But the words stuck in my throat. I just shook my head and tears ran down my cheeks.
The next few days became a mishmash of legal documents, school trips, and trying to explain the unexplainable to the kids.
The divorce was quick, leaving me with compensation that hardly seemed fair. We had to sell the house, and my share of the money went to buy a smaller home.
I bought a modest two bedroom house for us. A home where I no longer had to fear betrayal.
The hardest part wasn’t losing the house or the life I dreamed of. The hardest part was watching Lisa and Maxim realise that their father wasn’t coming back.
At first Sergei sent child support payments like clockwork, but that didn’t last long.
After six months, the payments stopped, and so did the phone calls. I told myself that he was probably busy, or needed time to adjust.
But as the weeks turned into months, it became clear that Sergei was not only out of my life. He was gone from the children’s lives as well.
I later learnt through mutual acquaintances that Marina had played a significant role in this. She convinced him that communicating with his ‘past life’ distracted him from their common future.
And Sergei, always wanting to please her, agreed. And when financial problems began to arise, he didn’t have the courage to meet with us.
It hurt, but I had no choice but to take full responsibility for Liza and Maksim. They deserved stability, even if their father couldn’t provide it.
Slowly, I began to rebuild not only our lives, but also myself.
Three years later, our lives fell into a new rhythm that I grew to love.
Lisa was now in high school, and Maksim had taken up robotics and was successful at it. Our small house was filled with laughter and warmth, which reminded me how far we’d come.
The past no longer plagued us.
I thought I would never see Sergei again, but fate had decided otherwise.
It was a rainy day when everything came to its conclusion.
I had just finished shopping and, balancing my bags in one hand and an umbrella in the other, I spotted them. Sergei and Marina were sitting at a table in a shabby sidewalk café across the street.
And it looked as if time had spared neither of them.
Sergei looked tired. His once immaculate suits had been replaced by a crumpled shirt and a tie that hung unevenly. His hair had thinned and the wrinkles on his face spoke of exhaustion.
Marina, still dressed in designer clothes, appeared stylish from afar, but on closer inspection the details betrayed her decay. Her dress was faded, her bag was scratched, and the heels on her shoes were worn down to rags.
Seeing them, I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or just walk past.
But something made me stay put. I guess it was curiosity.
As if sensing my presence, Sergei looked up and met my gaze. For a moment, his face lit up with hope.
‘Lena!’ – he exclaimed, rising hastily, nearly knocking over a chair. – ‘Wait!’
I hesitated, but decided to approach, carefully placing the bags under the awning of the nearest shop.
Marina, noticing me, immediately frowned. Her eyes raced, as if she were avoiding a confrontation she knew she couldn’t win.
‘Lena, I’m sorry for everything,’ Sergei blurted out, his voice shaking. – ‘Please, can we talk? I want to see the kids. I want to make things right.’
‘Fix it?’ – I interjected. – ‘You haven’t seen your kids in over two years, Sergei. You stopped paying child support. What exactly are you going to fix?’
‘I know, I understand everything,’ Sergei began, his voice full of desperation. – ‘I made a mistake. Marina and I…’ – he cast a nervous glance at her. – ‘We’ve made a lot of bad decisions.’
‘Oh, you don’t need to put that on me,’ Marina interrupted him sharply, finally breaking her silence. Her voice was cold and full of contempt. – ‘You’re the one who lost all the money on your “safe investments”.’
‘You’re the one who convinced me it was a good idea!’ – Sergei snapped back.
Marina rolled her eyes.
‘Well, you spent the last of your own money on that bag,’ she pointed to her shabby designer handbag, ’instead of saving for rent.’
The tension was building between them, as if the resentment and frustration that had been building up over the years was now coming out.
I stood in silence, watching this spectacle. For the first time I saw them not as the spectacular couple that had destroyed my family, but as two broken people who had destroyed their own lives.
Marina finally stood up, adjusting her faded dress with an expression of disgust on her face.
‘I only stayed for the child we had,’ her words were icy, and she turned more to me than to Sergei. – ‘But don’t think I’m going to take it any further. You’re on your own now, Sergei.’
With those words, she turned and walked away, her heels clacking loudly on the wet pavement. Sergei stared after her, but didn’t even try to stop her.
He looked like a man who had lost everything, and only then turned to me.
‘Lena, please,’ his voice shook. – ‘Let me see the kids. I miss them so much. I miss us.’
I stared at him for a long time, trying to see even a shadow of the man I had once loved. But all I saw was a complete stranger who’d traded everything for nothing.
I shook my head.
‘Give me your number, Sergei,’ I said firmly. – ‘If the kids want to talk to you, they’ll call you themselves. But you’re not coming back to my house.’
His face contorted in pain, but he nodded. With trembling hands, he pulled out a piece of paper and wrote down the number.
‘Thank you, Lena,’ he muttered. – ‘I…I’d appreciate it if they called.’
I tucked the piece of paper into my pocket without even looking at it and turned to leave.
As I walked back to my car, a strange sense of finality swept over me. It wasn’t revenge. It was the realisation that I didn’t need Sergei to regret his mistakes in order to move on.
My children and I had built a life of love and resilience, and no one could take that away.
And for the first time in years, I smiled. Not because of Sergei’s fall, but because of how far we had come.