This right here was what Keith was always talking about. She was freaking out. She had a tendency to get worked up. Sometimes a mother did not just know these things. Last month, she’d just known that he’d been abducted from the bus stop. She’d raced down there in her bathrobe and house slippers. He’d seen her coming. Started shaking his head, like, Ma, no, no, no. But too late. The older boys were already imitating her shuffling run.

Once she’d dreamed he’d started smoking. In the dream, he’d been smoking a cigar. At Cub Scouts. Sort of flaunting it. He had a man’s voice and, in that voice, asked Mr. Belden if there was such a thing as a Smoking Merit Badge. Next morning, in real life, he’d busted her sniffing his clothes and started bawling the way he did when he was totally telling the truth but not being heard.

“Why would I smoke?” he’d said. “Ma, that’s disgusting.”

What you had to do was overrule your irrational fears. By learning the facts. She’d read about this in Best Life. One gal scared of flying had spent the month before her trip to China memorizing air-fatality statistics. A man afraid of snakes had come up with a mantra about the majority of snakes being nonvenomous. In another article, parents, intending the best, had gone too far. One mom, super-focused on eating right, had turned her daughter anorexic. A dad had been too strict about violin practice and now his son hated music. Also, had panic attacks whenever near polished brown wood.

All over the world right now, thousands of boys were out farting around, having broken a promise they’d made to stay in the yard.

Most woods were not dangerous.

Generally, lungs did not just fail.

The world was not a scary or hostile place, and Derek was a smart little guy with a good head on his shoulders.

He was fine. What she was going to do was sit down and write something.

What she was not going to do was hover by the window.

Much.

“The Tree Who Longed to Come Inside.” Once there was a tree who longed to come inside and sit by the woodstove. He knew this was weird. He knew that his fellow trees were being cruelly burned in there. But, gosh, the kitchen looked so inviting. Because of all the hard work the mother had done. Painting and whatnot. When she should have been writing. The smoke pouring out of the chimney smelled so nice. The flesh of his fellow trees, burning, smelled amazing.

Yikes.

Restart.