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

“Dad, I’m here because I was told you’ve had a change of heart, that you want to embrace me. For all of my faults. All of what you perceive are my faults.” I do not know how much of this he understood.


“I do, honey. I do. Please tell me you’re normal again. Grant a dying man’s final wish. I’ll forgive you for what you’ve done to yourself and your family and your God.”


It tore me up. It did. For the entire trip, I hoped what I was told was true, that he had a change of heart and was accepting me. That my mother was accepting me. Neither was true. As I rode on the train thinking about what I would do if my father...I was not sure what I would say if he asked—begged—me to deny who I am. To say it was all some kind of misunderstanding. To tell him he was right all the time and how wrong and sorry I was.


Chapter 6