In the Woods

by Tana French

In my second year there I became fascinated with late-night true-crime documentaries, mostly on the Discovery Channel: not with the crimes themselves, but with the intricate structures of their unraveling. I loved the taut, steady absorption with which these men—sharp FBI Bostonians, potbellied Texas sheriffs—carefully disentangled threads and joined jigsaw pieces, until at last everything fell into place and the answer rose at their command to hang in the air before them, shining and unassailable.

The one joy of migraines is that they make a perfect excuse: they’re disabling, they’re not your fault, they can last as long as you need them to and nobody can prove you don’t have one.

I was suddenly, fiercely glad that I would never in my life have to be a teenager again.

“All that about making the sister sick for her own good; would you say she actually believes that?” “No,” Cassie said. She refolded the tissue to find a clean bit. “‘Believe’ doesn’t exist for her. Things aren’t true or false; they either suit her or they don’t. Nothing else means anything to her. You could give her a polygraph and she’d pass with flying colors.” “She should’ve gone into politics. Hang on; here we go.”