This story, one way or another affecting our entire family, happened in August two thousand ... and, incidentally, the year is not important, in the provincial city of P. At that time, summer, already feeling the autumn, still imperceptibly sneaking up, tried to donate the remnants of heat, sometimes spilled by heavy rain, and only at night, as if taking a pause, let the autumn coolness come to us.

But perhaps it’s worth starting the story from afar and introducing you to my family. My name is Natasha, by the time of the events I want to tell about, I was 19 years old, and I was, in general, the most ordinary young girl, a student in the philological department, with all the problems and problems inherent in this beautiful age. I was, and still am, an only child in the family, which was also quite ordinary.

My parents got married quite early, especially in modern terms, when young people are in no hurry to tie themselves to the knot in order to enjoy a single life as long as possible. My father, Pavel Alekseevich, at that time, at five minutes, a graduate of a military school, married his mother, Marina, who had just turned nineteen. She was just like me now, just going crazy, if you think about it and, to be honest, it frightens me pretty much, for I’m definitely not ready to become a wife to anyone right here and now, I, as a representative of the next generation, see and really live in a different rhythm of growing up, although the upbringing I received was very, very conservative.

Shortly after the parents' wedding, I came into the world, by the way, I suspect that their marriage was, as they say, “after flying”, since I was born less than eight months after the wedding, but we never discussed this issue. Father put on shoulder straps of lieutenant of marines, and life began full of wanderings around the cities and villages of our vast Motherland: we moved with unenviable regularity from one garrison to another, waited for the father from business trips (including from the Caucasus, from where he brought awards and gloomy mood), and I constantly had to get used to new schools and classmates. As a result, for all my childhood and adolescence I didn’t have really close friends, I also didn’t have a love for studying, although I finished the school quite well. In all this kaleidoscope of changing places of residence and new people, in my life the only joy was sport - I did not give up rhythmic gymnastics, and even gave some hope at some point. I was ready to go to workouts at least anywhere, stuck in the gym for hours, and as a result, I lost my rank of CCM. But it didn’t work out any further, I didn’t wait for invitations to the regional team: as the coach explained to me, it was all about my body size - the hips were too wide for gymnastics (this was so veiled I was told about an overly big ass), height (by that moment I vymahala to 178 centimeters), and after fourteen years, my chest began to develop too quickly.

At sixteen, I made a very difficult decision for myself and said goodbye to gymnastics, which left me a legacy of a healthy flexible body, an excellent stretch, quite a feminine and sexy figure, and you do not think that your chest and butt, not suitable for sport, interfered, in a normal life it was very, very handy, so men's views will not lie.

My mother, too, endured the "joys" of marriage for a military man without enthusiasm, looking for joy in the work that she had to change with the same regularity as my school. Unlike me, she easily and quickly found friends in any place, spent a lot of time with them or at work, often went to her parents in P., in general, since I went to school, I saw my mother irregularly.As a result, I have never been very close to her, except for preschool age, and we lived with her some kind of parallel lives: no, I was always fit and well fed, but I didn’t have anything to do with my mother. On the whole, I grew up with a certain feeling of being useless to my parents, as if they had their own life, and I had my own. Perhaps it was so. And although dad often, and sometimes for a long time, went away on business trips and in service, I was sincerely attached to him, and must have loved him more than my mother.

When I finished school, my father left the service, being already a lieutenant colonel, and we moved to the already mentioned city P. I went to the university, my father and my mother found some kind of decent positions in reputable companies, and life began to flow. I can’t say that something radically changed for me: Mom was increasingly busy with her career and herself, my father was still driving around a lot, and I lived the same conditionally independent life.

As I mentioned, then it was the end of August, I was preparing to go to the third year in order to continue studying Italian, linguistics and literary theory. It was getting dark. I spent almost the whole day, wandering around the city where I was born, but who learned and learned to love just now. I sat with a book in the Rumyantsev Garden, drank a cup of coffee in Literary coffee, and sat in the square on Arts Square again. I loved to be alone, it didn’t do me at all, and on the contrary, sometimes I wanted to be without everyone. That time it was like that.

You do not think, I was not inhospitable, and did not avoid the society of their peers. I even started a romantic relationship with a young man with a historical one. But then I wanted to be alone with myself and my thoughts.

Twilight had already crawled between the trees, trying to win back as much space as possible, it was getting chilly, and I realized that it was time to go home. I slowly walked along Italiana Street, looking at the windows, I was always fascinated by this: to see a piece of the interior and imagine people living in a particular apartment, who they are and what they are doing. I looked into the windows of shops and cafes, looked at people, inventing their stories, fantasizing about their lives, thoughts, deeds and experiences. It seemed to me very exciting, and very well matched my mood.

And suddenly, in one of the restaurants, through a large display window, I saw my mother sitting in my turn. My first impulse was to go to a restaurant and sit down at her table, but something unknown stopped me, and I stayed on the street, continuing to watch her.

Mom looked just superb, however, as usual, she always paid a lot of time and energy to her appearance. She was wearing a light business suit, her blond thick hair was stylishly styled, a soft but thoughtful make-up emphasized her attractiveness. She sat on one leg, leaning forward a little toward the table, and casually chatted with a man, sometimes squeezing white wine from a glass on a high stem. Sometimes my mother smiled, making it even more attractive, her companion said something animatedly, sometimes gesticulating. After standing for a few minutes, I decided not to distract my mother, and went on.

But my thoughts lost their usual rhythm, returning again and again to what they saw. Something did not give me rest, something sat a thorn, which could not manage to pull out. And then it dawned on me, a new thought flashed at first with a flash of lightning, and then despicable as if an ice serpent crawled into my consciousness. The way her mother held herself, how she coquettishly tilted her head to the side, how she looked playfully at her companion, how she laughed and how she moved, left no doubt - she was flirting with this man. It was definitely not a business dinner or something like that, it was a date.

“Damn, is that what comes out, she has an affair?” - this thought brought discomfort, pained and did not allow to think about anything else.I drove this guess from myself, but she came back again and again. Mom returned home around ten in the evening, but there was nothing unusual about her behavior, so I still didn’t decide if my suspicions were exhausted or, conversely, confirmed. That night I could not fall asleep for a long time, then winding myself up, trying to calm down, ...