Locks O. Won

Born Into a Spoiler Alert: Notes From a Macbeth Descendant

Some of us get the blood-soaked ancestors, the melodramatic surnames, the oddball reputations that precede us into rooms. Some of us get the tiny mortifications that knock the wind out of us in foreign bars. Some of us, if we’re really paying attention, also get the golden-cloud moments—the quiet return to a library desk that feels like a portal back to the versions of ourselves we’ve been building, fleeing, or reinventing for years.