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Frank was buckling Tanner into his carseat when the question came.
“Daddy?” he asked, squirming like he always did when Frank tried to buckle him in.
“Yeah, buddy, what’s up?” Frank returned, then his tone softened a bit. “Settle, squirmy-pants, I gotta plug you in.”
“How do you know you’re a boy?” Tanner asked, and Frank hesitated a moment.
“Uh, I dunno,” he answered honestly, then shrugged and straightened now that Tanner was buckled in. “I guess I just feel it. People call me a boy and I like it. I like being a boy. Why d’you ask?”
Tanner kicked his feet, with that expression on his face that said he wasn’t sure how to phrase something.
“There’s a girl in my class,” he said finally, looking down at his sneakers. “Nila. And she used to be a boy, but she said she didn’t feel like a boy, so her parents let her be a girl.”
Frank’s brows shot to his hairline, and he rested his hands on his hips.
“Yeah? What are you asking, bud?” he asked.
The silence was heavy for a long moment before Tanner spoke again, and Frank used the silence to pull himself into the driver’s seat.
“What does being a girl feel like?”
Frank exhaled pointedly and shrugged. “Ah, I dunno, bud, I’ve never been one. Have you asked Mommy?”
“No,” Tanner answered with a shake of his head.
“Well, why not? Mommy would know more about being a girl than me,” he said as he buckled himself in and started the car. “Or you could ask Penny.”
“Penny eats bugs,” Tanner replied, sticking his tongue out. “I don’t know any girls who eat bugs.”
“Hey, we’re working on that,” Frank said gently as he began backing out of the school parking space. “Speaking of, we gotta go get Penny from preschool, so you can ask her when we pick her up.”
Tanner seemed to accept that for a while, until they were about halfway to the preschool.
He hummed, kicking his feet, and Frank checked the rearview to look back at him.
“What?” he asked.
“Can I ask Dr. Mel?” Tanner returned. Frank raised a brow.
“You wanna ask Dr. Mel about being a girl?”
Tanner nodded. “She’s a girl. She’d probably know how it feels.”
With a sigh, Frank slowed at a stop sign. As he turned, he asked, “Why don’t you wanna ask Mommy, kiddo?”
A beat.
“She doesn’t explain stuff like Dr. Mel does,” he answered. Frank knew what Tanner meant. Abby was good with words, but not quite good enough to simplify big stuff like this for younger ears. Frank hummed.
“Fair enough,” he said. “I think it’s still worth asking her, though. She might surprise you.”
“I wanna ask Dr. Mel first,” Tanner insisted. He picked at the bandaid on his knee. Bluey.
Frank sighed again. Once Tanner was set on something, he was real stubborn. He slid his phone out of his pocket, opened it, and passed it back to Tanner.
“Go ahead, buddy, call her,” he said. Today was Mel’s day off, too, so she’d probably be able to answer. Almost instantly, the ringing tone filled the car. Maybe Frank let Tanner on his phone too much, if he was this quick with it.
Another ring, then the connecting sound.
“Oh, hi, kiddo!” Mel’s voice crackled over the receiver. Frank glanced in the rearview again and saw Tanner holding the phone up to his face. Ah. FaceTime. “What’s up? Is everything okay?”
“My daddy told me to call you,” Tanner said, kicking his feet, and when Frank made a sound of protest, he giggled.
“You begged me to talk to her, don’t pin this on me,” he said, playfully scolding him with no real heat. “Go ahead and ask her, buddy, Dr. Mel is a very busy lady.” Mel laughed.
“No, no, it’s okay,” she assured. “Becca’s at work, so I’m free all afternoon.”
“Dr. Mel,” Tanner started, “you’re a girl.”
“I am a girl,” she affirmed.
“How do you know you’re a girl?” he asked.
She hesitated, and Frank could pretty much envision her expression— her lips pressed in a thin line, brows knit in thought.
“Uh, well, I like being a girl,” she said carefully. “People call me a girl and it feels right. I like when people treat me like a girl.”
“How do you know it’s right?” Tanner pressed.
