1. MAGGIE

Maggie and her girlfriend, Isabel, crossed the border into New York. The drive from southern Vermont, where they taught at a boarding school, to Port Haven on the North Fork of Long Island, usually took Maggie about six hours, but it was the day before Thanksgiving and traffic was piling up. Maggie also hadn’t accounted for the unexpected snowstorm making its way along the Eastern Seaboard.

Isabel picked through a bag of pistachios. “Prep me on your family,” she said, and curled her long legs beneath her on the passenger side of Maggie’s twenty-something-year-old Jeep Wagoneer. “Like a game. One word to describe each of them.”

“Hmm—”

“No thinking,” Isabel said. “What does Kerouac say about getting to the truth?”

“I don’t know.”

“Sure you do.” Isabel snapped her fingers. “‘First thought, best thought’!”

“That’s Ginsberg.”

“I told you you knew.”

Maggie laughed, which relieved some of the pressure that had been building inside her. Not only was she bringing a girlfriend home for the first time, but something had happened that morning that had thrown her. Headmaster Cunningham, in his characteristically formal voice, had told her he’d like to speak with her first thing on Monday when she was back from Thanksgiving. He didn’t specify what the meeting was about, but she’d avoided opening the calendar invite his secretary had sent because she worried it would reference something to do with her disastrous trip to Boston last weekend. She’d gone to attend an Anne Carson event at the Museum of Fine Arts and ended up seeing her ex, Sarah. Maggie had tried to put her anxiety aside for the visit home—she had enough to worry about with her mother meeting Isabel—but that proved more difficult than she’d expected. Throughout the drive, her mind drifted to Sarah leaning in to kiss her, and her stomach felt sour and twisty.

A sporty BMW behind them flashed its headlights.

“I think they want you to move over,” Isabel said.

As Maggie switched lanes, the BMW zoomed past them, and the passenger stuck his middle finger out the window.

“Jesus,” Maggie said.

“I like that you’re a slow driver. It reminds me of my dad.”

Maggie checked the speedometer, which was indeed hovering just above the speed limit.

When they’d first gotten on the road, she’d decided not to use the GPS on her phone because she didn’t want a text from Sarah popping up while she drove.

Isabel relaxed back against the headrest. Her dark hair hung in a low-slung ponytail that made the car smell like coconut every time she adjusted it.

Maggie turned down the radio. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll play.” It was better than stewing in her anxiety. “Let’s start with Cait.”

“And the word for her is—”

“Fiery.”

Other words might have been more precise—explosive, for one—but Maggie was trying to keep things positive, even though her oldest sister hadn’t returned any of her calls recently. She hadn’t even responded to Maggie’s text about bringing Isabel home for the holiday.

“She was also always the prettiest,” Maggie said. “Still is.”

“I’ll see about that.” Isabel flashed her that wink Maggie found irresistible.

Maggie actually looked a lot like Cait. Whereas Topher and Alice took after their mother—all strawberry-blond curls and hazel eyes—Maggie and Cait had their father’s straight brown hair, blue eyes, and lanky build. But Cait had some quality Maggie didn’t, something that wasn’t just about her full lips and smooth complexion. It was in the way she carried herself, almost like a warning. While it had gotten Cait attention ever since puberty, it wasn’t something Maggie envied.

“Who’s next?” Isabel asked.

“Alice,” Maggie said. “Middle sister. The word for her is … Mom, I guess.”

“Isn’t that, I don’t know, more like her role? Maybe the word is maternal?”

“She’s such a mom. You’ll see.”

“Fine. What about your mom, then?”

Maggie had spent plenty of time that morning thinking about Nora. She knew her mother wouldn’t be outright rude to Isabel, but her discomfort with Maggie being gay would make it difficult for her to be warm and welcoming.

“Nora is … opaque. I mean, I told you she was literally raised by nuns in an orphanage in Ireland, so she had it pretty rough.” Then she said, “I’ve never felt like I’ve known her. Not really. Or that she wanted to be known.”

“Doesn’t everyone want to be known?”

Maggie held out her palm for pistachios. “I’m not sure if it’s even possible to know someone fully.” She cracked a shell in her teeth, and the nut popped into her mouth, salty and slightly stale.

“Maybe, but that’s different from wanting to be known.”

Maggie conceded.

“And your dad?”

“Robert.” Maggie tapped the steering wheel. “For him, I’d say obliging.”

Isabel laughed. “In a house full of women, what other choice did he have?”

“Well, it wasn’t always that way, before my brother…”

Isabel shook her head. “Oh God, why did I say that?”

Traffic slowed to a stop and Maggie reached for Isabel’s hand. “It’s okay,” she said.

After a long moment, Isabel said, “It’s just, you never talk about him.”

“Yeah,” Maggie said, shrugging. “I know.”

Isabel placed her hand high on Maggie’s thigh and kissed her neck, sending shivers along Maggie’s body. After what Maggie had done in Boston, she did not feel like she deserved any of Isabel’s affection, and receiving it now was almost hard. Still, when Isabel leaned in closer and pressed her lips against Maggie’s, she kissed her back—not only to avoid making Isabel suspicious but because it was exactly what she wanted to do. Isabel’s breath smelled earthy and sweet: pistachios.

The blare of a car horn behind them broke the moment, and Maggie reluctantly pulled away from Isabel, put the car back in gear, and drove on.

* * *

Maggie first spoke to Isabel last winter while conducting phone interviews for the writer-in-residence program at Grove Academy, where she taught English. Isabel was her last call. Maggie had already favored Isabel’s plays over the work of the other top candidate, a language poet who used only words containing the vowels a and o, but she approached the call cautiously.

Sarah, the mother of one of Maggie’s students, warned her that choosing an openly gay writer might come across as playing favorites. It was a fair point, but since Sarah was also the married woman Maggie had been sleeping with for the past year, the irony of Sarah’s cautioning about moral lines and clear judgment wasn’t lost on her.

After Maggie and Isabel hit it off, chatting far past the half hour they’d scheduled, Maggie submitted her recommendation to the English department.

Copyright © 2025 by Heather Aimee O’Neill