Valentina Nikolaevna left her job every day at three; she sat in her renovated kitchen, with her dumb husband stuck at his research in the volcanological institute uphill, and made up her mind that Olya had a flawed family structure—because Olya’s mother had a skill, because she had to travel, because they didn’t have the money to hang around painting their lashes and watching the evening news and fretting over two random little girls.
