All of which was easy for her. She had been dealing with men like this ever since she had come to Iowa. Men wanted to be strong. One way to be strong was to be knowledgeable. In so many areas, it was not possible to be knowledgeable without getting a Ph.D. and doing a postdoc. Guns and hunting provided an out for men who wanted to be know-it-alls but who couldn’t afford to spend the first three decades of their lives getting up to speed on quantum mechanics or oncology. You simply couldn’t go to a gun range without being cornered by a man who wanted to talk to you for hours about the ballistics of the .308 round or the relative merits of side-by-side versus over-and-under shotguns. If you couldn’t stand that heat, you needed to stay out of that kitchen, and Zula had walked right into it by crossing the threshold of Jacob and Elizabeth’s house. She smiled and nodded and pretended to be interested in Uncle Jacob’s bear lore until Aunt Elizabeth finished putting the boys to bed and came and rescued her.