Free Tomorrow River by Lesley Kagen

ballerina toes,” I whisper, forgetting all about how loud that creak is in front of the stove.
    “’Bout time,” Lou calls high and mighty out of the dining room.
    Damnation .
    “Get in here, you two.”
    I lead Woody into the grandest room of our house. Red flocked wallpaper runs from the ceiling to the floor and a portrait of Woodrow Wilson in a gilt frame hangs above the sideboard. The twenty-eighth president of the United States was born in Staunton, a town up the road a piece. Papa admires him quite a bit. Enough to name his only children Jane Woodrow and Shenandoah Wilson . On the dining room walls, there’s also a couple of pictures of Carmodys that date back to the 1700s. Grampa’s got the most important of them up at his house, but we have Hiram Carmody, who rode with the Knights of the Golden Horseshoe. They were a band of explorers who discovered the Shenandoah Valley from a crest of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Our gorgeous valley must’ve seemed like a mirage to them. I’m grateful Woody and me don’t take after those Founders. I think Grampa Gus inherited his sour disposition from these old codgers. Every one of them looks like he swallowed a bottle of cod liver oil and asked for seconds.
    Lou’s up on a stepladder cleaning the crystal chandelier that hangs above the polished mahogany dining table that sits twelve. “You’re late,” she says, not even bothering to look down at us.
    “I know . . . we got . . .” I so resent explaining myself to her.
    “Ya just missed your pappy. He came askin’ for ya.”
    I can feel my sister bunch up again beneath my fingertips. “What’d ya tell him?” I ask, gliding my hand up Woody’s neck. Stroking where her hair meets her skin keeps her calm.
    “The truth, a course,” Lou says haughty. “That y’all wouldn’t mind me and went flittin’ to town, blabbin’ with anybody who’d bother talkin’ to you about your mama.”
    “You wouldn’t dare,” I say, rubbing Woody’s neck even harder.
    “Maybe I would, maybe I wouldn’t,” Lou says with a rise of her right eyebrow. “Ya just can’t know for sure, can ya.”
    Oh, yeah I can.
    I can barely stand breathing the same air Lou does these days, but I love her uncle, Mr. Cole Jackson, to bits. He’s the one who taught me how to play cards. Papa doesn’t give us any spending money so beating Lou and Mr. Cole at poker is how I can afford to buy Band-Aids and drawing supplies for Woody. That’s how I know that Lou raises up her right eyebrow when she’s got nothing but a pair of sixes but wants to trick you into believing she’s got a royal flush.
    “You better tell Woody you’re lying right this minute, Louise, or . . . or I’ll make sure Papa knows you been sneakin’ out of your cabin to meet up with Blackie,” I say, pulling that ace out of my sleeve. (If those two get caught, you understand who’d get into trouble, don’t you? It wouldn’t be my uncle, that’s for sure. Lou would find herself back in the bayou so fast she wouldn’t even remember taking the trip.)
    “If ya think I’m scared of your fath—” Lou smacks her jaw shut. She just remembered that unlike her—I never, ever bluff. “Go on and tell, see if I care,” she says with a toss of her head, but she’s as scared of breaking Papa’s rules as Woody and I are. She’s not supposed to get romantically involved, especially with his brother. She’s supposed to be cooking and cleaning and taking care of Woody and me and that’s it, so that’s why Lou’s backing down. On both counts.
    When she gets eye to eyes with us, I tell her with clenched fists, “Woody needs an apology.”
    Lou knows that when I get like this that I’m not messing around, so she steps right up to Woody and puts on one of her old-fashioned smiles. “Thought ya knew I was only kiddin’ ’bout tellin’ your pappy that you and your sis been runnin’ into town. Ya know how I like to fun.”
    She didn’t used to.
    Woody and I spent many an