— Where are you preparing to go, Ina?

— Yes? — Leonid uttered with a tired voice, looking at the wooden ceiling of the room.

On the other end of the line, a cold, professional voice was heard.
— Mr. Leonid Popescu? We are from the Police in Bucharest. We inform you that your wife has been urgently transported to the county hospital. At this moment, she is stable, but we have a few questions regarding the circumstances of the incident.

His heart stopped for a moment.

— Is she… alive? — he barely managed to stammer.
— Yes, but she was poisoned with an unknown substance. Perhaps you can help us understand what happened.

Leonid abruptly hung up the phone. Jeanne looked up, smiling.
— Who was it, darling?
— Nobody, a mistake… — he mumbled, pulling the blanket over himself. But sleep had vanished.

He reached for the pack of cigarettes, but his fingers were trembling. Thoughts buzzed in his head like wasps: “She got away… she got away…”

The next morning, a police officer appeared at the cabin’s reception. Tall, with a short haircut, holding a briefcase under his arm.
— I’m looking for a Mr. Popescu, staying here, — he said firmly.
Leonid tried to hide, but Jeanne, knowing nothing, happily called out:
— He’s here, in room 12!

At that moment, Leonid understood that everything was over.

A few hours later, he was already at the police station. He remained silent, looking out the window, while the officer asked him questions. When they showed him the envelope with the powder remnants found in the trash can near the building, his face went pale.

— Mr. Popescu, your wife told us something interesting before she was taken for surgery. That you always leave your work clothes in the laundry basket, but this time, she found them washed and ironed, without stains… as if you wanted to disappear clean.

Leonid collapsed into the chair.

— I didn’t want to kill her… just to… — he stopped.

— Just to what? — the officer asked calmly.

— Just to leave alone. Just once. After so many years of… routine. I wanted a break, to breathe.

The officer looked at him for a long time, then sighed.
— Maybe you should have told her that, not poured poison in her coffee.

A few months later, in the hospital room, Ina sat by the window, lost in thought. In her hands, she held a prayer book. The doctor told her that she had fully recovered.

But something in her had broken.

One day, she received a letter from the Jilava prison. It was from Leonid. He was asking for forgiveness, telling her that without her, he had no reason to live.

Ina read it to the end, then set the paper aside, with a strange calm.

She went out into the hospital courtyard and looked at the sky. The sun was setting gently.
— Twenty years of routine, and for what? — she whispered. — Maybe it took a disaster to remind me that I am alive.

She returned home alone, but she was no longer the same woman. Instead of the perfectly measured coffee cup, she now put in two spoons of sugar. And in the living room, the television no longer played in the evening. Instead of a series, there was only silence — a new, warm silence, full of life.

One day, an envelope arrived from the bank. It was a notification that the money from the joint account had been donated to a children’s home. Leonid had made the gesture before being sentenced.

Ina let the paper slip from her hands and smiled for the first time in a long time.

— Maybe, in a way, he still wanted to fix something, — she murmured.

And so, in a house where everything had always been perfect, life finally began to flow naturally.