The God of the Woods

by Liz Moore

To panic, said T.J., was to make an enemy of the forest. To stay calm was to be its friend. • • •

It was then that a memory sprang forcefully to the front of his mind: something the boy had said once about his grandfather, in passing, that Carl had brushed aside.

“The best part of being married to George Barlow for a decade was learning that it’s all right not to do everything that’s expected of you all of the time. This is a notion that has been positively liberating for me. The way we were raised—the way our parents raised us, I mean—it trained us to think it’s our job to be absolutely correct in everything that we do. But it isn’t, Bunny. Do you see? We can have our own thoughts, our own inner lives. We can do as we please, if we only learn not to care so much about what people think.”

“Kissing someone—someone you want to kiss, I mean—is like living inside the best song you ever heard. It’s the same feeling.”

generally become most enraged when they sense they’re about to be held accountable for their wrongs.

would have protested that life was worth living. But Tracy, at nearly thirteen, read the statement not as a cry for help, but as a statement of fact.

It was funny, she thought, how many relationships one could have with the same man, over the course of a lifetime together.