On the day I turned eighteen, my mother threw me out the door. But years later, fate brought me back to that house, and in the stove, I discovered a hiding place that held her chilling secret.

Anya had always felt like a stranger in her own home. Mom clearly favored her older sisters — Vika and Yulia — showing them much more care and warmth. This injustice deeply wounded the girl, but she kept her resentment inside, constantly trying to please her mother and get at least a little closer to her love.

“Don’t even dream of living with me! The apartment will go to your sisters. And you’ve looked at me like a wolf cub since childhood. So live wherever you want!” — with these words, Mom kicked Anya out of the house just as she turned eighteen.

Anya tried to object, to explain that it was unfair. Vika was only three years older, and Yulia five. Both had finished university at their mother’s expense; no one pressured them to start supporting themselves. But Anya was always the odd one out. Despite all her efforts to be “good,” her family barely loved her — if you could even call it that. Only Grandpa treated her kindly. It was he who took in his pregnant daughter after her husband abandoned them without a trace.

“Maybe Mom is worried about my sister? They said I look very much like her,” Anya thought, trying to find an explanation for her mother’s coldness. She tried several times to talk frankly with her mother, but each time it ended in a scandal or hysteria.

Grandpa, however, was a real support for her. The best childhood memories were connected to the village where they spent summers. Anya grew to love working in the garden and orchard, learned to milk a cow, bake pies — anything to stay away from home as long as possible, where every day greeted her with contempt and reproaches.

“Grandpa, why does no one love me? What’s wrong with me?” she often asked, holding back tears.

“I love you very much,” he answered kindly but never said anything about Mom or the sisters.

Little Anya wanted to believe he was right, that she was loved, just in a special way… But when she turned ten, Grandpa died, and since then, the family treated her even worse. The sisters bullied her, and Mom always sided with them.

From that day on, not a single new thing — only clothes handed down from Vika and Yulia. They mocked her:

“Oh, what a fashionable blouse! Use it for wiping the floor or for Anya — whatever you need!”

And if Mom bought candy, the sisters ate it all themselves, handing her the wrappers:

“Here, dummy, collect your candy wrappers!”

Mom heard everything but never scolded them. So Anya grew up a “wolf cub” — unwanted, constantly begging for love from people who saw not just a nobody in her, but an object of mockery and hostility. The harder she tried to be good, the more they hated her.
That’s why when Mom threw her out on her eighteenth birthday, Anya found a job as a nurse’s aide. Enduring and working hard became her habit, and now at least she got paid — even if a little. But no one here hated her. If you are met without malice where you are kind, that’s already a step forward. That’s what she thought.

Her employer even gave her a chance to get a scholarship and train as a surgeon. Such specialists were in great shortage in the small town, and Anya had already shown talent, even as a nurse.

Life was hard. By twenty-seven, she had no close people. Work became her life’s meaning — literally. She lived for the patients whose lives she saved. But the feeling of loneliness never left: she lived alone in a dormitory, as before.

Visiting Mom and sisters was a constant disappointment. Anya tried to do it as rarely as possible. Everyone would go out for a smoke and gossip, while she went to the porch to cry.

One day at such a moment, a colleague — orderly Grisha — approached her:

“Why are you crying, beautiful?”

“What beautiful… Don’t tease me,” Anya replied softly.

She thought of herself as plain, a gray mouse, not even noticing that by nearly thirty she had turned into a petite charming blonde with big blue eyes and a neat little nose. The awkwardness of youth had disappeared, her shoulders straightened, and her light hair, tied in a strict bun, seemed to be trying to break free.

“You’re really quite good-looking! Value yourself and don’t hang your head. Besides, you’re a promising surgeon, and things are going well for you,” he encouraged her.

Grisha had worked with her for almost two years, sometimes treating her with chocolates, but this was their first real conversation. Anya burst into tears and told him everything.

