When Dad leaves her and Sammy at Uncle Bobby's and doesn't come back for months. She wishes she were bigger, stronger, like Dad and Uncle Bobby. She wishes she were a grown-up man so Dad could trust her to look after Sammy while he's out hunting.
She tells Bobby her wish, and Bobby laughs at her a little uncomfortably.
"Well honey, you won't ever grow up to be a man. Girls grow up to be women."
For the first time, it occurs to her that there's one big difference between her and the rest of her family. For the first time she wonders if maybe Dad can't trust her to watch Sammy because she's a girl and not a boy. She wonders if Mom would have lived if she'd been a man instead of a woman.
And what if she'd been a boy? Maybe Dad would've trusted her with Sammy then. What if she could have got Sammy out of the house and Dad could've stayed behind to save Mom?