from a meter or two away. They said proper farewells to everyone, including Dembe who was busy playing with Musoke’s new cane.
“Have a good honeymoon!” Shanti’s mother chirped, giving both her and Sanyu hugs as the train pulled in.
“We’ve been married for five years. This isn’t a honeymoon,” Shanti said. “It’s PR. The launch of the rail line is very important and—”
Shock and then delight filled her as she was swept off her feet by her handsome husband. “I booked us a sleeper car, Wife. It’s a honeymoon.”
“Oh, by the three gods, have some decency,” Musoke grumbled, but Shanti laughed and wrapped her arms around her husband’s neck.
“How many honeymoons can we have?” They’d traveled all over the continent and the world over the last few years, and explored their kingdom as well.
“Endless honeymoons,” Sanyu said as he nodded farewell to their family. “It’s the one thing you’ve agreed to barter for, and several trips with my beautiful queen is a small price to pay for . . .” He inhaled and exhaled deeply and smiled.
“For what?”
“For you.”
Shanti assumed that the way she burst into tears at her husband’s earnest words as he carried her into their private suite on the train was caused by her hormones. But the love that filled her when she looked at him? The pride she felt as the train carried them through their kingdom, in the midst of both massive change for the better and reclamation of its past?
That was only logical.
Acknowledgments
As always, I’m thankful to the Avon staff at all levels of production, especially my editor, Erika Tsang, as well as my agent, Lucienne Diver. Special thanks to Rose Lerner, whose early feedback was incredibly helpful.
I’d also like to thank my readers—your support is a beacon that helps me navigate around the many garbage fires burning in the world and find my way to the happily-ever-after as I’m writing.
Excerpt from When No One Is Watching
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Chapter 1
Sydney
I spent deepest winter shuffling back and forth between work and hospital visits and doctor’s appointments. I spent spring hermiting away, managing my depression with the help of a CBD pen and generous pours of the Henny I’d found in Mommy’s liquor cabinet.
Now I’m sitting on the stoop like I’ve done every morning since summer break started, watching my neighbors come and go as I sip coffee, black, no sugar, gone lukewarm.
When I moved back a year and a half ago, carrying the ashes of my marriage and my pride in an urn I couldn’t stop sifting through, I thought I’d be sitting out here with Mommy and Drea, the holy trinity of familiarity restored—mother, play sister, prodigal child. Mommy would tend to her mini-jungle of potted plants lining the steps, and to me, helping me sprout new metaphorical leaves—tougher ones, more resilient. Drea would sit between us, like she had since she was eleven and basically moved in with us, since her parents sucked, cracking jokes or talking about her latest side hustle. I’d draw strength from them and the neighborhood that’d always had my back. But it hadn’t worked out that way; instead of planting my feet onto solid Brooklyn concrete, I’d found myself neck-deep in wet cement.
Last month, on the Fourth of July, I pried open the old skylight on the top floor of the brownstone and sat up there alone. When I was a teenager, Mommy and Drea and I would picnic on the roof every Fourth of July, Brooklyn sprawling around us as fireworks burst in the distance. When I’d clambered up there as an adult, alone, I’d been struck by how claustrophobic the view looked, with new buildings filling the neighborhoods around us, where there had once been open air. Cranes loomed ominously over the surrounding blocks like invaders from an alien movie, mantis-like shadows with red eyes blinking against the night, the American flags attached to them flapping darkly in the wind, signaling that they came in peace when really they were here to destroy.
To remake.
Maybe my imagination was running away with me, but even at ground level the difference is overwhelming. Scaffolds cling to buildings all over the neighborhood, barnacles of change, and construction workers gut the innards of houses where I played with friends as a kid. New condos that look like stacks of ugly shoeboxes pop up in empty lots.
The landscape of my life is unrecognizable; Gifford Place doesn’t feel like home.
I sigh, close