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

“I once asked my father about Mary and how he treated her, how he and my mother ostracized her. You know what? Not only did he express no regrets, he insisted that it was the proper…no that it was the ‘only’ thing that he could do. He was pleased with himself for sacrificing his sister to what he thought was a higher good. And, Kerry, he’d think the same thing about me. So would my mother. It’s part of who they are, this evil.”


Throw that in with the fact that I had done what was expected of me for too long because what was expected of me was not me. So giving up their money meant I had to give up, at least for a bit, going to law school.


“Anyway. I had a partial athletic scholarship at Stanford and my parents paid the rest. And I took out a loan for half my Columbia tuition and they paid the rest as well as for my share of the rent. But I gave them a note—I insisted on this—for every penny that they advanced. I can’t take their money, even as a no-interest loan, anymore.


Chapter 22