But she had, underneath the ordinary teenage fog, a plain and unbudgeable sense of what was fair, and it had never occurred to her to be afraid of her father the way I’d slowly, without noticing, taught myself to be.

So when he laid the trade in front of her, she didn’t perform outrage.

She just looked at it the way you’d look at a math problem with an obvious answer, and gave the answer.\n\nHe recoiled like she’d reached over and slapped him.

I don’t think anyone had spoken to him that plainly in years — certainly not me, not for a long time, because somewhere in the sixteen years I’d learned to manage him instead of answer him.

My daughter hadn’t learned that yet.