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Sarah had once said that life was better when you acted like a sapling in the wind, twisting and bending when needed, so that the roots stay strong and whole. She wasn’t sure anyone in her family believed her, least of all Bella.
The young man behind the bar had tattoos under rolled-up sleeves. Sarah briefly wondered about the hieroglyphic life story unfolding across his flesh as he glided around the room delivering food and drink and a noncommittal smile.
The woods around here are thick with myths and stories.”
It was impossible to protect children from the random wantonness of the world.
The living-room window offered a glimpse of a crystalized world. The front street, awash in white, looked like the top of a wedding cake. Icicles turned tree branches into gleaming archways. Though beautiful, a barrenness lurked in the brightness: not even a squirrel track seemed to disturb the gloss.
How had Matt managed to slip out to the bakery without leaving a single trace in the snow? She held the puzzle for a moment, scarf in hand, before letting it trickle away like melting ice.
Memory was a misplaced faith; we believed in our pasts only as far as we remembered them.
It was like that, grief. Dormant, but
always ravenous, waking in its own time to steal away moments of contentment.
How do you process an unknowable loss? Grief was a mutable feast, she supposed, filled with every horrid flavor that the human mind could conceive. Who could even say where the line of normal ended? Certainly, anger was a reasonable response.
“Magical beliefs and superstitious behaviors allow people to reduce the tension created by uncertainty and help fill the void of the unknown.”
Sarah had mourned the loss, but not more than she’d nursed the grudge.
A funny thing happened to rational thought through tragedy. To cope, the mind followed strange paths carved by grief and wishful thinking.
Everything Sarah thought she knew about her husband, about her family, about her life, exploded, as if she’d been carrying a land mine near her heart all this time.
A Herman Melville line from Moby-Dick played on repeat in his head, like a scratched CD track: There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke.
He’d been trying to work his way through the novel for months, reading a page here and there. Not because it wasn’t readable, but because it struck Boychuck as a book you lived with for a while.
“The wilderness is probably the purest expression of beauty there is in the world. There’s no right, no wrong, no good, no bad. The wild deals in life and death just as easily as we breathe. It’s primal and true. We can walk within it, even fool ourselves into believing we’ve tamed it, but disrespect it and it will swallow us.”
“Take the river, for example,” Sarah continued. “Sure, it’s needed. I mean, water’s a necessity for survival, right? It’s used for drinking, for fishing, it’s a transportation route. The river has everything we need to survive. But wrong her and she can be vicious.” Sarah’s voice was razor sharp on the last sentence.
“The devil loves unspoken secrets. Especially those that fester in a man’s soul,”
“Rob, do you believe that nature has karma?” “In what way?” He’d heard the word before, but usually chalked it up to city folks reading too many self-help books. “That the universe has balance. Something good will even out something bad.” “I don’t know that the universe cares enough about us. Way I see it, we’re nothing more than fleas on the back of a bear when it comes to the universe. Nature don’t care about right or wrong. There’s no cosmic retribution. Good people make mistakes; bad people do good. It’s randomness and chance in my mind. Call it the universe, call it the hand of God, call
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The wilderness would never welcome her back. This was never a safe place. It had grace and beauty and an undeniable energy that could rejuvenate the soul—or save a marriage—but there were no bargains to be struck. The lake hadn’t broken its promise to her. There had never been one. The water flowed because it must, and it owed Sarah and her family nothing. The woods were savage, dark, and deep. And they kept their secrets.
