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 said, “But however different they may be, they are our parents. Even as adults, they are our parents. For good or bad.” I was in a pontificating and contemplative mood.


“Sometimes when I visit Chappaqua,” I said, “I see or hear something, maybe even smell something, and suddenly I think of her. It doesn’t happen as often as it did at first. Then it was terrible. Everything reminded me of her. Now it’s almost random. When I was last there, it was the field where she always watched my horrible soccer games. A bunch of kids were playing in the same-colored uniforms we wore, and I could almost see her in the stands. It made me sad. I thought of some of the mothers sitting in those stands and wondered whether any of them would be taken too young and how her daughter would ever recover from it.” I took a slow but long drink from my glass.


Chapter 97