The Red Garden

by Alice Hoffman

That was the country she was in most of the time, a place where people heard what she said but not what she meant. She wanted to be known, but no one knew her.

The pastor, Johnson Jacob, came and said a prayer. He was a good man, and he waited with me while the laborers dug the grave. He told me that we could not begin to understand the mysteries of our faith, and I wondered why he assumed I had any faith at all.

They say that dogs may dream, and when Topsy was old, his feet would move in his sleep. With his eyes closed he would often make a noise that sounded quite human, as if greeting someone in his dreams. At first it seemed that he believed Sara would return, but as the years went by I understood that his loyalty asked for no reward, and that love comes in unexpected forms. His wish was small, as hers had been—merely to be beside her.

some people might say it was best for children to eat only simple things. In their experience, nothing was simple.

Louise hadn’t really liked Cambridge, all those know-it-all girls, the smart-aleck pot-smoking boys who thought no one had ever had an original idea before they came along.