This story was funded by our members. Join Longreads and help us to support more writers. This week: • Uncovering a century-old love triangle. • Missteps and mystery in a high-profile legal case. • A coming-out story for the (advanced) ages. • How a gaming juggernaut lost its way. • The cat who tore a neighborhood apart. ...

For Maclean’s Abby Tickel shares her emotional journey of coming out as transgender at age 66, and the joy and efficacy she’s found in making new friends, LGBTQI+ education and advocacy, and most importantly, finally getting the chance to be herself. Recently, I led a bird-watching event at the Inglewood Bird Sanctuary in the heart of the city....

Brendan Koerner has enjoyed a long, successful career reporting on stories and characters who feel almost too vivid to be true. For his latest at Wired, though, he turns that formula inside out—and becomes one of the army of hidden support workers who assume the identity of an OnlyFans creator in order to maintain chats with paying subscribers. Hilarious...

Joanna Meade moved into an old house in Baltimore’s Roland Park neighborhood. When they removed a wall during a bathroom renovation, they discovered a black tin box hidden among the plumbing. Inside, she found 67 “juicy turn-of-the-century love letters,” all except one postmarked 1920 or 1921. Tim Prudente and Stokely Baksh recount what Meade, her...

A fabric store owner, a surgeon, a TV-news traffic anchor, a Latin-dance-music D.J., a church organist, a letter carrier, and a firefighter share career highlights and their very last day of work before retirement. There has always been a certain feeling of euphoria that comes to Tony Pabón as he looks out at the dance floor from his D.J. table...

Timothy Reif is one the legal heirs of Fritz Grünbaum, an Austrian cabaret performer and art collector who died in the Dachau concentration camp in 1941. Since the 1990s, Reif and his family have been searching for Grünbaum’s collection—more than 400 pieces of art, including Egon Schiele’s Russian War Prisoner, a drawing worth $1.25 million. For Chicago...