Eric and Wen’s Father-Daughter Bond

Eric and Wen’s father-daughter bond is built from the ordinary acts of care that make a family feel secure, then tested by the cabin siege and broken by Wen’s death. Eric comforts her, establishes rules meant to keep her safe, and carries her through the cabin’s violence; afterward, holding her body and insisting that the family will remember her become ways of sustaining their connection when he can no longer protect her.

Identity and Early Bond

Wen is Eric’s daughter and one of the two fathers’ young child. Her eighth birthday is approaching, though she has overheard Eric and Andrew wondering whether the date is her actual birthday or one assigned by the orphanage in China’s Hubei Province. The uncertainty belongs to her early history, but the family life the book depicts is immediate and shared: Wen calls Eric Daddy Eric, and his fatherhood appears in the attention he gives her, the way he responds to her fear, and the routines they have made together.

Wen is outgoing, direct, and determined, but she is not always at ease with her reconstructed smile. The faint scar beside her lip remains evidence of surgeries to repair a cleft lip, and Wen remembers only the first and last hospital visits. Eric’s later response to his own head injury reveals how closely he identifies with this visible mark. He sees the bandage as the beginning of a real scar that might make him resemble Wen and Andrew, and the prospect gives him an unexpected sense of belonging with them.

Care in Everyday Life

Eric’s fatherhood is expressed through shared attention rather than grand declarations. When Wen bursts into the cabin frightened and urges her fathers to come inside, Eric first asks whether she is all right. He recognizes that she is deeply afraid even though she is not crying or apparently hurt. Wen slows down enough to explain that people have arrived and that some of them frighten her; Eric and Andrew follow her inside. Her urgency changes the family’s immediate priorities, but Eric’s response begins with concern for her safety and an effort to understand what has happened.

During the siege, Eric carries Wen chest to chest as Andrew prepares to get them out. Wen loops her arms around Eric’s shoulders and hides her face against his neck. The posture is practical, because Eric is moving her away from danger, but it also gives physical form to the trust between them: she turns toward him, and he holds her close while the adults try to find a route out of the cabin.

A different kind of closeness appears after Eric sustains a head injury. With his head bandaged, he tries to explain to Wen that the resulting scar will make him a closer match for her and Andrew. Wen does not answer or look away from the television, but she shifts nearer and rests her head against his legs. Eric finds the moment funny and moving, then suddenly grieves the small ritual they may lose: after he shaved his head, Wen would inspect it for nicks or pretend scars. A permanent mark would mean she no longer needed to check for a temporary one. His laughter gives way to sobbing, intensified by the effects of his concussion, while Wen remains beside him. Her quiet physical response is not a solution to his distress, but it is a return to the closeness that gives the exchange its meaning.

Protection, Rules, and Trust

The fathers’ efforts to keep Wen safe also appear in a remembered conversation about Andrew’s gun. Wen initially thinks the meeting in her parents’ bedroom concerns her habit of sneaking in to look at her baby pictures. Instead, Andrew and Eric show her a locked gun safe and explain that the weapon is dangerous, not a toy, and never something she may touch. Eric repeatedly objects to the idea of Wen handling it, even when Andrew briefly offers. They establish strict rules about the gun and the bedroom, treating safety as more important than her curiosity.

That conversation becomes painfully consequential in retrospect, without making the accidental shooting a failure of Wen’s understanding or a deliberate act by her fathers. During the struggle, Leonard’s hands are over Andrew’s as they grapple for the gun; the weapon discharges and Wen is killed. Eric later remembers her falling and recalls praying in his head as he understands that she is gone. The distance between the careful family rules and this uncontrollable outcome makes the loss especially devastating: precautions had been part of their care for Wen, yet they could not prevent the catastrophe inside the cabin.

Eric’s concussion further complicates his ability to remain present. In a disoriented period afterward, he remembers Wen sitting near him as he unties his legs, a loud report, and her falling away from him. He remembers recognizing that she was gone and trying to pray. His recollection is broken and hazy, but its central fact is painfully clear: the daughter he had been trying to protect is dead, and he has to return to that knowledge through impaired memory as well as grief.

Grief and the Work of Carrying On

Immediately after Wen is shot, Eric and Andrew huddle beside her and call her name. Later, Eric and Andrew try to rise together and look back at Wen; they rest their foreheads together and break down. Eric then insists that they must take her with them. Even in shock, he does not treat her as someone who can be left behind in the cabin. Their grief is shared, but Eric’s insistence gives it a practical direction: she remains part of the family’s departure.

When the men prepare to leave, Eric says that he will carry Wen. He prays for the strength to do so for as long as necessary, connecting that present effort to an earlier family game. For several weeks after Wen’s third birthday, she had asked her fathers to carry her around their condo and counted the laps as a measure of their strength. Eric and Andrew would deliberately complete the same number, frustrating her belief that one of them might prove stronger. Now the familiar act of carrying has lost its playfulness, but Eric still chooses to bear her weight. Wen’s body is wrapped in a sheet, and his promise to keep holding her becomes an expression of continuing fatherhood in circumstances where care can no longer change the outcome.

The effort is not effortless or uninterrupted. Eric’s condition is compromised, and he eventually needs to rest with Wen across his thighs. He does not put her down casually; he thinks about how tiring his arms are and about continuing to carry her for whatever distance remains. When Andrew offers to take her, Eric says he can manage and will let him know if that changes. This exchange preserves both men’s care for Wen while showing Eric’s particular need to remain the one carrying her for the moment.

As the family prepares to leave, Eric and Andrew’s commitment shifts from getting through the immediate crisis to remembering Wen beyond it. Eric resolves that they will lift her, carry her, remember her, and continue down the road despite whatever obstacles lie ahead. The relationship’s final form is therefore not an escape from grief or a restoration of the family as it was. It is a promise that Wen will remain their daughter in memory and love, and that Eric and Andrew will keep moving forward with her loss part of their shared life.