You’re naughty Leo West.
Leo 8:51 AM
I’m not naughty, I’m in love.
“You ready to do this?” Courtney sticks her head in my office, catching me midblush. Dressed in a yellow pencil skirt and crisp white blouse, she looks like a woman who has shed some deadweight. I couldn’t TOTALLY disassociate myself from school during my maternity leave. Courtney came by a few afternoons bearing gifts of Chinese food and lemonade and to fill me in on school news since my memorable exit. The day after school was out, so was Gemma. She packed up the kids and left for Sydney, and Winn followed shortly after. Polite rumor has it he went to be near his kids, but others speculate it was to flee his inflated sense of self-importance that everyone would still care about his affair once summer hit. Geoff chased after Winn, and last Courtney knew via a postcard to Daisy, he was traveling through the outback. Unclear if he was alone or Winn was in tow.
Meanwhile, with Geoff out of the picture and Courtney devastated at the prospect of Benjamin no longer being in her life, she struck up an unexpected friendship with the first Mrs. Dunn. According to Courtney, cutting out the middleman and sharing kids with a sister-wife is hands down the best way to parent.
Courtney carefully picks Morgan up out of his car seat while I strap myself into my frontloading baby carrier. I snuggle Morgan down in there, his legs spread wide, our heartbeats pressed against one another. Courtney inconspicuously tucks a spit-up cloth into the left hip strap just in case. I tilt my chin down, kiss the top of Morgan’s head, and whisper, “Be good for mama, this is a big day for us.”
Standing in front of my twenty-two trustees, I rock side to side, lulling Morgan to sleep and soothing my nerves. Courtney gives me the thumbs-up that it’s time to get started. I clear my throat and hum to find the right key to belt out Alicia Keys’s “Girl on Fire.”
Nah, I wouldn’t do that, that’s something a twenty-four-year-old would do. At forty-four, I am woman on fire.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We have an uncanny propensity for writing topical books that coincide with social and cultural shifts in the United States. Our first book, Tiny Imperfections, about gaming the private school admissions season, was copyedited mere months before Varsity Blues seized every news outlet in America. Never Meant to Meet You, our second book about Black Baptist and White Jewish neighbors, was written during the vacuum of the pandemic and launched just as one of the ugliest waves of antisemitism in American history crashed onto our country’s shores.
The last i was dotted and the final t was crossed on The Better Half as hints that Roe v. Wade might be overturned began to appear. We started chapter one when all American women had reproductive rights protected by law, and our book highlights that security for women of all ages. Never did we consider that our lead character, Nina Morgan Clarke, as well as our sisters, daughters, friends, and even ourselves, would lose autonomy over our bodies at the same time we were finishing this book. There is no truer and—in this era of dismantling women’s rights—more painful statement than “truth is stranger than fiction.”
We are thrilled that Mindy Kaling, Carmen Johnson, and the team at Mindy’s Book Studio fell in love with Nina Morgan Clarke and her family as well as the topical challenges the characters in the book face regarding the immigrant experience in the United States, late-in-life pregnancy, racial identity and tension, privilege, and education. That Mindy’s Book Studio trusted in our ability to address these sensitive topics with humor and joy was a bonus. We would like to thank everyone on Mindy’s Book Studio team for their trust in us and for giving Nina Morgan Clarke a voice in the world.
We have said it before and we will say it again and again: Liza Fleissig, there ain’t no other agent than you who can do it better. We wish every writer could have such a caring and loyal professional to count on to step up and support exceptional storytelling. Alison Dasho, our acquisitions editor at Amazon Publishing, the joy is all ours every time you email, call, or we hop on a Chime. You are the third lioness in our Triple A pack, and we recognize how scrappy you are when you fight for us. Tegan Tigani, development editor extraordinaire, you deliver editorial feedback with smiles and sunshine, making us believe that all the work we need to do is not only possible but necessary because we know that you know a good story.
With every book we write our gratitude grows for our parents, husbands, and children, who allow us to continue the emotional roller coaster that is birthing books into the world, as does our appreciation for each other. Writing is an extremely intimate act, one that most writers do solo. When writing happens between two highly opinionated women （one Black, one White） and encompasses the tricky topics of race, religion, privilege, and love, some might imagine it an impossible creative feat. But we have managed to get better and better—together. Our writing, balancing our working relationship, and our shared dissection of heart-wrenching topics hasn’t gotten easier, but our commitment to valuing each other’s ideas with care and attention has. We wouldn’t have it any other way.