Sonya got married when she was very young. Our tome was 10 years older than she was. They met at a ski resort. Sonia was from a low-income family. They lived together with her mother in the village right after high school. Sonia went to the city to university and graduated with a gold medal. She was accepted without exams based on the results of an interview. Sonia wanted to go home to her mother for the winter vacation, but her classmates persuaded her to go to a ski resort. Sonia was good at skiing, no way in the countryside without it. Tickets for students were not very expensive, plus the student committee paid 50 percent. It was there that she met Artyom, a handsome imposing man who immediately took the young student under his tutelage. Sonia believed in everything that Artyom told her, but her friends laughed at her. They said it was just a holiday romance. Sonia looked dreamily up into the sky. Inside, when Artyom proposed to her, all the evil tongues shut up and began to die of envy. Artyom was rich and took care of her beautifully. By the end of the first year, they got married. Every single person at the university was sure Sonia would quit her studies, as such men keep their wives at home in golden cages. But not Artyom. On the contrary, he insisted that Sonia should study, and she studied even harder, going for a red diploma. They said that you drop out of university if you got pregnant, but Sonia didn’t quit and for some reason didn’t get pregnant. She was very nervous about not having children. She wanted children secretly from her husband. Sonia went to the doctor and had some tests and checkups done. She was shocked that she was healthy. Sonia had lived all her life with only her mother and without her father, and she did not know how to solve problems with men or talk to them on sensitive topics. Sonia was as careful as she could be, but Artyom got angry. “Why do you need children? Is it bad to be just with me?” he asked sternly. “But that’s why people get married,” Sonia said. “And I thought people get married when they love each other,” Artyom replied. Sonia was very worried about starting this conversation. “I haven’t noticed your mother getting married to bring you into the world. Maybe you shouldn’t either. If you want to get pregnant and get fat and look like a cow, I need a wife, not a sow,” said Artyom. Things went wrong between them ever since. Artyom hardly ever spoke to her, only on matters. He stopped being interested in her activities, studies, and other things. Only in public, Artyom was still playing the role of the perfect husband, smiling and hugging Sonia. She even thought that things had gotten better. But as soon as they were alone, Artyom began to ignore her, as if she never existed. “I don’t think things will be the same now. You’ve ruined everything yourself,” Sonia was at the university, and suddenly, the cellphone rang. The number was unfamiliar, and Sonia ran out of the classroom. Some strange feeling of anticipation seemed to grab Sonia by the throat. She gasped, and with a trembling hand, the girl pressed a button. An unfamiliar male voice asked if she knew Artyom. “Of course, I do,” said Sonia. “He’s my husband.” “You know, he died in a car accident,” said the stranger with a cold voice, without any emotion. Sonia felt the ground fall from under her feet. Her eyes went fuzzy. “This is a joke,” she shouted into the phone. The voice continued, “What kind of joke would this be?” and began to explain where she had to go and who to meet. It was like a nightmare. She was in the morgue for a lineup. An attendant opened some door in the wall, pulled out a long drawer, and threw back a sheet. More than anything, Sonia wanted to scream. No, it wasn’t him. But on the stretcher was Artyom, detached, gray, and cold. She nodded her head and fainted. Then there was a funeral, a memorial service, and something else. And somewhere in between, Sonia walked into the university to study. She didn’t understand anything. She listened to something but heard nothing. Thank God the exams were far away; otherwise, she would have failed. But she could not prepare well and pass the exam badly. Any red diploma was out of the question. But Sonia didn’t care. As if her life ended with Artyom’s death. Now, her favorite, well, her only pastime was visiting Artyom’s grave at the cemetery. Sonia’s conscience tormented her. Why had she started that conversation with him about the children? If they hadn’t quarreled with Artyom, maybe he would not have been so upset and not have had his accident. So, it was all her fault. She was the one who killed Artyom. Sonia began to lose her mind. One day, when she was walking to his grave, she saw something large and wide. As she got closer, Sonia saw that someone had brought a huge basket of lilies of the valley to Artyom’s grave. Strange. Who could it be? Sonia was confused. The flowers were beautiful and placed with love, obviously. But Sonia was even more surprised when the basket stirred and some things squeaked inside. She pulled the flowers apart and saw newborn babies. Three at once. Two boys and a girl, lying on her husband’s grave. “What is this? Was it some kind of prank or did someone misunderstand something?” Sonia could not leave the children in the cemetery, much less on her husband’s grave. She carefully placed the flowers on the grave. She didn’t throw them away. Someone had made an effort, and Sonia took the basket with the children home. She found a note in the basket when she moved the children to the bed. “These are the result of our love.” Sonia was dumbfounded. So they were Artyom’s children. Then who is their mother? Her husband had a mistress. So that’s why he didn’t want to have children with her. He had another woman who, in her husband’s opinion, was far more suited to the role of their mother than his lawful wife. Then why did he marry Sonia? Men are very strange. They do strange things. Sonia was very angry with Artyom, not so much for his act, but because he was already dead, and she could not ask him anything now. Sonia remembered about the lilies of the valley. She ran out of the apartment and to the cemetery again. It wasn’t far away. Arriving at Artyom’s grave, she sought out the previously carefully arranged flowers. She cried and trampled the hated lilies with her feet, then fell on Artyom’s grave and wept. When she calmed down, she got up and went home without looking back. She had only blamed herself for asking him about the children for so long, but he had a mistress. Sonia walked home with a calm heart. She forgave herself. As she approached the apartment, she heard a child cry. The children at home. How could she have forgotten about them? The little ones weren’t responsible for anything. Sonia went home, hugged the children, and calmed them down. They were hungry, of course. Thank God the babies couldn’t walk or even crawl yet and could be left at home. Sonia went to the store to get baby formula, bottles, and more supplies. She fed the children and sat next to them to watch them sleep. The boys looked exactly like Artyom. The girl too, but her features were softer. Sonia looked in the basket again to see if there was anything else. It looked like Artyom’s mistress had prepared well. At the bottom were three birth certificates with stamps and signatures. Artyom was listed as the father, but the mother column was blank. Strange. You can’t get a certificate like that without knowing someone in medical circles. Apparently, Artyom’s mistress was not a simple girl. Certainly not as simple as Sonia was. So how do we find out who the mother of the triplets was? What to do with these babies whose mother so coldly left them on the grave? Give them to an orphanage to grow up as orphans? But they were Artyom’s children, weren’t they? And in any case, Sonia loved her husband, despite everything. Puzzled over what she should do, Sonia stayed up all night. In the morning, with a trembling hand, she put her information in the mother’s box for all the children and relaxed after that. Soon, she took the little ones to her mother in the village. Sonia didn’t leave university; she graduated, even though she did not have a red diploma with honor roll. But she raised her children alone with her mother, without anyone’s help.
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While visiting her husband’s grave, she found three babies lying on the wet ground.
