Page 3

Chapter One

Dina woke before her alarm. It was 7:00 a.m., and she knew she should get ready for work. Instead, she lay in bed and stared at her pink ceiling.

Her ceiling hadn’t always been pink. Eighteen months ago, when Arshad had moved out—or more accurately, after she had kicked him out—it had been a bland white. Six months ago, when their divorce was finalized, she had gone on a decorating blitz in the bedroom she had shared with her lying, cheating ex-husband, painting the walls, trim, and even the ceiling a soft pink—a color the salesperson at Benjamin Moore had assured Dina was “the neutral equivalent of an off-white.”

She wasn’t sure she still liked the pink, but she did enjoy wondering what would horrify her family more—the fact that she had kicked out her husband of nearly five years and secretly divorced him, or the fact that she had painted her house herself.

She hadn’t grown up in a family who took pride in DIY projects, or in any sort of manual labor. Why get one’s hands dirty when one could simply pay someone? was the Haq family motto. Dina remembered a parade of contractors named Jake, Luke, Marty, Brian, and Reggie, all affable and polite, who “did” for her family. She could have called up any one of them. But then she would have had to admit why she was painting her bedroom a soft, not-so-neutral pink, a color her hypermasculine husband would have hated. Which meant she would have had to explain that Arshad was no longer her husband, a conversation she was hoping to put off having with anyone outside of her best friend and fellow lawyer Lisa Wu, and definitely not her opinionated South Asian family, for as long as possible.

She knew the decision to conceal her marital problems and subsequent divorce from her family made little sense. If she hadn’t stopped seeing her therapist two years ago, she might have been able to parse through all the dysfunctional reasons why she had settled on secrecy as the best way to deal with a major life event. Though Lisa had assured her it had something to do with being the long-suffering eldest daughter in an immigrant family, combined with perfectionist tendencies and a healthy dose of log kya kahenge—Urdu for “what would people say?,” also known as her family’s official motto.

Arshad had agreed to remain quiet as well. He owed her, she reasoned. And since her odious ex still worked with her at Haq Law, she assumed he wasn’t eager to reveal the truth about the string of “mistakes” that had led Dina to show him the door. She tried not to dwell on how easily he had agreed to keep their ruse going, or what that might mean; she knew Arshad was not one to concede without expecting something in return.

Then there was the other complicating factor: Around the time her divorce had been finalized, her baby sister, Hania, had announced her engagement to Samir Kazi, only child and heir apparent to a wealthy family in Chicago. They had met on one of the Muslim matchmaking apps and hit it off. Her parents had been overjoyed, and the two families had immediately made plans for a summer wedding, to coincide with the neighboring countries’ respective national holidays—Canada Day on July 1 and Independence Day on July 4.

So really, she was doing everyone a favor by keeping this life update to herself. Dina didn’t want to throw ice water on her parents’ and Hania’s happiness, or take any of the attention away from her sister. She would tell her family the truth about her altered marital status after her baby sister’s wedding. And then Arshad would resign his position as partner at Haq Law and take a one-way trip to Mars. One could only hope.

In the meantime, she just had to get through the next eight days and the many parties her sister had planned leading up to the big day, starting with an event at the airport tomorrow to welcome the bharat—the groom’s party—followed by the traditional mehndi to kick off the start of wedding festivities this Friday in Toronto, then the nikah, the Muslim wedding ceremony, on Sunday, and walima reception, hosted by Samir’s family in Chicago the following week. In between, Hania had planned other smaller events, providing more content for her wildly popular social media accounts. In the past year alone, HaniaBanana had amassed over a million followers, with plenty of sponsorship and endorsement deals, so much so that she’d had to hire a social media manager last year, a young woman named Ambreen.

Dina’s second alarm went off, and she drew a pillow over her face and screamed into it. Then she threw off the covers and sat up. So what if her personal life was in shambles. So what if she was hiding a terrible secret from her family. Her life wasn’t so bad. She glanced around the bedroom—the dainty, canopy-covered white bed (another post-divorce purchase), the oversize, too-tall mirrored dresser (a mistake, but it had looked nice in the store) with matching nightstands, the frilly lampshades, and touches of rose gold everywhere. At least she had done to her house what she hadn’t managed to do to other aspects of her life: completely eradicate any trace of Arshad.

She showered quickly, using an aggressively floral-scented bodywash Arshad would have hated, then dressed in a white pantsuit paired with a pale-pink hijab and cream heels. She was reaching for her white Celine bag when a sound downstairs made her freeze. Maybe she was hearing things. It was probably just the furnace, or a mouse, or maybe a bat—

Bang!

Definitely not a bat. Looking around for something she could use as a weapon, Dina grabbed a particularly long hijab pin and, phone tightly clutched in her hand, crept downstairs.

Her least favorite person was in her kitchen, his back to her, rooting around in her pantry. When Arshad turned around, he held one of the Cadbury treats she bought from a specialty store that imported them from the UK, and that she had been saving for dessert. Her grip on the hijab pin tightened.

“Put. Down. My. Cake. Bars,” she said to her smirking ex-husband.

He ignored her, ripping open the packet and popping the entire caramel cake bar in his mouth as if he had all the time in the world. As if he had not just entered her house—okay, technically it was still his house too, but only until her mortgage application was approved—without being invited.

“Twinkies are better,” he said.

She brandished the hijab pin. “You take that back!”

Arshad grinned at her. “Are you flirting with me, Haq? I know sugar is your love language.”

Dina tipped her head back and groaned in frustration. What even was her life. “What do you want, Arshad?”

“Just doing as I was told,” he said, brandishing a yellow Post-it Note.

Dina colored and grabbed the piece of paper from his hand, nearly tearing it in two in the process. “That wasn’t meant for you, you useless bag of soiled diapers,” she muttered.

“You are capable, strong, and hardworking. Seize what the world gifts you,” Arshad repeated, his tone mean and mocking. This was the Arshad she loathed, the one only she got to see in private, when all the adoring clients and family were gone. “Still writing notes to yourself, I see.”

Dina tried to keep calm. “What do you want,” she said. It wasn’t even a question, because she already knew the answer. Her ex-husband always wanted the same thing: whatever was good for Arshad.

“I’m here to remind you, once again, about the favor I’m doing for you this week,” he said. His tone was casual. Too casual. Dina narrowed her gaze on him, instantly suspicious.

“I’m aware,” she said, schooling her features into a calm mask. Inside, her heart was hammering. Of course Arshad had decided to wait until the eve of her sister’s events before making his move.

“It’s been a real burden, not telling your parents and sister the truth about our current state of affairs,” Arshad said with a sigh.

Dina rolled her eyes. “You would know all about affairs,” she shot back. “I’m sure keeping our divorce a secret has really twisted your conscience into knots.”

Arshad continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “It just keeps me up at night, worrying how your parents will react once they find out their golden child, perfect Dina Haq, couldn’t make her marriage work.”