Yaryna couldn’t believe her father was gone. Ostap had been full of life only days ago—joking, making plans, building something in his workshop. Now he lay in a coffin, his face gray and strangely unfamiliar. The church outside Bohuslav was packed.
Incense and candle wax thickened the air. So many people pressed around her that Yaryna had to push through the crowd and stumble outside. She sank onto a bench under an old acacia and wept. “Why?
” she whispered into the emptiness. “Why did you give him to me, only to take him away? ”
She had spent almost her whole childhood in an orphanage. On her graduation evening, a man in a light gray suit walked up the path with a bouquet of flowers, repeating her name like a prayer.
“Yaryna, Yaryna Melnyk. ” That was how she found her father. That was how he came back into her life. Ostap gave her everything she had never dared to hope for.
A home with a garden, a warm fireplace, a golden dog named Zhuka. They played ball on the lawn while he sat in the wooden gazebo, drinking tea and closing his eyes in the sun. He wanted to tell her the truth about the orphanage, but every time he started, he broke down. He would weep silently, claw at his own face, and fall quiet.
She never pressed him. Then, a few days ago, buyers came to look at one of his old cars. Ostap was laughing and telling jokes when he suddenly went pale, swayed, and crashed onto the hood. Yaryna stood right there, frozen.
People shouted, someone shook him, but he was already gone. The blood clot had killed him within minutes. “Nothing could have been done,” the pathologist said, handing her the paper with a practiced sad face. At the funeral, Yaryna didn’t cry.
She stared at nothing and said nothing. She threw a handful of dirt on the coffin and walked away before the grave was filled. At the wake, she sat without touching food or water. People shook their heads.
Someone tried to comfort her with words about memory and memory living on. She smiled faintly and slipped out the door. She woke two days later to the doorbell ringing. Demyan, her fiancé, stood in the doorway with bags of groceries.
“I let you sleep,” he said. “You look better. ”
Yaryna’s stomach grumbled. Her cat wound around her feet, begging.
She walked into the kitchen, mechanically chewed something, then said: “I have to go to the notary. Can you drive me? ”
“Of course. ”
“After that, let’s go to my father’s house outside the village.
There’s a fair there tomorrow. I want to be there. ”
Demyan agreed with too much energy. He talked about how they would take care of things and maybe go out in the evening, as if nothing had happened.
As if they were planning a normal weekend. The notary was quick and draining. Every signature made her father’s death more real. Then they drove into the forest, and the silence sat heavy between them.
Demyan pulled over onto the side of the road. “Look at this,” he said. They got out. In front of them stretched a wide meadow, covered in yellow wildflowers.
The air was thick with warm grass and earth. Demyan stood there for a moment, then asked quietly: “Have you decided? ”
Yaryna didn’t understand. “A month and a half ago, when you introduced me to your father, you said you needed time.
I understand if now isn’t the moment. I just need to know. ”
Yaryna looked at him. Her father had liked Demyan.
And now she was alone. Maybe this was the anchor she needed. She stepped closer, took his hand, and kissed him. “I’ve decided,” she said.
“Yes. My father would have wanted this. ”
Demyan exhaled, then his face twisted. He patted his pockets and grimaced.
“I forgot the ring. What a disaster. ”
He dropped to his knees and started digging through the grass, pretending to search for something. Yaryna watched him, confused, then let out a nervous laugh—the first in days.
Suddenly he stood up, grinning. “Look what I found. Gold. ”
He held out a wedding ring.
Yaryna, still smiling in disbelief, slipped it onto her finger. By the time they reached the village, evening was falling. The long street smelled of smoke and dogs. Yaryna waved to old Petro, the neighbor, who was stacking boards by his fence.
He only glanced at her from under his brow and turned away. “He’s not friendly,” Demyan said. “He and my father fought over the boundary line for years. He didn’t even come to the funeral.
”
Yaryna unlocked the gate. The yard had grown wild. Demyan found a brush cutter and attacked the weeds with surprising energy, while Yaryna made dinner in the summer kitchen. They ate in the gazebo.
“We’ll have our wedding here,” Demyan announced with his mouth full. “It’s a good place. ”
That night Yaryna walked through the garden alone. The sky filled with stars.
She thought about Demyan. Like her, he had grown up in an orphanage, but somehow he had built a successful business in the city. When she asked how, he joked about winning the lottery or finding treasure. She never pushed.
Everyone had secrets. They married quietly in the yard. But instead of a honeymoon, Demyan packed his bags and went back to the city. “Business problems,” he said quickly, not looking at her.
“We’ll go in winter. ” Yaryna stayed behind to repair the house. She threw herself into work: new wallpaper, painted veranda, clearing the garden. Old Petro watched her from behind his fence every day, shaking his gray head.
One hot afternoon, she was struggling with a wheelbarrow full of broken brick when he finally called out: “Why are you breaking your back alone? Where is that husband of yours? ”
“He works. He has his business.
”
Petro helped her dump the bricks, then frowned. “Your father took care of this garden like it was his own child. It hurts me to see it like this. ”
She offered him tea with honey.
