Suzanne Nelson was raised just outside of San Francisco. A Stanford grad and varsity runner, she heads to New York City for law school. She is gay, but has come out to no one. In New York she meets Kerry Neally, a New Yorker and fellow student. Who is straight. First in a study group and then as a pair, they find themselves become attached to one another. And have to work out that Kerry thinks she's straight. Eileen is Kerry's mother. She is a widow, and meeting Suzanne helps her leave the shell into which she placed herself after her husband died. And she comes to the attention of two men. One a widower. The other divorced. And love intevenes for her choice. With Suzanne settled into her New York life, she turns her back on her parents, who turned their backs on Suzanne's aunt Mary, a gay woman disowned by her parents and brother decades before. She, too, lives in New York and she and Eileen attempt to get Suzanne's parents to understand their daughter. Kate Nelson comes to New York to reason with her daughter. As eventually does William, her father. The story is about how the members of what becomes a large New York family deal with themselves, each other, and love.

The Neallys

Kerry moved on. We were, I knew, in a state of perpetual estrangement. If she even noticed me it was only in passing and would hang with Marie, her moot-court partner, and Mike and Bill from the study group. My moot-court partner was a guy named Patrick, who sat next to me in our Property class. He was nice and relaxed and I enjoyed working with him. And I enjoyed drafting my moot-court brief and doing my argument.


Outside of school, Patsy had become a good friend. She loved telling, and I am afraid I loved hearing, her tales of dating woes. “Everyone thinks I’m this badass butch,” she told me more than once, “but I can’t just point to someone and say ‘here, now.’ I’m so misunderstood.” But of course she was that type of badass butch but I think she felt that it was a role thrust upon her that she was tired of and just wanted to find her “her,” whoever that might be.


Chapter 16