Stepfather

My mother and I live in different cities: I'm in Moscow, she's in Kursk. It's expensive to call, and we don't visit each other very often, so we correspond via email. I don't really have any other relatives, only my elderly grandfather in Ukraine. My stepfather became an alcoholic five years ago and died. I can't say we were happy then, but we breathed a sigh of relief, because toward the end of his life, he began beating my mother (and I, consequently, had to fight with him over it), stealing things from the house, and terrorizing the entire household. Shortly before his death, he even began threatening us, sometimes flying into rages, cursing, and threatening to get us from the other side. So, when he was found frozen behind the garages in winter, no one was too upset. We mourned and forgot all the bad things about him, and since he never did much good, it turns out we forgot about him completely.

 Early this year, my mother, as usual, was getting ready to go to my grandfather's. I called her the evening before. The next day, I opened the mail and there was a letter from my mother. She wrote that she hadn't gone anywhere because work had been a big deal and she'd postponed the trip for a couple of weeks. She also invited me to come over and help her with the dacha; she'd bought a bunch of seedlings, and it was hard to manage on her own. I thought about it and decided to go. After all, I hadn't seen my mother in a while, and I needed help; there was no one else to help.

I took a week's vacation, bought a ticket, and called—they picked up, but I could barely hear anything. I texted her, and my mother replied that her cell phone had fallen off and wasn't working properly. In the end, we agreed that I'd come and pick up the keys behind the radiator in the entryway.

I arrived in Kursk and made it home. I found the keys in the terrible mud behind the radiator; they probably hadn't cleaned it since the day the house was built. I tried to open the apartment, but the key didn't work. I called my mother's cell phone and heard the phone ringing behind the door. This, to put it mildly, disconcerted me. I called my mother at work, and they told me she'd left for Ukraine the day before yesterday. I called my mother's number again (I think maybe I imagined it), and I heard the phone ringing behind the door again, and then the sound disappeared: someone picked it up, rustled, but didn't speak. Now I was seriously worried. I hung up, called again—same thing. Someone was at the door.

I went to my neighbor's house and explained the situation. She gave me my grandfather's number (my mother had left it just in case), and I dialed it. My mother answered. She was very surprised and frightened by my story.

I called the police. While I waited for them, I went to look in the windows. I even climbed a tree—thankfully, it was on the second floor. I started calling my mother's phone again, and I heard movement at the door. And then I almost fell out of a tree, because I saw through the tulle that this "someone" was wearing a brown sweater with white stripes and light-colored pants. I immediately remembered that frosty winter day—my mother and I were woken up that morning by the police. A frightened woman from the neighboring house told me she'd gone out with her dog before work and seen him. My stepfather was lying in the snow, hunched over; he'd apparently gone out for vodka while we were sleeping and decided to drink outside. He was wearing a brown sweater with white stripes and white summer pants. Those were the only things I recognized him by at first, because his face was completely covered in snow.

Finally, the police arrived and knocked on the door. Then they spent a long time investigating, taking my computer and my mother's laptop, looking for fingerprints, questioning neighbors. They found nothing. They chalked it up to a stupid prank by one of their acquaintances, and besides, nothing was missing, so the case was quickly closed...