“It was their mother-in-law who introduced them to Marya Markovna. They had a mother-in-law - one for two. This happens - and, alas, more often than we would like. If Katya had been asked when her mother turned into a mother-in-law, she would not have answered. And no one would have answered in her place. It begins as a chronic disease - with barely noticeable alarming symptoms. Maybe when a high school daughter invites a boy, lop-eared and awkward, into the house for the first time, and, lo and behold, she volunteers to bake cookies herself, and her mother feels a pang of jealousy: because for this lop-eared boy, there are cookies, but for her, well, at least I wish I could boil the pasta..."