One of my siblings wants me to help her remain in the closet our father left decades ago.

[pnwmom]

Dad had moved out to live with his partner in another city, while Mom remained in the town they'd made their home in. She insisted that none of us tell our friends, from high school or anywhere else, about the reason for the divorce. This was in the era of AIDS, the "gay man's disease," and my husband and I were settling into life in another state, thousands of miles away. So this wasn't a hard secret to keep.

Fast forward to now: a year ago I told my Red-State-sister that I'd written a novel, and that I was getting some positive feedback, and the protagonist had a gay father. Would she like to read it before I sent it to agents? No, she didn't want to. And she tried (and failed) to get me to promise that if I ever published it, I would use a pseudonym.

By then she was living more than a thousand miles away from where we went to high school, and we both use our husbands' surnames -- so the chances of any of her Red State friends finding out that her Blue State sister had written a novel with a gay father were incredibly small. I decided it wasn't worth fighting about because the odds of getting it published were tiny.

But now the odds aren't quite as tiny. I have an agent who is getting ready to submit my novel to editors. My agent asked if I was willing to tell the editors that this was an "own voice" story, and I said yes. I've shared biographical information with her that she'll be passing along. I'm done with hiding my parents' secret. They're both gone now and I can't hurt them -- and the story is entirely fictional. I don't even think our parents would have had a problem with it. But I do have that Red State sister, and I'm almost afraid to bring up the topic.

Isn't it sad that, after all this time, my sister still carries the burden of sadness and shame that our parents carried for so long? But there is no way I'm going to work so hard on a novel only to see it published with a fake name!

I hope that my novel finds a home, and I don't lose a sister if it does. . .