Summer in the South by Cathy Holton

your people come from?” As if Ava, who barely knew her own mother, who knew nothing of her father, should be able to explain the whereabouts of her ancestors. Southerners, who had stayed in the same small town for generations, seemed to take it for granted that the experiences of the rest of the country would mirror those of their own narrow world. No, not Southerners. She knew too few of them to be able to make such sweeping generalizations. Woodburns. Landed gentry. She had read about them in English novels but had never, until this evening, understood exactly what the term, with all its historical and socioeconomic connotations, meant. The Woodburns were like something from a Jane Austen novel.
    No, not Austen , she thought, remembering the face under the ice.
    One of the Brontë sisters, more likely.
    W hen she awoke again it was nearly nine o’clock. Sunlight flooded the room, falling between the window slats and making geometric patterns on the dark floor. There was a scent of coffee and frying bacon in the air, and Ava could hear movement deep within the house, the clinking of china and silverware.
    Coming out of her room, she stood for a moment in the sunny hallway, listening to the muffled sounds of the house. The lingering sense of melancholy she had felt yesterday seemed to have dissipated in the bright sunlight. The house seemed even more splendid than it had last night. Will had given her a tour, and she had passed in openmouthed amazement from room to room, but seen now in the brilliance of a summer morning, the shutters open, light flooding the large rooms and pooling against the darkly polished floors, Ava was amazed anew at the stunning elegance of the old house.
    The ceilings on the first floor were twelve feet high and trimmed with ornate plasterwork. At one end of the wide central hallway, near the front door, a graceful staircase rose to the second floor. The rooms opening off the central hallway were expansive and filled with antique furniture, most of it in the Empire style. Oil portraits of dead ancestors hung on the walls. All the interior doors were massive, eight feet tall and nearly four feet wide. (“Wide enough so ladies in their hoop skirts could pass through,” Josephine had told Ava.) They were solid mahogany and, like the furniture, had been made at Longford. Oriental carpets covered the dark heart pine floors. A massive French gilt mirror graced one of the walls of the hallway, a place where the women of the house used to stand to check their wide skirts before venturing out. “If only that mirror could talk,” Fanny had said gaily to Ava, “what stories it could tell!”
    She walked slowly through the dining room beneath the watchful eyes of Randal and Delphine, stopping to look at the many objects of interest. Along one wall, built-in glass-fronted cabinets housed an extensive collection of sterling silver. Several smaller sideboards held silver tea trays, jam pots, and ornate obsolete utensils. She stopped and peered at a gilt-framed letter hanging on a wall between two long windows. The script was barely legible but the signature was vaguely familiar.
    As if sensing her presence, Will came through the butler’s pantry, whistling cheerfully. “Good morning,” he said.
    “Morning.” She turned her attention back to the letter, tapping the glass with one finger. “Thomas Jefferson,” she said. “I recognized the signature. This is a very good replica.”
    He smiled faintly, an apologetic yet vaguely defiant smile. “That’s no replica,” he said. “He and my great-grandfather Randal were friends.”
    She stared in amazement, then turned and followed him through the butler’s pantry into the sunny kitchen.
    Josephine was standing at the sink, an apron tied around her narrow waist. “There you are,” she said, as if she had been waiting for Ava. She was wearing a pair of yellow rubber gloves. “Are you hungry?”
    “Yes,” Ava said, surprised. “I am.” She never