports came in early. You can leave at noon today if you’d like.”

Irina stared at the message, barely believing it. A half-day? She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had unexpected free time. She finished her work at the office by noon, her fingers flying over the keyboard with practiced efficiency. For once, everything balanced on the first try. Then she texted her evening employer, asking if she could come in early to finish quickly.

“Sure,” came the response. “I’ll have everything ready.”

The afternoon work went smoothly too. By three o’clock, Irina found herself standing on the sidewalk with the sun warm on her face and actual free time stretching ahead of her. For the first time in six months, fate had handed her a small gift.

The spring sun felt glorious after the fluorescent lights of offices. She decided to walk home—it was only twenty minutes, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d walked just for pleasure rather than necessity.

As she approached her building, Irina slowed. Their apartment was on the third floor, and the window was wide open—unusual for this time of year when it was still cool. She could hear Anatoly’s voice carrying out into the street.

He was on the phone, speaking loudly, almost cheerfully. The tone surprised her—she hadn’t heard him sound animated in months. Curious despite herself, she slowed further, trying to catch the words.

“Mom, don’t worry, I’ve thought everything through…”

His mother. Of course. Polina Yevgenyevna had never quite approved of Irina, though she’d been polite enough during the engagement and wedding. After they married, the criticisms started—subtle at first, then increasingly direct. Her cooking wasn’t good enough. Her housekeeping needed work. She should dress more femininely. She spent too much time at work.

Irina unlocked the building’s main door quietly and climbed the stairs, her heart beginning to pound for reasons she didn’t quite understand. Some instinct told her to be silent, to listen.

The apartment door was slightly ajar—Anatoly had grown careless about such things. The hallway was dim, all the lights off to save electricity. His voice came clearly from the kitchen.

“Now’s the perfect time to invest in real estate,” he was saying, his tone enthusiastic and confident—the way he used to sound when talking about his career plans. “That dacha outside town is ideal. The owner’s desperate to sell.”

Irina froze in the hallway, pressing her back against the wall. A dacha? They’d never discussed buying property. They could barely afford rent.

“We’ll use your savings and ours with Irka,” Anatoly continued. “Combined, it should be just enough for the down payment. The rest we can finance.”

Ice flooded Irina’s veins. Their savings. Her savings. The money she’d been killing herself to earn and protect.

“The dacha will be in my name, of course,” Anatoly said casually, as if this were obvious. “Irka doesn’t need to know about it yet. We’ll tell her after everything’s finalized. She’ll be happy—it’ll be an asset for our future.”

Irina’s hands began to tremble. Her husband and mother-in-law were planning to spend their money—her money—behind her back. To buy property that would be in his name alone. To make major financial decisions as if she were a child who couldn’t be trusted with information about her own life.

She backed toward the door silently, her mind racing. Everything suddenly made sense—why Anatoly hadn’t looked for work. He didn’t need to. He was planning to use her earnings, combined with his mother’s money, to buy property. Property he would own. Property that would give him financial security while she continued to work herself to death.

Irina left the apartment as quietly as she’d entered, pulling the door shut with barely a click. She walked down the stairs on shaking legs, then started running once she hit the street.

The bank was three blocks away. She arrived breathless and went straight to the counter, pulling out her identification with trembling hands.

“I need to transfer all the money from this account,” she told the teller, rattling off the joint account number. “Everything. Right now.”

The teller looked concerned. “Are you certain? It’s quite a large sum to—”

“I’m certain. Transfer it all to my mother’s account.” She provided her mother’s account details, which she’d memorized for emergencies.

The money—every ruble they had saved together, plus what she’d been depositing from her two jobs—flowed out of the joint account and into safety. Irina also emptied her separate car savings account, transferring that to her mother as well. All of it, gone from where Anatoly could reach it.

“The transfers are complete,” the teller said after several minutes.

Irina took the receipt and walked home slowly, her heart pounding so hard she felt dizzy. Fear and anger warred inside her, but underneath both emotions was something else: clarity.

She’d been so focused on trying to salvage their marriage, on hoping Anatoly would change, that she’d failed to see how bad things had truly become. He wasn’t going through a rough patch. He wasn’t depressed or struggling. He was planning. Scheming. Using her.

When Irina entered the apartment this time, she made noise—unlocking the door normally, dropping her keys on the table with a clatter.

“I’m home!” she called out, her voice unnaturally bright.

Anatoly appeared from the kitchen, phone in hand. “You’re early,” he said, looking guilty for just a moment before his expression smoothed into indifference.

“They let me go early. Good day for once.” Irina set down her purse and looked around the apartment with new eyes. “I thought I’d do some organizing. Spring cleaning, you know.”

She went to the bedroom and pulled out Anatoly’s suitcases from the closet—the expensive matching set his mother had given them as a wedding present. She began packing his clothes methodically: shirts, pants, underwear, socks. His toiletries from the bathroom. His shoes.

“Irka, what are you doing?” Anatoly appeared in the doorway.

“Washing your T-shirts—just putting everything away neatly!” she called back cheerfully, continuing to pack.

Two large suitcases soon stood in the hallway, stuffed with Anatoly’s belongings. Irina straightened her blouse, ran a hand through her hair, and walked into the living room where her husband had returned to watching football on television.

She picked up the remote and turned off the TV.

“Hey! The game’s on!” Anatoly protested.

“Tolia, we need a serious talk.”

“It’s the championship! Can’t it wait?”

“It’s decisive, all right,” Irina said, folding her arms across her chest. She marveled at how calm she felt, how steady her voice was. “I want you out of this apartment tonight.”

Anatoly laughed—a short, disbelieving bark. Then he saw her face and the laughter died. “Are you crazy? What are you talking about?”

