Summer in the South by Cathy Holton Page A

ate breakfast in Chicago—she usually wasn’t hungry until lunch—but the delicious smells had awakened in her a ravenous appetite.
    “There’s a plate for you on the stove. And coffee in the percolator.” Josephine nodded at the gleaming pot on the counter, glancing at Ava’s bare feet.
    “Good morning!” Fanny called brightly. She, Clara, and Alice were sitting in the small sunny breakfast room off the kitchen. A large tabby cat slept on Fanny’s lap. Ava poured herself a cup of coffee and, collecting her plate, went to join them.
    Will pulled out a chair for her and then sat down beside her. He seemed shy around her this morning. Attentive but unsure of himself. She was awkward, too, looking at the long-limbed man beside her and trying to remember the boy she’d known in college. She remembered the brotherly kiss he had given her and the jaunty way he had said goodnight.
    “We’re being lazy,” Fanny said, stroking the cat, but Ava noted that they were all dressed except for her. Fanny wore a blue dress and Clara wore a pair of jeans and a red sweater. Ava was still in flannel shorts and a faded T-shirt, her usual sleeping attire.
    “Sorry,” Ava said, running her fingers through her hair and glancing around the table. “I’m not really a morning person.”
    “You’re on vacation,” Will said. “You’re entitled to sleep in if you want to.”
    They had set a place for her, although it was clear that everyone else had finished breakfast some time ago. The table was cleared except for their coffee mugs and a pair of silver jam pots that Alice placed in front of Ava with a faint smile. Alice wore a coral-colored tennis warm-up with a flower-shaped diamond brooch on one lapel. Her dark blonde hair was cut close around her narrow face.
    “As long as I don’t make it a habit,” Ava said. She had planned on rising early and finishing the outline for her new novel, a coming-of-age story about a girl and her mother traveling around the Midwest, before heading out to Longford with Will.
    “It’s going to be a scorcher,” Fanny said, staring out the window. “Why, I can’t remember a time when it’s been this hot in May unless it was that summer all those years ago when the strange insects dropped out of the trees and the river was swollen with the rains. You remember, Sister. The summer of—” She stopped, a curious expression on her face.
    “Yes,” Josephine said quickly. “I remember.”
    “We thought we might take a drive,” Will said to the table at large. “Out to Longford.”
    “Such a pretty day for a drive,” Fanny said. Alice and Clara looked at Fanny and she blushed suddenly, a deep crimson color.
    Josephine stood in the doorway, wiping her hands on her apron. “Try the blackberry jam,” she said to Ava. “It’s made locally.”
    Ava ate while the other four women talked quietly about an upcoming barbecue. Will stared out the large windows, his hand curled casually around an empty coffee cup. He had told her last night that he was renovating Longford, trying to update the house while remaining true to the architectural period. Upon being further pressed as to what he did for a living (she gathered from his demeanor that this wasn’t something she should have asked), he admitted that he flipped the occasional house and had been involved for some time in a local company that manufactured parachutes. He had sold that business, he told her, when he began the renovations on Longford. The reality, of course, was that he didn’t have to do anything and they both knew it.
    “It won’t take me long to get ready,” Ava said to him, spreading her toast with blackberry jam.
    “I’m in no hurry.” He gave her a brief smile and then glanced up at Josephine, who remained standing in the doorway. “Aunt Jo, do you think those blueprints might be up in the attic?”
    “The plans for Longford? Possibly. I know there was a set that was given with the family papers to Vanderbilt. But