Janelle Brown

This is the great horror of life: that mistakes are forever, and cannot be undone. You can never truly go back, even if you want to retrace your steps and take another route. The path has already disappeared behind you.

So yes, I grew up fully aware that my father was a brilliant man whose expertise I should never ever ever question.

Did I believe that he was a good man? That’s another question entirely.

We need to acknowledge the things that are still wild, the things that have survived us. We need to remember that this”—he gestured at the trees around us, the falling snow, the vanished deer—“is what we are supposed to be part of. Instead, we’ve manufactured these precarious societies, ruining the earth with our so-called technological advances. Our guns and our biological weapons, television sets and computers. Making ourselves obsolete in the process, even.” He wiped away the last of the tears. “Left alone, nature takes care of itself. But all we humans do is destroy

“What do you mean?”

“Think about it. What if your mom isn’t even dead?”

I sat there until I finally understood, with knifelike clarity, that I had to find a way out of this cabin.

It never occurred to me that the real terminable offense was the monster who had just slipped through the doors that this man was being paid to guard.

“I’m not the face of anything.”

“You’re a face.”

“Not one that anyone should want to look at.”

“I want to look at it.”

“You’re the Bombaster’s daughter.”