The rain tapped persistently against the windowpane, while the city stretched out beyond—damp, muted, and gray through the misted glass.
Igor sat rigidly in the armchair, his gaze fixed on the soaked walls of the buildings opposite.
Behind him, in his usual spot, sat his grandfather, Viktor Stepanovich, wrapped in a thick blanket, clutching a book.
He was a stooped old man, his hair white as snow, and his glasses perpetually slipping down his nose. His finger traced the lines slowly and deliberately, as if each word bore a distinct weight.
This entire scene irritated Igor. His grandfather’s slowness, his hoarse cough, and most of all, the gentle look that still conveyed: “I love you, my grandson.”
But Igor felt no love. Only impatience. Revulsion. The thought that he still had to tolerate this old man felt suffocating.
He never knew his father, and his mother died early. Viktor was the only one left. He was the one who took him from the orphanage, paid for his schooling, gave him a home, clothes, and food.
Yet Igor never recognized this as love. To him, it was merely duty—a task an elderly man performed because he had to. Nothing more.
And, of course, there was the promise of the future. The city apartment, the country house, the savings set aside. Igor always knew that one day it would be his.
He didn’t have to work for it. He just had to wait. For years, nothing else moved him but this quietly maturing hope.
But the years passed, and Igor grew angrier, more bitter. He blamed his bosses, the system, the world. He never took responsibility for his own life.
Whatever failed was always someone else’s fault. The grandfather just watched, listened, and grew ever quieter. There was a time he hoped—maybe Igor would grow up, maybe he would change.
Until one evening, calm and quiet, Viktor approached him and softly said:
– I don’t think I can leave you anything.
Igor stared at him, bewildered.
– What are you saying? It’s all mine!
– No. You couldn’t keep it. You would waste it. I simply cannot trust you.
That sentence broke something inside him. He grew furious, then determined. If the grandfather wouldn’t hand it over willingly, he would force it. He found an old schoolmate, Petya, who had become a pharmacist.
He coerced him into giving some sedatives, “just so grandpa wouldn’t worry so much.” Then he began slipping doses in. In the morning tea, at night in the milk.
Viktor Stepanovich slowly began losing himself: forgetting where he was, what he was doing, who he truly was. At night he wandered, sometimes whispering: “Lida… where are you, Lida?”
Igor felt everything was going according to plan. The grandfather disappeared—not physically, but in spirit. And when hardly anything of him remained, Igor took him to a dubious nursing home.
A place where no one asks questions, where the elderly are quietly tucked away in a corner.
But someone noticed something was wrong. A nurse, Nadya, saw the story behind the frail old man.
She asked her husband Sergei for help, and together, secretly, they smuggled Viktor out of the home.
They brought him to their own house, washed away the haze of medications, and slowly, piece by piece, helped him find himself again.
One day the man spotted a photograph on the dresser: a smiling woman with a headscarf looked back at him.
– That’s… that’s Lida… – he whispered. – My Lida…
It turned out Nadya was the granddaughter of the woman he had loved in his youth. The woman lost in the war, yet who left behind someone—someone who now returned life to him.
Viktor cried, but not from sorrow—rather from the realization that what he had given was not lost—it had simply come back in another form.
In his will, he left everything to Sergei. He was no blood relative—but family by heart.
When Igor learned this, he stormed into their home in rage. Demanded everything back. But Viktor Stepanovich was no longer the confused old man. He stood there, leaning on his cane, and quietly said:
– I remember everything. I remember what you did. And I am no longer yours.
Igor left silently. He never sought them again.
Months passed, and Viktor grew weaker. But he smiled. Evenings he held Lida’s photo in his hands and whispered:
– Thank you… for letting me make amends.
One morning he never woke up. Peace rested upon his face.
Igor meanwhile began working in a warehouse. Hard labor, low wages. But for the first time, he didn’t complain. One evening he stood by the window, gazed long at the twilight, then quietly said:
– I ruined… everything.
No one answered. But somewhere, in a deep, quiet place, perhaps a voice still returned to him:
– I forgive you, Igor. I forgive you.
