Dogwood Read Free

grown-ups stare at kids. The room felt like it needed music. Something playing in the background. Maybe if he opened a window a bird would chirp or something and break the silence.
    He tapped a pencil. Will you write it?
    What choice do I have?
    He reached for the pad on my lap.
    I pulled it away and held on. I can’t promise I’ll get it right.
    Is that what you think I want? I don’t want it right. I want it to be good. And true.
    I’m saying it won’t be any good. How long do you think it will take?
    He handed me another pad. Write about them until you’re ready to talk.
    Wait. You mean my sisters or—?
    Everyone has a story, he interrupted. Tell theirs.
    I looked at the pads, the green running across the pages in perfect lines, as if they could go on to infinity. Parallel lines do that. That’s what Mrs. Arnold said when we were studying math. They just go on and on and on and never touch. Hard to imagine something going so far as to never touch. Kind of sad, too, in a way. I squared the edges and tucked the pads under an arm. His words echoed in my head, through the halls.
    Good things can come from pain, he said. Not all of it is good, of course, but some of it. And the places it leads are good places, not bad. Never be afraid of the places pain will take you.
    Like a hospital?
    He smiled.
    So I left and found out he was right. Everyone does have a story .

W ill
    Clarkston Federal Correctional Institution
    Clarkston, West Virginia
    I can’t stop my hands from shaking. Just like at the trial. Uncontrollable. It doesn’t even help if I shove them in my pockets.
    With the fluorescent lights over me so strong, I can see a ghost of my reflection. I’ve avoided mirrors for twelve years. Only two months to go, but I don’t think I’ll ever look in a mirror again and not remember what’s happened. It’s enough to turn a strong man’s stomach.
    Men elected president enter the White House with dark hair, full of vigor, and most leave a few years later looking twenty years older. I would have taken the White House over Clarkston. I entered this white house weighing 195. If I can stay above 150, I’ll be happy.
    The solace comes when I close my eyes and think of home. What the neighbors are doing. Fishing with Uncle Luther. Or with my dad. I’ll never do that again. The excitement of hunting season. There are people up the hollow who were in grade school when I left. They’re out of college now or in prison. Maybe out of college and in prison.
    The chair squeaks as I lean forward and rest my elbows on theFormica countertop. The letter came a week ago. The explanation was a bit confusing, but it said she would visit. And now I sit with my stomach in knots, unable to let the thought enter my mind that it might really be her .
    My first two months here were spent crafting letters, pouring out my heart, detailing my feelings. Half of them I threw away, convinced I’d said too much or too little. The other half I sent.
    Every letter went unanswered.
    I heard rumors, of course. Wild ones that she had moved away or was pregnant and had a shotgun wedding. Carson, my brother, called her unspeakable names. But every waking moment of the last dozen years, I’ve thought of her.
    Down the row, a voice echoes off the scratched Plexiglas. Tears. Hands reaching. An inmate falsely accused. A mother weeping. It seems so cliché now.
    Yet I can’t deny a flicker of hope. After a year I stopped sending letters, but I never stopped writing. Or loving. There are things I have to do once I get out. Hard things. People I have to face. But if I can just see her once more . . .
    Every night for twelve years, I’ve turned off the light and interlaced my fingers behind my head, drifting off to a dream of a house on a hill overlooking a meadow and a sea of West Virginia mountains and trees rolling like an ocean. I’m returning from work swinging a lunch box. I stop and pick up a child who runs to me. Then she appears on the porch, in