“Yeah,” said Vee. “I mean, we did go to the aquarium, but we were there like half an hour.”

“Vee,” I said, “did you get ID too?”

“No, because Licia was my ‘designated guardian.’”

“You fired a weapon?”

“Only a two-two. Licia fired a Glock.”

“Wow,” said Elsa.

“Licia was actually pretty good,” said Vee. “We both were.”

“You guys about ready to go?” I looked up. Dan was standing with the journalist by the door of the studio.

“We’re going to need five minutes,” I said.

“Sure, bro.” He opened the door for the journalist and stepped through it after her.

The door swung slowly shut. Elsa’s expression was unreadable. I looked at Vee.

“What?” said Vee. “Are you going to tell me, We’re not gun people? Or all about how Mum stopped shooting?”

“Please don’t anticipate my reaction, Vee . . .”

“You can stop judging me. I promise I will never again do such an irresponsible thing.”

“I’m not judging you. If anything I’m judging your sister. What was she thinking?”

The next morning I drove Dan to the airport. He sat in silence all the way to the terminal. “No need to come in,” he said as I drew up.

“Wish you weren’t going to be so far away,” I called after him.

He stopped, turned, looked at me for a moment. “Me too, brother,” he said, and headed inside.

I was back by seven, making breakfast. The smell of coffee in the grinder, of oranges in the squeezer: these things made me feel Licia’s absence so keenly.

At home in D.C. she and I were always first up. Licia would sit at the breakfast bar, finishing her homework from the night before. Sometimes she would look across as I was fitting the filter into the coffee maker, or pressing oranges through the squeezer, and we would stop what we were doing and smile and say nothing. Then she would go back to her math, and I would return to making breakfast. I would cut bread and boil eggs and fill lunch boxes, and when I looked up she would be frowning quietly at her exercise book.

“I would like to be exceptional, Dad, of course I would,” she would say if I noticed she was struggling. “And maybe one day I will achieve something exceptional.”

“Licia,” I would say, “you are utterly exceptional to me.”

“I’m more a doer than a thinker, I guess. And you don’t need to over-praise me.”

She didn’t want my help. I would watch, a little heartbroken, as she forced her way through the problem, quietly speaking the numbers to herself. Mostly, though, this was a happy time. Just the two of us, without her sister there to remind Licia of what she was not.