Free Dogwood by Chris Fabry Page B

hurry it up.” He pointed at the clock. “Time’s wastin’.”
    “Ruthie, this whole thing scares me. What if I get in there and . . . ?”
    She patted my arm with an arthritic hand that could have passed as the talon of some ancient bird. “Karin, do you trust me?”
    “I have up until now, but I’m beginning to wonder why.”
    “Then you’re going to have to trust me when you don’t feel like it.”
    “I don’t know if I—”
    “I do.” Ruthie said it forcefully, eyebrows furrowed, like she meant for it to sink deep into my soul. “I’ve divined the one dream you told me about, but I haven’t figured out the other one.”
    That took my breath. “How do you know about the other one? I never told you.”
    She waved a hand. “Some dreams are written on our minds, and it takes years to figure them out. Others are written on our hearts, and it takes someone who loves us deeply to read them and tell us what they mean. There is a language on your heart I’ve been trying to translate ever since I met you. At first, it was just curiosity. Then the more I got to know you, the more I came to love you, the more I wanted to know.” She pointed at the door. “There’s an answer sitting in a chair in that room, separated from us by a thick wall of plastic. I am going to find out what is writtenon that heart of yours because it’s the only thing that will truly set you free. At least that’s what I believe.”
    My heart would not be still. Something told me life would never be the same once we faced Will.
    “Karin, I know this is good, but there’s something I need you to do.”
    I wasn’t sure what else she could ask. She had already driven me from my comfortable life. What more?
    “Can you open that door for me?” she said.

K arin
    Children are unaware of thorns.
    I pushed Tarin’s stroller to Ruthie’s house, and Tarin caught sight of a rosebush in bloom and reached to grab it. I held her hand but picked a bud so she could smell it. “That’ll hurt you if you touch the sticky parts,” I said.
    Ruthie’s house was nestled in a sea of stucco and hot tubs, and its simplicity struck me. Ivy wandered around the chimney, and violets bloomed near the concrete porch. Inside was unbearably hot, but she didn’t seem to notice. She had bathed before dinner and smelled of sweet talcum.
    Ruthie poured two glasses of sparkling wine, and we ate a mouthwatering Parmesan chicken recipe she said had been in her family a hundred years. I think it was the first time I truly savored a meal.
    “Food was never meant to be gulped,” Ruthie would later say. “Food and family and friends are meant to be enjoyed slowly . Meals are a lot like life, fresh and hot and inviting. If you run through them, you miss a lot.”
    At some point in the evening, Ruthie asked about my love life.
    “I’m married. I don’t have time for love.”
    I thought she would laugh, but she waited, drawing me like some ingrown tide. Though I could not speak his name, I told her of a young man I had known, and the feelings I had pushed away suddenly returned.
    “What happened to him?” she said.
    “He went away and I settled for a good man.”
    “Have you ever spoken with him?”
    I shook my head. “It’s too late.”
    Somehow we got onto the topic of writing, something I had done in childhood. Ruthie handed me a leather-bound notebook and said she wanted me to fill it with everything I could remember.
    That night I began writing again, but I mostly filled the book with her words, her homespun wisdom. When I met her for lunch and forgot the notebook, I wrote on paper napkins or on the backs of children’s menus. I could not get enough of her words, and there didn’t seem to be anything she would hold back from me.
    Some time later she asked what I’d written, and I opened the book to her words and shared my thoughts.
    Ruthie laughed from the gut, put her elbow on the table, and propped her chin on the back of her hand. “I think