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

“You are such a geek,” Patsy said. “At least you didn’t go back to Kirk.”


I resumed. “Anyway, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I’ve never kissed a girl although I’d long wanted to and now I knew that there was one girl I needed to kiss. And I knew enough about her to know, or at least think, that she was straight. Unlike you, I don’t have any gaydar, working or otherwise.”


“And when you hit on her she backed away like you had the plague?” Patsy asked. “Been there, done that.”


“No,” I said, my arms flailing about as we jogged up Cat Hill—a sculpture of a crouching cougar menaces those who pass. “It never got that far. I told her I was gay because I wanted to see her reaction to that before I did anything else. And that’s when she looked at me like I had the plague. She gave me a disgusted I-thought-you-were-normal look and without thinking I threw her out.


Chapter 17