Antony had not been sure he wanted to be a father when Opal had announced “We’re pregnant,” and the first year of twins, he was sure, had sliced at least twenty years off his life. But now that they were ten, their personalities were tangible, not in that liminal state where you had to wonder about how if the things you saw in them were just confirming your biases from when they were new. Ayanna, the wild one, their child who liked getting dirty, who wanted to run everywhere, and who had stopped nursing quickly as if even then she wanted to be independent. Olivia, easygoing—had slept through the night regularly as a baby—was obedient, but also had a dark side. The one who’d asked if it was true vampires did not believe in God, then was disappointed when the answer was, well, almost everything that has to do with God—crosses, holy water—hurts them.

But he loved hearing his daughters’ opinions; the way Ayanna wasn’t embarrassed to say exactly what she was thinking made him miss his sister. He liked direct women. Often, Antony felt guilty because he had a much harder time parenting Olivia, not only because of their schedule but because she was well trained in the obfuscation of her opinions and discomforts. Olivia was deeply invested in appearing nice. It was an uncomfortable relief to hear about her being mean.

“What would a holiday in our faith look like to you?”

She dropped the tow on her toboggan. Flopped into the snow and made a snow angel, fiddled with her mittens, and readjusted her hat. While she played and thought, Antony rolled a giant snowball, making the base for an inevitable snowman. Farther ahead at the hill, a kid was yelling at the top of her lungs, “Too fast.”

“It should have really good food, we should have to do nice things for other people, and I think we should have to learn something.”

He liked the idea of it.

What if, he considered while rolling the snowman’s midsection, they had five days of holidays between the twenty-sixth and thirtieth. It would overlap with Kwanzaa, but that was fine. Day one: Service. Day two: Knowledge. Day three: He couldn’t think of day three. They went up and down and up and down the hill. Both yelling with delight at the final one where they wiped out and Ayanna lost one of her snow boots.

“We were going so fast, it felt like we would just fly into the moon,” Ayanna said.

Antony laughed and helped her slide her wet-sock foot into the boot.