“I’d be crazy to stay with you one more day. I heard everything, Tolia. Everything about the dacha. About spending my savings without asking. About putting property in your name while I work two jobs to keep us afloat.”

His face drained of color. He lunged for his phone, fingers jabbing at the screen to open the banking app. Irina watched as his expression morphed from confusion to shock to panic.

He raced to the laptop on the kitchen table, logging into the bank account there as if the phone had somehow shown him incorrect information. Then he screamed.

“Ira! Where’s the money? The account’s empty! What did you do?”

“I moved it to a safe place,” Irina said calmly. “My mother’s account, to be specific. I earned that money, especially these last six months while you lay on the sofa playing games and planning to steal from me.”

“Steal? It’s my money too! We’re married! I’ll call the police!”

“Call them,” Irina said evenly. “We’ll have a nice discussion about how you’ve been living off me since you quit your job without even telling me you were planning to. About how you withdrew five thousand rubles for ‘relaxation’ while I worked fourteen-hour days. About how you and your mother were planning to commit fraud by using my earnings to buy property in your name alone. Please, call them. I’d love to see how that conversation goes.”

Anatoly’s face went through several shades of red and purple. He looked toward the hallway and finally noticed the packed suitcases.

“This is my apartment!” he shouted.

“No, it’s a rental,” Irina corrected. “And I’ve been paying for it. Alone. For six months. My name is on the lease along with yours, but only my money has been keeping the roof over our heads.”

“You can’t just throw me out!”

“I can and I am. Leave now, or I call the police and tell them you’re threatening me. Who do you think they’ll believe—the woman with two jobs who’s been supporting her unemployed husband, or the man who’s been living like a parasite?”

Anatoly stared at her, and Irina saw the moment he realized she meant every word. The meek woman who’d tolerated his behavior, who’d cried and pleaded and hoped—she was gone. In her place stood someone harder, colder, and completely done with his nonsense.

“You’ll regret this,” he muttered, grabbing the suitcases roughly. “My mother won’t forgive you for this. She’ll make your life hell.”

“Say hello to Polina Yevgenyevna for me,” Irina said with a small, cold smile. “Tell her to save for that dacha herself. I’m sure she can manage it with all the money she’s got tucked away.”

Anatoly dragged the suitcases toward the door, bumping into walls and furniture. As he crossed the threshold for the last time, he turned back.

“You’re going to be alone,” he said viciously. “No one’s going to want you. You’re not young anymore. You’re not that pretty. You’ll come crawling back.”

“Goodbye, Anatoly,” Irina said, and closed the door in his face.

A porcelain figurine on the shelf—a gift from his mother, a shepherdess in a pink dress—rattled from the impact and fell, shattering on the floor. Irina looked at the pieces scattered across the tile and felt no sadness at all.

She walked to the kitchen, sat down in a chair, and wept. But these weren’t tears of sorrow or regret. They were tears of relief, of release, of a burden finally lifted from her shoulders.

The calls and texts started within an hour. Polina Yevgenyevna, furious and righteous: “How dare you treat my son this way? After everything he’s done for you!”

Irina blocked the number.

More calls came from numbers she didn’t recognize—probably Anatoly borrowing phones from friends and family. She blocked them all.

Anatoly himself alternated between begging and threats in his messages: “Please, Irka, let’s talk about this. I love you.” Then, an hour later: “You’re going to pay for this, you heartless bitch.”

She documented everything, took screenshots, and saved them in a folder. Just in case.

A month later, Irina filed for divorce. She attached bank statements showing her income and deposits. She attached the rental payment records showing she’d paid alone for six months. She included the threatening text messages.

Her lawyer looked over everything and nodded approvingly. “This should be straightforward. Do you want to pursue reimbursement for the money he withdrew without your consent?”

Irina thought about it and shook her head. “I just want it over with. I want to be free.”

The divorce proceedings were uglier than she’d hoped but not as bad as she’d feared. Anatoly showed up with his mother, both of them looking at Irina with undisguised hatred. Polina Yevgenyevna actually stood up at one point and called her a “gold-digger” before the judge told her to sit down and be quiet.

In the end, the judge ruled in Irina’s favor on every point. The money in her mother’s account remained hers. Anatoly was ordered to remove his name from the rental lease. There were no assets to divide—they hadn’t accumulated anything of value during their marriage except the savings Irina had protected.

Walking out of the courthouse, Irina felt lighter than she had in years. The spring sun was warm on her face, and the world seemed full of possibilities rather than obligations.

She went back to working one job instead of two. Her boss at the accounting office asked her to take on more responsibility with a raise. She accepted. She painted the apartment walls a cheerful yellow, bought new curtains, and filled the windowsill with plants that she actually remembered to water.

Six months after the divorce was finalized, Irina stood in a used car dealership, her hand resting on the shiny hood of a modest sedan. It wasn’t the brand-new model she’d once dreamed of—those dreams belonged to a different person, a different life. But it was reliable, affordable, and entirely hers.

“I’ll take it,” she told the salesman firmly.

The paperwork took an hour. Irina signed her name over and over, smiling each time. When the keys were finally in her hand, she sat in the driver’s seat and just breathed for a moment.

The car smelled like leather cleaner and possibility. She started the engine and switched on the radio, and her wedding song came on—the song she and Anatoly had danced to while their guests clapped and cheered.

She reached for the button to change the station, then paused. She listened to the familiar melody and realized something: she felt no pain. No anger. No regret. Just a gentle nostalgia for a time that had passed, like looking at old photographs of someone you used to be.

Irina turned up the volume and pulled out of the dealership parking lot, heading toward her next chapter.

THE END