John said, “Crying out loud. She’s eleven years old.”

Poppy snapped her gum. “I just told her, you know, ‘Alex can be whoever the hell Alex wants to be.’ ”

John grunted. “And she’s got plenty of time to decide that on her own, without a bunch of grown-ups slappin’ labels.”

He glanced at his daughter in the rearview mirror. Alex slept peacefully, mouth sagged open, a tiny thread of drool connecting her lip to her Cincinnati Bengals T-shirt.

Alex and her father shared a special bond. Ever since she was small, she loved helping John change the oil in their vehicles, stack firewood, and clean out the gutters, and she begged to accompany him on trips to the lumberyard, the shooting range, and Ace Hardware. Alex’s most coveted possession was her BB gun, and she and John spent countless hours doing target practice on Coke cans in the backyard. Alex would mimic everything John did: wear her cap backwards, roll a toothpick back and forth across her lips, sniff defiantly as though someone had changed the rules every time she missed the can altogether. When she was a toddler, she’d sit on the bathroom counter and watch her father shave, then ask to have shaving cream put on her own chin, which she would remove with a comb in the same long, measured strokes that John used with his razor.

Alex’s idolizing of John flattered him, especially since Ryan had never shown an ounce of interest in his father’s hobbies. Furthermore, in the last year or two, Ryan had become downright judgmental about John’s love of hunting and fishing. One of Ryan’s high school teachers had taken the kids on a trip to the Shenandoah River, done a bunch of tests on the plants and the water, photographed the animals they saw, and picked up litter, which got Ryan all wound up about the ecosystem. Even before this, Ryan had always been happier reading books about anything from aliens to Antarctica to forensic psychology, or going on long bike rides by himself, rather than accompanying his father on tasks and excursions. Lately, Ryan’s solitary bike rides had gotten longer and longer, but John didn’t ask questions.

Ryan was a much better student and just plain much smarter kid than either John or Poppy had been. Fast reader. Great memory for facts, whiz at math. Hard for John to imagine he shared any DNA with the kid whatsoever. Several months ago, Ryan had been admitted to the West Virginia University on a full scholarship and would start there this coming fall.

John couldn’t believe how lucky he had gotten with Ryan and Alex. He had friends with kids who had problems John could hardly fathom. One of his buddies had a kid who had overdosed on heroin and was found dead on the floor of the bathroom at Shoney’s. Fifteen years old. Another one had a twelve-year-old who was sitting in Juvie for stabbing his grandma after she unplugged his Nintendo in the middle of a game. So John knew not to take anything for granted—Ryan and Alex were great kids, easy kids, the best a parent could hope for. Even if Ryan could be a smug little shit about fishing sustainably. Even if Alex and her shaved head invited some questions.