— Igor, don't argue with your sister, said Anatoly.
"Not my sister," Igor replied in a low voice before leaving.
Each time, Sasha felt a tension building within her.
Not anger, but powerlessness.
She saw the balance that she and Tolya had built over the years crumbling.
Slowly, patiently, through arguments and reconciliations, they had built it.
And now, that balance was beginning to crack, and it seemed that no one but her noticed.
Or that she preferred to ignore it.
In early November, Vika announced that she needed a new phone.
The old one, as she put it, "couldn't keep up anymore" — the apps would freeze, the camera would glitch, and in general, this
