Summary

1 – “Every story begins with an unraveling. This story starts with a kiss. Her mouth the soft nail on which my life snagged, and tore open” (131). The author describes the beginning of her relationship with the beloved whose presence in her life, she adds, triggered a range of important, potent changes. As the relationship began, she writes, she (the author) was still seeing someone else, and went to the conference where she met her beloved determined not to cheat, but felt herself drawn intensely to the beloved and ended up having sex with her. Afterwards, she writes, the relationship to which she was returning felt like it was dissolving, and she no longer felt like herself.

2 – The next day, the author writes, she met her half-sister – another woman, she adds, whose new and unusual influence was coming into her life...