The God of the Woods

by Liz Moore

Her voice, it seemed, had been continuously decrescendoing since birth, so that by age twelve, she could scarcely be heard.

Peter frequently offered her criticisms, always couched as advice.

“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.

The idea of insisting on anything, when it came to Peter, was unimaginable to her. She wasn’t—frightened of him, exactly, though there had been one or two incidents that caused alarm. It was more that she had come to see herself nearly exclusively through his eyes, and therefore being in his good graces was the easiest way to achieve a sense of well-being.