“‘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”

near the top of my class in 2008. I was accepted to the University of Virginia on early decision. My mother cried genuinely, the kind of tears she rarely allowed. My father hugged me and said he was proud. Cassidy made a sign with construction paper that she taped to the front door.

The sign said, “Diana is going to UVA.”

When I look at that image in continue reading …