“Maybe you should call Dmitry Alekseevich? The one you recently saved. He treats you well. They say he has many connections,” Grigory suggested.

“Thanks, Grisha. I’ll try,” Anya replied.

“And if it doesn’t work out, we can get married. I have an apartment, won’t wrong you,” he said jokingly.

Anya blushed and suddenly realized — he was serious. He saw in her not a pathetic orphan but a woman who deserved love.

“Okay. I’ll consider that option too,” she smiled, feeling for the first time in a long while that she wasn’t a “workhorse” or unwanted, but a beautiful young woman with everything still ahead.

That same evening, Anya dialed Dmitry Alekseevich’s number:

“This is Anya, the surgeon. You gave me your number and said I could contact you if there were problems…” she began, then hesitated.

“Anya! Hello! How wonderful that you finally called! How are you? But you know what, let’s meet instead. Come over, we’ll have some tea and talk about everything. We, older people, like to chat,” the man responded warmly.

The next day…

“Anya… I might have a solution,” he said thoughtfully. “My wife passed years ago. My son lives abroad. I was planning to move to my dacha permanently, but I don’t want to leave the house empty. It’s yours if you take care of it. It’ll give you peace, and me — comfort, knowing someone good lives here.”

At first, she refused — the offer was too generous — but he insisted. So a week later, she moved in.

That’s when fate circled back.

Because the address on the deed — the small, old house Dmitry offered her — was in her hometown.
Her mother’s street.

At first, Anya didn’t even recognize it — the neighborhood had changed, new buildings had sprouted. But when she stood before the iron gate and saw the old birch tree with the scar on its trunk, her breath caught. Across the street was her mother’s apartment — the same balcony where her sisters once leaned out to laugh at her torn backpack.

Her hands trembled as she unlocked the gate. The hinges creaked like a memory resurfacing.

The interior smelled of dust and lavender soap. Dmitry had said the house used to belong to an old friend — a woman named Klavdia who’d died years ago.

For days, Anya worked tirelessly: cleaning, painting, airing out rooms. And one evening, while scrubbing the kitchen stove, her rag caught on something — a loose metal plate on the back panel. Curious, she pried it open.

Behind it, hidden inside the wall, was a bundle wrapped in oilcloth.

Her heart pounded as she unwrapped it — and froze.

Inside were dozens of photographs — faded, black-and-white, some crumpled. Every one of them showed her mother… with a man she’d never seen before. And in several of the later ones, a baby — her.

But the man wasn’t the father Anya had been told abandoned them. He was different — younger, smiling, holding baby Anya in his arms with unmistakable tenderness.

At the bottom of the bundle lay a letter, yellowed and sealed with wax.
It was addressed to “My daughter, Anya.”

Her trembling fingers broke the seal.

“If you ever find this, my little one, it means I never found the courage to tell you.
You are not like your sisters because you are not their sister.
The man you called Father wasn’t yours — he died before you were born.
I loved another. Your grandfather forced me to hide it.
I kept you, but I couldn’t love you the way I should — not without hating myself for what I’d done.
Forgive me, if you can.
— Mama.”

Anya sank to the floor, the letter shaking in her hands.

She had spent her whole life believing she was unloved because she was unworthy.
Now she knew: she was unloved because she was a reminder.

That night, she sat by the stove, staring into the quiet flames. Her heart hurt — but it was a different pain, almost cleansing.

By morning, she packed the photos and the letter in a new box and placed it back behind the stove panel — not to hide it again, but to leave the past where it belonged.

When Grisha visited a week later, she met him at the gate with a smile — calm, radiant.

He frowned, noticing her serenity. “You look different. Lighter.”

“I found something,” she said softly. “Answers, maybe. But also freedom.”

He didn’t ask. He just took her hand, and for the first time, Anya didn’t flinch.

Above them, Mount Rainier’s snowy peak shimmered in the distance — distant, untouchable, yet no longer frightening.

Because for the first time, Anya knew exactly where she belonged.