Now, as it turns out, is pretty damn great.

I change my mind about preserving my mother’s room. And over the course of a week of after-school meetings with Johnny, Sasha and I decide the wall between the master suite and my mother’s room will be torn down to make a music library where the twins can listen to music and study. Because as it turns out, they’ll be going to college after all.

Sasha had only expressed mild interest in community college as a fallback before I disappeared for my six-month marriage sentence. Kasha refused to consider it at all. Hugs and Cuddles had already agreed to extend her hours upon graduation, why go to college when she already knew music was what she wanted to do with her life? I also suspect seeing me struggle to finish my law degree and raise them while also working as Amber’s legal secretary soured them on higher education.

But after no more than three conversations over dinner in Zahir’s suite, the twins change their plans. They decide their temporary brother-in-law is right. If they’re serious about music or any career in the arts, they need a solid business and marketing background to ensure financial success.

It’s too late to apply to any of the colleges with a strong business and marketing program, but surprise-surprise…the girls’ overly indulgent brother-in-law shows up to dinner with acceptance letters from Manhattan University only a couple of days after they announce their change of heart. Now the girls can go to one of the top universities in the country...providing, of course, that they earn a certain score on their SATs. Every day after school, the twins join me in our suite where they study with an SAT tutor Zahir’s secretary found for them, and I half-heartedly study for my bar exam.

“You should refocus your efforts while you’re here,” Zahir says to me over lunch in his room one afternoon. “I do not watch television as a habit, but I did catch one or two episodes of your show. You wrote a few of the songs Asir produced, did you not?”

“I mean, yeah, I used to write during my hip-hip princess phase, but not anymore. And did you seriously watch the show?” I ask, because it’s a straight-up struggle to conjure a mental image of him watching TV, much less watching my old over-the-top reality show.

“Yes,” he answers with a somewhat distasteful twist of his mouth. “The episode where you and Asir produced a song for charity was the only episode I enjoyed.”

Wow…burn, but then he finishes with, “Perhaps, you should try writing again if only to help the twins with their upcoming demo. We’re only here until Ramadan, so it would only mean be taking a couple of weeks off from your studies.”

The following day, I tentatively switch priorities—just for the remaining two weeks that we’re here. I open a new notebook and begin jotting down a few of the lyrics I’ve been keeping trapped behind a wall of resolve ever since my father died. But the sputter of lyrics soon becomes a fount. And as it turns out, two hours of SAT practice is an amazing warm-up focus exercise for the twins.

We fall into an easy routine. I write in the mornings, and then study while the twins receive coaching for their SATs. After the tutor leaves, we pull out Sasha’s keyboard and let the music flow until it’s time to join Zahir for dinner.

Life feels good again. In fact, it feels better than good. The change of location, the inspiring views outside our windows, the clarification of goals, and time like we’ve never had together with the twins’ busy performance schedule and my work and studies. Before my two weeks is up, and by the time the house is completed in June, the girls and I have two songs prepared and ready to go for the at-home recording studio.

“Iyanla Vanzant called and said she wants her job back,” Sasha says to Zahir over our nightly dinner ritual.

“Because you are up in here fixing everybody’s life,” Kasha finishes.

Of course, Zahir doesn’t get it. But the twins fall out laughing at their own joke. And though I try to hold back, I can’t contain it when Kasha adds, “Pew! Pew! Pew!”

The three of us laugh until we have tears in our eyes. And then even harder when Sasha pulls it together long enough to intone, “But he didn’t shoot him.”

Zahir continues to eat his New York strip steak and shakes his head as if he suspects it will take him longer than two weeks to figure the three of us out. And maybe that’s why he announces during our next dinner that he won’t be returning to Jahwar for Ramadan as previously planned.

“Isn’t that kind of a bad look for, like, the king not to show up for Ramadan?” Sasha asks.

“It is not the best look, no,” he answers, throwing Sasha a bemused half-smile. “But it is not necessarily the worst thing ever. I have many cousins and other family members to serve in my stead and of course, I will observe Ramadan here. Besides, not much business is done during this time of year in Jahwar. That means my efforts will be more productive in the States.”

Zahir reaches across the table and squeezes my hand. I squeeze back, even though I sense part of his reason for not going back home during Ramadan has something to do with him not having a Muslim wife. At least for now.