Beth Jenkins, raised in an Irish Catholic family outside Chicago, with her father a retired Chicago cop, would not acknowledge to her family that she was gay, fearing how they would react. She moved to New York, visiting her home occasionally. At Christmas just over three years before the story begins, and against her better judgment, she responds to the when-I-you-going-to-find-a-man question by coming out.<br><br>Any hopes of staying are shattered when her father says he will not sit at the same table with this creature. For three years she speaks to neither her parents. Then her sister calls. "Dad is dying. He's turned over a new leaf." She agrees to come, but only with her girlfriend, with whom she is living in Brooklyn.<br><br>This is the story of their journey to Beth's home and what happens when she gets there.

The Prodigal Daughter

My parents too. The image that came to mind for them was even earlier, when we sat around the house opening Christmas presents. I must have been twelve or thirteen. The quiet one. Images burned into my brain, and it was those images that flowed through my pencil as the train rocked.


The sketches were far better than they would have been had I done them at the time. I had raw talent, but it had not been honed into the precision and the depth that these new drawings presented. Were they idealized versions of my family? As I looked at each, I did not think so. My siblings today were just updated, more cynical versions of what I drew. My parents were still much the same, or at least were when I last saw them. Maybe a bit harsher.


It had gotten late when Mel jerked me out of my world.


“I’m kind of sad and kind of happy.”


Chapter 4