When he walked in on Ayanna crying in her room, with math flash cards around her, for a moment, Antony considered quietly walking back out. He was tired both of trying to figure out insurmountable problems and of a quiet belief—that his ex-wife called “self-serving” and he called “healthy”—that his children should be allowed to have private emotions and feelings until they were ready to talk to him or they were clearly mentally unwell. He knew their mother was always seeking out their journals, asking their friends for info, taking them on car trips and asking them probing questions when they weren’t able to go anywhere. Antony could see their teen years coming, and saw the tempest of slammed doors, sulky silences, and broken relationships those actions, if they continued, would bring.

Ayanna continued crying, didn’t even notice him in the doorway. She buried her head into an oversized stuffed cat and yelled, “I hate you, Olivia.”

“I’m sorry to walk in without knocking,” he said. He tried to nod his head toward the overflowing laundry basket in his hands.

She kept her face in the belly of the cat.

“What are you and your sister fighting about?”

“It’s dumb.”

“Ay, tell me,” he said.

Ayanna did not tell him then, or over dinner, or even after he had baked a yellow cake with chocolate frosting and presented her with a slice and a large glass of milk. It was only in the morning, after the first large snow of the season, when he called out to work and told Ayanna they were going to go sledding and watch a movie together today. Then, as their feet crunched on the snow toward the best hill in the neighborhood, Ayanna told Antony what Olivia had said, how kids at school were saying things like you had to be a good Christian to have Christmas, and she wanted to know why their church didn’t have any holidays. Kids at school got Christmas and Easter, one of them had Ramadan—Antony guessed the breaking of the fast felt like a holiday to that kid—and Jewish people had all sorts of holidays throughout the year.

“I know you said almost everything on Earth is made up to help people do things or understand things,” Ayanna said. He could not tell if her nose was red and her eyes were watery from the cold or from the emotions she was feeling. “But is it a real religion if it doesn’t have holidays?”

“There are some faiths that won’t even celebrate birthdays.”

“I hate that.”