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yet”—Christina leaned in toward both Louise and Carole—“Tim asked Jen to go with him!”
    “What did she say?” asked Carole. She couldn’t help but feel interested.
    “She’s thinking about it,” said Christina. “They mightgo to the movies this week, if Tim can get his mom to drive them.”
    “Wow.” Louise leaned back in her chair. “I don’t know why she just doesn’t say yes. He’s had a crush on her for forever. Do you have a boyfriend, Carole?”
    “Sort of.” Carole told them about Cam. “We don’t get to see each other very often.”
    Aunt Lily, who had been out in the living room with the rest of the family, came back into the kitchen and smiled at them. She reached into the pantry, grabbed something off the shelf, and tossed it to Louise.
    “Marshmallows!” said Louise. “What a great idea!” The three girls adjourned to the living room, where Grand Alice, Uncle John, Aunt Jessie, and Colonel Hanson sat talking in front of a big open fire. Louise produced some long-handled forks.
    “The secret,” said Aunt Jessie, taking a fork and bending low before the fire, “is to keep turning your marshmallow around and around over some nice red coals, to get it perfectly brown and even.” Carole noticed that Louise turned hers around and around and made perfect marshmallows too. Carole had always preferred hers burnt. She thrust her marshmallow right into the fire.
    “The secret,” said Christina, laughing, “is to be able to get your marshmallow off the fork afterward!”
    “If anyone knows that secret, tell me,” Carole said ruefully. She pulled at the black and gooey mess she’d created,then gave it up and got another marshmallow to try for a more perfect one. The wind howled around the house and down the chimney. The fire flickered. “Brr!” Carole said, half to herself.
    “Louise said you had a reason for visiting now, Carole,” Christina said. “It’s too bad you didn’t come in summer. The weather’s nice, and the lakes around here are so pretty.”
    Carole explained about her family-tree project. “It’s not that I didn’t want to visit before,” she said, “but this was a good excuse at a good time, I guess, and Dad’s being awfully nice about it.” She smiled up at her father, who winked back.
    “The project sounds interesting,” Christina said.
    “I think it will be. Dad was telling me part of a story about a man who escaped slavery and came here to Minnesota.…” Carole looked around the room, hoping that one of her relatives could fill her in on the details. Uncle John nodded and seemed about to speak.
    “That rascal Jackson Foley!” Grand Alice exclaimed. Carole looked at her in shocked surprise. Grand Alice had been dozing off but now was sitting forward in her chair, her eyes snapping. “You want to hear about him, do you?” she asked. Carole nodded. “Well, it’s a story, all right.” Grand Alice leaned back, crossed her hands in her lap, and began to speak. Everyone listened.
    “My late husband’s great-grandfather was born into slaveryon a cotton plantation in the middle of Georgia. No one knows quite where it was—ol’ Jackson never told what his master’s name had been, and when he got away from there he didn’t bother to read the road signs on his way out. So we don’t know who owned him—owned, Carole, think on that—or where it was he was born. Master gave him the name Jackson Washington.
    “He had a wife. He had three little babies, born one after another, scarcely a year apart. Then one day he had a chance to escape. The Underground Railroad. A train, so to speak, had come for him.” Grand Alice’s voice had a musical lilt to it, and Carole was so absorbed in listening that she could hardly move. She knew about the Underground Railroad—the secret network that had helped slaves to freedom.
    “I don’t blame him for leaving,” Grand Alice continued. “I don’t blame him one bit. Think what it meant: freedom! The work he