To Have & To Hold
Her son and his bride-to-be were house-hunting, and Nina knew it was time for her to step back . . .
BY ALIYA ALI-AFZAL
Nina sat in the restaurant, waiting for Zach and his fiancée Anna. She took a sip of her iced tap water, relieved that there was air conditioning. She hoped the weather stayed like this, though perhaps a little cooler, for the wedding.
Zach and Anna had been asking to meet her for weeks: for dinner, to go to the cinema, to go strawberry picking, but she had made an excuse every time.
Anna had also invited her for a meal at their flat, just the two of them, when Zach was away on a work trip, but Nina had said she was working late that evening, even though she had stayed home, eating alone.
It wasn’t that Nina didn’t approve of her future daughter-in-law, a fellow university lecturer who Zach met at a conference a couple of years earlier, or that she didn’t want to meet the young couple. However, they were house-hunting, so she knew that the topic would come up and Nina didn’t want to give her opinion or inadvertently say the wrong thing and alienate Anna.
When Nina found herself suddenly thrust into the role of future mother-in-law to Anna, she had just one rule: do the opposite of what her own mother-in-law would have done. It was exhausting to always be on guard though, and so she had avoided meeting them.
Once the house had been bought, things would get easier.
“Mum!”
Zach hugged her from behind as she sat in her chair. She smiled and stood up to face him as he loomed above her, his arms squeezing her tiny frame.
Anna hung back a little, looking unsure, and Nina stepped towards her, pulling her into a hug, too. She was surprised by the flash of relief in Anna’s eyes. She had done her best to make Anna feel welcome, so she didn’t understand why the young woman looked so uncomfortable.
They caught up over lunch, Nina reassuring Zach that she had been happily busy with her job at the local library and meeting friends at her tennis club. As Anna mentioned their house-hunting, Nina steeled herself to make sure she gave zero opinions. She took a large bite of her apple pie so she wouldn’t be able to speak.
“Everything’s so expensive in London,” said Anna, tucking her wavy bob behind one ear. “My sister just bought a four-bedroom place near Mum and Dad in Dorset for the same price as a shoe cupboard in Brixton.”
Nina felt as if someone had crumpled her heart int