He drank five cups, ate almost all the candy, and told her his son Vasyl was a professional stove maker. “If he comes on the weekend, I’ll send him over to look at your bathhouse. ” That evening, the years of neighborly hostility quietly ended. One cold, foggy morning, Yaryna was picking apples in the garden when she heard rough voices at Petro’s fence.
“What do you want? ” Petro barked. “Do the Tkachis live here? ”
Yaryna froze.
Tkach was her married name. Demyan’s name. She pressed herself against the cold fence, barely breathing. “There’s no Tkach here,” Petro said, and slammed the gate.
When he turned and saw her white face, he said: “Some suspicious type came sniffing around. Don’t be scared. I’ll keep an eye on you. Maybe he’s your husband’s business partner?
”
“Demyan doesn’t have friends like that,” Yaryna whispered, but a cold doubt was already taking root. The next day she went into the forest to pick mushrooms. It was a bright, familiar place. She found a few strong boletus mushrooms, then wandered deeper to a thicket of blackberries.
Her hands were stained with purple juice when she heard a loud crack behind her. “Who’s there? ” she called. Silence.
She felt for her knife in the grass. Then the crack came again, closer. Before she could run, something hit the back of her head. Her knees buckled.
The forest went dark. She woke to a throbbing pain and complete darkness. The air smelled of mold and old tools. She was in her own shed, her hands and feet bound with zip ties.
Blood trickled down her face from a wound on her head. She dragged herself to the door. Locked. Then she heard voices outside.
One was Demyan’s. “Why the hell did you bring her here? ” he hissed. “What was I supposed to do?
Leave her there? There were foresters around. I barely got away. ”
“We had a deal.
We were supposed to do this quietly. Sink her in the swamp, like I ordered. ”
“Watch your mouth. I’m not your errand boy.
”
Yaryna squeezed her eyes shut. The truth hit harder than the blow to her head. Her own husband had hired someone to kill her for her father’s money. “I hit her hard,” the stranger said.
“She might already be dead. If not, I’ll finish her. ”
“Not in my yard,” Demyan snapped. “Wait until full dark.
Then you take her into the woods and out to the swamp. We’ll go our separate ways after I pay you. ”
“You’ll pay me. Because if you don’t, I won’t stay quiet.
”
Yaryna stopped listening. She searched blindly in the dark until her fingers found a rusty scythe blade. She began sawing at the plastic ties around her wrists. Then the lock on the shed door scraped.
Yaryna held her breath. The door creaked open a few inches, and suddenly the voices outside stopped. “Hold it right there! ” a voice thundered.
Petro’s voice. Yaryna looked through the crack and saw him standing in the yard, holding an old hunting rifle pointed at the two men. “Hands where I can see them! Police are already on their way!
”
The stranger raised his arms. Demyan’s bravado melted. He stood frozen, staring at the black barrel, and didn’t move when the police arrived and snapped handcuffs on his wrists. He never once looked toward the shed where Yaryna lay.
Petro cut her ties and helped her outside. “Fool girl,” he said, but there was no anger in his voice. “Did you feel nothing? What kind of man he was?
”
“I thought he loved me. ”
Petro sat down beside her on the bench. “Your father waited so long for you. He lived for you, Yaryna.
He kept this house, this garden, everything for you. When you appeared, his life finally had meaning. He would never have allowed that piece of filth to touch you. ”
Yaryna started to cry.
She said she wanted to go to the police station and look Demyan in the eyes, ask him why. Petro shook his head. “No. Don’t do that.
Don’t look for logic in traitors. Let the past stay in the past. You need to live now. ”
Time passed.
Autumn turned the hills gold and red. Yaryna stayed in her father’s house. She found peace in the garden and in the quiet daily work. The traitor was gone.
The house began to bloom again under her hands. One afternoon, she stopped by the bathhouse to see how the renovation was going. Vasyl, Petro’s son, had just finished building the new stove. He wiped his forehead and smiled.
“It turned out beautiful,” he said. “I’ve never made a better one. ”
“You finished so quickly,” Yaryna said. “Why not?
I did it all myself. And I already got paid. ”
“So how much do I owe you? ”
Vasyl wiped his hands on a towel and looked at her with warm, steady eyes.
“I already received my payment. The work itself was a joy. If every job were like this, I’d be the happiest man in the world. ”
He looked at her for a moment longer, then said, “Maybe we could have lunch together?
In town, some nice place. I have a car, we’ll be there and back in no time. ”
Yaryna smiled. For the first time in a long while, she felt light.
“Okay,” she said. “But first wash up and change your clothes. ”
They walked up the narrow path to the house together. Vasyl talked about his work, about funny stories and jobs he’d done, but his eyes kept drifting to her.
She pretended not to notice, but she felt a quiet warmth spreading through her chest. They got married a few months later, in the same farmhouse with the garden she had brought back to life. The windows were open, the air smelled of ripe apples, and for the first time in years, the house felt full again.
