The Witch Elm

by Tana French

Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Hamlet

Worrying had always seemed to me like a laughable waste of time and energy; so much simpler to go happily about your business and deal with the problem when it arose, if it did, which it mostly didn’t.

But even when the fear receded for a while, it was always there: dark, misshapen, taloned, hanging somewhere above and behind me, waiting for its next moment to drop onto my back and dig in deep.

“The thing is, I suppose,” he said, “that one gets into the habit of being oneself. It takes some great upheaval to crack that shell and force us to discover what else might be underneath.”

A difference I could see, right there in front of me. We made two whole new people. It doesn’t get more concrete than that.”