The Mother-in-Law Swap

Two households in the same city draw up a plan that sounds like a joke until the names are filled in. Each man would spend his hours with the other's mother-in-law. The women are married, older, and not props the sons-in-law remembered to consult. On paper it is a swap. In a kitchen it is a proposition. / Schedules make it feel manageable. A weekend, a pretext, a door that used to mean family. Somebody is curious, somebody is cornered, and somebody means to keep the secret from the daughters whose marriages make the plan possible. The first exchange has a date.