“I guess it just fits. Like, if somebody called me a boy, I wouldn’t like it,” Mel answered. “It’s right because I like it.”
Tanner hummed, kicking his feet again.
“You don’t like when people call you a boy,” he echoed. She must’ve shaken her head, because he continued. “What does it feel like?”
“When people call me a boy?” she asked. “I guess it’s like wearing a pair of shoes that don’t quite fit right.”
Tanner was quiet for a long moment.
“I don’t like being a boy,” he said finally. Frank glanced back again.
“Oh,” Mel said, voice steadier than Frank probably would’ve been able to manage. She barely sounded surprised. She’d always been good at keeping it locked down in front of other people. “Okay. Do you think you might like being a girl?”
“Maybe,” he admitted.
“You could be neither, if you want,” Frank cut in before he could stop himself. “You don’t have to be a boy or a girl.”
Tanner made an uncertain noise as they pulled into a parking spot at the preschool.
“Well, you can try out being a girl,” Mel said gently. Frank felt something soften in his gut. She was always so gentle with Tanner and Penny. “And if you don’t like it, that’s okay.”
“…Okay,” Tanner conceded finally. “I think I wanna be a girl.”
Mel stretched upward on the couch as the credits rolled. While she wasn’t necessarily thrilled to be watching Hercules for the twelfth time, it wasn’t Elf, and Frank’s kids loved it. This was most of their date nights at this point— which she didn’t mind, but she’d like a bit more alone time.
“Okay, girls, bedtime,” Frank said definitively, to immediate protest from Tanner and Penny. “Yes, yes, Daddy’s evil, I know. You guys have school tomorrow and need rest.”
“I’m not even tired,” Tanner protested, crossing her arms over her middle as if she were hugging herself. Mel bit back a laugh.
“Yeah, I know,” Frank said as he picked up Penny from the floor. “But if you don’t sleep, you’ll fall asleep at school tomorrow and you’ll get in trouble. And we don’t want that.”
Tanner thought for a moment, frowning, then stuck her tongue out.
“Nuh-uh, put that tongue away, little lady,” Frank said with a frown of his own.
“So,” Mel cut in, swooping in to haul her up into her arms and carry her towards the bedroom the girls shared when they stayed in Frank’s apartment. “Tanner. Have you thought about your name?”
“Mm, I like my name,” she said, squirming in Mel’s hold. “Even if it’s a boy name.”
“Do you think you’ll keep it?” Mel asked. “Lots of girls have traditional boy names. There’s a girl like you, actually, a famous girl, and she used to be a boy. Her name is Hunter.”
Tanner perked up at that. “Really?” she asked, squirming, and Mel guided the skirt of her dress back down to cover her underwear. She was so wiggly. Two months of girlhood wouldn’t change that, Mel guessed.
“Yeah,” Mel said with a nod, then opened the door to the kids’ room with her hip. “And I used to go to school with a girl named Arlo.”
“Woah,” Tanner said, a little transfixed. “I wanna be a girl with a boy name.”
“That would be very gender of you,” Mel said, then set Tanner down on her feet and helped her pull her dress off. “Let’s get you in jammies, yeah?”
Tanner bounced on her heels as Mel dug through the suitcase at the foot of Tanner’s bed.
“Alright, girly, you gotta get in your pajamas,” Frank’s voice came from behind her, and Mel glanced over to see him toss Penny gently onto her bed.
Changing them into their pajamas and getting them in bed was an affair and a half. Mel was used to it by now. It was comfortably intimate.
“There y’go, see? It’s not the end of the world,” Frank said, already grabbing the heavy book of fairy tales off the shelf. He flipped to the tale they were on, near the beginning of the book, and smiled. “Ah, and today’s bedtime story is Rapunzel.”
The girls sat up excitedly, already chattering about it, and Frank settled them with a quiet coyote hand symbol, which they mimicked.
“Alright,” he said, settling onto the edge of Tanner’s bed, beside where Mel had settled, then cleared his throat. “There were once a man and a woman, who had long in vain wished for a child…”