“‘This is Diana—our family dropout,’ my mother said for the fifteenth Thanksgiving in a row, but when my sister’s new husband reached across the table to shake my hand, his grip locked, his face went still, and the room forgot how to laugh before he said the two words nobody there was prepared to hear”

that frustration generated, not describing it. To hear her describe it plainly and without the studied calm she usually used to flatten difficult subjects was like seeing a wall you had been walking around your whole life suddenly become transparent.

I could see, for the first time, the room on the other side.

She had been 29 when she left the firm. continue reading …