I’m greedy. I wake up each morning starving for everything I can get from this life, from this woman, and want to offer everything I have to give. We spent two decades apart and for the rest of our lives, I’ll be making up for lost time.
She looks down at me, the laughter dying. “But if not, we have Noah and Mai. I know they’re not mine, but I love them like they are. I really do, Ez.”
“I know you do.” I lift the little tab suspended from the chain she wears around her neck, a symbol of our two weddings, of a lifelong love.
“You know Mama thinks Daddy set this all up, right?” she asks, catching my fingers at the necklace. “That he requested I present the awards, selected you, to bring us back together.”
The memory of Joseph Allen, a giant in this city, taking time to talk for hours with me that day, furiously scribbling my dreams on a napkin as our coffee grew cold, is vivid in my mind. I unpacked my heart to him that day, and there’s no way he could have seen what lay in my heart without seeing his daughter Tru.
“I wouldn’t put it past him.” My smile fades. “Maybe he wouldn’t have if he’d known what you’d have to endure, living through someone else having my child.”
Kimba drops her forehead to mine, slips her fingers into the hair at my nape.
“He wouldn’t have changed a thing. Daddy knew firsthand how messy love can be,” she says, her words wistful, certain across my lips. “Mama told me that love isn’t tidy, and she’s right, but all the mess we had to wade through to have this, to have each other, was worth it.”
Nothing life has thrown at us so far—not a twenty-year separation, not Aiko’s pregnancy or any of the challenges that come with negotiating such a complex blended family like ours—have managed to crack the foundation we laid for this marriage starting the day we were born.
Noah’s laughter, Mai’s squeals, the clack of mah-jongg tiles – the symphony of our life together—clamors from below. A cacophony that from the outside looking in probably seems discordant and sounds like a mass of noise. But to us it makes sense, all the notes fitting together. Harmony where there could be chaos. The tastes, the sounds, the stories, gathered from distant lands, borne by our blood, blended in our bonds.
Forever.
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Author’s Note
As I was writing, I had a few early readers wonder if I’d made up the Crown Act Kimba discusses. I didn’t. It’s a real thing and so very vital in the fight for workplace parity, not only between men and women, but to protect people of all ethnicities and traditions against systemic bias.
Learn more about the Crown Act here: https://www.thecrownact.com/
And as for the book Kimba gives to Noah, Ezra's Big Shabbat Question, it's an actual book written by Aviva L. Brown. She writes books about Jews of Color, different types of Jewish families, and every day Jewish life.
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“This story sets a new bar in the genre… Exquisitely written, meticulously researched, tender, yet oh-so steamy--this is the Mary Poppins of Contemporary Romances: practically perfect in every way." -- Natasha Is A Book Junkie