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Dean (Deanna according to her birth certificate, but nobody ever calls her that) has always felt that extra X in her chromosomes to be a huge injustice. She is convinced Dad wanted a boy; that her greatest service to him was in raising Sammy in his absence (and, truth be told, in much of his presence, too).
Sam’s protestations are like the grooves on a favourite weapon, worn deep and soft with constant handling. It doesn’t matter that she’s faster, more agile, a better shot; a black belt in several martial arts to compensate for her lower body weight and strength. Sam feels like a lumbering, clumsy giant next to his sister, and he knows she has the edge on him in instinct, too; arrowing straight to the heart of a hunt like a stooping falcon where he hesitates, a circling buzzard weighing up perspectives.
He also knows that it’s he, not Dean, who disappointed their father, taking off to find the long way round that hunting, after all, is engraved on his bones. It doesn’t matter. He tries to be patient, to give his unstinting support and understanding to the ways in which she over compensates for an imaginary deficit.
When she learns that their mother was also a hunter, and one of the best, it’s like sunshine pouring into her soul, balm and valediction, uplifting and absolving. Until Mary is restored to them and, unable to comprehend these two grown strangers, walks voluntarily out of their lives again.