Favorite Stories

How it happened, Rachel didn’t understand. She was driving to the salon when this crazy woman with a stroller darted out from behind the bushes. A dull thud and a child’s cry. That’s all she could remember. For three days, she was in a daze. She didn’t even care whether they’d put her in jail or not. Her husband took charge of everything. It was he who hired the lawyers and secured an expert report that proved the young mother had been drunk. Now Rachel could hope for a suspended sentence. But the “catch” was the grandmother of the injured …

— Where are you off to in the middle of the night again? — Emily froze in the hallway. — Don’t pretend you can’t hear me. As long as you’re living with me, I have a right to know where you’re going and what you’re doing. I’m responsible for you! — Mom, enough! I’m not a kid anymore. Am I going to be under your watch until I’m old enough to retire? — Natalie straightened up, brushed her bangs from her eyes, and stomped her foot lightly. Her gaze burned with resentment. — Don’t yell. I was just asking. When …

It so happened that I urgently needed surgery, and I ended up in the hospital. At home, I left my husband and our dog. My husband and I have been together for a long time, and as they say, we live in perfect harmony. We’ve known each other since school, studied in parallel classes, went to the same summer camp, and in high school, we got close at a school dance. We started hanging out, going for walks, and later I waited for him to return from the army. He became my first love and the father of my children. …

Don’t rush to call this story a fairy tale. Life is so unpredictable! You never know what it might hold… For a long time, she didn’t know her real name. All she heard was: — Dolly! Fetch it! Dolly, give it here! Dolly, clean up! That’s how her parents addressed her. That’s what her brother and sister called her. And her brother and sister were her main tormentors. There was a six-year age gap with her brother, four years with her sister. As she grew older, she understood why her mother called her not just Dolly but also a “mistake.” …

A typical morning at the bank began, as usual, with an overwhelming number of calls and clients, but Alex was used to it by now. Twelve years on the job will toughen you up to just about anything. His boss popped into his office. — Alex, I’m sending you a request now. Check everything on this loan agreement and get back to me. It’s urgent. — Got it, — Alex replied, waiting for the notification from the work system where his boss’s request would appear, while tuning out a client’s ramblings about how all banks would collapse in the near …

Ethan hadn’t even had the chance to ring the doorbell when the metal door swung open, and an elderly woman in a bright satin robe shouted from the threshold: — Hurry up and come in! Where have you been? Get to the kitchen, quick! What are you standing there for? — Sorry, but I… — Ethan began, still hiding a bouquet of flowers behind his back, but the strange woman had already disappeared into the depths of the apartment. Ethan shrugged, hesitantly stepped inside, placed the flowers on a small entryway table, took off his shoes, and, still in his …

Barbara had been married for three years and thought she was living a perfectly normal life. There was no luxury or wealth, of course, and the apartment was rented, but she was with the man she loved, the one she had been smitten with since high school. Her Andrew had always been a cheerful, carefree, handsome guy who easily drove girls crazy. But Barbara didn’t consider herself attractive and never hoped for more than simple friendship with him. She wrote his essays, completed his tests, and helped with homework, while he, taking the notebooks from her hands, would gratefully kiss …

It happened during one of my shifts as a paramedic. The day had been grueling, and all I wanted was to stretch my aching, exhausted legs on a cot somewhere. But, as luck would have it, a fire broke out at a school in the Maykuduk district of Karaganda. At that moment, every other ambulance crew was tied up with calls, so it fell to me to respond. Meanwhile, a fierce blizzard was raging over the city… The radio crackled with news that during the fire, the school’s security guard had jumped from a third-floor window. Firefighters, rushing through the …