Tomorrow River Read Online Free Page A

any of your mumbo jumbo this mornin’.”
    “That’s not mumbo jumbo. That’s poetry. Miss Emily Dickinson.” I’m this close to getting up out of my chair, picking up the fry pan off the stove, grease and all, and using it to flatten the back of her head. She’s all the time doing this. Trying to make me feel like I’m letting our dear mother down when what I’m attempting to do is the exact opposite.
    I wonder if right about now you might be agreeing with her. Thinking to yourself:
    What’s wrong with this child? Why didn’t she start searching right away? Her mama’s been gone almost a year.
    Well, I wouldn’t be too quick to judge if I were you. I did all that I could.
    I questioned those that live at Lilyfield. I didn’t want to get our father more jittery than he already was, but I asked Mr. Cole Jackson one afternoon where he thought Mama might’ve gone off to and when she might be coming back. He set down his pruning shears and cast his eyes heavenward. “Some things in this life are not ours for the knowin’. The Almighty’s got a plan for all His children,” he said. “Found it’s best not to question Him.”
    I should’ve known that’s what he’d say. That’s his answer to almost anything, so he was no help at all.
    I even stooped so low as to bother Lou. “Thought ya was s’posed to be so damn smart,” she sneered when I asked if she knew anything about Mama’s disappearance. “There’s that ten-thousand-dollar reward your granpappy put up, so if’n I knew somethin’ about your mama’s vanishment, don’t you think I woulda told it by now? Shoot. I had that cash money, I’d be livin’ in high cotton ’stead of waitin’ on you spoiled girls hand and foot.”
    Reaching a dead end no matter which way I turned, I began to believe that Mama’s goneness was just some sort of silly misunderstanding. Even after Sheriff Andy Nash showed up at our front porch on All Hallow’s Eve, telling Papa in a suitably haunted-sounding voice: “I’m sorry, Your Honor. I . . . we . . . all of us have done what we can to find Miss Evelyn. The leads just seemed to dry up.”
    The sheriff admitting defeat like that did get my hackles up, but just a hair. I still believed Mama’d come home any moment no matter what dopey Andy Nash thought.
    Especially when December 24th rolled around. Our mother loves all the holidays, but Christmas Eve is her absolute favorite . Woody thinks it’s because she was named for it, that’s why. Eve lyn. Mr. Cole trudged out to the woods that afternoon with his ax and drug back the prettiest spruce to set in the parlor. I placed the Mitch Miller Christmas album on the hi-fi the same way our mother would’ve to set the mood for tree trimming. After my sister and I hung our stockings, set out the cookies and hot cocoa, we stood by the front window and I sang over and over, “Oh, Come All Ye Faithful,” but you know—Mama didn’t.
    And on May Day, I was so positive she’d show up with the better weather that I got up extra early and ran down to the potting shed. But when I threw open the door, all I found was Mama’s gardening shoes, sitting on the workbench wrapped in spiderwebs like a haunted present.
    Just like I’d been doing the whole time Mama’s been gone, I told weeping Woody, “Must you always be so dramatic? Just because she hasn’t showed up yet doesn’t mean she’s not goin’ to. We’ll head into the kitchen one of these mornings, and there she’ll be, sipping her tea and reading. ‘Good morning,’ she’ll say, so thrilled to see us. ‘How were your dreams while I was gone, my two peas in a pod? Not half as sweet as you, I bet,’ and then . . . and then everything will go back the way it was. Better even. Her and Papa have had a nice vacation from one another. Absence always makes the heart grow fonder. Just you wait and see.”
    Even though my sister couldn’t come out and actually say so, I could tell she wasn’t buying into that,