Joyce’s Reviews > The Marriage Code > Status Update

She was still shaking a little with joy. Could you shake with joy?

SPOILER!!!

here, in my home, where you’ve been so patient & understanding about everything in my crazy family, I just wanted to thank you & say only thing that’s missing from this crazy family is you. I love you. I think I always loved you but was so pissed off @ you I couldn’t see it. But I’ve learned & grown w/you, & I want to keep learning & growing w/you for the rest of our lives. Will you marry me?

I want to just take the edge of your sari and spin you like a top until you unravel.

While the sari had been a pain to get on, and she still didn’t understand how six yards of fabric was the magic number for this garment, she felt more like a princess than she ever had.

Neighbors kept bringing over sweets & savory snacks, now Emma understood why her stomach needed to be prepped. .. all about food. Cardamom-laced laddoos, big & orange & round. Squishy yellow & white sweets sitting in rose-scented syrup. Fried snacks smelled like cumin & chili, coiled round like snake. More snacks w/peanuts & fried lentils that were easy to stuff in her mouth

Rishi’s mom had forced some kind of medicine down her throat that tasted like chalk and cumin so that she wouldn’t get sick from eating all the food on Diwali; she’d literally made Emma open her mouth and had thrown it down her throat.

She’d grown up in a small house, then a trailer with her grandmother. There wasn’t much room of your own, and somehow that forced intimacy created more intimacy. You had to know about each other’s business.

A few hours ago everyone was about to kill each other, and now everyone’s all happy

that’s how family is. You know, it’s always the worst before it’s the best.

Maybe life is like your family. Like you said, it always feels really bad right before it gets really good.

The baby was tiny, pudgy in all the right places, a dark mark smeared on her cheek—something Rishi had said they did to block out the evil eye.

...he'd been hiding who he was & what he wanted for so long that his own parents didn't even know him. He loved them, took care of them, & wanted wife who would be everything to them. But when he wasn't around them, he lived life they didn't approve of ... duality of what he wanted & what they wanted were like crack that split him up & down. crack was splitting wider ... w/each lie he'd told to protect them.